 Good afternoon, welcome to the New America Foundation. It's really a great pleasure to introduce Mitch Silver, who is an old friend of the New America Foundation, who is the director of intelligence analysis at the NYPD, where he's just written a really brilliant new book called The Alkyda Factor, which I think is both deeply researched and also very clearly written, unlike a lot of other books that I have to read in this area. And based on Mitch's very deep dive into terrorism cases throughout the West and alkyda's involvement or lack of involvement in those cases, Mitch also co-authored the radicalization in the West. Is that the correct title of the NYPD report that attracted a lot of attention in 2009? He's a graduate at Columbia's CEPA school. Interestingly, he spent nine years essentially in corporate finance, is that correct? So it's unusual for somebody, I think, at NYPD to come out of that background. And so Mitch will address the subject of his book today. And then we'll open it up to Q&A and take away Mitch. All right. Peter, I had sent some slides to Andrew, but I don't see them. But I'll leave them with that. That's OK. That's right. We'll wing you with that. We'll get Andrew left, unfortunately, yesterday. So the slides with it. Well, good afternoon, everyone. I want to thank the New America Foundation for hosting me today. We've actually had both Peter Bergen and Stephen Cole up at NYPD speaking to our personnel to help them be more informed the nature of the changing threat, and specifically looking at alkyda and how it's morphed over time. And in fact, both Ghost Wars and Peter Bergen's books sort of required reading for our analytical cadre. This afternoon, I'm going to walk you through the nature of the book, The Alkyda Factor. And let me bring you back to September 11th. In September 11th, 2001, because September 11th really changed the world's perception of alkyda. What had been considered a small band of revolutionary terrorists with a capability limited to attacking Western targets in the Middle East and Africa was now something very different. Suddenly, the group's threat profile had changed drastically. And the perception of alkyda's capabilities, strengths, and ability to project force was boosted to an entirely different order of power. Subsequent plots against the West perpetuated this new idea of alkyda as an organization that spanned the globe had a thought out and precise strategy to defeat the West. In what I believe was a classic case of mirror imaging, imagining the enemy's characteristics to reflect your own, the perception grew that alkyda was highly organized, rigidly centralized, and had deployed recruiters, operatives, and sleeper cells to the West who could be activated on command. These alkyda agents were supposedly able to spot recruits, send them back to Afghanistan and Pakistan for training, and then launch them back to the West under the precise command and control of alkyda to carry out plots that would fill out the organization's strategic aims. More than 10 years after September 11, 2001, we now know this to be untrue. Instead, we know that the role of alkyda core in global jihadist plots against the West has actually varied significantly over time. And not all of what have been generally termed alkyda plots have had equivalent involvement by alkyda. This prompted the question that really drives the study. How much is alkyda involved in the alkyda plots? And that actually was the original title for the book until Penn Press mercifully fixed that and put me out of my misery and came up with the alkyda factor. But this is really a fundamental question because we're to truly understand the nature of the threat posed by the transnational jihad led by alkyda. We have to have a greater and more nuanced understanding of the genesis of plots and their execution. Alkyda core's role shouldn't be overestimated or underestimated because important resource allocations derive from the answer to these questions. It affects military, intelligence, policing activities that are dedicated to preventing the next attack. So in a sense, determining where the action is for the plot or in military terms what Prussian military theorists Carl von Klauswitz called the center of gravity or critical element of strength for alkyda is key to provide insights on how to thwart them. And to date, not enough attention had been focused on this issue. So essentially what I did is I looked at what I believe to be 16 of the most important alkyda plots against the West since 1993. So 16 plots over an 18-year time period, this was to test for consistency. And the West, North America, Europe, and Australia, you have geographic diversity. And essentially as someone from New York City, looking at alkyda's plots in environments that are similar to New York. So really restricting it to the West. Most of the plots you're familiar with, these are the big ones. 93 Trade Center, the Millennium Plot against LAX, the 9-11 plot, Shoe Bombers, the Lackawanna Cluster, Operation Rhyme, which was Deer and Burrow, and the Gas Limo plots, where he did surveillance on the city core building and the stock exchange in New York, as well as some locations in the UK. Operation Crevice, another UK plot where individuals were targeting either a shopping center or a nightclub with ammonium nitrate devices. The Madrid Attacks of 2004. The Hofstede Group and their assassination of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands in 2004. The 7-7 Attacks in London. The 7-21 Attacks two weeks later with five suicide bombers in the London Metro. Operation Pendennis, a plot in Australia against the Australia Football League Championship. The Toronto 18, Operation Overt, the Transatlantic Liquid Bomb Plot with the Gatorade type bottles. Operation Dagger, a plot in Copenhagen. And then finally Operation High Rise, which was the Najib Al-Azazi plot from summer of 2009. So these are the big plots. These are the ones that either caused the most damage or had the potential to cause the most damage. So what were my research sources for this? Because clearly it's been a lot written in the media and how, you know, why was I gonna provide anything more value added than what's already in the New York Times or the Daily Telegraph. The key thing was that I was able to get access to the legal documents, especially the trial transcripts from the UK, from the US, Australia, Canada. And as a researcher, I have to say, you know, getting to the primary source material is always key, but really embedded in these trial transcripts in the detail of where do these individuals meet? What happened at that fateful meeting in Pakistan where they decided that, you know what, instead of doing something in Afghanistan because there was no need for foreign fighters, they made the decision to turn and do something against the UK. So all of those details, who they met, who facilitated their travel, is all embedded in the trial transcripts. And that was really what sort of gave me a unique insight into these plots. So how did I measure what was the al-Qaeda factor for the plots? Essentially what I did is I looked at a variety of different points in the evolution of the plot and asked the question, well, what was al-Qaeda's role here? So one of the things I look at and essentially each plot is a chapter in the book. So for each plot, I said, what about the scene, the social environment that sort of preceded the development of the plot? Did al-Qaeda set that up? Did they send the blind shake to New York City, specifically with the mission to organize a group of followers who could then be utilized to attack the World Trade Center? Or did that happen organically or fortuitously? What about the cluster? The group of individuals who sort of formed that proto-conspiracy? Did al-Qaeda pick out who the 7-7 bombers were gonna be in London? Or did they organize themselves and self-choose? What about the connections to al-Qaeda? Did al-Qaeda send recruiters to London, to New York City, to find the Najibullah Zazi and find him and send him back to Afghanistan and Pakistan for training? What about the plot conception? Was this a plot that al-Qaeda had on the shelf? Like the idea that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had for using planes to hit buildings, only awaiting individuals who could be trained to fly planes? Or was this a plot designed by the men living in communities outside of Madrid, saying, you know what, this is the way we're gonna coerce Spain to get out of the Iraq War. We're gonna hit them just before the elections. And what about the plot launch? What was the role of al-Qaeda's chief of external operations? Was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed involved? Abu-Abid al-Masri are some of the other individuals who've had this sort of number three spot in al-Qaeda? Or was this a plot that group of men in Toronto conceived of themselves? What about the target selection? Again, was this something that al-Qaeda determined? Will it hit the World Trade Center, the Capitol building, and the Pentagon? Or did the individuals decide, hey, we're a group of individuals in Australia. What