fareed zakaria gps is next for our viewers here in the united states. welcome to a special edition of "gps beyond the manhunt, how to stop terror." >> an operation that killed osama bin laden. >> just two years ago that navy s.e.a.l.s in pakistan spoke the words geronimo and that meant osama bin laden was finally dead. today the fight continues. as we saw boyleston street in boston. stepping back from the crisis,

we also need to ask larger questions about the state of our security. what is the threat out there and are we prepared for it? >> he intended to use the remaining explosives that he had and detonate them in times square. >> the fight today is at home and abroad. >> we have seen that threat become geographically dispersed. >> against al qaeda's core, its affiliates and lone adherents, known and unknown, in all corners of the globe. during this hour, we will explore some of the toughest challenges facing our intelligence community and our country. we will talk to people who have spent decades in the shadows and on the front lines surveying and tackling some of the nation's gravest threats and anticipating the next ones. we will examine the state of al qaeda today, how big of a threat is it? >> my experience was whenever you declare them dead, you could be wrong.

>> we look at the cia's not so secret assassination program. >> we're in a war. and war is hell. >> and enhanced interrogations. did they lead to osama bin laden? are our current interrogation tactics working? >> probably the grimmest place i have ever been. >> then, tracking terror. how do intelligence officials target a lone wolf? >> there's a whole bunch of things, certainly technically possible but do you really want your government doing that? >> shut up. >> and it's not just a movie. two of the actual women in the hunt for bin laden take us inside the cia. >> when you think of 007, you know, you don't think of jane bond, you think of james bond. and, last, my own thoughts on confronting terror today.

defining the enemy and understanding the threat. what does al qaeda look like today? it's been called al qaeda 2.0. a more decentralized organization than the one that attacked us on september 11th, 2001. loosely made up of affiliates and hangers on like al qaeda and al qaeda and the arabian peninsula, al shabab, but who are these smaller organizations? should we be concerned about them here at home? and what about the lone terrorist living in the west, quietly plotting another boston bombing. cnn national cnn analyst peter bergen oversaw the first television interview with osama

bin laden in 1997. his book "manhunt" is the subject of a new hbo documentary. what do you think is the state of al qaeda today? >> the best onset of that question is what osama bin laden's own assessment of what it was. he wrote a letter how the drones impacted his group. he was aware that the al qaeda brand and it would be bad for fund-raising and attract a lot of negative attention. that's osama bin laden's assessment and i think that's a pretty accurate one. >> former secretary of defense leonpanetta oversaw the campaigns against al qaeda in pakistan's tribal areas known as the fatah. >> i honestly believe that we are safer since 9/11. largely because of what we've been able to do going after

their core leadership in the fattah. when i first came into government, there were four key people that were largely running al qaeda. today three of them are dead and one is in deep hiding. not to mention a number of other members of what we were often called the top 20 leadership. many of them have been, have been hit, as well. >> former cia analyst cindy who spent a career tracking terror said despite the virtual decapitation of al qaeda's leadership, don't count the group out. >> i get a little nervous when people say it's over, we don't have to worry about that any more because al qaeda always has several tracks going at the same time. my experience was whenever you declare them dead, they prove you wrong. so, i don't want to say they're not hurt. they're not in trouble. but it's too early to let our guard down. >> panetta agrees. he's worried about two aspects of al qaeda 2.0.

first -- >> i think what we do have to worry about is what i called kind of metastasized al qaeda that has moved into other areas. yemen and in somalia and mali. we have to continue to worry about al qaeda being able to establish a foothold in one of these countries. and, therefore, establishing a base from which to attack the united states or europe. >> former cia counterterrorism chief robert grinith says north africa isn't a concern. when you look at north africa, do you think this is the next place to worry about, or do you think that's a largely a local struggle? >> it's a local struggle and we have to be somewhat concerned about it. we have to be careful if we fundamentize a local security concern. >> how dangerous are those franchise operations we think of mali and we think of somalia?

