information about the organization and its networks, and to cut off sources of support. these operations clearly reduced al-qaeda's capability and the threat it poses ten years after that trial day in april. the organizations indiscriminate violence and unpopular political ideas isolated it and thwarted its dream of islam in muslim societies. greater radicalization is bigger in the united states than it was a few years ago. that's reflected in the agenda today. there's certainly a vanguard and revolutions a foot in the arab world coming from different sources than al-qaeda dreamed about. of all the changes, some things really have not changed very much from that april ten years

ago. bin laden is still not in any courtroom or any detention facility, neither is the principle deputy. they remain resilient militarily and continues to plan attacks against americans and american allies. potent new affiliates emerged in the arabian peninsula as others declined importance, and somalia for its part is mired in a fourth decade of civil violence where they are inspired by al-qaeda and are still a figure. we'll wrestle with that at the end of the day. in a few months we'll reach the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and many of the experts here play an important role in interpreting some of the evidence about where we've come before congress, before the media, to the administration, and public and in private, and i think our purpose in organizing

this conversation today was to get ahead of the questions and think together about them essentially to consider this a sort of day long study group and to take advantage of each other and to take advantage of the time and space to really think carefully about thisment i think my own guiding thousands for the day is discourse that brings many of us together and guided our ambitions, peter and patrick and mine at new america which is to stay focused on the evidence. the time of the southern district trial ten years ago, al-qaeda was underestimated in the united states. at times since then, the importance and potent sigh of the organization is overestimated. i think the best we can do is to stay coldly and impartially focused on the facts as best as we ascertain them and this is

hard to do simultaneously, remain open to challenging new arguments, to new ways of thinking about the facts and new perspectives. that's the goal today to keep that conversation moving and also make it transparent and available to others who are interested in it. some of the questions that were litigated, literally litigated in the united states and the bin laden case are still alive, how is al al-qaeda's organization structure be understood? to what extent is it best understood to a network or a broad movement in which followers act in isolation from leaders or as a brand or all four of those things? what are its strengths and weaknesses? what are its current -- what is the current profile of its regional affiliates? what can we confidently forecast about the evolution over the next 5-10 years, and what questions can we acknowledge are

proven too hard to answer satisfactorily? what are the questions and why do they matter? that's some of what i hope to wrestle with today, and to get started conveniently i'm moderating the first panel, so i'll invite the panelists to the stage, and we will keep rolling. >> i won't read out the agenda in front of you, but you can see we're starting with an attempt to start the day with a broad overview, with four very well qualified experts, and i think without having rehearsed it, bruce, if you don't mind, i'll go in the order listed and that puts you first. bruce hoffman is the center fft security studies at georgetown university law school, a

specialist, well known to you in the area of terrorism and counterinsurgency long before that specialty was a common vocation. he was previously directser of the rand corporation office for eight years until 2006, and held a number of executive positions there. his publications include his influential book from 1998, "inside terrorism" now expanded and revised, the failure of britain's policy in palestine in 1947 published in the 1980s. he's the editor and chief of a scholarly journal studies in conflict and terrorism and series editor of the columbia studies and terrorism in irregular warfare and has a new book under sale. please welcome bruce hoffman. [applause] >> thank you, steve, and thanks, peter, for organizing the

conference as well. we've been told to adhere very strictly to the time period, so i'll stare at my watch to do so. peter very kindly invited me,ic -- i think this is the third conference i've been included in. the two previous ones i think were characterized by various heralds who at the time in 2004 and 2008 were singing about al-qaeda's demise. i remember very clearly the 2004 conference when one of the participants said that rather have been calmed al-qaeda 2.0, but should be called al-qaeda rip. of course, then the july 2005 attacks in london transport occurred and that indicated that they were not only alive, but was kicking. interestingly is the 2008 variant of this conference or predecessor followed by only a few months, the debate played

out in foreign affairs in the "new york times" and elsewhere about al-qaeda and bin laden's continuing relevance and since then, faisal shahzad shows that organizations mat and there's a constant direct inspired mote voted and animated by persons like more traditional or familiar individuals like bin laden and others. i think evidence of this, of course, is clear in the case of beyond any doubt was controlled by al-qaeda central in pakistan, and as we just saw this previous fall with the plots to stage mumbai-like attacks across europe. peter had this conference at a

moment when many people are also singing the praises of al-qaeda's demise or its irrelevance and the arab spring produced the latest set of al-qaeda obituaries. forgive me about the jaundice because i've been reading these articles for ten years and are proven inaccurate. many of the statements we hear about the arab spring illustrate an a-historical approach to the understanding of terrorism and doesn't border on wishful thinking, and i have to say one the few pieces that evidences this sober objective analyst is a piece in the "new york times" op-ed pages. why do i take the cautious few? firstly, people embraced the notion that somehow terrorism and democracy are epithet call to one another and rather

history shows terrorism thrives in democratic environments. think of west germany from 1960 to 1990s with the red army faction, northern ireland not only throughout the period, but indeed today saying the threat posed by ira disinnocence is now on par in the united kingdom with that of jihaddists, and we see in questionable democracies in iraq or pakistan, terrorism retains not only a foothold, but is a daily fact of life. i think secondly we often misunderstand that terrorist groups are not fast movements or political parties. they feed off of uncertainty. terrorist groups first and foremost are small numbers of discontented individuals who embrace violence, not necessarily to build something, but to act as spoilers to up end

peace processes, to transfer democratic transformations and put dash to any force of optimism. they seek to create fear and anxiety to undermine confidence and authorities, and to polarize societies. hence the positive arab spring, and i see no one is void of any of those capabilities to do any of the above. rather, i argue from al-qaeda's point of view the arab spring and recent developments nothing could have suited them better at a particularly critical juncture in their history. it diverted tremendous amounts of attention from south asia to west africa and the middle east. secondly, it's presented new choojs for security and intelligence services across that region, and many of whom close allies of ours on the war on terrorism and more concerned

about domestic challenges and threats than they are international terrorism or transnational threats. i think my caution is also warranted for other reasons. firstly, at least in my analysis, al-qaeda has actually grown and expanded in the past three years rather than shrunk. for instance, if peter had this conference two years ago, and we talked about the theaterrers throughout the word, i would have had a more on optimistic assessment showing they are resilient add adversary, but at the same time it's not growing and confined to traditional areas of operation of pakistan and afghanistan and pushed back on its heels in iraq, although it still is a factor there. it's having trouble expanding and al-qaeda europe showed itself to be a challenge, but it's been limited in the attacks it could successfully carry out,

and, of courses the tremendous success story in the middle east with indonesia and al-qaeda has very much been eliminated, yet any past three years is an ability for the movement to expand or grow by more than half. in other words, from the roughly seven networks that existed in 2008 and 2009, one can say there's 11 al-qaeda networks throughout the world, and some of the new ones, not just my analysis, but the director and james clapper and the dcia, they said quap presents as much as a threat to the united states as al-qaeda central. we have seen in the last few years a two-bit militia group in somalia ten years ago we wouldn't have cared about and exercised operations on the world stage and even though the

attempts failed, it did show their ability to recruit individuals throughout europe and the united states, and we have al-qaeda with a renewed preps in sudan, and as peter and i wrote about in our study for the national security preparedness group last september, we have what one has to say is this recruetment infrastructure in the united states, very con finded to extremely small numbers, but nonetheless it's kiss quieting when three of the main leaders of operational commanders i should say and the affiliates are american citizens, and here i think of the instrumental role in plots, and omar smz amani and his role and the operational and

propaganda rolle in aqap. think about it. in the past two years, our budgets are shrinking, we lay off people. gosh, if i could grow the faculty in my program at georgetown by 50% in two years, that would be enormous university. yet, even despite the immense pressure al-qaeda is under, and i don't want to give the impression al key da is as strong and posing the same threat, but it nonetheless continues to pose a very serious threat. where they succeeded most is creating a network. there's no longer one al-qaeda in one place to fix, but now many al-qaeda in different places with different capabilities, different relationships with their host countries, populations, and its

governments and requires tailor-made situations. what this means for the united states and the war on terrorism that at a time with fewer resources to devote to the struggle, we can't have a one-size fits all strategy and we have to adjust ourselves to the threat al-qaeda presents in each of the theaters. i'm almost up with my ten minutes. i think al-qaeda's strength and one reason for longevity and survival is there's a strategy that is implemented successfully, and that's attrition that secretaries to wear us down and -- seeks to wear us down economically and socially. economically bin laden and his minons never said they would beat us militarily on the battlefield, but said, you can go back to the 2004 videotape says he's going to bankrupt us. in 2004, that wasn't a message

that carried much res innocence, but weather it true they can take credit for our budget trials, it is something there. they seek to overwhelm us with the multiplicity of threats to divert our attention. as al al-qaeda was conceived 23 years ago to be the base of the foundation, it both operates with top-down directed terrorist operations, but, of course, from the start it had this mission of inspiring, motivating, and animating individuals to join the caravan or engage in violence on their own in hopes of fulfilling or assisting al-qaeda's aims. for al-qaeda, it's great because it overwhelms us with threats from different adversaries making the current threat environment despite the fact they are weaker than ever, more