will hurt Australia most? What will coerce them to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan? Hit them at their Australia football championship. What about the casing of targets? Did al-Qaeda send someone to look at the New York Stock Exchange and the World Bank down in DC here? Like they sent Deer and Burrow in 2000 and 2001? Or did the individuals say, you know what? We've been on the London Tube. We don't need to case it out. And they sort of took advantage of that familiarity. What about the communications with al-Qaeda? Was it like 9-11 where you had Ramsey bin al-Shib? You had one phone to call Mohammed Atta, who was in the United States, and one phone to call Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was still in Afghanistan. So he was almost a human link man for the plot. Or did the communications just come at the end of the plot, let's say with Zazi, where at the last minute he decided or realized that, you know what, I don't know the exact recipe for the device. Better email al-Qaeda. So there was no communications, no control of the plot until the last minute when the guy decided, realized he didn't have the ability to make the explosive device. What about logistics? Did al-Qaeda fund the plot with $500,000 for 9-11? Or provide $12,000 to Ahmed Rasam, who was involved, who was leading the LAX Millennium plot? And then lastly, what about the weaponization? Did al-Qaeda provide the shoes, the explosive underwear? Or did these individuals potentially exchange hashish for dynamite, as they did in Madrid in order to get the capability to carry out the plot? So essentially along this trajectory of the plot, I asked that question at different points to try and find out what was precisely as al-Qaeda's role, because really only through that deep dive can you get to the nuance. What falls out of it is a schematic where people are in a scene, they break off into a cluster, they decide bottom up to sort of travel overseas generally, and oftentimes they may not even link up directly with al-Qaeda. They may link up with L-E-T, Lashkar-e-Taybah, like Deer and Barrow did, or Omar Qayyam from the crevice plot, or they may link up with J.C. Mohamed like Rashid Raouf, who was involved in the 2006 airline plot. And then these individuals, through links, hook up with al-Qaeda, and then they're sent back to the West to carry out a plot where they carry out their operational cycle, where they do their target selection, where they do their casing, their logistics, and their weaponization. So looking at the 16 different plots, trying to figure out where the commonalities are and what sort of lessons can be drawn from them, one of the things that falls out is that for each one of these, the story begins in the West. Even if we're talking about the 9-11 plot, you have to look at Mohamed Atta, Ramzi bin al-Shib, Zia Jara, living in Hamburg, Germany. And essentially, although most of the conspirators for the 9-11 plot were all born in the Middle East, if not for this period of radicalization in Hamburg for Atta and three out of the four pilots, that plot doesn't go forward. But really, across the board, we're talking about the Hofstad group with the Copenhagen plot or the Montreal, the LAX plot, where ex-patriot Algerians are living in Montreal. The story begins in all 16 plots, really, with individuals living in the West. These are the people who end up being the primary conspirators in the plot. Once you move beyond that, you see something that I call the scene. And the scene, you've seen the movie, The Social Network. The scene you can think of is sort of the jihadi social network. In a sense, it's what precedes terrorism. Just like any type of social network, there are hubs, there are nodes, and people are bouncing around like electrons. So what's a hub? A hub could be the Finnsmary Mosque in London. Could be the Al-Farouk Mosque in London. It could be Speaker's Corner in London, where people are seeing someone talk about terrorist acts or about foreign policy overseas. There are hubs where people go and meet. There are ideologues in the scene. If you're in New York City, it might be the Blind Shake. If you're in London, it could be Abu Qatara, Abu Hamz Al-Masri. In Toronto, it was the janitor at the mosque. But there are ideologues in the scene. And the scene has sort of irregular borders. You can almost imagine something ameba-like where people pass, move in and out of the scene. University Muslim Student Associations. At some universities, they may be particularly politically active and espouse extremist views. So people spend time in some of these Student Associations. And there's a mirror image of this online. And instead of certain mosques and certain hangouts, replace it with a chat room, a pal-talk room, a Facebook page. So there's sort of a cyber variant of this. But essentially, in looking at all of different plots and seeing how did people get into the scene? And you can think of Londonistan sort of as the scene in a sense. There are two on-ramps to it. One is reactionary Islam. And what do I mean by that? Well, I mean that people develop an intellectual framework that has a binary world view. It's the believer versus the unbeliever. They adopt this set of views that says, you know what, there's only a literalist interpretation of Islam that is correct. And that Islam and democracy are incompatible. And I'll be crude for a second, but I'll quote one of the guys from the Operation Pendence or Australian plot. He said, listen, Allah's law is the only law worthy of ruling mankind. Democracy is full of shit. So clearly not an intellectual, but this is an intellectual framework that he's bringing to the table, that Islam and democracy are incompatible. And some of these individuals may join the Salafis, they may join the Tapli Jamat. Again, this isn't terrorism, but this is espousing a literalist interpretation that sets them on a pathway where under some circumstances, violence is acceptable. But some people come to the scene or the sort of the social network and they're not coming to it from a religious standpoint. They're really coming to it from a political standpoint. Almost a clash of civilizations, Samuel Huntington. There's a war against Islam. The West has invaded Muslim lands and there are certain type, there's a grievances there and it's a set of narratives. So that requires some type of action. So what do these people do? They join organizations that are activists. They may join the Muslim Brotherhood or Al-Muhajroon if you're in London or Hisbatariah or if you're in New York City you might join Revolution Muslim or Islamic thinker societies. Some of these groups that demonstrate, they've got a black flag, either over 10 Downing Street over the White House depending on where you are. And essentially they believe that by demonstrating provocatively they're gonna change the world. And for each one of the different plots, there's a scene you can talk about but essentially that shows where these people originated from. And in the book I talk about let's say in the Transatlantic Liquid Bomb Plot that's a lot of the individuals started out with Tablighi Jamat in Walthamstow and High Wycombe in London. After that some of them went overseas and worked in camps where they were helping refugees from Afghanistan and Pakistan and that mobilized them to wanna take some action. They get back to London, they're involved in the university scene, they're leaders of student groups and they're politically active demonstrating against the Iraq war. But again, this isn't terrorism but what happens next gets you closer. What happens next is that people actually decide that you know what? Prayer, proselytization, political activism, that's not enough to change the world. And actually what they decide is they have, they reject the scene. And again this comes out of the trial transcripts but you have someone like Omar Qaim or Muhammad Jenaid Babar, guys involved from this Operation Crevice to attack either a mall or a nightclub in London saying, you know what, al-Muhajroon, all they do is talk, talk, talk. And essentially that's not good enough, that's not changing the world. So they decide they need to take a much more activist approach. So they actually reject the scene, it's too passive, not changing the world and they spin off. They break off with a group of friends, maybe people they grew up with, maybe people they went to university with and they meet in a private location. If you're in Sydney, Australia, you may be meeting in the Halal Butcher Shop in Lakemba in Sydney. If you're up in Leeds, Beeston, and Dewsbury in Northern England where the 7-7 bombers came from, you may be in the Alec Rebook Store. If you're in New York City, you may be in a bookstore called Islamic Books and Tapes, you know, which was a place where individuals involved in the Harold Square plot hung out. But essentially individuals break off into a private place. Usually their ideologue is still involved with them and they sit there or if you're in Hamburg or if you're in Muhammad Atta's apartment and you debate, what is required of me? Do where do we fight? Should we