 Good afternoon, I'm Honor de Borger, I direct the Transnational Threats Project at CSIS and I'm the moderator for today's panel Very quickly a few thoughts when French authorities were trying to get their arms around the internal Al Qaeda threat They focused on the country's 1,000 most important mosques and discovered that 40% of the imams had no religious education whatsoever They had simply lifted material from the web and when asked to point out the websites. They were reading. They were all pro-al-Qaeda We don't have to go over what's happened in the UK and in Germany recently It seems to me that for years we've comforted ourselves with the simplistic notion that our own young Muslims were born into relatively well-to-do Families therefore immune from any temptation to sign on with internet desperados Political correctness also led us to avert our eyes from any such domestic problems The US army report on major Hassan Evidently failed to mention Islam Islamist or Islamic And today's banner headline on the washington post says that jr. Jane is a new kind of threat It isn't new. What's new is our willingness. I think to talk and write about it Hence the crisis report released today by CSIS I assume they all have copies Yes Well, then I don't have to tell you what the title is Interesting Interestingly, I was reading this morning what Adam Gadan al-Qaeda's American spokesman Was saying recently and I saw him also on Al Jazeera when I was in the Persian Gulf a week ago He pulled no punches when he praised defiant Muslim heroes like Mujahid brother major Hassan who has shown us what righteous Muslims can do with an assault rifle And do for our religion and brothers in faith and has reminded us how much pride and joy A single act of resistance and courage can instill in the hearts of Muslims everywhere Nonsense as we all know, but nevertheless It is broadcast by al-jazeera And I listened to it for about 10 minutes So here we have this wonderful panel To sort try to sort out fact from factoid from disinformation And zero in on the On five recent events that came under the rubric of homegrown terrorism perpetrated by US legal residents and citizens And so now we have the four panelists known. I'm sure to most of you. Let me tell you quickly who they are They will speak for five to seven minutes and then Throw it open to questions from the floor in the order of the appearance We first have rick ozzie nelson csis is director of homeland security and counterterrorism program A former navy pilot with 20 years of intelligence experience Including assignments at the nsc where he was in charge of developing national strategy for maritime security And served at nctc the national counterterrorism center Afghanistan was among Ozzie's numerous overseas deployments and he redeployed to csis last november Mark sageman is among as you know the world's top three specialists on islamist terrorism His latest book as leaderless jihad terror networks in the 21st century To mention of course all of mark's academic positions and books written would leave no time to do justice to the other two panelists Suffice it to say that this remark of a man during the cia in 1984 after a tour as flight surgeon in the us navy After a year on the afghan task force. He served two years in pakistan 87 to 89 Where he ran the us aid programs for the afghan mujahideen that led to the defeat of the soviet occupation forces Which led in turn to the collapse of the soviet empire nine months later So That's we we have marked the thank in case you didn't know After two years in india. He resigned from the cia to return to medicine And after completing a residency in psychiatry at penn state. He has practiced forensic and clinical psychiatry in which capacity Evaluated not five or 50 but 500 murderers Dr. Phil anderson with 30 years of experience in government the private sector and the policy community was one of the early bird pioneers at csis who developed homeland security policy and stood up our own homeland security program right after 9 11 Dr. Anderson's work helped mold national thinking on how to create dhs to begin with and most important of all how to Protect our critical infrastructure. He is now director of the institute for homeland security He's a frequent witness as you know at numerous congressional hearings during that critical post 9 11 phase and then moved on to develop From the ground up and then execute lucent technologies bell labs government business strategy as vp of their washington operations Last but by no means least is someone i had the privilege of working with daily at csis through the 90s On the global organized crime project, which morphed after 9 11 to transnational threats known as tnt Today experts from around the world are familiar with frank salufo's work on homeland security I was in pakistan at the time of 9 11 I have got back just in time to bid farewell to my friend and close colleague as he had been recruited by governor tom ridge as his deputy and a special assistant to the president for homeland security at the white house As a vice president of jord Washington university frank leads gw's homeland security efforts on policy research education and training And directs the multidisciplinary homeland security policy institute what he calls a think and do tank That builds bridges between theory and practice to advance homeland security through an interdisciplinary approach Frank is the prolific author of dozens of monographs Some of them we did together on everything from getting ahead of prisoner radicalization To cyber strategy 2.0 to cyber crime cyber terrorism cyber warfare Or how to avert an electronic waterloo to combating chemical biological radiological and nuclear terrorism A comprehensive strategy. So ozzy is first up five to seven minutes ozzy and That way we in half an hour. We can get to their thoughts into this mic and after that it'll be your question Thank you