>> i think we have to be very careful because in all of these geographies that you mentioned, yes, there are a small number of international terrorists properly so-called and people that we do have to worry about. but for the most part, the people that occupy this ungovern space are local people and have their own local concerns. >> but if the al qaeda affiliates in those areas aren't yet grand threats, peter bergen says there's an offshoot we do need to keep close tabs on in a surprising place. >> in syria, fareed was saying, you know, a very interesting phenomenon the most effective fighting force is an al qaeda front organization. they are doing, they're doing something that al qaeda-like groups have never done before. large amounts of a bread to a very desperate population. i think this is really a new phenomenon where you have a

hezboll hezbollah-like militia operating in a political manner, much like al qaeda affiliates. how that will play out, we'll see. >> what has already begun to play out, as we saw in boston, is the more immediate, bigger threat to the homeland. leon panetta explains what keeps him up at night. >> what we've seen and what concerns us, i think, in the last few years is other approaches to creating terror. one of those came from alaki. >> known to many as the bin laden of the internet. he is believed to have started in "inspire" magazine. online propaganda outfit filled with articles in how to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom. >> he was basically urging people anywhere, anyhow, do what you can to be able to go into

the united states and attack the country. i think that kind of inspiration of trying to get people to motivated in some way to either self-radicalize or do something that similar to what we saw in boston. i think that remains a serious concern. >> michael hayden is the former director of the national security agency and the cia. when you look at boston. does that look to you like the new face of terror? >> i really do think that is the case. i mean, there's a real sense that doctrinally al qaeda wants the mass casualty attack against the target, but they can't do that. now, what you've got are these one offs, very likely self-radicalized individuals coming at us. i'm fond of saying that because of our success, and this is a measure of success, i'm fond of now saying that future attacks

against our homeland will be less well organized, less likely to succeed. they're just going to be more numerous and, unfortunately, that's been worn out. >> later in our hour, we'll ask our experts to stop the next boston. but, first up, hitting al qaeda overseas. are we on target with killing terrorists with drones?

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it has been called the shadow war. a war waged not with boots on the ground, but with eyes in the skies. unmanned aerial vehicle, drones. have flown stealth missions. some armed with laser-guided missiles. the cia and defense department each runs its own drone program

with its own set of rules. the cia's program is so highly classified, that it is barely acknowledged by the white house. between 2004 and 2013, the new america foundation puts the total estimated number of strikes in pakistan and yemen at 428. with 49 under president bush and 379 under president obama. that's almost eight times as many strikes under the obama administration. they estimate the number of militants killed to be between 1,982 and 3,251. the number of civilians between 276 and 368. an unknown casualties between 200 and 330. the "new york times" national security correspondent mark mazetti says to understand the program today, you have to start at the beginning. after 9/11, you see a big change

that takes place at the cia. >> after 9/11, a week, a week after 9/11, president bush gives the cia authority to basically go around the world and capture or kill al qaeda operatives. and this is the lethal authority that the cia hadn't had for decades. >> what is the legality of the drone program? we had president ford's executive order that tells the cia not to do this kind of thing. we have president carter's executive order against assassination and, yet, we have a drone program that seems to assassinate people. >> so, the legal authorities given to the cia and by the justice department under, you know, still classified memos are that the cia can carry out these drone strikes because they're "assa "assassinations on a global battlefield." going after military targets. so, you assassinate political

leaders but kill soldiers on a battlefield. >> the problem is, how do you make sure you only kill soldiers on the battledfield? leon panetta the cia director from 2009 to 2011 says after an al qaeda target list had been vetted, the decision was ultimately his to take the shot. >> at the time that i was director of the cia, we made very clear that if there were any women and children in the shot, we were not to take it. and that we were to only go after those that we knew were identified as targets and, therefore, enemies of the united states. is there some collateral when you're hitting a particular target and you're not sure of the situation, especially when you're going after compounds? sure. there may have been some collateral. but it was minimal. >> former cia counterterrorism chief says in recent years that target list has expanded.