challenging than ever because we have the cover the water front of potential threats. al-qaeda is not winning, of course, but at the same time the fundmental conceit of all terrorists insurgeon groups of those who provide strategies of attrition means they don't have to win, just avoid losing. we see their ability to adapt, adjust, and ensure survivability. we want to say after 23 years, it's not slacking. in 9/11 taught us anything, it's that al-qaeda is most dangerous with a safe hatch from which to operate from. these days, al-qaeda not only has been able to expand to new safe hatches, but looks in the middle east today because of the instability, the uncertainty, the chaos, because. because of the vacuum of leadership emerging there and will remain until the process of

democracy play itself out, i doubt there's new opportunities. according to the -- our priority has to be to concentrate on al-qaeda, not just one enemy in one place like we saw pakistan and regarded iraq in 2003 and 2006, but over the past two years, al-qaeda spread into failed and failing states and environments. this requires continued attention in afghanistan and pakistan where they began to complption in 2002, but now regrouped, but also our ability to counter expansion to failed and failing and unstable states. this focus will also require recognizing that al-qaeda cannot be defeated by military means alone. i think the predator program is effective, there's no doubt. two things though, firstly, a

tactic is not a strategy and shouldn't be confused with one. despite the news yesterday after the killing of another high value target if you look at the excellent work done, and look at the 1 # # strike -- 122 strikes, you see a declining number of targets. al-qaeda and associates themselves are adapting and adjusting to so consequential a matter as the drone program, but that's what they do otherwise they don't survive. finally, success requires a dual strategy, a systematically destroying and weaken capabilities as the drone program. also, a more dedicated and a more serious effort designed to break the cycle of terrorist recruitment that sustains and generates the movement by carrying the terrorists

message. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, bruce. next up is peter berg, my colleague and director of the national security studies program here. he's well known to many of you, the terrorism analyst at cnn, and he also in that affiliation with cnn conducted the first television interview with bin laden for an american audience in english in 1997, and that interview marked the first time he declared war against the united states. that inspired peter's dedication to the subject and rigorous approach he's taken to open search research on al-qaeda. and his book was completed before the 9/11 attacks and was available to provide a very welcomed source of clarity to american and english speaking readers at a moment of widespread confusion where the

attacks originated. he followed that up with very important and still very valuable oral history, the bin laden i know, and then this winter, his book, the longest war, the enduring conflict between america and al-qaeda was published with rave reviews and the attention was well-deserved and hope that book continues to have a wide readership as the 9/11 anniversary approaches. , peter? >> thank you, it's great to be on this panel with whose work i admire. i wanted to pull back now that we are almost ten years from 9/11 and say what was achieved by the attacks and what was the purpose? obviously, it was to kill americans, but there was a strategic purpose to have the americans pull out of the middle east. none of that happened in the way

that bin laden thought it was going to happen. as a tactical matter, the 9/11 attacks were a success, but instead of american withdrawal from the middle east, it precipitated the invasion of afghanistan and iraq, so from a strictly strategic point of view, 9/11 was a total failure, and i think that's true nine years ago and is true today. i think bruce and i differ slightly about the arab spring. i think his caution is certainly deserved, but i think it is pretty striking that we have not seen a single picture of bin laden carried by the protesters in cairo, benghazi, bahrain, nor any other place or spouting al-qaeda's antiwestern rhetoric. no one is burning american flags or israeli flags which is so

proformer in that part of the world, so the men and ideology of al-qaeda are not part of the process. now, of course, as bruce's indicated, they can try and, you know, make hay out of all this in yes , yemen or libya or other places and caution is deserved, but when obama says al-qaeda are small men on the wrong side of history, i think history is just leaving them behind. that is the good news. now that said, of course, and bruce made this point a long time ago, the gang in germany was a small group of people that enjoyed zero public support and inflicted damage on german society in the 1970s, and al-qaeda enjoys recruitment rather than supporters. we saw with the flight 523, if they burned up in detroit, not only would americans be killed on board and others and would

have been covered all over the world, it would have had an effect on international business and also the obama presidency took a big hit even though it was a near miss. right now, we have a tolerance in a sense, but an unhealthy zero tolerance for any tomorrow of terrorist attack even though we know it's likely to happen at some time. it doesn't matter who's in office, republican or democrat, there's great political cause to a terrorist attack of that scale. flight 5353 and the attempt to kill dozens people on the manhattan subway represents what al-qaeda can do now. are these all events? no, are they important for us? yes. andrew and our colleagues at syracuse maxwell school and new america look at the 175 terrorist cases, charges, or convictions since 9/11, and what

didn't happen with the cases is interesting. not one involved chemical, bilogical, or radiological weapons. in all these terrorist cases, there's 17 people killed in the united states by jihad terrorists attacks and more people die in their baths every year than because of attacks. again, that is something that is unpredictable in the years immediately after 9/11. that said, as bruce and i wrote and we did see 2009 as the -- it was the year with the most terrorism cases since 9/11 with 45 cases that we document. now, is that an outlier on pat tent? at the moment, we don't know. the number of cases were slightly unusually high because a lot of somalia-american cases and a lot of people who travel to somalia were recruited in the 2009 period. again, we thought we were

insulated from the al-qaeda ideology because we are higher educated and have higher incomes and are different than their counterparts, but we are not entirely insulated and there's an increasing americanization of these groups. he was instrumental essential in the planning of the mumbai attack, and if there's another, they can come to war at this time. i think the pressure on the i understandian government to do something -- indian government to do something will be overwhelming. we are exporting terrorists now, not just him, but jihad jane who wanted to kill the swedish cartoonish and others trying to fight in the jihad. we find there's no ethnic profile for the 175 cases. i won't bore you with the details, but there's no particular group that stands

out. you are likely to be a caucasian as you are somalia or african-american recruited by the groups or indeed a middle easterner. that's the snapshot of the domestic threat. i want to pull back again and look at the wider al-qaeda situation. i think there's four factors operating in al-qaeda's favor and four against it. the big one i think is that al-qaeda is it infected other groups who don't call themselves al-qaeda, but operating in an al-qaeda like manner. when we have the world's greatest expert speaking later and when let hunts down american and jewish tie rapts, we're in a different situation than we were several years ago with a group interested in attacks indian targets. we have suicide bombers going to barcelona and then sending,

faisal to blow up a street, there's a different situation. these are large scale groups that enjoy this government or support and have tens of thousands of recruits, and this is quite problematic. bruce mentioned the affiliates. i think the kind of recovery of al-qaeda in iraq was entirely predictable not to the point where they become an organization that controls territory, but a spoiler of going forward and we're leaving in iraq as you know at the end of the year. that doesn't hurt al-qaeda and iraq, and it's like the hitman you don't invite to dinner if you're the mafia family, but it's very helpful to attack, and of course, bin laden aeroothers are out there. i think it's striking that bin

lad p said nothing about the events in the middle east, and i'll end with that thought in a minute. well, maybe in is the moment to say it. why has he said nothing? we have 35 videotapes and audiotypes since 9/11 and usually within three weeks he comments on the decisions. i think that he is concerned about his safety or he's very, very scratching his head about what to say because this is what supposed to happen in the middle east, but it's nothing to do with his ideas and no one is calling for his end state around the middle east. very few of the protesters are hoping for that as a future in the middle east. bin laden is still out there. i think this helps al-qaeda at large.

.. >> a lot of lower level mill taxes. do they -- militants. do they represent a clear and present danger to the united states or troops in the afghanistan? i think that's quite debatable. the fact that obama has good ruppeled the number in two -- quadrupled the number in two years, this would have created a huge firestorm if it were

president bush. it is something we should be thinking about more carefully with the pakistanis, maybe thinking about more information sharing about the way we go about it, more joint operations or some way to bring them into the tent a little bit more. on pakistan, you know, three other factors that are working against al-qaeda. i think it would not have been predicted there would be 30,000 troops, serious blocking operations, months of sort of bombing of taliban positions before the operation. it would have also been unpredictable they would do a serious operation, so there has been a see change, i think it's -- and that was done with a lot of public support unlike the previous operations in waziristan in '05 and '06 which were seen to satisfy the americans who were giving us money. that was unpredictable, it's a good thing, but i think it's reached it's ceiling. i don't see the pakistani government going into north waziristan on any serious

matter. and the shifting attitude on the taliban which no longer enjoys a robin hood image in pakistan, if you look at polling data, al-qaeda is polling, the numbers have just cratered. this is all gone. even worse for al-qaeda is some of the people that they relied on for religious mentoring have turned against them very publicly. and it's one thing for a muslim terrorist to say 9/11 was a bad idea, the shake who, after all, as bin laden himself said in the interview we did with him in '97 he said the reason i'm attacking the united states is because of the sheikh. he was bin laden's religious mentor. and the fact that this guy's publicly turned against bin laden and is saying, you know, calling him out by name, i think it's very hard for al-qaeda, and they've never responded.

when they don't respond, it means they don't know what to say. the fact that he hasn't said anything, i think, indicates that he has, i guess, some cognitive dissonance about what is going on right now. ms. . >> thank you, peter. our first two speakers are two of the most credible and long-serving outside analysts offal -- of al-qaeda in the united states. and our next speaker has credible analysis from inside the government, and the first is juan zarate. a think tank a couple of blocks away from here. he was a deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism during the george w. bush administration, and in that role he was responsible for developing and overseeing u.s.

