“Bestselling author Gavin de Becker is America’s leading expert on predicting violent behavior. Advising such clients as the C.I.A. and the United States Supreme Court, this three-time presidential appointee has changed the way the United States government protects its highest officials. He is a senior fellow at UCLA’s School of Public Policy and Social Research." (jacket notes from de Becker’s Protecting the Gift, 1999).

Elements of this program were adopted from many different sources. The concepts of informed intuition and pre-incident indicators, as well as other important lessons and elements in this curriculum, were derived from the violence prediction and prevention principles of Mr. de Becker. Mr. de Becker did not develop this curriculum; his organization, de Becker & Associates, generously permitted the use of his material and ideas, as presented in his books The Gift of Fear and Protecting the Gift, for the development of the VSAP Project. Both of these books are recommended texts for the VSAP Project curriculum.