fair to say that it started and when it was being run by you was more narrow, more surgical and more directed against international terrorists, terrorists of global reach and m morphed into something that became a much more frequently used weapon for just all the bad guys in the region? >> i think that's a fair way to characterize the evolution over time. it's very easy when you get out on that slippery slope to say, look, here, we shouldn't just be focusing only on the international terrorists, what about the people supporting them? when we take the next step and start attacking them as an affiliated group, as if they were international terrorists themselves, we're inviting a lot of trouble. >> and trouble that peter berger of the new american foundation and cnn has seen first hand on the ground in pakistan. >> because we have the technology and a tactic that works, the temptation to use it repeat

repeatedly. in 2010 there are 122 drone strikes. not 122 leaders of al qaeda in the world. the cost of that just angering deeply the fifth largest country in the world in terms of population in 2015, i think that's a pretty high cost to pay. >> one recent target in yemen hit the village where a former u.s. exchange student grew up. he says the strike target was a popular and trusted figure in the village. he says he did not know that he was connected with al qaeda. >> it angered people there. you don't come regardless of what happening in this area. >> recruiting tools for al qaeda, which sometimes offers compensation to people whose houses have been hit. >> nothing has ever empowered al

qaeda in yemen as much as the strike drones. is the drone program out of control? >> no. i don't think so. it comes back to what are the circumstances in which you find yourself. targeted killings have enabled us to bring al qaeda prime, al qaeda along the afghan/pakistan border to the point of destruction. i can think of almost nothing that has contributed more to the safety of the united states than what we've been able to do to take senior al qaeda leadership off the battlefield. >> even if hayden thinks the tactic works, he says the government needs to change the way they deal with it. for the domestic audience, he says the obama administration needs to do something spies hate to do. talk publicly about what they are up to. >> the issue is political sustainability. my advice is to be as

transparent as you can be, even perhaps risking a little bit of operational effectiveness. otherwise, this program, which if i would describe as being successful will have an on/off switch and affected by american elections rather than being a program that most of america supports. later in the show, how to defend against the next boston-like attack. coming up next, should the united states be in the business of torture? does it yield useful information? what if there's a ticking time bomb? weal 'll find out when we come back. tdd: 1-800-345-2550 searching for a bank designed for investors like you? tdd: 1-800-345-2550 schwab bank was built with tdd: 1-800-345-2550 all the value and convenience investors want. tdd: 1-800-345-2550 like no atm fees, worldwide. tdd: 1-800-345-2550 and no nuisance fees. tdd: 1-800-345-2550 plus deposit checks with mobile deposit, tdd: 1-800-345-2550 and manage your cash and investments tdd: 1-800-345-2550 with schwab's mobile app. tdd: 1-800-345-2550 no wonder schwab bank has grown to over 70 billion in assets.

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welcome back to our gps special "beyond the manhunts." it's called the ticking time bomb scenario. a terrorist is in your custody, he knows about a bomb, it could go off at any minute. to what lengths would you go to find out where and when? shortly after 9/11, that was the question that emerged as we

wrestled with the palpable ferier of the unknown. who was bin laden? is there another attack coming? in 2002 the justice department approved the use of interrogation techniques like waterboarding and extreme sleep deprivation. three years later, congress banned enhanced interrogations by the military. the cia could continue to use the techniques, but it was a subject of much debate and uncertainty. >> i can say without exception or equivocation that the united states will not torture. >> then on his second day in office in 2009, president barack obama signed an executive order outlawing these coercive techniques. >> there we go. >> all future interrogations by anyone in the u.s. government had to follow the strict guidelines of the army field manual.