go to Chechnya? Should we go to Israel? Should we go to Afghanistan? What should we do? And essentially this is really what happened in a lot of these cases in Lackawanna, New York, upstate New York, you know, what the men were told was, listen, you need to wake up. People are dying overseas in Bosnia and Chechnya and Israel and you're doing nothing to stop it. So these individuals felt guilt about living in the West and from their sessions, they called halakas where they would discuss politics and religion over pizza. They eventually decided in the summer or in the spring of 2001, they needed to go overseas, they needed to go to Afghanistan. That was really gonna be the only way that they could redeem themselves and they went as a group of high school friends. These were all guys who had played soccer for Lackawanna High School, had American girlfriends, were dating the cheerleader but at a certain point, they decided that some type of action was required for them. Interestingly enough, in these plots, a person who often gets talked about, the recruiter didn't really appear. Instead, somebody else appeared and I've given him the name and he's really an archetype called the Fixer and the Fixer is someone who essentially, he knows someone who can get you into a camp. He's not a recruiter in the sense that he's been sent top down from the organization to solicit people. He's someone, let's say, like Abdul Roof, Hanachi in Montreal, who went to an al-Qaeda camp, came back and was telling this group of ex-patriot Algerians who were hanging out in Montreal because the Algerian Civil War was going on, doing petty criminality. Hey, I just went overseas. You wouldn't believe the experience I had. It was sort of like outward bound with guns. And you know what? If you're a petty criminal living in Montreal, like Ahmed Rassam, Mustafa Lopsey, this sounds great. So what do you say? Listen, I'd like to go. You know, can you set this up for me? And sure enough, Hanachi could do it. He reached out to a connection to a connection and who did he hook up with Abu Zubaydah? So these individuals, Akram Mursam, ends up going overseas. Not because an al-Qaeda recruiter came into town because of the Fixer. And why do these guys want to go overseas? What is it? Well, there are a number of reasons. Number one, they want to go overseas to fight coalition forces. They don't feel like they're doing enough in London or Montreal or in Flushing, Queens. So exhausted, they want it to go overseas and fight. Paramilitary training. This is what the guys from Lackawanna were looking for. They wanted to sort of have that outward bound experience. Skill development. The leader of the 2006 airline plot with these Gatorade bottles, Ashley said, you know what? It turns out that trying to make a hydrogen peroxide explosive device is kind of dangerous. So I don't want to do it at home. I want to learn from someone who knows how to do it. And this was a guy who was going to explode it over in a plane over the Atlantic with eight other flights simultaneously. Provide supplies. Sometimes they want to travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan and find out, what does al-Qaeda need? Do you need money? Do you need boots? Do you need tents? Like the operation crevice guys. Or sanctioned direction. Someone like Adir and Barrow, who had come up with all of these proposals for plots, brought them to al-Qaeda to find out, almost like looking for funding from a venture capitalist. You know, will you endorse it? So these are some of the reasons that people go overseas. But essentially, more often than not, it's a bottom-up initiative. You're looking at the 7-7 plots, some other interesting things come out of this, and that is that there's repeat travel to Pakistan. In fact, Muhammad Sadiq Khan, who's the leader of the 7-7 plot, travels three times to Pakistan before he comes back to London and explodes himself on the subway. Interestingly enough, the first time he goes, and Peter's written about this, is because of Kashmiri concerns. He went with one other associate, Waheed Ali, and what did Waheed Ali say? He said, listen, there's nothing common about going to train in Pakistan. Islamically or morally, it was correct. If you wanted to help your Muslim brothers, it's just a whole romantic idea of going, training, helping your brothers. We all came back out of 190%. So this idea that for Kashmiri issues, grievances, concerns, you might travel to Pakistan, and that might, through connections, end up being the way you link up to Al-Qaeda, like Deer and Burrow. And Muhammad Sadiq Khan, the first time he went, he joined, he was trained by a group called Harkadul Mujahideen, H-U-M. The bus literally picked them up at the airport, but that was okay. It was a Kashmir issue, it wasn't Al-Qaeda, it was 2001. But ultimately, he travels overseas again in 2003, sent by a fixer, sent by a taxi driver who lives in Luton, north of London, named Muhammad Q Khan, who says, go to Afghanistan and find out what does Al-Qaeda need? Do they need money? Do they need supplies? Do they need fighters? So he goes on a fact-finding trip, and that trip ends up putting him on the pathway to linking to Al-Qaeda, and subsequently being one of four suicide bombers in London. But essentially, this is a pattern that repeats itself, whether we're talking about Ahmad Rasam, or Zazi, or someone like Muhtar Ibrahim, the leader of the 721 plot. Again, it's traveled to Pakistan and a certain frequency to it. What also sort of comes out of the analysis is that there have been varying roles for Al-Qaeda's chief of external operations. In some situations, let's say like Richard Reed and his associate, Sajid Badat, who went overseas, they actually link up with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad gives him a very specific mission, just like 9-11. These are the shoes, you're gonna wear them on a transatlantic plot, and that's what you're going to do. And when they come back to Paris and London, respectively, there's someone who I've called the Link Man involved. It's actually Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's nephew, Omar Al-Baluchi, and he's literally the guy who's got the two phones, or the two email addresses, one to email Richard Reed and find out when he's going, if he's going, make sure he's going, and another to his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, to let him know what the progress of the plot is. So that Link Man is sort of a cutout who provides a little bit of a distance between the Al-Qaeda chief of external operations and the conspirators are in the West. But that's an example of specific direction by Al-Qaeda, given to wear these shoes on these flights. What you also sometimes have suggestion, and going back to the 1999 Millennium Plot, targeting Los Angeles, Rahakman Rasam goes for his outward bound with guns type experience, and he and some other expatriate Algerians come up with the idea to hit LAX Airport on the eve of the Millennium. They talk about that idea with Abu Qutada, and at that point Abu Qutada isn't actually part of Al-Qaeda. He's in a mirror in his own right, considered on the same level of Bin Laden. Abu Qutada, I'm sorry, Abiz-Abida endorses that, gives them money, gives them hexamine tablets, and essentially they go on their way to target LAX. But that was an example of sort of more suggestion and endorsement. So the plots, there's a typology. So there are three different types. One is command and control plots. You met someone with Al-Qaeda, they commanded you, hit this target during this time period, and this is how you do it, and there was control. They called you up to make sure that you're actually gonna commit and go through with the plot. The 2006 airline plot, Rashid Raouf was emailing, calling the guys, when are you going? Are you being surveilled, checking in on them? Then there are plots that are suggested and or endorsed. You know what? We already have enough fighters here in Afghanistan, but you've got a UK passport. Why don't you do something for the cause in the UK? Similar thing happened with Zazi. Zazi is two associates arrive in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They want to fight coalition forces. Salih al-Samali and people involved external operations, so wait a second. We don't need you to do that. Why don't you go back to New York, September of 2009, and carry out a plot there? Make sure it's in a place where you kill a lot of people, potentially mass transportation, but the date and the exact way they do it is left up to the conspirators. So less of an al-Qaeda role in those plots. And then lastly, there are those that are inspired. There are plots where really al-Qaeda, you haven't met anyone from al-Qaeda, they haven't given you any direction, but you act on your own. The Madrid bombers in 2004, the Toronto 18, who said, listen, we're not officially al-Qaeda, but we share their principles and methods and how they committed the attack, they were gonna carry out the attack in the name of the al-Qaeda organization in Canada. Is there an al-Qaeda organization in Canada? Absolutely not, but clearly these guys were