counterterrorism strategy. before the nsc he was assistant director of the treasury for terrorism and financial crimes where he led treasury's notable efforts to disrupt financing and built antimoney laundering systems and oversaw the expanded use of treasury administrative powers to advance american national security interests. so it's a pleasure to have juan back at new america. please. [applause] >> steve, i was a little bit worried. i wasn't sure where you were going with the fist two being -- first two being the most credible. [laughter] steve, i really appreciate being here. in fact, part of the reason i accepted and really was honored to be part of the panel was simply to listen to bruce, peter and glenn. so i'm really honored to be a part of the panel and appreciate the work of the new america foundation. i'm on all your lists, and i

appreciate all the work that's done and, peter, thank you again for all our work and, bruce, you as well and glenn. the first two speakers have laid it out incredibly well, so let me do this. you know, i started looking at al-qaeda in the pre-9/11 days when i was actually a prosecutor learning at the feet of pat fitzgerald. was part of the embassy bombing's prosecutorial team. i was a young trial attorney then. one of the things that amazed us at that point was we realized al-qaeda was very clearly employing a strategy of war against the united states. and those of us who were involved in it saw very clearly there was a lack of appreciation for that strategy not only within the american public, but even within senior policy making circles. what's interesting at this point is the fact that i think we need to recalibrate not only our our assessment of al-qaeda, but

how it is we recalibrate our approach to al-qaeda. whether or not b al-qaeda should be the primary lens through which we view transnational threats and key national security interests and how that then effects our approach. but let me take a step back and talk a little bit about the chapters of al-qaeda, in particular the arab springs because i think if you look at the history of al-qaeda in particular since the early '90s, you have key moments in history where al-qaeda faced a transformative moment or at least a point of opportunity that they either took advantage of or were hurt by. and i think the arab spring is a fundamental moment and chapter in the context of al-qaeda's existence, its narrative, it ideology, and it's something i wrote about in "the new york times." bruce, i appreciate the reference to it. but i think on the eve of the arab spring al-qaeda was in, in transition and under a great deal of stress, i think. the al-qaeda core was not only under physical stress and threat

given the counterterrorism activities in western pakistan, but was under moral and theological assault as peter indicated from the various circles from within jihadi circles as well as other elements of muslim communities that have been important to al-qaeda's relevance. and al-qaeda does care about its relevance. it does care perhaps more than other terrorist groups in the past with respect to its moral/political/theological legitimacy. so the fact that you have the sheikh coming out consistently against al-qaeda's ideology against bin laden is actually a deep blow to a group that cares deeply about its moral, historical and theological place and mission. but in the cob text of the arab -- context of the arab spring, and if you look at the chapters in history, you have 9/11, you have the invasion of afghanistan, you have the inability to capture bin laden at tora bora which i think was a

strategic failure on our part and, peter, you've written extensively and extremely well on this. the invasion of iraq, another moment, a moment of opportunity for al-qaeda. you also had the surge which i think was a moment of great defensiveness for al-qaeda in part because they were put on their heels not just by american force and presence in the face of pressure which had really been the first time in recent memory that the u.s. had fought back once it had been bloodied fairly dramatically. and so that cut against the narrative of an america that was a paper tiger that was willing to fight but only if it was not cut or bloodied. but also and most importantly and i think existentially a rejection from the sunni-arab tribes which is really the heart of al-qaeda's constituency. if you think back and look back to the al-zawahiri letter to zarqawi, al-qaeda in '05, '06

and '07 really projected al-qaeda being a core base for strategic expansion of the region and really the hub for then movement toward its ultimate establishment of the islamic call fate. that has now withered. al-qaeda in iraq certainly is a presence, a real threat to stability in iraq, but it no longer presents that strategic platform that al-qaeda once envisioned. and so i think historically we'll look back to the surge as a very important moment in the context of the evolution of al-qaeda. but i think the arab spring in some ways is perhaps the most important moment since 9/11 in the immediate aftermath. in part because as bruce indicated, you have an opportunity for al-qaeda, a very real opportunity, and i think from al-qaeda's perspective and if you read their statements and the essay, for example, from anwar al-awlaki, tsunami of change -- by the way, peter, you're referenced in the latest issue of " inspire."

i aspire to be quoted by -- [laughter] no. but what you have is a realization that there is breathing space, that not only are regimes distracted, not only is there running room for jihadi playing fields, but you also have opportunities for the growth of the movement in ways that weren't available, in particular in north africa and in the gulf. and so there is an opportunity there. there also is an opportunity, and if you read so what her ri's now -- zawahiri's five episodes with respect to the spring, you see this quite clearly that al-qaeda is banking on the discontent, disillusionment and chaos that they envision will come out of the arab spring. so they are very much playing the long game as they typically do, a long strategy of banking on the disillusionment of the

reformist movement of democracy. and with this i'll differ a bit with bruce because i do think the democracy provides breathing space in some form or fashion for terrorist groups. i think for al-qaeda it's a little bit different because ideologically they see democracy and secularism and the principles of democracy as being fundamentally antithetical to their ideology. you've seen this over time in their rhetoric, in their doctrine, you saw it vividly in the fourth statement from zawahiri in the context of the arab spring where he literally does an indictment of democracy. democracy is said to be this, it is really this. democracy's said to be in this, it is really this. really an aopportunity to under-- an atent to undercut the notion of democracy. so they're banking on the disillusionment, and they're banking on this notion people will see the western puppeteers behind the discontent that emerges. but i also see this as a fundamental moment where we could see the beginning of the

end of al-qaeda as an ideology which is really what success has been, at least in my mind, defined as in the war on terror or at least the war against al-qaeda. that the ideology grows to be bankrupt, that the group becomes marginalized, its global regions, its networks no longer have strategic impact. that is success in the context of the war on al-qaeda. and so this is a strategic moment in part because if you do have reform movements that are largely secular, that are based in democratic principles, that have core notions of dealing with local grievances absent the boogieman of the united states or the west behind every problem or grievance, that then starts to reshape very much the narrative. and as you look where al-qaeda was on the eve of the arab spring, it was an ideology already under assault in terms of its not only strategic relevance, but also moral and theological legitimacy.

that said, it's in the balance. and i think this is why this period is so fascinating and important, and i think that's why these conferences and, steve, this conference is so important because there's so many questions and issues at play and questions as to what role the united states can play, what levers does the united states have to bring to bear? but i think there's some fundamental questions in the context of the arab spring that have yet to be answered, and i think we'll only take further time to help answer. first, does the political space as bruce argues actually give al-qaeda not just running room operationally, but ideological and political running room? does, for example, the fact that karma draw by, the head of the muslim brotherhood, coming back to cairo to throngs of supporters, a man who has supported suicide bombings in the past, that's provided theological support for that, does political running room in cairo, for example, for salafi

political groups, does that now somehow legitimate or open up greater space for al-qaeda's ideology to be one of other actors? as peter mentioned, al-qaeda doesn't need to take over the entirety of the reform movements to be successful. they don't have to take over the governance in this places like tunis and cairo to be successful. all they need is to gather a few add heermts and for i'd i don't imagine to remain relevant for fund raising, etc. does that opening provide them some running room ideologically? what does the arab spring do to the broader underlying narrative upon which al-qaeda has hitched its strategy of the west being at war with islam? this is a theme that is continuously hammered, will be continuously hammered by al-qaeda statements in the future, and it's the one poll number that hasn't shifted over time. peter has mentioned, rightly, the fact that al-qaeda has

declined precipitously in terms of popularity. bin laden less and less popular. even suicide bombings in most muslim majority countries or communities has dropped as notions of legitimate actions against tyranny or presentation. but the one number that has remained stable has been the notion and the perception, deeply held, that the west is at war with islam. and that our policies are directed at the keg degradationf muslims and islamic countries. and that has been the underlying narrative upon which al-qaeda has built its ideological narrative of the 1990s. so there's still a question as to whether or not the arab spring actually does damage to that narrative. i was quite hopefully, frankly, with president obama's inauguration that he could start to change that narrative, to reshape it, to break it because we had not been able to in the bush administration. so i don't know what happens to that narrative, but i think if

western principles, if democracy, if reform went out, that narrative starts to shift, and it starts to shift perhaps in a fundamental way which is to our advantage and to al-qaeda's disadvantage. in addition, i don't know given where we have been in terms of radicalization of westerners and the broad strategy of al-qaeda to cast the net widely for those western radicals. how the arab spring plays on the internet to radicalize individuals in places like london, toronto, portland or other places in the west, it's not clear what resonates on the streets of cairo will resonate in the minds of those radicalized in the western context. that's part of the complexity that bruce talks about in terms of the prodder network of al-qaeda. -- broader network of al-qaeda. and then finally, one of the things that we've looked at, and we've done a study at csis, and, in fact, we put out a report called the threat transformed,

looking at the state of al-qaeda right before the arab spring, and we're doing a final report on the future of al-qaeda to be published right before the 9/11 anniversary. peter's been kind enough to be parking lot of the advisory board -- part of the advisory board for that project. one of the things we've looked at and have started to cogitate more on is what role do other actors and other platforms globally have to play in terms of the al-qaeda ideology. so it may not be that al-qaeda core survives for very long or that it has global reach, but groups like lash carral tie baa do have ambitions. so do those groups in some way pick up the banner, the ideological banner, especially if that core, underlying message is not affected, and does that then become a successor or the next chapter in al-qaeda's existence even if, for example,