so the million dollar question. did coercive technique lead to osama bin laden? once again, our intelligence experts weigh in. >> the site that i visited was probably the grimmest blase i have ever been. ran the counterterrorism center from 2004 to 2006. >> it's a business when you are, again, for understandable reasons, sequestering people who you believe have information, actionable information, which if you're able to acquire it, will save lives. >> in your experience, looking at all the information you got, does it work? is the use of coercive interrogation, which some people call torture, a useful way to get information? >> for -- those group of hardened terrorists against

whom, you know, the normal sort of measures that you might encounter in a chicago precinct, for instance, simply did not work. simply were unavailing. we acquired a lot of very important intelligence. >> leon panetta was in charge the day osama bin laden was killed. >> i often get criticized for saying this but it was the fact we got information, even though you may not like the approach that was used. the fact was, it was information. >> the team that really carried out this mission. >> but panetta says the significance of that information is far from cut and dry. >> was it absolutely essential to being able to find bin laden? i'm not sure. i don't think so. i think, frankly, there were a lot of other bits and pieces of intelligence that we have that we ultimately could have put together the same kind of pattern that we needed in order to track bin laden. but, you know, was there information that came from those

interrogati interrogations? yes, there was. >> one of the people sifting through that intelligence was cia analyst cindy storer. do you think the use of torture was important in getting osama bin laden? >> well, i have to say that i chose not to be involved in the program from the beginning. so, i don't have a lot of knowledge about what was done and what came out of it. my only experience -- >> what do you mean chose not to be involved? how could you do that? >> i just said i wasn't going to. that was it. i saw what was happening after 9/11 and they tried to get me to go down and talk to detainees and i wouldn't do it. i think people didn't put in a lot of time in the context of what we anyhow about the larger organization and they would just say, so and so said this, it must be true. that's a danger. >> i think it really undermines what the united states is all about. we have said to the enemy what we believe is dear can, in fact,

be sacrificed because we are scared to death of them. i think that's exactly the wrong message one has sent. we're strong, we're proud of what we have, we can make our system work. i think we can balance security and our freedoms. that's what the society is all about. >> the interrogation process is a, it's a very human process. >> robert grinnith says debates largely miss the point. in the end, he believes the most intrigal part of the process has nothing to do with physical pain. >> the most effective tool you have is knowledge. the fact that if you are a suspected terrorist, perhaps a known terrorist who is detained and you know that you, that in any given instance it's unlikely that you can lie to me with impunity, that is a very, very powerful tool. >> when the intearigator is able to signal to the prisoner, i

know these pieces of information so if you try to lie to me, i'll know you're lying to me. that's powerful. >> so when the detainee says something and you shake your head and you smile and you say, my friend and do you think i'm sitting here with you because i know so little? that could be a very, very po r powerful thing. >> former cia director michael hayden agrees, but says we should also be mindful of the circumstances. suppose you had a situation like the boston bombings, except this time you caught one guy and he was, he was able to talk and you thought there was a ticking time bomb somewhere. would you, would you believe that in those circumstances torture would be appropriate. >> torture is never appropriate. it's like asking me, do you think murder is appropriate, no. by definition torture and murder are wrong. now, would i attempt to question that individual beyond the normal practices of the

massachusetts state police? perhaps. beyond the 19 techniques they're allowed in the army field manual? perhaps. but no one claims that, for example, the army film manual exhausts the universe of lawful techniques. so, you need to keep your options available because you can't predict what circumstances you might find yourself in the future. i had a phrase when i was director of the national security agency, we're going to play inside the foul lines, but there's going to be chalk dust on our cleats. >> go right up to the lines. >> exactly. if i don't, fareed, what i'm doing is protecting me and my agency, not america. >> when thinking through this issue, remember that the u.s. government has mostly stopped using enhance interrogations since 2006. and has completely stopped since january 2009. since then, al qaeda has been battered, intelligence has been gathered and act aed on and

several major plots have been thwarted. if the question is, can we tackle terrorism without using torture? the answer seems to be, we're doing that right now. up next, targeting the radical lone wolf on our shores. are we on top of this threat? i am an american success story. i'm a teacher. i'm a firefighter. i'm a carpenter. i'm an accountant. a mechanical engineer. and i shop at walmart. truth is, over sixty percent of america shops at walmart every month. i find what i need, at a great price. and the money i save goes to important things. braces for my daughter. a little something for my son's college fund. when people look at me, i hope they see someone building a better life. vo: living better: that's the real walmart. but with advair, i'm breathing better. so now i can help make this a great block party. ♪