inspired by al-Qaeda, and that's in whose name they wanted to carry out the plot. A little bit in terms of the anatomy of these plots, and it's almost biological, because if you look at the conspirators who carry out these plots, you can divide them into three categories, and you can almost envision a cell with a nucleus. And inside the nucleus is what I call the active core. These are the one or two people who without them, the plot doesn't go forward. No Najibullah Zazi, there is no Zazi plot. No Muhammad Atta, probably not a 9-11 plot in that way. No Muhammad Siddiqui Khan, no 7-7 plot in London. These are the people who are essential for the plot. In a circle around them are who I call the followers. And the followers are people who may do some reconnaissance, they may buy the material for the device, they may even be willing to be three of the other suicide bombers or two of the other suicide bombers, but they're followers. They wouldn't do it without the leadership of the people in the active core. And then if you do another concentric circle, you have people who I call the periphery. And who's in the periphery? Well, the periphery is often the ideologue. Let's say in the 1993 plot, the blind shake wasn't able to be indicted or tried for his involvement in the plot. Was he in the mix? Did he know what was going on? Did he sort of set the stage? Absolutely. So, and in the UK, they're dealing with this issue where they have people like Abu Qatada, who they can't try him for anything, but they know he was in the mix and a lot of these are at least on the periphery of these conspiracies. Also, who's in the periphery? The wives, cousins, relatives. If you're talking about the July 21 plot in London, these are the people who after the plot failed and the five explosive devices didn't work correctly. They were the ones who were gonna distribute the video. They helped one individual get out of the UK and get to Italy. These are people who are often arrested when the plot gets taken down, but are let go because there's not enough detail or information to try them for the actual involvement in the conspiracy. A great example of this is the Toronto 18. Four people in the act of core, about 10 people who are followers and then a bunch of people in the periphery. And who's in the periphery? And the periphery is the ideologue, the janitor at the mosque who played basketball with the boys, gave them the ideology, but wasn't involved in the actual conspiracy. Who else is in the periphery, the wives? One of the wives of the Toronto 18 actually had a prenuptial agreement with her husband. If you don't go ahead and commit violent jihad, I get a divorce. So did she know something was going on with her husband? For sure. In the Zazi plot, when he was building the TATP in his uncle's garage in Aurora, Colorado, his uncle walked in and saw this and was, what is this? And Zazi said, this is some type of birth control device I'm making, this is true. And did the uncle know something was gone? Of course he did, but he didn't turn him in and actually the uncle was prosecuted for lying to federal authorities. But people in the periphery know something's going on. They may not know the details of the conspiracy, but they're certainly aware and to some degree, permissive that it's going forward. But that cluster of people, the active corps, the followers, the periphery, when they're back in the West, that's really as we move further and further from 9-11 where they're doing the target selection, the casing, the logistics and the weaponization. And the communications al-Qaeda, there's another example like the Zazi plot, this operation crevice that I've mentioned where again, right at the end, Omar Qayyam forgot the precise mix for the ammonium nitrate device and what does he do? He emails his colleague in Pakistan to get that information. And that reach back to Pakistan and Afghanistan has actually been a key point where some of these plots have been thwarted, Zazi specifically among others, because there's that communications that signals intelligence can pick up. But that really sort of gets to that point of, well if a lot of the action for the plot is happening in the West, where is the center of gravity? Just to zoom out to let's say 10,000 feet and sort of wrap it up, I like to end on sort of where I believe we've been and where we're going with the al-Qaeda threat. And I would say from 2001 to 2004, you could almost envision sort of a one big red blob as the al-Qaeda corps. We know who hit us on September 11th, it was an organization, it had some structure. There were a couple affiliates and allies, Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, Jemma Islamiyah in Indonesia and Afri went into Iraq, al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia. But that was really what we were talking about when we were talking about the greater al-Qaeda threat plus al-Qaeda emitting their ideology. You fast forward to 2004 and the picture starts to get a lot more complicated and I would almost use a cancer analogy. The primary cell, the primary tumor has metastasized. It's been hit with radiation, it's been hit with chemo and where is the cancer metastasized to where it's toughest to get at it, to the lymph nodes. And if we're talking about a terrorism metaphor, where are the places that are toughest to get at it? Yemen and Somalia in the Islamic Maghreb, potentially Nigeria. So spots where it's difficult to get at, it can proliferate and really grow. So now the al-Qaeda threat looks like still that al-Qaeda corps there shrunk in significantly but now you've got affiliates and allies, al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, al-Shabaab in Somalia, some of the Pakistani groups, Tariq-e-Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaisi Muhammad, the remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq. And to some degree I think there had been for a period of time a view that these affiliates and allies really only focused on their local theater of operations. But really that all changed on December 25th, 2009, when suddenly someone from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had the audacity to try and attack the homeland. So al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's their grievances, their issues weren't solely restricted to their theater of operations. And then may of 2010 again, the Pakistani Taliban decide to attack New York City with a vehicle-borne explosive in Times Square. So again, another one of these groups acting out of their theater of operations. And I think that we would be remiss if we didn't think that there's a possibility that any number of these other groups sort of part of this alphabet soup, a J-E-M, al-Shabaab might do the same thing. And in fact, David Hadley was put on trial last year in Chicago and they asked him, is there any scenario where L-E-T, who carried out the Mumbai attacks, would ever attack the United States? His response was yes. If L-E-T could do it in a way that it wasn't obvious that they were behind it. So that's in terms of future threat, things we have to be concerned about. You've got all of these groups. And which I think at this point in time makes for one of the most challenging counter-terrorism environments for a practitioner. Number one, you still have the remnants left from, well I'd say number one, you still have people radicalizing the violence. Individual arrested in Tampa Bay, Florida wanted to do a vehicle-borne explosive on a mall. Individual who left the US military a signals officer arrested on his way to Somalia. That's just the last two weeks. Individuals arrested in the UK, someone who wanted to stab a member of parliament. So in smaller groups, individual up in Upper Manhattan on the West side using pipe bombs that he made out of an Al-Qaeda magazine how to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom. People are still radicalizing in the West. And now they can go one of three routes. They can still try and link up with Al-Qaeda Corps. Sure, we're down to remnants and there are probably only a few people left who've got the ability to instruct. But if you look at the Zazi plot, which was called the most serious plot on American soil since 9-11, what was it? It was essentially three young men from Flushing Queens, one of them who got trained by a ballmaker up in the Fata area. And a person who, and then he came back and recruited a couple of his friends in a sense into the plot. That's the Zazi plot. That's a 7-7 plot. So as long as there are one or two people left in Al-Qaeda who can train on how to make a hydrogen peroxide device, that threat, though, diminished still remains. Then you've got the ability for Westerners to join one of these other groups. Faisal Shahzad can join a TTP. Sameer Khan can go join. Or Anabdul Matalib can join an AQAP. Any one of these groups, and now we can add Boko Haram, potentially, as another affiliate or ally who might decide to strike the West. And then you've got the individuals who are Al-Qaeda-inspired, homegrown plots, who are still left out there. So to wrap up, what are the key judgments? Number one, and I