zawahiri or bin laden or killed or captured? so those are key questions. let me just quickly wrap up. i think al-qaeda many some ways is trying to through its statements portray itself in the way it would like to see vents, certainly trying to inject itself in ways it's not relevant. they talk about having naught the mountains while the protesters have taken to the streets and trying to coalesce with the brothers of the revolution. but i think it is important to understand how al-qaeda sees itself and how it portrays itself because that, then, drives its strategy, and we have to be cognizant of that as we react and try to head it off. first, they see the withdrawal of the u.s. and the debates in the u.s. with respect to afghanistan and iraq as being to their benefit. they're already crafting the narrative that this is a great success, that this is along the lines of the withdrawal of the soviet troops from afghanistan, these are grand victories for the global movement. now, the reality of that, you

know, can be debated, but that's certainly the narrative that they're weaving in the context of what's happening. they're touting and very much banking on the rise of the affiliates, the ability of groups like aqap to not only try to target the west, but also to discome obama bob late the united states even with failed attacks. and so there is glee and pleasure in that, in their statements and in how thaw operate. how they operate. they're quite pleased, quite frankly, with the fall of the autocrats like mubarak or who are under assault like gadhafi. they see that to be a windfall in the context of their strategy. this was one of their main strategies in terms of the near enemy. they have to worry about what follows, clearly, but this is one of their goals and, clearly, they see this as advantageous. and then finally, as bruce indicated, strategically and narratively what they are talking about more and more and how they see themselves in terms

of their success is their ability to bankrupt the united states. i call it the bleeding bankrupt model or strategy, and you see it more and more. you've seen it more on the ground in terms of how the afghan taliban talks about their strategy against the united states. you've seen it at the highest levels in terms of how zawahiri and bin laden have talked about the financial crisis being an auger of the demise of the grand american superpower. and so they very much see themselves on the right side of history. they see the long view of history. and they see themselves playing for the long game when america has short patience, is often seen as a paper tiger and does not have staying power. i've argued for a long time that the ultimate success and antidote to al-qaeda will be a grassroots countermovement to its ideology within muslim communities around the world. and the ability of those movements to not only effect

change in their communities, but also a network against a transnational network that is aligned against them and the west. if you look at what's happened internationally in pakistan, groups like the sufis and other more moderate groups have come under withering assault from al-qaeda, and you can look at not just pakistan, but somalia and others. there is a battle underway within the muslim world, and i think the real solution here at the end of the day in terms of countering the ideology is for this grassroots countermovement to emerge. and i think from my perspective, that's why i'm hopeful with the arab spring because it's in these reform and protest movements that you actually have in a context outside of al-qaeda these organic movements actually emerging. and so i'm, actually, hopeful in that sense even though the threat is more diverse, more blended, more complicated. i think we're moving in the right direction. but we're at a pivotal juncture strategically, and i think we have to recognize it just as

al-qaeda has. so with that, thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, juan. our final panelist is glenn carl who has spent 25 years in the american intelligence community. he earned his undergraduate degree from harvard and a master's degree from johns hopkins and became an operations officer at the central intelligence agency. where he served in a variety of assignments that i'm sure he'll be happy to enumerate in due time. he has a book coming out in july called "the interday to have: an education." and i think if you are watching -- interrogator. if you are watching this program, you can go on amazon and preorder it, and i think you'll want to do so after hearing from glenn. one of his last assignments was as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats which is a position at the national intelligence

council that oversees interagency assessments of transnational terrorism, principally al-qaeda in the recent period. and it was in that important role that glen finished his long career in intelligence having kind of migrated from operations to analysis. l and i think blending both of those skill sets with unusual distinction. so we're very fortunate to have him here today. glenn. [applause] >> thank you very much. i think everyone has claimed to be honored on the podium here. [laughter] but i think i have the best claim to saying that i'm honored, really since the panelists i'm sitting with i take some wry satisfaction in noting were either my superiors or the sages at whose feet i sat to learn their wisdom. as i started to do my work on the national intelligence council. many of you will know that the national intelligence council is almost literally the only body

in the intelligence community, in the foreign policy community with the mandate, the assignment to look strategically at threats or issues of concern to our foreign policy and national security. it's rather stunning that such a small institution with 12 nios and perhaps 20 deputies, arguably with inr and an equally-sized office somewhere in the department of defense, are the only bodies that do long-term, detached assessments. it's quite shocking, i think really. the nsc, theoretically, will do that, but they're stuck having to put fires out in the inbox every, every morning. so that means that my job was to look from 60,000 feet at what the strategic issues are, specifically in my case with respect to al-qaeda and terrorism. now that i'm a free electron, i think i've totally gone off into orbit and can say more or less

whatever i wish, so i'm free to do that. [laughter] and i'll start by putting a net assessment of al-qaeda ten years on in a somewhat grotesque, wry way but i think accurate. prior to 9/11 al-qaeda was trying to kill us and was successful from time to time. al-qaeda remains capable today, still of doing so. and are trying to. but we not need really worry about too this too much. so it was and so it remains for the moment. but this gets to some of the bad news which are, my colleagues have spoken about from dirt perspectives but making similar points that there are deep driver toss the jihadist threat to al-qaeda that remain, are independent in anything that we as a government through our military or intelligence agencies can do or any government can take anywhere and that will guarantee a sustained

threat as it has been for not just the foreseeable future, but for many years to come. but that, my beginning also means that we really can and need to be masters of our own perceptions also. and looking and focusing on al-qaeda as we have so much since 9/11 and even before, decade and more with almost the entire national security and intelligence establishment and the resources of the greatest power on earth overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, focused on the imagined near-existential threat posed by al-qaeda or of jihad is, perhaps, a skewing of resources and a misperception of the fundamental scope of the

threat. we certainly have enlarged our fears, but that might also misrepresent the true degree of the problems that we face or challenges and threats that we face, and we do face them. so what are the broad elements of a net assessment ten years on, say? i refer to the drivers, the deep strategic issues that we can do relatively little about. they remain. the first i would call enemy, and i think that we all struggle to understand the particularities of al-qaeda's ideology, its strategy, its individuals, its motivations, its tactics, all relevant to do, all important for experts charged with policy and counterterrorist operations. that's true. but the broader picture, i think, is that they pretty accurately can be described as an islamic version of the neolists or anarchists of a

different era in a different part of the world with different religious origins in the late 19th century and in europe. who killed many be people, who were a threat, who were not existential but were a phenomenonover social disruption, enemy and were sincere, sometimes strategic and coheernlt, but a symptom more than a driver themselves. they're also, another long-term driver of what has caused them and will continue to do so to be a problem for us is, as we all know, some of the policies they attribute to us and sometimes that we actually have carried out. our identification with and support for israel, whatever the justice of their criticisms and however they may skew the palestinian plight, that perception is reality, ask

that's an exceptionally -- and that's an exceptionally difficult and a sustained driver for, to motivate the al-qaeda ideology. and then the much broader, diffuse, largely incoherent but sincerely felt fear of rejection of -- at the same time they have attraction, too -- things western as the force that's causing the revolution in their societies and cultures that seems to be casting them all aside, threatening their way of life of which the united states is the embodiment. and it's almost like the serpent's apple. it's irresistible. they want it, and they hate it for the consequences that it brings to them. and motivates people to -- some idealists young men to act upon their ideals through al-qaeda.

but there have been changes in these long-term drivers too. so that was, the first ones were sort of the what we are arguments of drivers. and this is a bit more of the what we do drivers that have changed. some of my predecessors have spoken of the significant decline in support among muslim populations, particularly arab-muslim populations which is the heart of the issue with respect to al-qaeda. because, frankly, there's a long history now of observing what al-qaeda does for a sustained period. an increased realization that and rejection that al-qaeda's solution to all ills is, essentially, death. and most people will choose life. it's as simple as that long term. there's the decline in the centrality of the crisis in iraq

and of america's involvement in it. we certainly catalyzed some of the threat against us by our actions there. we counterrered, too, but there was an interesting dynamic of countering some of the things we were seeking to oppose and suppress. and then there's a change, substantially, in some of the most aggressive, all-defining counterterrorist policies of the united states. one rarely now hears about a global war on terrorism as the all-encompassing paradigm that shapes the world's views of what the united states does. then, critically, what my colleagues have spoken about at some length, we have the crumbling to some extent yet to be determined or another of the regime in the middle east, and it's these decrepit, frozen

regimes that have been unable to respond to the revolutions that are, have been going on for decades and that are accelerating and that have been the justification for many of the grievances that lead to our opponents in al-qaeda to win people to their cause and to act. any revolution is as much of a danger as an opportunity, and extremes almost always will dominate over moderates in the center. and you can choose any revolution, any social upheaval in the almost any society at any time, and that dynamic, unfortunately, plays out all too often except in those societies where there is a very healthy civil society and the, quote, revolution is more of an organic evolution of the government as opposed to a rejection of the social system. the united states being frequently called the most

conservative of revolutions, the revolution it was, it succeeded because the political culture was rich, and the evolution was minor. similarly, with less success and more strife over a longer period of time we have talked about the english civil war, the english revolution in this a similar way. the french revolution, russian revolution, on and on. the dynamic is less encouraging. civil societies in the muslim societies now undergoing these changes are dramatically weaker and less rooted than the civil societies from the examples that i gave before. that's a cause of concern as well as an opportunity since there is now change coming. however, the news is also good because these changes are coming, and these are all long-term not just threats, too, but destroyers of al-qaeda and likely support for it because in the muslim-arab societies in