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welcome back to our special. al qaeda may be battered, but there's a new threat out there. the lone wolf. one person or a small group self-radicalized and determined to kill. in other words, boston. the cia and fbi are, of course, working hard to stop the next would-be bombers. but what exactly are they looking for? how do you track a shadow? someone harboring extremist tendencies quietly. someone who might turn violent, but isn't yet. the former director of the cia, general michael hayden says the united states is continually calibrating the balance between freedom and security. >> i put my arm out, fareed, and said this is what we're doing for you now in terms of security and intelligence community, the defense community and, frankly, we made these attacks up here, the ones that were very

punishing and about which we were very fearful. 9/11, world trade center one, we made them very, very unlikely. now we have these, these one off kind of attacks. like boston like najibullah zazi, i ask americans, what do you want me to do with my hand? i can push it down a little bit. i don't know how much safety i'll buy you, there will be more safety. but how much more of your commerce, your privacy or your convenience do you want me to squeeze for a marginal increase in safety? as a citizen, as an intelligence professional, i'll follow the guidance of the republic. but as a citizen, i'm thinking my hands are about at the right place now. i don't know that we need to do a whole lot more. now, the secret within that is that sooner or later, some of this stuff is going to happen and we all have to recognize

that there is going to be a margin of risk that we're going to have to live with now. >> so, now, describe what it would mean to push that hand down. you ran the national security agency, the super secret spy agency with many people believe is the largest budget that has the ability to do, it does all the technical, technological data gathering. could you eavesdrop on, you know, conversations at a much grander scale than you're doing? >> you know, what technology is available now, of course, you can be more invasive. truth in advertising here, fareed. i installed the terrorist surveillance program which caused so much controversy during the bush administration. >> which was about eavesdropping on phone conversations. >> it was about international calls, one which may have been in the united states which we have reason to believe that were affiluted with al qaeda. which sounds like a good

description for threating about the boston kind of threat. even there we recognized that we have to be very careful, very selective. this couldn't be this broad net over all of america's conversations. even there, it was very, very targeted. >> i asked ali sufron, a former cia special agent. a publication of sorts on the web which contained the information of how to build these pressure cooker bombs. should the united states government be trying to shut down these kind of websites and is it feeasible? >> i don't think it's the issue of feasibility. you know, it's very hard to regulate the internet. we have thousands of websites to promote islamic extremism. we need to monitor the sites and monitor the people who basically spent a lot of time on these sites and then monitor their travel pattern and their

communications. let's actually start putting this travel pattern, putting their cyber footprint pattern and put them together. and create kind of a profile. a threat profile about that specific individual. >> law enforcement would need to do the almost impossible, sort out who are the radical muslims, not prone to violence and those who could turn into terrorists. robert grenier a former cia counterterrorism chief. >> it's a very difficult thing to detect when an individual, small group of people are self-radicalizing. that key step to go from views that you and i may consider to be radical or unrealistic to then make the decision that now i am going to engage, i'm going to act on this and i'm going to act violently on this. that is very discreet step. very subtle thing and oft aen it is only apparent in hindsight.

and our greatest ally are the communities in which they live. and i think one of the great challenges for us as a society and particularly for law enforcement, is to have the sort of relationship with immigrant communities, muslim communities in the u.s., which conveys to them that we are not sig sigmaatizisigma s i sigmaatizing you as a community. we want to work with you as partners. we're all in this together. >> leonpanetta is a former director of the cia. >> we have learned a lot since 9/1 1 on basically how to try to get ahead of this. what we have seen is that you absolutely have to develop good intelligence. that intelligence is a key here because if you have intelligence, then that's what can really target you towards where those threats are. i think it can be done.