get to play a little bit of Monday morning quarterback on this, but 10 years after 9-11, we can say that Al-Qaeda-core's actual role in plots against the West has been overstated. That's not to say that the threat has been overstated, but they're actually, their hand in the plots has been overstated. A lot more of the action for the conspiracies has been in the West by Westerners, independent of Al-Qaeda. But Al-Qaeda, and Al-Qaeda has not actively recruited in the West. Really, with the one exception of Lackawanna, where someone from Al-Qaeda actually showed up in town and got people to go to a training camp, you don't really have top-down recruitment from Al-Qaeda. What you do have is sort of bottom-up desire by individuals to go overseas. And Al-Qaeda's been opportunistic. Someone shows up from Copenhagen, they'll take them, they'll turn them around, and send them back to Denmark. Someone shows up from East London, they'll take them, train them, and turn them around, send them back to the UK. Someone shows up from Flushing, Queens, same thing. Turn them around, send them back to the US. So they've been opportunistic and who's shown up on their doorstep. And then lastly, what does that mean for the overall threat with the demise of Bin Laden? Well, my belief is that given the combination of Westerners who were continuing to radicalize, and now this multiplicity of options for them in terms of groups that they can hook up with, or, frankly, go it alone, the threat has morphed, it's disaggregated, but there still is a significant threat that will require vigilance going forward. Thank you very much. Thank you for that extremely clear and stimulating set of remarks. Let me ask you a couple of questions before I throw it up on the floor. In a sense, your book is a meditation on the Sagemann-Baufmann debate. And in the book, you don't really reference it directly. And you taught a class with Mark Sagemann at Columbia. And I guess the counter argument to what you've just said today might be something along the lines of, yeah, of course, plots that happen in the West are gonna have a Western component. But what turns somebody who's just an angry person in their pajamas, reading some internet blog about G-Had into a capable bomber is a training in a training camp. And I think that you referenced yourself to one of the people in the planes plot who said, I really need, you know, building a hydrogen peroxide bomb ain't that easy. You're either gonna blow yourself up or have a dud unless you know how to do it. It's very unstable, kind of. So if you, I mean, just reviewing some of the cases that you've talked about, you know, the key person in each of these cases did go to a training camp. And I think that was a key part of there. So whether it's Ramsey Youssef or Holly Sheikh Mohammed or Muhammad Sidi Khan or Omar Qayam. And in a sense, these are the, I can't remember the phrase you used to describe these, but if you take this guy out of the plot, the plot doesn't happen. And, you know, in the Lackawana case, to me, it seems like if Carmel Derwish hadn't been in Yemen and remained in New York, upstate New York, you know, maybe that plot would have come out a different way. So just wanna, how would you sort of address the kind of counter-argument? Yeah, a couple of things. I think, you know, and, you know, it was keen inside to sort of see that this really bounces between the Sageman Hoffman argument and friends with both of them. But, you know, I think both of them, in a sense, get points on this debate. And I always thought that the argument got pushed to extremes in the media, extremes that neither one of them sort of represented. You know, one of, if you look at the 16 plots, I end up identifying three of them as al-Qaeda command and control. So, one could argue sort of leader-led jihad plots. They're about five or- Which are the ones that you identify? So, 9-11. Yeah. Shoe bombers and Operation Overt. You know, where not only someone- Which is a planes plot. Which is the planes plot with the Gatorade bottles. Not only do they link up with al-Qaeda, get some training by al-Qaeda, but there was command and control. There was someone checking in on them to make sure that they were doing what they were supposed to be doing going forward. Then there are about five or six plots that I've identified as al-Qaeda inspired. And this is the way I organized the book. So, the 1993 World Trade Center plot, because it's sort of pre-al-Qaeda in some ways. The Madrid plot, Toronto 18, Operation Pandanus plot in Australia, and Hofstad. Then there are about six plots, or seven plots that I call suggested and endorsed. So, to bounce off the Sageman-Hoffman argument, the ones that are command and control clearly fit Bruce Hoffman's argument. Those that are al-Qaeda inspired are Sageman's argument. Then there are some where it's a little murky. They met someone from al-Qaeda. Maybe they even got some training. And then they went back to the West. And some of them, let's say like 7.7 and 7.21, we don't exactly know what al-Qaeda's role is, was, after that. We don't know if they gave them the direction. In 7.7, the guys took the answer to their grave. Although now we learn that in the final months of the plot, there were phone calls coming into Mohammad Siddiqui Khan as he was building the device. Was that command and control, or just instructions on the device? Unclear. But essentially, there were about six or seven plots where there was some al-Qaeda linkage, but not necessarily command and control. And those sort of fit in that middle ground, actually, between Bruce and Mark. And then I think going forward, what we've seen is a proliferation of these smaller plots, homegrown plots. So I think from that standpoint, it looks like the trend line is going toward more of the inspired plots. Let me ask you sort of a question. Why does it matter? I think it matters for a couple reasons. Number one, on the big issues, when the United States decides whether it's going to do a surge in Afghanistan out of 100,000 troops, it sort of predicated on the idea that this is for the purpose of eliminating al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. So involved in that, tied up in that, is your assessment of what is al-Qaeda, are they in Afghanistan, and what are those 100,000 troops going to be able to do there? In fairness, the surge in Afghanistan is not to prevent the possibility of Afghanistan returning to some form of Taliban control. It's a little bit less strongly, it's not that they're trying to wipe out al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. No one is saying that, right? I mean, that was certainly wrapped up in the discussions as a key, I don't think it was one or the other, but certainly the purpose of degrading al-Qaeda further was involved in that decision-making process. So I think that at least should be some data points that should be considered in terms of, and is that likely the end the al-Qaeda threat, I think is another question, by its potential eradication in Afghanistan. So allocation of resources versus more resources spent on the homegrown to in a sense stop the supply of people who are seeking to go overseas to disrupt them, to identify them. So I think that's why it's important for resource allocation questions, then also for in order to thwart the plot. If we're finding out that more and more plots aren't linked to al-Qaeda, then we have a lower chance of thwarting them via SIGINT or something along those lines. How often is it that an NYPD official gets to publish a book while sort of in office, and to what extent did you have to go through some sort of vetting by the people in the organization? Yeah, this was a pretty unconventional event. I'd say there are zero data points before this. And it did get vetted by NYPD, and I think one of the reasons why the process actually is read once to give me suggestions in a second time to make sure I did them. And I know blacked out bits where the CIA threw people. Yeah, yeah, exactly. No, I managed to circumnavigate that. But really, because it wasn't policy prescriptive, I think that was the key thing why I was allowed to go through. And really, it sort of let the facts lay out as much as we knew them without necessarily having a strong opinion on what should be taken from that. One sort of final question before I throw it open. In a sense, because you mentioned LET, TTP, Al-Shabaab, AQAP, Boko Haram, as all potential threats in the future. And then clearly, these are not just a bunch of leaderless guys wandering around in fat or elsewhere. So it does seem that whenever somebody in the West has these ideas and then wants to go and execute, they do want to hook up with sort of an organization that will give them training. And that's the whole point, that they will go somewhere geographical. And so going back to this Afghanistan question, I mean, the reason that we're in Afghanistan is partly to influence what happens, obviously, in the FATA and the federally administered tribal areas, where so many of these groups are based and so many of the problems that you deal with every day are coming from. So I