particular there are civil societies, there are middle classes, there is economic change accelerating. all inadequate, all fragile, but all real. there are now large percentages of population who are literate for the first time in history. most revolutionary thing that one can do, the most -- the strongest blow long term that one can take against al-qaeda is to educate little girls, and that's not a hard counterterrorist officer policy operation proposal. it doesn't play well when we're supposed to be using predators or conducting operations, both of which have their relevant uses, absolutely. long term this is undermining, it's a driver fundamentally that is changing that will undermine the appeal of those who propound death and exclusion. there are a few specific

elements that i'll mention. al-qaeda's, clearly, significantly weaker today than it was ten years ark and it was never -- and it was never as strong or pervasive as it seemed to many of us. it could kill us in numbers, but it was a terrorist group of several hundred people. our national security establishment is infinitely more capable and powerful so this is a threat for the likes of me in my career for us to be concerned about legitimately, but for the dentist in peoria, does he need to lose sleep at night and order that his policymaker leaders, the people he puts in office direct all the national resources of the nation to that threat? object iively, i think the cases pretty strong that that is not the case. it does remain, however, al-qaeda, cohermit, motivated and capable of killing as we've heard and as we'll continue to hear. but this means, as it always did

but even more so now, that there are methods, there are capabilities of the conventional explosive, small weapons one or several individuals acting in concert possibly kind of attack. that's horrible, and we must stop them. the london bombing and madrid bombing, the airplane plot, all of these things are terrible, but they are terrorist actions, not existential attacks by a soviet nuclear force or a conventional army or something to that effect. so the fear that has driven many of us for so long of the mushroom cloud or fighting them there so that we don't have to fight them here was always, well, part sincere fear, part delusion and part misdirection of our priorities and the true nature of the threat. so in conclusion, then, what's the net assessment of them, of al-qaeda today and going forward? there's a long-term, slow

seismic shift of the drivers of society that affect its fringe activists or killers, those who would be drawn to outside of idealism to al-qaeda. undermining the appeal of this organization. but there will always be be an abundant supply of these idealist killers who are willing to kill you for your own good and who, therefore, will require intelligence service and national security establishment to try to stop them beforehand. there's been a long-term decline of al-qaeda capabilities since 9/11, but they remain coherent and capable of killing, and there'll be a persistent threat of this sort for as long as one can foresee. so in the end, you know, they are still trying to kill you and can do so. we need to pursue them. they are what they were, albeit diminished, a lethal but margin alstom of vast upheaval that the

intelligence community needs the pursue while the rest of us can get on with our lives without obsessing about them too too mu. thanks. [applause] >> i thank you all, four very thoughtful and, i thought, calm and complementary presentations. they do, i think, mark a range of analysis about where we are ten years on, and there are many questions that i'm tempted to use my moderator's progress tiff to ask. -- prerogative to ask. i'm only going to ask one and then turn it over to you for the half an hour we have before the next panel. i would take note that in the historiography of al-qaeda conferences which i think we should have a little bit of self-awareness about, one notable absence from the four net assessments, not a single reference to online activity or the facebook generation of

al-qaeda even though if you go out into the arab spring and you meet the protesters, of course, that's where they live. so i invite anyone who wants to offer an assessment of where that figures today. it was a subject of many conferences three or four years ago when the internet was big. [laughter] i actually wanted to go to the very provocative theme that glenn ended with because i think for the public and for even expert analysts this set of strategic observations that i think were bounded in range by bruce on the one hand with his observations about the failure to -- about the repeated pronouncements of bitch wares for -- obituaries for al-qaeda and glenn's analysis of trying to put the threat into a different kind of perspective, it begs a question that i'd like each of you to address which is in that confused, disoriented

and fearful period after 9/11 that we all recall and that we will be brought back to in a few months there was, of course, an empirical uncertainty about the enemy's capabilities. it took time to sort out what they really had, whether they had sleeper cells, whether they were as well organized as they seemed to be on 9/11. so it took, it took an honest while to gather the evidence to discover that 9/11 was a kind of a moon shot for them. and, of course, immediately the united states put pressure on them which changed the dynamic. but another analytical precept then and now was that national security investments to counter this threat were justified by the low probability, high-impact use of weapons of mass destruction by these organizations. and it would have to be a premise of your argument, glenn, i think that this is simply beyond their reach in any meaningful way. your dentist in peoria only

sleeps easy if you find, as a matter of fact, that this is impossible or so unlikely as to not warrant substantial national attention. and, bruce, you didn't mention that particular threat in your sort of observations about al-qaeda's resilience, but i wonder if each of you could comment on the way you think about that starting from the premise that it's low probability. but beyond that how does it figure in your assessment? so maybe we'll start with bruce. >> well, i think a lot of the uncertainties after 9/11 reflected what was at the time not a great understanding of al-qaeda. and i think with khalid sheikh mohammed's capture, for example, we realized just how fundamental and how pivotal he was and also how unique he was to carrying out 9/11 and that's, you know, the good news and the bad news. the good news is we haven't yet seen someone of khalid sheikh mohammed's rich imagination, knowledge of the united states,

determination and inventiveness appear, but the bad news is, you know, we don't know where the next khalid sheikh mohammed is and what that potentiality might be. i think the problem is, i mean, glenn's right that the dentist in peoria can sleep easily, but at the same time, though, as 9/11 demonstrated and as the power of an individual to surmount, you know, the impersonal forces of economics, of culture and so on that was both, i think, at the heart of the 9/11 threat from bin laden and ksm's perspective. i mean, indicates that, you know, even i think in this environment even a credible, unsuccessful attempt to use unconventional or exotic weapons would have, you know, profound repercussions. we see the repercussions that even an attempt to put ink cartridges onto cargo planes, even the consequences of the failed bombing of northwest

airlines flight 253, and i suppose this is, again, one of the paradoxes. yes, al-qaeda is weaker than it's ever been, it lacks those capabilities, doesn't have the laboratories to develop ab track and chemical -- anthrax and chemical weapons that it once enjoyed in afghanistan. but at the same time surely from this perspective when they are knocked back on their heels, the appeal of acquiring a weapon and even an unsuccessful attempt would have really more seismic impacts probably than what we're seeing going on across north africa and the middle east today in terms of our own security, in terms of our confidence of what ten years of counterterrorists and antiterrorist measures, both physical security and otherwise have bought us. and that has to figure, i think, very prominently in their calculation. it's something we can't completely ignore. that goes back to one of my main points, the challenge that we face today is it's almost more

difficult because we have an entire water front of different threats and different capabilities. and i think, you know, we're just waiting, perhaps, and fortunately we haven't found the person that had that rich imagination that ksm had. >> peter. >> al-qaeda's experimentation with so-called weapons of mass destruction was amateur. they never acquired path no generallic anthrax, they're not nuclear scientists, they experimented with ricin, so they never really got anywhere. that said, i mean, there are two problems, i think, that are -- and, of course, the war in afghanistan destroyed whatever they had going anyway, and that was one of the great victories of the war. that said, i think there were two problems. one is a sort of moore's law of biology which we discussed which is that, you know, stuff that was basically extremely advanced boyle logical research 20 years ago could now be done by a high school student. and the second point, and i

think this is really the key is it's not that khalid sheikh mohammed is going to turn himself into a biological genius, it's that a bruce i've vens is going to be attracted by by political ideology in pakistan or egypt or indonesia where there are dual use programs, completely legitimate and be attracted by a group like lash car a tie yee baa or others. and that is, basically, the main concern that we need to face, i think. >> juan? >> steve, just very quickly about your internet question, i did mention it very briefly as a question as to how the arab spring will affect those -- >> so you won't be demerited. [laughter] >> no, i appreciate it. the one observation i would make with respect to al-qaeda is other than sort of organic, loosely affiliated individuals as an organization it's not very good, actually, in the new social networking environment.

you know, we've seen zawahiri attempt the q&a sessions online which have proven disastrous because they're not able to be quick and fluid in the context of the back and forth of that environment. and so in some ways it plays to their disadvantages as an organization. they're good at posting videos and messaging, but in a very orchestrated sort of concentrated way. to your initial question, though, and i think your question raises incredibly important fundamental point which is how do we recalibrate, as i said, how do we recalibrate our assessment of the threat from al-qaeda? because we are still in a zero-tolerance environment. looking back, for example, end of last year. you had the europe mumbai-style plots, you had the failed package plots from yemen, you had a number of american individuals who were plotting different attacks including portland and the metros in the

washington, etc. if any one of those had happened, it would have been a transformative event in the context of our assessment of the threat and the reaction. and so i'm one who argues that we shouldn't be viewing everything through the al-qaeda lens, we shouldn't aggrandize them. but you can't ignore the reality of the threat. and i think one of the things and observations i hope comes out of the ten-year anniversary is not only what we did, sort of what we didn't know before 9/11, but what we did learn after 9/11 and what we were able to do. i think we're a bit myopic in the context of recalling all of the plots that were actually disresulted, not to mention the attacks that actually did happen internationally despite the fact that americans, we've been fortunate in terms of casualties post-9/11 from al-qaeda attacks. but there have been numerous attacks, numerous plots disresulted. and i think we tend to -- disrupted. i think we tend to forget that and the role we and our partners played in disrupting that.