very much ardent. I'll actually have the easy part because we have published a study So if you want to know what we think you can just read the study Before we go forward, I want to thank you know our know for you It's an honor to have distinguished speaker such as yourself here and then my co-panelist for adrena did this mark Phil and frank and then particularly to ben bedurian my research assistant who helped to offer this report Um, I do want to get into the conversation. So i'm just going to touch on some of the high points in the report Basically what we decided uh, there was a lot these a lot these five cases that we call that last fall of The media was reporting calling homegrown or domestic extremism We wanted to evaluate them very in a very rudimentary fashion to kind of figure out Is there a trend or what's going on with these cases? And the five cases we're talking about are the zazi case The david headley case Hassan case that we're all familiar with the the smally case Were the the two dozen residents from minnesota And then the five young men from from northern virginia nor nor the virginia five The details of those cases are are in the report, but i'll go ahead and touch on some of the themes The purpose for holding this panel is not so much to to state whether this is a Trend but it's to have a discussion because we think it's something that the american public we need to we need to address At least have a as our note alluded to have a have a conversation about because it has broad implications for us What we did Take from this study was the fact that we think this is it's a serious issue, but we think it's a narrow problem It's not it's not a widespread problem We do think that there is significant issue with individuals that are u.s. Legal residents or citizens That have what we call a duality Which is understanding of u.s culture and access to us to travel freely If you're under u.s documentation and then to understand a foreign culture overseas and to be able operate overseas very freely as well And that kind of duality we think makes very lucrative Of targets for groups like al-qaeda that are seeking to recruit And we see you know in the case of jihad jane, whatever we make of her That's a perfect example of someone who can be recruited who is not does not meet our stereotypical Ideal what a terrorist may or may not be One of the things we did in the report was just look at is this a europe case Europe has been dealing with radicalization domestic radicalization much longer than we have We see the case in the united states is very very different A lot of the issues in europe we see as a Result of social marginalization. That's not the case in the united states for the most part The muslim and islamic communities are very well integrated relatively speaking and a lot of times are outperform their partners And there's also what was particularly troubling about the cases for us. So there was also a remarkable diversity There was no common template for this and I think some of the other panelists are going to mention that they all were recruited by Various groups let or el shabbab or even taliban or al-qaeda They came from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. So there wasn't really any particular template. You could say this was was the issue But there are some similarities and i just want to highlight two of those That we found and one Is that there was a there was an issue of of an intermediary that these individuals were disenfranchised By some case and this is a case. I think a lot with extremism And then as some intermediary was able to take that disenfranchement Franchement and turn it into action have them act on that on those feelings And mostly this was done via the internet And at times it was done in mosques particularly those mosques overseas when those individuals traveled And then there was also A narrative that almost to a to a number that they bought into this narrative that somehow The al-qaeda narrative that the u.s. And the west is at islam even when zazi pled guilty He said that was one of the reasons that he was going to commit commit to terrorism Now again, so how do we how do we counteract these trends? One we have to sever these links with these intermediaries And keep this from happening and two we must continue to puncture this al-qaeda narrative In no way should we use that it should dictate us foreign policy But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be smart as a nation and be prepared to counteract that narrative And be more aggressive in our strategic communication And then how to move forward just touching on this You know some of the things we pointed out that are critical to this is the the fusion centers and the state and local relationships In a lot of these cases with extremism Those those will first know to identify it will be those closest to those individuals friends and family members Local police force those kind of entities. They're going to see the changes in behavior They're going to see the thing is with case with the words of virginia 5 They went missing the families contacted a muslim civil rights organization who then contacted the fbi So those kind of relationships and they're going to understand those communities better than perhaps the federal government will But at the same time the federal government has the overarching understanding of the global terrorist threat of al-qaeda And these other groups and the linkages that are going to have to be have to be Important and then lastly Wrapping up my remarks We do believe again the internet remains what we'd call blind spot in the u.s. Government Certainly a lot of things have happened since 9 11 to increase to u.s. Government's efforts in this venue But it has more has to be done the internet has to be treated as as as we'd say in dod battle space And appropriate capabilities have to be brought to bear on that to ensure that