mean, in the next iteration of this book, when you write the next version, will you be looking at the whole question of other organizations and their influence on plots more broadly instead of just focusing on al-Qaeda? Yeah, I think, well, I'm going to hit that. I also wanted to come back to the training issue that you brought up before. Clearly, someone who's trained by a skilled person, like we heard the individual in the liquid bomb plot, potentially makes them more deadly. But there is just one counter to the argument is that in the Madrid plot where no one went overseas and they just hooked up dynamite to cell phones, they killed 191 people, which actually is four times as many as Mohammad Sadiq Khan, who we're pretty sure did get al-Qaeda training. Al-Qaeda is. Right, exactly. The non-Jahadis. So sometimes it makes you more deadly in general, but that doesn't mean amateurs can also be deadly. Which is sort of the way we're looking at it from prevention stage. But to this question, yeah, I think if there was another iteration of the book, and in fact, I sort of made a conscious decision to exclude the Christmas Day plot, the May 2010 Times Square plot, the David Headley plot against Copenhagen. So you could use different, the next iteration would be the other groups and Westerners who have shown up on their doorstep and then been utilized back against the West. And I think is one of the biggest concerns the US probably should have right now, whether we're concerned about individual of Somali descent from Minneapolis, going overseas to Al-Shabaab, or individuals going to Mauritania, AQIM. This idea of Westerners going out and then being sent directed back, I think in many ways probably the biggest concern. It may not just be the training. It's also the kind of bragging rights when you come back and you've hooked up with, you've gone overseas and it makes you more of a more serious figure. It's beyond simply the actual training on bomb making. I think it makes you a different person. Yeah, it certainly gives you that credibility. I mean, the street cred that you've been overseas and have come back and puts you in a position to lead something if you're so inclined to do that. Great, well, let's open it to the audience. And if you have a question, can you identify yourself and wait for the microphone? And also, questions are encouraged rather than lengthy statements. Okay, he's just behind you. Oh, there he is. Hi, Shelton Williams with the Osgood Center. I know this is not in your book, but it begs the question. How are we at anticipating and encountering these events or possible terrorist events? Your local, state, national, international, are we changing our approaches rapidly enough and effectively enough to counter these threats? The record would seem to be pretty good, but it keeps changing as you suggest. Are fusing centers working, is DHS working, all those things? As an operations guy, let us know. Yeah, I think in general, the scorecard is good. I mean, if you look at the last two years, plus or minus, the FBI nationally, the NYPD and the New York City metropolitan area have been tremendously successful in detecting individuals who are about to turn to violence. And a couple of exceptions, and it sounds somewhat like a Faisal Shazad, which was clearly an intelligence failure, a Zazi who was able to get to that point, a major Hassan. But in general, there are a lot more successes. And these are needles in the haystack, especially as you get to smaller plots, micro conspiracies of one or two people. How are you gonna find these guys? And in a sense, law enforcement and intelligence are evolving because they realize that, you know what, the internet is increasingly more important and people who may not be visible in the physical world, online, they may think they're anonymous, but they can be detected. Does that mean that somebody who is gonna perpetrate the next attack would make damn sure that they weren't involved on the internet or communicating with people on the internet? Or is it just something that is unavoidable that people just weren't abandoned? Yeah, I think as they got into the operational phase, they would sort of do the equivalent of what the 9-11 hijackers did when they came back from Afghanistan. They sort of shaved their beards and didn't hang out with anybody. So sort of the internet version of that, where they would observe some type of operational security, the interesting thing is that online, your footprint to some degree is usually immortal. So even when we've looked at people like Umar Farouk Abdul Maltalab, the underwear bomber, you can go back five years and he's, I think, lonely Farouk in London. And he's online saying, I'd like to do something, I wanna get involved, and he's just a college student, but his footprint's there, and that's retrospective. But so I think people would try and observe operational security, but they may have already given enough signatures that you might detect them. In your job, to what extent are you looking at other forms of political violence, right wing, left wing, environmental, you name it, eco, is that part of your remit? Or are you? Yeah, no, I mean, it is. And for the NYPD, I think, and I think in general, everyone's focused with New York on the al-Qaeda-type threat, but really, our remit is broad. Any type of political religious violence falls under our auspices. We've had some unsolved bombings of a recruiting center, of British embassy, and devices that didn't kill anybody, but they're more of an anarchist nature. So things like that need to be investigated as well. You were obviously spinning up quite a lot on the 10th anniversary of 9-11 for obvious. There was also some indication there was a sort of shards of a plot, as I think you were sort of pursuing. What happened to that? There were three guys, maybe one of them was, they were from North Africa, what were the details of that, and did it, was there just nothing to it? No, you know, essentially there was information that came in from a reliable source that suggested that there was something in motion. And essentially, sometimes with intelligence, and sometimes with plots, you're left sort of with that hanging information. It doesn't necessarily go away or get vetted out that it's false, but you don't get any more dots to sort of support that thesis, and you're left to something you're scratching your head. If it hasn't been disrupted, was it ever real to begin with? But you also can't keep up your defenses if essentially shutting down the city of New York to all of vehicular traffic, definitely. So at a certain point, we had to open up the bridges. And also you publicized it, so maybe people were scared off if it existed in the first place. Was that a very self-conscious decision? Yeah, it was. I think it was a view toward deterrence and the idea that, especially since there was so much unknown about it, that this might be something useful to deter someone from doing it for their fear that they're already detected. Doug. Hi, Doug Alamant with New America. Historically speaking, isn't this exactly what we should be expecting from an organization that sees itself with a world-changing multi-generational mission? I think of maybe like the Society of Jesus in the 16th, 17th, 18th century, when they're trying to recatholize England, they're sitting right across, right across in France, directing it as best they can. But then when it's China, they just send Ricci, as I recall, just go to China and do what Jesuit to do. Isn't this really normal behavior, historically speaking, for this kind of religious political organization? And by that, do you mean sort of the decentralized element of it, or? Yeah, using whatever means of command and control seems most appropriate, directly and closely when you can, sending one loan agent with very broad instructions when you can, or just providing kind of, exemplar causality when you can't get someone in there to do something for you directly. Doug, that is the first time that al-Qaeda is being compared to the Jesuits as far as I'm aware. And I think when I leave here, I've got to go straight to Wikipedia to get smart on that. So not being entirely familiar with that example, but I think al-Qaeda has turned to this strategy out of necessity. So in a sense, here's the good news, right? The good news is that special forces, coalition forces, drones have done a phenomenal job in degrading and taking really important al-Qaeda people off the battlefield. People like the chief of external operations, again and again and again, and in many ways that's one of the most important spots because that's the guy who's directing plots at the West. So what do they do? You know, they're under attack in Afghanistan, they're hiding in Pakistan. They jump on the bandwagon of this sort of decentralized movement, and there are ideologues in al-Qaeda al-Suri who put that out there. So they've got some legitimacy to do it, but they then endorse Inspire Magazine. Inspire Magazine says, hey, wait a second, people are getting arrested going overseas. Don't try and do it, do something at home. You don't need to go overseas. You've