a long-winded way of saying i think what we need to do is sort of settle on a recalibration of the threat, and one of the most difficult element is the the wmd threat. and i would agree completely with peter. i think the two greatest threats right now are a biological agent produced by a nonaffiliated, yet inspired set of actors; southeast asia or somewhere that then becomes a real issue. if you read world at risk which was the wmd commission report in november of 2008, they talk about that. they talk about biological warfare and an attack being of concern. you hook at the insider threat in term -- look at the insider threat in terms of the pak nuclear threat, those al-qaeda types were not nuclear scientists or sophisticated, they were meeting with utn scientists before 9/11. they had inroads. they had conversations. they had al-masri who had has part of his portfolio building a nuclear program. so you can't wholly dismiss it

because if that event happens, it's a game changer not only for our national security, but for the entire world. but how do you calibrate that? because you can't be spending billions and billions of dollars. so i think my prescription is sort of just very roughly, you have to look at those strategic flash points where terrorists can have dramatic geopolitical impact, and you have to concentrate attention on those. you have to the look at groups like lt which could provoke a war between india and pakistan. i think you have to look at particular types of attacks that would reenergize al-qaeda in a particular instance or destabilize further the world economy, etc. so i think, you know, recalibrating the threat is complicated, but it's necessary ten years after. >> thank you. and glenn? >> thank you. i'll talk about two things quickly. can you all here? okay, good. the internet and recruiting issue and then the low

probability/high impact mushroom cloud issue. i think the reason that we didn't or the fact that we did not discuss, really anyone, the internet very much is a sign of growing understanding of the nature of how al-qaeda conducts and jihadists conduct their business. the intelligence community looked very hard and continues and scholars do, too, at the issue of how al-qaeda recruits and what role the internet may play. in that. and there are a couple of misconceptions that i think we came to debunk internally, and i think in public now too concerning recruitment. the assumption or the operating conviction, belief was that al-qaeda was sending, basically, recruiting sergeants around the world to find disaffected and idealistic young men to join on to the cause and go off and kill themselves or kill others in some useful way

for al-qaeda. and there is virtually no evidence that they have the equivalent of people in times square with an office or speaking at mosques and so on. it doesn't really work that way. similarly, on the internet the thought was, well, they'll have their sites, and there'll be secret messages that'll attract people that are being passed, and that's not really the model either. people bring themselves, become motivated themselves and seek to join, and al-qaeda's very subtle and intelligent since it's in a business of killing or being killed. they're quite competent and careful and don't accept anyone, and there's a vetting process that is careful too. so people propose themselves as volunteers and maybe identified and accepted -- and may be identified and accepted, but there isn't a dramatic, strategic recruiting program via

the internet or via these recruiting people who go around to sign up. more typical has been a committed individual who seeks to get to tar knack farms or yemen to volunteer and might be accepted. we saw that with the foreign fighters, somewhat different phenomenon, about the foreign fighters issue in the al-qaeda and in if iraq during the insurgency there. so that's the recruiting thing. the second issue, the low probability/high impact issue, it's a critical point that policymakers and intelligence officers have to assess at all times, absolutely. one of the very disturbing lessons i learned from bruce, actually, was the unfortunate and frightening arc of the increasing infallibility of an individual over history.

caesar's assassin could kill caesar alone, and then the guy foxx plot could blow up parliament, and we fear today -- well, bin laden brought down the world trade center. and who knows what will come next. this, i hope it's not moore's law that's operative, but certainly this is a trend. the individuals have more power and freedom given the changes in technology and society over the course of time. and that's our goal as societies, and that's disturbing for us as counterterrorism people, no question. however, one cannot, one may have but one cannot wisely make policy based on the infinitesimally small although theoretically possible threat. resources are impossible to allocate that way, and it would mean, really, the end of our civil society and freedoms. so you have to make hard judgment calls. and devote your resources and

define your strategic and tactical approaches based on the overwhelmingly likely possibilities and assessments of capabilities. some facts on chem corral, raid i don't raid -- radiological -- i'll have to speak in generalities, but, of course, the intelligence community looked and continues to look, i know, as accurately and intensely and in an ongoing way as institutions are capable of doing at these threats. but when you look at some of the facts, they are reassuring really. the most likely, we assessed at the time -- i don't know if it has changed, i believe the answer is it hasn't -- threat from the cbrn universe coming from al-qaeda, we thought, was anthrax as i think peter alluded to a couple of minutes ago. but when you look, actually, at

the capabilities they had, i'll put it in somewhat flippant terms, but bin laden went to mullah omar and said, brother, we need a facility to do some work, and mullah omar said, well, yes, you can have something here at the kandahar airport. so it was, basically, a bombed-out couple of rooms with no windows with a dirty bunson burner and petri dish maybe. and they thought, well, we need a sign -- sign i terrorist, and they found -- scientist, and the anthrax that we thought that we found in the facility after we liberated the country was largely, i think -- not largely, was naturally occurring in the soil, and they couldn't do anything. and didn't know where they were going and couldn't do it. they poisoned a dog. that was their pig experiment.

-- big experiment. there were other capabilities that did concern us that are lethal with chemical capabilities. this is a bad thing that we need to stop, that we think they developed and that would be on the level of killing everyone in a subway car. that's something you have to stop. that's not the same thing as the fear that we all have -- had -- of anthrax killing today bs of thousands -- dozens of thousands or a cloud like in has happened in india happening here in southeast or northwest washington. and when one looks at the nuclear program of al-qaeda, and i could go through this for a long, long time, but ksm was quite clear. he said, i recommended against this, what are you talking about? this is way beyond us. and although things are easier once they have been discovered and developed, it's worth keeping in mind that the united states devoted, i think, 25% of its gnp for four years in world war ii to develop the first atomic weapon.

and the only other countries that have done so since are a handful, most of them with the assistance of the united states. b it may have become an engineering challenge today rather than a science problem, but it remains very hard to do, particularly if you are having to hide from every intelligence and national security service in the world. and the threat of loose nukes and radiological -- radioactive material with which to make a bomb is real. i think one of the best things that -- i personally think that the bush administration did and i don't think it deserved enough credit was to actively, aggressively and president clinton started this before, too, work with the russians and newly-independent states to secure nuclear material. i don't know how much is considered not secure now, but it was an aggressive program which had truly measurable, positive effects to increase the security of all of us.

it is not easy to steal a nuclear weapons quantity of material and then to make a bomb when you have all of us coming after you. so to conclude, one has to make policy based on the overwhelmingly prepond rant likelihood of attack and that is individual actors possibly work anything concert with a few others and not a mushroom cloud in manhattan. >> thank you all. i apologize for depriving the floor of all but about ten minutes, but we do have a rich program, and i want to keep it on time. so let me collect three questions and let each of the panelists choose one that they wish. yes, sir. >> [inaudible] united states army war college. i was encouraged by all the panel members talking about the open rejection of much of al-qaeda's message by the muslim community. unfortunately, for most of us -- particularly the dentist from

peoria -- the reject remains largely muted. we have said over and over again that we have mislabeled or we have allowed al-qaeda to mislabel the west as being at war with islam. unfortunately, a significant number of people in the united states are still left with the message that a significant portion of islam or a vocal portion of islam is at war with us. so how do we go about projecting that heretofore muted message of rejection that is, in fact, coming from the muslim community that we're still not hearing much about here in the western world? >> thank you. david. >> david ignatius from "the washington post." i'd like to ask the panel to address what i think of as the baseline question of core al-qaeda strength in pakistan including the tribal areas in

afghanistan. analyses that talk about al-qaeda being on the run in those places, and those have been pretty common the last few years, are premised on the success of policies that are a little bit more in question today than they have been. the breach in the u.s./pakistan intelligence military cooperation relationship looks pretty real to me. as someone who follows this carefully and something that's going to be consequential. ..

i think i will just stop there for now and let the panel chew on each of them. you don't have to do both. i would ask you each to choose one and maybe you can start with david since it speaks to some of the granularity of your own assessment. >> i think the short answer is it is maybe possible to do counterterrorism plus it is going to depend upon the quality of the intelligence we add on the ground. the fractured relationship with pakistani intelligence, the front page story on "the wall street journal" today that karzai is being pushed by the pakistanis not to put afghanistan's long term security in the united states but to

count on pakistan and the prc shinseki to a shaky foundation but all terrorist group live in the future and have to live in the future because otherwise glynn and others describe how could they have the pretense of the pretensions of counter superpower much less the national law enforcement of the list published country. so i think al qaeda -- again i may have a different view than some people but sees the recent development as far more positive and opportunistic than anything they've had in the recent past and as we know al qaeda first and foremost is an opportunistic amol and that enabled it in the last two decades and enabled it to recognize to take good vintages opportunities to seize on them, so the fact is yes the quirky devotee is diminished but it hasn't been completely nullified. as long as they believe they have the foundation of the nucleus to reorganize as they

did against everyone's expectations in 2002 they look to the current defense has entirely positive. >> peter, you can choose either, how to communicate more successfully in the war of ideas as particularly the kind of civilization will narrative for. >> on the plots and afghanistan, you know, the president obama's most important policy decision, i think the most important says we're going to be in afghanistan until december, 2014. that's important as the libya decision and imagine if george w. bush said we are going to be in afghanistan for four more years with 100,000 men and women uniform there would have been on the left and so this question of is there a ct plus approach to some degree it's moved in the