That we're doing we all that we can to to to interact that And then I think uh our no since he's a distinguished Words and I'll keep it short to five minutes and turn it over to my my colleague mark sageman Thank you. I'm honored to be here. Thank you everybody. Let me count go on to what I want to say otherwise I'll spend five minutes thanking everybody We all right first of all in the last 10 years just about every Terrorist plot has been homegrown By homegrown. I mean it came from the west. This is not al-qaeda infiltrating the west This is a western kids going abroad some of them come back to majority want to stay abroad And this you have to really make a distinction between the guys who want to stay abroad A little bit like the Lincoln Brigade in the 1930s We have to understand why they want to fight abroad as opposed to really come back Here to to do things is there an increase? Actually, there is a slight increase, but overall in 2009, but overall there's a A tremendous decrease the high watermark of terrorism of plots al-qaeda type plots in the west Was 2004 and been decreasing ever since uh with an uptick in 2009 But you talk about five six plots worldwide as opposed to Arresting, you know people who belong who want to do things or something like that Benefited plots Are very few Then the process of radicalization three or two step process one is To join a protest counterculture, which is uh legal in a western liberal democracy and indeed I would argue Maybe uh the driving force for the evolution of a western liberal democracy just remember civil right movement and uh women's liberation movement So practice counterculture is fine. It's so it's not really uh violent extremism Which I think we should look at because people express themselves in very Violent ways even though they don't do anything violence. It's extremist violence. We should focus on And we have to be very focused otherwise. We may actually increase the number of people who get very upset That's the first step. It's really joining this protest counterculture a second step is really rejecting This protest counterculture as being ineffective having a sense of moral outrage and then wanting to do more Becoming violent And uh, that's really what we see a little bit in 2009 and I'll uh, I'll talk a little bit about that Now in terms of the al-qaeda narrative, I really don't know why people keep on harping on that The narrative is very simple. The west is at war against islam. That's it. It's a sound bite I wouldn't call it a narrative or call it a frame Now the question is why is that appealing to some people and not to others? That's really should be the question Now there is also no direct link between ideas and action We've known now since the 1950s That every idea is mediated through small group discussion This is a two-step process. It's been popularized in the tipping point But that's been well known with since the work of ellie who cats and paul arsas fell that colombia in 1955 And that has been it's pretty robust. It's been demonstrated time and time again So the key element is really the small group discussion Either on the internet or face-to-face Okay. Now, let's kind of look at your list Jaji Yeah, I have homegrown because he spent about what 12 years here in the united states But it turns out that he radicalized in pechawa Not so much in the united states. He married 1986 went back to pechawa for a long period of time It was very much in pechawa that he actually got this idea Headly and runner this does not give us much confidence Because those guys were radicalized were running around the world for eight years being militants And we didn't detect them until 2009 not the new problem Major hassan We don't know what he is. He's definitely a mass murderer whether he's a jihadi or not that really remains to be seen And uh, the the army has not concluded yet Basically, he sent 16 emails 18 emails to uh, olake And olake answered to Basically not trusting him. So is he part of a protest counter-culture? He wants to be But he's not really been accepted. We don't really know yet what his computer Says because I don't think the fbi has finished the exploitation of the hard drive But it's uh, he's definitely a mass murderer. We don't actually know exactly what led him to uh, what he did Uh, the guys as I said who go abroad whether the somali or the five kids from virginia That's kind of going abroad to fight abroad. So Why is there an uptick in 2009? If you look at it, well, I would put three different argument arguments one is that We're still very much discriminating against the muslim community in the united states So even though about five six years ago, we didn't really see much of This violence with against the homeland Now I guess some of them are losing patience and it and and the media may have become a little bit more strident in the last year So because uh, they object to the government's political correctness The second argument is that This is tapping into a new market. Those new guys really don't speak arabic They're very much english speakers and what really has happened in the last five years Is that you have a shift from arabic language chat rooms to vernacular chat rooms. So french english german Dutch turkish And that has tapped now into a pool of people were relatively neglected by the global neo g had Prior to five years ago And that that includes the increase in number usually and the numbers are not so much increase in the united states But they are in turkish and germany. That's where the increase has Come forth in the last four years at least the iju case and and the turks see as well and Finally the third argument is that We see that the attraction to the narrative as you put it has really lost a lot of traction worldwide the polls are fairly robust On that Support for terrorism has decreased both in the muslim world in the western world just about everywhere So why do we