got the, we're sanctioned to do it. So al-Qaeda jumps on that bandwagon and says, yeah, that's right. Thank you very much, Benjamin Tua. In light of your focus on the bottom up nature of many of these plots, recruitment, walk in self-activation, and the fact that how we define terrorism and act against it can complicate the efforts, our efforts to reduce the threat from it. How do you view in that context the controversy over the Islamic cultural center near ground zero before, I guess, the elections in 2010? I mean, so that issue as to something to refate it out of the spotlight, it doesn't look like it's going forward or at least in forward in a way that it was originally conceived of. I think the country, United States has such a history of tolerance of all different religious races and creeds. So the idea that you should be able to have a religious center anywhere was an important one for the mayor to uphold. That said, I do know that there wasn't necessarily a population who underserved in that area by scarcity of religious institutions. So one has to wonder a little bit, was there a provocative nature to choosing that spot by the people who were behind it? I don't know. I don't know what their intentions were, but regardless of what their true intentions were, I thank you, the mayor clearly made the right decision in endorsing their ability to go forward because if you just say, look, religious institution anywhere in New York City have to be allowed to do it. Reg Smith, RCS associates, I realize that NYPD considers this a serious threat and acts accordingly. I understand that NYPD and the FBI have worked effectively for years, long before 9-11. I was wondering if you would like to comment on how this helps the al-Qaeda factor. In terms of how NYPD and FBI working together helps. Yeah, there's actually a very natural collaborative way that the FBI and NYPD can work together because essentially the FBI is getting information from the CIA, from the NSA, from the threat that emanates overseas and they're going to bring that to any locality and be aware of that. And the NYPD actually starts at the exact opposite end. The NYPD is in the weeds, looking at the grassroots origins of the terrorism, looking for the individuals who are radicalizing the violence in our neighborhoods. And it's really when the two meet, you have some of the most serious plots like Anaji Balazazi from Flush and Queens meeting up with al-Qaeda and then sent back to New York. So we're complementary efforts and the more that we continue to work together in that way, just helps keep New York City and the country safe. Was there a discussion at NYPD of the Barcelona plot in 2008 when Pakistani Taliban sent suicide bombers to Barcelona and saying we need to think about this as a problem or was it? Yeah, I mean, NYPD I think was ahead of the curve in thinking about the idea that affiliates and allies might attack the homeland. And I'll even go five years earlier to L.E.T. and Willie Brigitte in Sydney, Australia. So let me get this right. Someone from the Caribbean is essentially sent by L.E.T. to Australia to survey targets for a plot on L.E.T.'s behalf. So here was an affiliate or an ally looking to target a Western country and then fast forward to 2008 with a TTP plot in Barcelona. Yeah, so we believed before Christmas Day of 2009 that there was a decent shot that an affiliate or ally might target the U.S. Has there been any evidence that L.E.T. was interested in attacking the United States or New York in particular? Have you seen anything? You know, not specifically for New York City, although David Headley is commonly called of David Headley from Chicago, but he actually is David Headley really from New York. He used to have a video rental store on the Upper West Side. One of my analysts actually was a member, you know, some pre-L.E.T. of the video store. But, you know, L.E.T. recruited some of those individuals from the Virginia paintball plot to provide supplies to them. There was never a plot per se against suburban Washington, D.C., but also within the last six months, there's been an individual who was arrested in the Washington, D.C. area who was setting up a website that L.E.T. had asked him to do in English. So this was, and really it was support for an FTO. So we've got shadows of L.E.T., sort of operating here, not necessarily a plot per se, but one has to wonder, as the U.S.-Pakistani relationship continues to deteriorate, is there some point where L.E.T. is useful from an asymmetrical warfare type of standpoint? And clearly you'd be at a point where things have gotten very bad, but just something to keep in the back of your mind. That's Eric. Eric, just a lady here. Hi, Ann Lalina. My question is from a state and local enforcement prevention perspective. So we have this book and is there a lesson plan? I read this book and I start plotting on a map and then I start looking in my region as to certain populations. Where do I go based on your book, as far as trying to apply the lessons and the information and the analysis you've given us to try to understand and identify what may be going on? You know, it turns out that it's a very specialized capability to be able to detect individuals who are radicalizing to violence. You know, the FBI has that remit nationally. There's no reason why they can't cooperate with local agencies who know the ground truth very well. And the idea is to find out where are those hotspots for radicalization? Where are the nodes, the hubs in that social network where people are radicalizing? And essentially to try and see if you can't observe the beginnings of a conspiracy and have an individual there to sort of serve as a tripwire and identify it. But it really becomes a detection issue but it's a specialized thing. The cop on a beat, it's gonna be tough for them to find the guys in Muhammad at the Ata's apartment in a sense, you know, radicalizing. It's not gonna be blatantly apparent to them. Does the internet make it easier? I mean, Major Nadal Hassan was exchanging emails with our lab key, which seemed to have been, I mean, they were pretty like, is it okay for me to kill American soldiers? Was one of the questions he asked. Why did that bowl get dropped? Do you have a theory on that? You know, I think with Major Hassan, you had the complication of a few different field offices in the FBI having ownership. Anything Allaki related is owned in San Diego because that's where Allaki investigation was going back to 9-11. The fact that he was in the Washington D.C. area. The fact that JTTFs in general, you know, people inside the task force are really not allowed to take the information out of the task force. So even though the military is part of it, the information doesn't flow easily out of the task force because of security concerns. So, you know, the information flow between the field offices, between the Department of Defense, you know, there were problems in that. And, you know, the Lieberman Collins report, I think does a really good job of digging into the weeds, you know, of the problems in the communication there. But I think the internet gives us another medium to detect people. The individual who stabbed the member of parliament because of his support of the Iraq War, Roshana Chowdhury, was a follower of Revolution Muslim. So, you know, on some of these websites, there are people interacting there. Someone else who was also arrested in the UK was a follower of that website, Samir Khan. You know, at length, so there are individuals, so if you know sort of the hubs or these sort of hotspots on the internet, they also can lead you to people. The gentleman in the back. Thank you. My name is Ivo Puljik, I'm from Al Jazeera Balkans, new branch of Al Jazeera. And I'd like to know is actually a question for both of you if you can, please. Did you find that during your research, some connections between Al Qaeda and Balkans, Southeast of Europe, Bosnia, Kosovo, or the whole region? And other question is what do you think about some connections between immigrants in US and terrorist groups overseas? Thank you. Let me take that second part first. You know, I think we don't understand it well yet, but there has been a trend since 2007 of people who, of individuals of Balkan descent, getting involved into Al Qaeda-type terrorism. You've got the Fort Dick Six, few members of the group were Balkan heritage, Duker brothers. We've got a couple of the individuals who were involved in the North Carolina Seven of Balkan descent in the Zazi plot in New York City. Addis, and I'm gonna probably not say his name right, you'll correct me. Addis Medianjan, you know, involved, you know, one of the three people involved in the plot. So, you know, I don't know what's under this individual arrested in Tampa Bay, also of Balkan descent. So, for some reason, the ideology is appealing to a small segment, but a segment of individuals of Balkan descent. And we know that generally, you know, the observance of Islam in the Balkans is a very tolerant, you know, sort of multicultural, almost westernized Islam. So, we don't know why, but it is a trend line that we're looking