distance that the decision has already been made public the decision is made for the reason when you think it through we have already done the ct plus ebit was found wanting 6,000 americans in 2003 about the size of the police department in houston and the size of texas with ten times the population. and that, doing it on the cheap we got what we paid for. the taliban came back with a sort of to some degree morphed together a logically with al qaeda and that's why we are having the discussion today so bct plus has been tried. we argue nation-building in afghanistan let's not pretend that is the case of the of penetration and doesn't want to use the term of building up in that large dhaka and national army which is the exit strategy is nation-building and that isn't ct plus and the obama administration came to the right set of decisions about this and it's been under processed as a major by the american media

because it doesn't fit with the narrative of the national security democratic party and the nobel peace prize president. estimates without controlling your freedom of speech, because you've been a big sort of thinker about the merit of question. >> i think it is less about what the u.s. government says in all of this and more about what relevant credible voices in the communities say so one of the things is lacking, one of the deficits the was certainly a problem in our administration and i will take some blame for this we didn't find enough avenues or ways to support credible places and networks already merging and that were out there. groups like the foundation that is the next extremist recruiters trying to organize against radicals and places like the u.k. and pakistan. the global survival network, the founders to of the corporate

collis and al qaeda hours a counterweight to al qaeda's message. there are these groups out there within the muslim communities in the otherwise against the extremism based on vienna, the kind of mothers against drunk driving and extremism that are trying to organize and established actors and we haven't found a way as the national security principal and doctrine to in power, in list and network and at the end of of the day that is the most powerful and the food and why it is helpful in the context because in some ways what is emerging out of the revolutions of leased the pristine air and spring is precisely that, organic movement not necessarily against anything more against al qaeda but in favor of ideals and for wing of the shackles off your upon which al qaeda realize so the one thing we can do better and i think that we've been wanting and i've been disappointed in the obama administration i haven't been

overly critical because i know how hard this is but i had hoped greatly in the fact you have a historical precedent in terms of this person and what he represented in terms of change being able to break the narrative, break the conversation and i think the conversation has gotten worse in terms of perceptions of a islamophobia come sensitivity on these issues and i think the one thing i would advise those looking at the issues is to say the substance of the hearings is a discussion we should be having yet the tone and context has to be different and the question is how do we enlist and empower those already have our similar interests at heart even if they are not american agents or allies how to be in power than in ways created a powerful soviet the ultimate in the food and gatekeeper against al qaeda's physiology. >> that is a good transition to the next panel, but as we have

in this one, the last word? >> we talked a lot in the intelligence community about how do we change the narrative and the perceptions in the muslim world so there's less attraction to al qaeda and jihad. we can't make policy we try to remain mute and that's our obligation. thank you. that's the obligation but i would like to buttonhole to talk about the subject. i feel that the air that we consistently make is to try to shape the debate and foster the moderation. if we do that like the principle we will change the nature of what we are analyzing and we get hostile to us. anything the united states touches will become poisoned but we don't need to do that. we need to let 1,000 foster a thousand voices blooming, and we can help develop ways and the government has taken many steps to do this from the various combatant commands to every

other component of the u.s. government to facilitate civil society discourse in different voices committee of a textile cooperative of women working in some suburb and a muslim city some place to a political party. and if we step back and have nothing to say about what is said much of it will be possible to the united states but strategically, it will diminish the appeal and that is a decree of the masses. >> please join me in thanking the panel. [applause] we are going to change on the fly since it still if you can.

>> [inaudible conversations] >> okay, everyone we are going to continue. there's charon. great. wonderful. thank you. again, my name is patrick doherty the director of the new america's foundation and i work with peter and steve year as the senior adviser to the counterterrorism program and the national security program. what we decided to do when we were designing the conference is to get a broad overview and then natural down into the various theaters and we are going to start with the domestic feeder and really take a look at the changing nature of the domestic threat and domestic responses to it and also look at our vulnerabilities. about a year ago senior national

security dennis mcdonough was speaking to another new american audience at the release of social security strategy in the united states, president obama's first, and he commented on and get his perspective on the domestic threat and he said, you know, the threat is from onsies and twosies, he called it, that get passed our defenses and strike a more formidable these. and so that we are a way to look at, we are going to look at what are the onesies and twosies that are going to get through? they are very realistic based on the last conversation that it's not about big either minor legends little or from worse, mushroom cloud coming and they are looking realistically at what the likely threat is. and so what we are going to do is start off with karen greenburg and longtime friend of new america and peter and myself and a longtime collaborator in the conference's and karen is

going to give a broad overview of the domestic threat. and we've asked peter newman to look at the dynamic we started talking up the last panel, internet radicalization and the countermeasures, counter radicalization both on the internet side and more generally and then to have juliet kayyem speak. she finished five years of speaking for deval patrick has homeland security advisor and massachusetts and then just recently as assistant secretary of homeland security for the intergovernmental affairs and she's going to take a look at homeland security in the context of a changing threat and changing budget. where do we stand in terms of the homeland security enterprise

and then finally, we are going to close with our own very lynn, and i always forget the name of the program, the market enterprise resiliency initiative, and barry brings an incredible understanding of the private sector supply chains and economic networks and many of you are going to recognize how important and relevant this is given al qaeda and the arabian peninsula's attempted attack last year on to of quote global shipping. what could that have done if the attacks were successful and looking at the full one of the these that are still out there. we don't dhaka that much in the recent years, but there's still we have a lot of concentration and a single supply change come supply chains out there and we are going to take a look at that so that's the overview. i'm going to ask all the

speakers to come to the panel and one more. churn on your phone and turn it back off the would be great so it doesn't interfere with the microphones and we are going to start with karen. >> thanks, patrick. thanks, peter, for having me in doing this. i'm going to correct a little of crime going to talk about. the reason i was asked to speak other than liking the new america's foundation more than anyone else in new york perhaps is that i run my center on all security has a database that we have been falling for eight years pretty much 24/7 which looks into all of the terrorism trial from charge to result, since 9/11.

what we thought initially about this terrorism trial database was the we would look at the track record department of justice and the sort of started in a kind of contrarian way like arresting all these guys, how many of them are really licensed, it had that tone in 2003, 2004, 2005. around the middle of 2000 we realized we had the opportunity to know more from the database and largely this was encouraged by peter who thought we might want to look into the criminal complaint and attend some of the trials and get to know some of the individuals. so you know there are a thousand trials so i don't really want to go to a thousand trials but most of them lead. but we have a vast amount of information about who these people are. so when i am asked to speak about the terrorism threat, a

word of caution to myself and then to you which is jihad these are the people the government arrested and we in tight and the people we bring to justice one way or another. at some point in the future when we have the luxury of being historians this is what we thought about the threat but it doesn't mean that what's coming is the exact threat and one of the things i was struck by and of course in the first panel was there are some disconnects between how al qaeda let or ebert in the database. so i'm going to talk very briefly about some of the statistics and what i think is going on and if you probably notice but i will go through it for you any way. there has been 308 cases of

jihadis terrorism and those are individuals, not cases since 9/11. of the 308, one third that we know what our al qaeda could always emerge leader but there were more al qaeda. attempt of them and model the handful of them are let and doubled in size and indictment yesterday. the way to look at these statistics is to understand, and i don't know if anybody mentioned this earlier that since 2005 the rate, the seriousness and the degree it danger involved in terrorism are asked and the number of indictments have escalated dramatically. there are -- there have been the and you can compare this to the number i just eight, 55 indictments.

and i thought i would -- keep in mind my original caveat have got this is how the perceived threat. i try to explain the rise in the numbers to you and see how it plays out. the first thing i want to mention is the fbi stinks' and maybe they are the most important in assessing the threat they contribute significantly to the members. so there are couple to a 20% of the case and the way this thing works as you might or might not know, depends on who you're talking to come the way that an fbi sting works is the fbi is charged to determine who might want to commit a crime as opposed to is already involved. the informant case has been involved since the beginning and i am going to come back so that's one of the reasons the rates have gone up

astronomically. but if you take that out, you still have 45 individuals and it's still a high number. the most serious attempt as i said since 2009 -- since 2001 have been since 2009 and you know them all, they are abdulmutallab, al shahzad and david headley the suing someone will talk about after me and if not you can ask questions about it. these are al qaeda and pakistani based terrorist group cases. they are not al-shabaab cases. they are involved individuals who've had a significant for the most part involvement with other countries either bring growing up or having a family there. leave out to model of out of it because he is a one-off in terms of talking about the domestic threat but he's part of the escalation stevan number 55 is rather large it's much more

important the five cases in 55 which is a reason not to look just at members and we can talk about what is this significant about the cases. some mention the wmd or someone did, more of the domestic prosecution's include wmd charges. this isn't true the first six years of terrorism prosecution in the united states. i can't remember what year it was but after something like the first four years there was one wmd charged that stood up and now there's a lot. in part you have to be careful because fbi cases involve wmd charges. they specifically involve themselves in plots that include wmd because that's the charge they want. having said that in these other cases i mentioned with the exception of passan involved wmd so they are on the rise and it's one of the reasons that the

bureau wants to participate in a plot that look like this. the final reason statistically in terms of understanding with the rising pieces are in some will talk about the list of separate participants. the number that have been arrested last year alone on a belief was people involved in this a moly terrorism were 25 and half of them were sue -- somali in half of them were american and the case a devotees focused on is jack to zachary cheser because it was the case of an american, not a somali, would broaden their rhetoric of what was happening in somalia. he was arrested before he went abroad. i think the day before the terrorist attack in ugonda and