see more violence where it turns out that if you look at large terrorist waves The violence come at the very tail end and the reason they come at the very tail end is that This kind of social blob this protest counterculture is is diminishing retractings becoming very ineffective And so people young turks are morally outraged Who now could not cannot really legally protest or really reject this form of protesters being totally ineffective Decide to then become violent and so in the In the leftist terrorist wave, you know all the violence came into 1970s when basically the leftist ideology had declined dramatically You know after the high point of 1968 the bar the minehub gang much of the much of the violence came In 1977 the red brigade same thing, you know, if you looked at the weather underground here Same thing at the very tail end. So in a sense, perhaps we are winning on You know diminishing that protest counterculture worldwide, but what we're going to have because of our success is An upsurge of violence in the next four or five years of the people are Disenchanted with the effectiveness of that protest counterculture. That's all I have to say. Thanks Well, thanks Arnault for the very kind introduction Haven't spent two years at CSIS immediately after 9 11 and Having been mentored by by folks like Arnault I I always welcome an opportunity to come back to CSIS. It's it's more like Coming home than anything else I I have a tough act to follow With with mark, but I would offer A few observations and I I think I may be a little more opinionated Than mark Considering the absence of some some of the, you know, some of the facts in these cases a lot remains to be seen I'd like to start by saying that I As I have always been all the way back to my early days here at CSIS Very skeptical With regard to how significant This threat of extremism is for the United States We've been dealing with and suffering Extremists and extremism throughout throughout our nation's history and that's not going to change Be that islamic extremism more Extremism of another flavor doesn't make any difference That's That's the united states and it's it's what we stand for and and there are always going to be disgruntled citizens soldiers Activists of of every Of every flavor and that's it's not going to change So I I continue and we have always You know, we've always been resilient, so I I'm skeptical, but that does that mean that we shouldn't be concerned at all. No it doesn't There are a number of things we need to be concerned about but I think that the engagement construct that ozzie and ben Describe so well in their paper is Certainly something that Could be helpful in this regard It It offers although it's very complex In terms of involving federal state local and and the And the muslim community It is complex, but it certainly is something that I think history has proven Is can be enormously helpful and and can generate enormous success At the homeland security institute we did a little bit of research On the 2005 pakistani earthquakes and and us engagement in pakistan to support Recovery operations there and what we found was that Islamic sentiment toward the united states You know was was improved in a in a measurable way. It was far more Positive as a result enduring that that period where the united states stepped in and And provided enormous relief services To pakistanis and to pakistan But that was episodic clearly Engagement if it's going to be successful has to be Continuous And it has to be consistent So I I think again that this this you're on the right track absolutely ozzie with that engagement construct At least in defining it Executing is going to be in my view far more difficult, but it's absolutely necessary if we're going to be successful that said I'd like to talk about a little bit about a concern that I have related to The way we have you know defined extremism. I think we see less these days the use of The term islamic extremism, but it doesn't matter. It's too late We use we overuse that term Following 9 11 and now we have Turned away from that and we simply say extremism, but the damage is done. We still associate extremism with muslims And that's the biggest challenge in my view to Engaging the islamic community Have already been labeled and You know a a muslim that commits an act of violence is automatically an extremist In most cases if you look at major nadal hassan in my view and I agree with mark that the the jury is still out There's a lot. We don't know But on the surface of it, uh, it would appear that nadal hassan was just a very disgruntled soldier And we've seen that many times before We've seen disgruntled soldiers and sailors and airmen and and and go in and uh Into mess halls in iraq and and elsewhere and kill their their brothers We've seen it. Um hassan was clearly um unhappy about his looming deployment and He reached out 16 emails in one case to one imam, but to a new he went shopping for others And when he finally found one that uh, at least answered two of his 16 emails, um You know we we connect the dots and say that That's uh an islamic extremist. Wow I'm skeptical. I don't uh, I I don't buy it. I see a disgruntled soldier who didn't want to deploy um, and then you know, we took it we As a society the media took it one step further And I think there's a real danger in that we have to be very very careful. We have the the jihadi jain or calling The rose story that broke this morning and There's a lot. We don't know about that, but uh on the surface of it it would appear that she was A woman who needed a great deal of attention and and found uh solace in the internet and you know it Again, we'll see we'll see how it plays out. But the danger is that in all of this is that we Um We create distance between Uh our larger society and the muslim community and if we're going to engage effectively, we've got to close now That gap we've got a We've got