at. Chalman here. Are you from the voice of America, Afghanistan Service? My question is a little out of the subject. It's the only Taliban peace negotiations and address to both. And if Mr. Berger would like to address, and if you don't want to spend time on this, I can do it after the session. Do you have anything to say about that? On that note, not too much. Right. That's okay. Mitch is the person who's answering the questions. Over here, this gentleman in the back. Steve Lockett, I'm a news producer and television here in the city. Thanks for the forum today, Mr. Bergen. Fantastic stuff. I didn't know, sir, if you had hoped to get through one forum without the mention of Iran, so I don't mean to disappoint you today. This forum comes, I think, a couple of hours after James Clapper's remarks on the Hill about the prospect of Iran being formidable in tacking or mapping out a strategy to attack the United States. And it also comes a couple of days after published reports and more published reports about the prospect of al-Qaeda be given sanctuary and safe haven in Iran. So could you ruminate on the prospect of the marriage between the two and how they might pose an imminent threat to the US? Well, I think since you used the word marriage, I'll add the word complicated to it. And I'm not sure if marriage is even the best way to describe it, but there has been different types of relationships between al-Qaeda and Iran, whether it was the travel of some of the 9-11 hijackers through Iran, sort of passive, the house arrest of some senior leadership members in Iran. So it certainly didn't seem to be a close working partnership or relationship, but maybe some tacit acceptance or tolerance of it. It's unclear how, if there's some type of conflict in the Persian Gulf between the US and Iran, how that plays out with al-Qaeda, sort of tough to predict on that front. But I think what, from the New York City standpoint, I would say is that if there is some type of conflict in the Gulf, we're gonna be on high alert for a variety of reasons. Number one, the idea that Hezbollah might act as an Iranian surrogate, depending on the nature of the conflict, and we've already had members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard expelled from the New York City as persona non grata and surveillance done on the subway in years past. And given how... Oh, I'm sorry, by the way. That one, we had a couple of events. One of them was in O3, and the other one I think was 2004, I believe. So, you know, somewhat dated, but given our hard level of targets that have Israeli or Jewish linkages in New York City and past Hezbollah attacks in Buenos Aires against those targets, we're significantly concerned about that. And that the idea of a Western attack or a US attack on Iran would fit in the narrative that we were talking about earlier. There's a war against Islam. First it was Afghanistan. Then it was Iraq. Now it's Iran. And granted, this is Sunni versus Shia. There may be people of the homegrown variant that sort of see this in a continuum and act out violently on behalf of Iran. So, it's something that we're following very closely. Did you concern at NYPD about US NATO action in Libya? And clearly, I mean, why wasn't that seen as an attack on an Islamic country? Yeah, we were concerned. We asked the question internally. We said, okay, well, how would this play out here? You know, is there travel between the US and Libya? How would someone from Libya get into the United States or New York? What might be targets for Libyans? Might the mission, the UN mission be a target? So we actually asked ourselves those issues. I think the Libya, because the Arab League's participation, maybe that defanged a little bit of it in terms of another Western war against the Muslim country. Gaddafi himself. What's that? Gaddafi himself. Gaddafi himself, yeah, doesn't inspire a lot of followers. Yeah. Okay, someone here. Thank you for the presentation. I would like to know what the Pakistan effector, if you talked about al-Qaeda effector, I would like to, you mentioned that already, but I would like to know what ruled the Pakistani groups or the Pakistani madrasas played in these plots. The first question. And the second question is, in terms of ideology, did you find any consistency that you can connect these all plots to a certain school of thoughts within Islam? And also, did you find any kind of counterframe to the way they were looking at jihad, at global jihad? That could be just something that can be promoted against a violent form of jihad? Okay, so there are a few questions sort of rolled up into that. I think the first one. The second one's the most problematic. The groups of the madrasas. These are a kind of religious strain. Oh yeah. That's the best stuff. So let me get that, not first. In terms of the groups, and I mentioned this in the talk, oftentimes other groups, be it L.E.T., J.C. Mohamed, Harkat and Mujahideen, have sort of been the conveyor belt or facilitator for individuals in the West who didn't have a direct al-Qaeda connection to make that connection. So the groups have been very important in that sense. I think Bruce Rydell has described it as a syndicate up there. And that's a pretty good analogy. In terms of madrasas, actually most of the people who've been involved in these plots were not the products of Pakistani madrasas. So that sort of ended up not being a real place to identify people involved in plots against the West. In terms of the religious ideology, I said there were two honoramps to the scene. One's political, one's religious. And if we're talking about the religious side of the equation, it's people who were adopting a literalist interpretation of Islam. Could be Salafi, it could be Wahhabi, it could be Diobandi, like Tablighi Jamat. And again, those aren't terrorism. And it's not a preordained conclusion that someone who adopts that literalist interpretation, that ultra-orthodox interpretation, that they will turn to violence. But those ideologies have a lower threshold. And there are conditions that can be met that would obligate or justify violence. And I think that's why some of those ideologies often precede people's move forward to violence. Okay, one final question here. Yeah, my name's Mi-Yang. I just wonder, besides ideologies, I think from their training to Al-Qaeda and their personal background, why do they resent or hate to waste the country? And actually some terrorists, they arrest or something like this, American, born citizens, American, white, right? So I just wonder from their background, why do they hate or whether they have been arrested before or whether they have family or something they feel very unjust. Right, can I also add to that? I mean, it strikes me that some of the people that we've seen show up in these cases or the Jihad Jain or others, that there isn't a weather underground. There isn't a Black Panther's sort of Marxist, leftist groups don't have much attraction. And that if you want to act out against the American government for whatever reason, Al-Qaeda or its ideology provides a way to do it. Have you thought of thought about that as an issue or another other ideologies coming along that we should be concerned about that 10 years from now, Mitch Silver will be writing about. Yeah, I think to some degree the lack of alternatives on the left, on the far left may be a rationale for some people to see similar goals as some of those ultra-left-wing organizations. So that may facilitate people's, you saw some of the good analogies for the anti-Iraq war protests in the UK. So you had people from, let's say, the al-Muhajroon groups demonstrating, but you also had people from the left who were demonstrating against the war in a sense they had a commonality of goals there and they probably disagree on almost any other issue, but on this political issue they were sort of in alignment. But I think we have seen this trend of converts getting involved in plots, whether Hispanic converts, female converts, you know, Bryant-Neil-Vineas, you know, a choir boy from Long Island Convert. Some of these people are lost. They're looking for a mission in life. Some of these other movements don't exist anymore and there's a certain coolness to the jihad. As odd as it is to say, it's macho, you're fighting, you've got a gun. It's that outward bound with guns type of thing. There's a cause. They're not necessarily sure what they're for, they know what they're against. They're against Western imperialism and it sort of fits hand in glove if they've adopted a certain interpretation of Islam that sort of works well with that political analysis. Do you regret the KSM trial? It will not be in New York City. No, I regret that KSM has not been put on trial because I think the United States and the Allies put Nazis on trial after World War II. They killed a lot more people than al-Qaeda so justice should be served and they should be on trial but New York wasn't the appropriate place for it. Great, well thank you and there's some books. So Mitch will be willing to sign afterwards and we really want to thank you for a brilliant presentation. Thank you.