i mean, after all, if you look at the last 10 or 11 years since 9/11, we have been able to get ahead of potential attacks. we have been able to prevent attacks that where we knew something like this was happening. so, the record is pretty good, but we just cannot let up. we have got to continue to be very vigilant. coming up next, in putting together the special, i couldn't help but notice how many women were critical in the intelligence hunt for bin laden. so, next, we ask a somewhat different question. are women better at this game than men? when we come back. hmm, it says here that cheerios helps lower cholesterol as part of a heart healthy diet. that's true. ...but you still have to go to the gym. ♪ the one and only, cheerios

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and now for something completely different. >> nobody makes a move. >> in the hit series "homeland." claire deigns plays a cia agent on the trail of al qaeda terrorists. sounds a lot like the main character a cia operative in the film "zero dark 30," right?

in real life, it turns out that many of the officers in the hunt for bin laden were women. the person who wrote the first complete assessment of osama bin laden, a woman. the analyst who first identified al qaeda in a briefing to the president, a woman. so it got me wondering. do women make better spies or analysts than men? are they in some ways more suitered to this kind of work? i put the question to the former cia director, michael hayden. do you think there's any significance to the fact that so many of the people who hunted bin laden down were women? >> i will confirm, you're right. this was a band of sisters that led this analytical hunt. two of the sisters were killed at cost. jennifer matthews was there and elizabeth hanson. both briefed me about the hunt for bin laden, both were

phenomenal and focused and obsessed. >> there are all these macho guys out there, but you wouldn't want tease women after you, they're relentless. >> this is a decade's long hunt and for these women, longer than a decade, these people were hunting bin laden before hunting bin laden was cool and popular. they were back there in the day prior to 9/11. in fact, that opening line from "homeland." >> i missed something once before -- >> where carrie mutters, i missed something that day. a lot of people in the agency, including these folks, were animated by the fact that that event had taken place and now they wanted to set things right. they really were focused on this energy beyond description. >> for the real scoop, who better to ask than former cia counterterrorism officials and cindy storer. the target of the leader of al

qaeda in iraq and cindy was one of the first analysts to focus on bin laden. do you think there's something that women bring to this kind of work that is helpful? >> i do. women just tend to do it better. even the men i've worked with who were trying really hard to do a good job of it, very few and far between. >> let me make a crude generalization. women are more patient, they are better at recognizing patterns that are slightly complex. men are, you know, eager to shoot first and ask questions later. does all that seem, sound a little bit familiar? >> i think it does. but i also think there is something to women having a protection mechanism. you can attribute it to being maternal instipth, but i think there is something to sort of rallying the troops to protect what we know and what we find sacred versus, i think, what men do dominate the offensive position where we take up the defensive position. >> you said something about, you

think there are certain advantages women have, also in terms of getting people to talk to you. right? >> i do. i think there's, female case officers have an advantage because they can elicit information in a different way than men. they are less threatening. they can come off as more mat n maternal. they do have an advantage working and recruiting to give them information. i think part of the fascination is when you think about 007 you don't think of jane bond, you think of james bond. i think it's the surprise for a lot of people. >> you worked that agency for a long time. >> yeah. >> was it difficult being a woman? all the issues that you hear about, you know, the cheryl sandburgs and ann marie of the world. >> i never felt any discrimination except when i touched military issues. then the men would have, i think

it's instinctive reaction or programmed reaction and then you can get them past that and then it would be okay. you have to say, no, i do know about this. >> let me ask a couple questions about something that everybody wonders about. watching the movie "manhunt" the documentary might have given people the impression that you, nada, were mia in "zero dark 30" would that be accurate? >> that would never be accurate. i would never take that away from the people who worked on finding bin laden. i left the agency prior to them catching him. >> is there a mia? >> i would say there were targeting officers and analysts involved in the hunt for bin laden. and i'm very proud of all of them. i think they did do an amazing job. there were a handful of very dedicated people who were part of that. in addition to the people that built the initial intelligence