to somehow reduce the damage that's been done. Uh in my view By label by labeling over labeling and over characterizing these kinds of things as is as islamic uh extremism So i'll leave it at that and turn it over to frank Well, thank you, and I will also try to be brief and it's difficult uh following such uh such esteemed colleagues and friends and uh I might just echo uh phil's point earlier. Arno truly is uh A treasure in washington and a mentor and when he calls, uh I jump Let me try to maybe add a little color To some of the the conversation here and maybe find some areas where I agree and also where I Disagree perhaps I think if you look at the 2009 cases in particular It underscores the fact that the threat continues to evolve It morphs It comes in different shapes and sizes There's not a one-size-fits-all approach and it's basically metastasized If you look at the zazi case that is probably the most direct case That we have that has direct linkage to al-qaeda central Obviously that is where we've spent most of our time effort and thinking as a country That's where the capacity and the capability is greatest And uh obviously that's looking back to to 9 11 is uh as our constant reminder If you look at the uh the hedley case a k a david hedley dowid gelani I think that's one of the most interesting cases we've seen He uh was connected to let Not part of al-qaeda central but clearly part of al-qaeda Affiliated organizations and certainly running in the same milieu of those that share its Its ideological objectives Here you have someone who changed his name two months before he went to do surveillance in mumbai Which ultimately was instrumental in let successful and meticulous planning that killed not only six americans but Over 160 other people and many other Hundreds injured Perhaps ironically given yesterday's news with jihadi jane Um, uh, you also had uh hedley involved in in an attempt Also with conduits and and former let members who were members of pakistani's military retired Engaging in in an attempt to uh assassinate the cartoonist in denmark I guess cartoons in scandinavia is becoming dangerous, but Um, uh, so you have the hedley case, which I think is kind of unique But again, it shows the fact that you have aq affiliates That historically did not look to the united states as a target and whether or not they are Strategically looking in that direction or whether or not you have fellow travelers who are exploiting that situation I think is something we need to look at Same same thing that we saw with our booty bomber over christmas Uh linkages to al-qaeda in the uh arabian peninsula Aqa p historically they were looking within yemen the kingdom of saudi arabia Um, uh, there's also some concern right now with al-qaeda in the islamic maghreb There's been some writings recently that they are looking to the united states as fair game as a target as well And I would argue aq i am is probably the most sophisticated of Of al-qaeda's affiliates simply because it's former leaders of the gsp gc Um, uh, as well as gia in the past Are have a higher sophistication level than most And the training and the experience Then you've got the the more wannabes And here as mark calls it leaderless jihad. These are more the self enlisted These are the ones that are inspired by al-qaeda's ideology inspired by the narrative inspired by the message And to to a large extent they're self enlisting And clearly the internet plays perhaps the most significant role In this space and and it is an ungoverned space and something i'll touch on momentarily And then you've got the al-shabaab and and the case studies identified here in terms of Americans fighting in from minnesota and elsewhere In samalia I just came back from the uk where There too is as well as most of western europe you have a number of Westerners going over to to samalia, but what's interesting is many are not part of the samali diaspora And the reason is i think it's easier to get to samalia because you can get to kenya without visas and you can slip into the border and you still come back home with the street creds the jihadi street creds to be able to further mobilize and marshal Indigenous support So i i don't think There is a single Not only profile, but what we're seeing is is a metastasized threat it comes in different shapes different sizes and that requires greater vigilance and and In terms of law enforcement authorities we can't just go to what we think we know Because it it will change based on part on our actions um, let me touch a little bit on the internet in particular because i think that is Where we probably have the the most thinking We need to do and perhaps some of the most difficult policy prescriptions and decisions we we have to be looking at No surprise that al qaeda its affiliates, uh, and the wannabes have placed such great emphasis on the net Asahab that is their primary means of al qaeda central's ability to get the message out. It's an asymmetric form of media. They can't turn to From an opsec perspective nor can they own A media capacity, so they've been looking to the net It has played a significant role in the past In terms of enabling tradecraft Whether it's fundraising whether it's communicating whether it's uh surveillance whether it's target selection The net has has long been Has played a significant role in enabling tradecraft, but i really think it's the recruitment radicalization piece that Um is perhaps most significant I differ a little with mark here because i think the narrative does matter The old statement it's the economy stupid. Well, it's the ideology stupid If you actually look to what, uh, um, uh, is drawing people in and it's not only making Religious arguments in fact mostly not it's more emotive than anything else. It's an emotional draw. It's uh, it It resonates with a small percentage of a population, but that percentage of a population seems to be more, uh, mobilized