like gina benoit and cindy. >> but no single person? >> that i can't comment on. >> very cia-like response. >> of course, of course. up next, i'll give you my own thoughts about how to stop terror. i'm here at my house on thanksgiving day, and i have a massive heart attack right in my driveway. the doctor put me on a bayer aspirin regimen. [ male announcer ] be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. go talk to your doctor. you're not indestructible anymore. you will lose 3 sets of keys 4 cell phones 7 socks and 6 weeks of sleep but one thing you don't want to lose is any more teeth. if you wear a partial, you are almost twice as likely to lose your supporting teeth. new poligrip and polident for partials 'seal and protect' helps minimize stress, which may damage supporting teeth, by stabilizing your partial. and 'clean and protect' kills odor-causing bacteria. care for your partial.

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you've heard from the top most officials who have fought this battle. the women who tracked osama bin laden and those who actually interrogated suspected terrorists. i hope it's helped you understand the dangers we face and how we should respond to them. i thought i owed you my own conclusions based on what i've seen and heard. first, al qaeda. the group that planned and directed the embassy bombings in kenya and tanzania and then the attack on the american destroyer "uss cole" and then the world trade center is a shadow of its former self-second, it has become a franchise operation with groups around the world latching on to its name and cause. but there's a debate. you've heard it here. as to whether these groups in somalia, mali, yemen are local thugs or global terrorists. in my reading of them, local concerns seem paramont. even the taliban, after all, does not have global terrorist

ambitions, but, instead, has always focused on its desire to control afghanistan. americans often forget that though we went to war in afghanistan, no afghan was involved in 9/11. nor in any other major terrorist plot against americans and europeans. turning local thugs into global terrorists could well prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. third, al qaeda was not crippled by magic, but through the hard work of counterterrorism by many governments across many regions. now, as we fight terrorism, let's think hard about collateral damage when we target a bad guy with a drone. fourth, the boston bombings have reminded us that the war on terror is one that has to be fought at home, as well. but how to find the next group of misfits who have no background with terrorists, who might get radicalized over the internet and who go from talking radicalism one day to plotting

terror the next. we cannot identify every one of these perspective terrorists, no matter how well we do. but people in law enforcement agencies across the united states will tell you, the best intelligence about potential terrorists comes from their communities, which oft aen me es in these times, communities. friendly relations with their moms and other leaders. and outreach to other parts of the community. if that sounds too soft, it's a proven method. most recently a few weeks ago a canadian plot to attack trains was thwarted with this kind of intelligence, provided by the local muslim community. the war on terror began as a grand enterprise involving major war. it seems to have evolved into police work. that is a measure of progress. a final point. not a thought, but some facts. the national counterterrorism center released its annual

report last june. it showed that terrorist attacks worldwide had dropped by 12% from 2010 and were down 29% from 2007. the global terrorism index also released last year systematically ranks countries by levels of terrorist incidents. over the ten-year period it analyzed, 2002 to 2011, the region least likely to suffer from a terrorist attack was north america. the most comprehensive studies show that terrorism was declining in the united states, even in 2001. and it dropped even more sharply after 9/11. here's peter bergen, again, putting it in some perspective. >> since 9/11. 17 americans killed by jihadist terrorists in this country. 300 americans die every year in their bathtubs. we shouldn't have an irrational fear of terrorism.

i hope this special report has helped you think about the future of terrorism more rationally. thank you for watching. i'm fareed zakaria. good morning, everyone. i'm brianna keilar at the cnn center in atlanta with a news update. new developments out of cleveland this morning. moments ago we heard from attorneys representing the three young women who were freed last week after a decade in captivity. cnn's national correspondent susan candiotti is in cleveland. she was at the news conference. susan, what did you learn? >> hi, brianna. coming to you from a very cold and windy cleveland this day, we're learning that amanda berry and her little girl, as well as gina dejesus and michelle knight are all spending this mother's day with family and/or friends. hearing this from a public