he's providing a lot of information in hopes of reduction of his sentence but these are the three big things happening. in terms of understanding the threat there's two things to look at. this is almost like old al qaeda, like the first al qaeda conference we had which was what's the national list threat that's involved in the plots so it's about cashmere and other things but it was very nationalist centric and that is what is happening with somalia and the question for a civil enforcement is what will it mean down the road if the people return? because the targeting training. for the most part that's how it seems that they are getting training and they will come back so the population from the point of view of the law enforcement is something that we need to be attuned to and have a better

sense of having immunity than we have had with some of the other communities. the one thing i worry about in understanding the cases and i said this at the beginning and i want to reiterate is the degree to which the fbi informants can skew the statistics and make us think we have one from where we have another and i think it's something somebody likes to look at these things may be us or somebody else should look at so i want to take this moment to look at two different strategies in terms of law enforcement and what's going on. i'm going to do it briefly and then close with some questions. i'm sure you know but the gft plot to blow up fuel lines at john f. kennedy airport which was an informant case which they poorly argued the court case on

the point of view of the defense that was one of the more interesting thing that has come out in any of the cases that we've looked at. what can what is the sort of bumbling fool jazz musician who had an idea about the jihad and the defense argued couldn't hold a camera and therefore couldn't surveil and was led in the course of this staying to get in touch in people with trinidad, and the ultimate narrative of this, and i don't have to explain to you in the room fukushima is the most u.n. named, and known recognized potential threat to the united states outside the united states. we'll talk about al-aulaqi by hoping that something the law enforcement is on top of. but that's an exit poll of a

stain where it actually takes you to understand better what the threat was. it was in a rather convincing way the tie between iran, the caribbean and the united states and it changed the nature of understanding the threat and i would compare that to a lot of other cases most recently lowercase about four african-americans who are literally lord into attacking the synagogue if not entirely at the suggestion of the bureau so what i'm trying to say is the stings skew the statistics but done right the can be important to you want to make sure they are not over board and therefore we don't really in the stand with the threat is. having said that, i want to turn to what i think the questions that need to be addressed are coming forward. one of them i just referred to. don't kid yourself about the americans abroad whether it's the 5i mentioned were the

somalis were some of the fbi people using and trying to reach out in some cases they are reaching out. the rule is something the law enforcement probably is much more on top of but he creeps up in case after case after case is a much more significant constant than either membership in al qaeda or one of the pakistani groups and certainly not al-shabaab and that is where the circles are starting to coalesce. one of the things you always worry about is where it's going to be the interchange between the good for different ostensible home bases. will the internet is the place they can exchange the the americans abroad who are participating this are the people that can do it. the second thing is the

intergenerational notion of this. peter has done this wonderful job of al qaeda 1.0, 2.0. the point is if you look at these cases and look at what is happening there is a significant difference between the first al qaeda, whether you want to call at come and i would love to know more about that conversation from the point of view of al qaeda one point go and even 2.0 and largely in terms of the use of weapons. i'm not so sure they are going to be the weapons of the future or that the passan case is an example or that americans abroad talking about this aren't beginning to think about the guns issue and how you have guns and i don't want to scare anybody so i think i will be quiet but we are the kind at the center often saying don't be worried that year is over exaggerated, the leadership

doesn't understand it. for the most part that is correct. the numbers make it seem like there are more people involved and that there are threats everywhere. what emerges from what's happened in the past two years is there are much more serious abilities on the people who want to harm us and our law enforcement seems to be more on top but that as hoffman said earlier it's true until we learn to distinguish between different kinds of the arrests and a different kind of threats and threat levels we want people to address some of the nuances of what this threat -- i think i exceeded my time. thank you. [applause]

>> let me quickly revise my introduction for peter as if i just kind of quickly glossed over his credentials. he's the director of the center for the state of political violence and is currently at georgetown university and working with peter and a member of you in the other colleagues working on the hamilton study commission coming up and we are glad to have him here to talk about the radicalization >> good morning. thank you very much for the invitation. i'm going to speak a little bit about the online radicalization but i think that it's worth talking a little bit more about counter radicalization what it entails because that is something i've been working on now for a number of months and

it's an important topic not at least because the administration itself is very soon going to come out of a policy statement on radicalization so this isn't an abstract exercise counter radicalization is coming to the shores where we'd better think about what it is and how it should be done. the first question i want to answer is what is counter radicalization, and the second one is why do we need it? the first question i believe is an even more important one and i want to spend a couple of minutes talking about this, because i found not just that people are necessarily stupid and they don't understand what it is but i found that there are lots of disagreements of the concept and that it is really worth educating both experts and

the public about the meaning of the counter radicalization. let me begin by saying what it is not. the first thing is not its military policing. when you're sick to an appellate, speak quite often when she talks about counter extremism and radicalization all she talks about this community policing, training police forces, educating law enforcement, and she conceives of count requisition as a softer nicer more cuddling form of counterterrorism. counterterrorism with a friendly face essentially still lose about policing and finding the terrorist plots and developing relationships with communities so they can give good tips so you can arrest terrorists but that is a minor function of the counter radicalization. it's not a part of the concept. furthermore, counter radicalization is not to the radicalization.

it must not be confused with that. we have had in your pub we heard about the prison based counter radicalization in places like saudi, iraq. these programs are better rehabilitation programs deal with the jihadist former members, activist, sympathizers of terrorist groups who are now being reformed. the audience requisition programs or radicalized people, the audience of the programs are non-radicalized people whoever may be targeted by the radical list people for the purpose of radicalization and recruitment and that's a really important difference that the two different audiences, the counter radicalization is not directed at people who are already terrorists the audience of counter radicalization of our communities that may be targeted by terrorists.

and that brings us to the heart. the aim is to prevent by raising the awareness in the community against the appeal of the violent extremism, and power in the them to stand up against. that's what counter radicalization is about. it's about empowering people to challenge the ideas and the individuals that are spreading violent extremism and that incidentally it can't be primarily or even predominantly about policing because you're not dealing with terrorists or even with potential terrorists. that is why it is terrible idea when policy makers only talk about counter radicalization as a soft form of policing because it is because that creates an entirely wrong perception that an and the lead to a person

feeds into the whole idea that all muslims are red kleist delete -- radical and need to be spied upon. it's not a program when it is properly understood it isn't a policing program rather than remaining in those muslims it's about strengthening communities and empowering and educating them and sometimes partnership with the government but i believe so they can help themselves. what does it consist of? it is a policy fema not a single policy. it's delivered in a multitude of channels and programs. they can come in different forms and shapes. it may be standalone activities come around tables but more often than not it is actually embedded within existing government programs, for example community safety challenges, provision of good government. a certain situation, the

government is actually limited to the role of convening relevant parties so the networks and partnerships between the non-governmental actors can be forged. all these things to radicalize. typical activities. it can include all sorts of things that they are messaging, outreach, capacity building and the training and education. that's the counter radicalization is. it's none of these things that i mentioned at the beginning. the question is do we really need this? it's difficult to talk about radicalization in this country. never mind counter radicalization because all these terms have been negatively framed in many ways and that's because of the hearings which portray all muslims in this country as extremist so that's

because senior policy makers constantly talk about and for those who died it's because of course the british program the most extensive counter radicalization program which in many respects wasn't successful and fell into the trap. people especially those of the more liberal conclude that it is a terrible idea. it's about criminalizing thoughts and it's an american. i believe there's another way so i would ask you to do is forget all these things come and erase them from your mind and keep an open mind about what i'm going to tell you now. let's imagine we have a young person who for whatever reason there is attracting the ideas spends a lot of time exploring those ideas on the internet and get involved in chat rooms and

starts becoming it's called a jihad, connects to people, start spending most his life in this kind of virtual world. these are legal activities and there's no guarantee this person will ever turn to illegal activities this person will become a terrorist. there's a greater chance he will not become a terrorist than that he will become there are two choices of what we can do. the first choice is the libertarians are doing to nothing. he's engaging the constitution ideas and 21 what he's doing is legal. the other option is the fbi option seeing someone like that and they are saying right now

he's only talking about illegal stuff, let's take him to the legal stuff so we can arrest him and put him into prison. so what they do when they find someone like that is to trap him, provide him with an operational plan, give him weapons and make him push the buttons. those are the two choices that the instruments that are available to us right now. i don't think that is a good option we have right now. i do think this is the way to deal with homegrown terrorism. it is in many ways a very counterproductive. both options are counterproductive. in fact the person i was talking about was someone called mohammed that you may be familiar with it is the person who tried to blow up the christmas lighting in portland oregon at the end of last year.

a 19 year old guide that was pretty much like the person i just described and to their credit his parents at some point picked up on it and not only did they pick up on that which is already pretty good, they actually reported him to the fbi. imagine that. your parents pick up your doing bad stuff on your computer and the report you to the fbi. they couldn't have been better citizens reporting their own son to the police because they thought he was a danger to this country. let said that this thing and in tracked this guy and they can do something he might never have considered doing or might not have been able to do and send him to prison of course is what happened. is that really a satisfactory outcome?

would you report your son to the police of the was a good chance to win the sent to prison? there are other things we can do and that's where the third option comes and that is the counter rad option to stick to this case a good program may be might have increased the chances of preventing this from happening. we still don't know enough about what exactly the mohammed radicalized the young somalis and confusion about identity, the same socioeconomic deprivation, lack of opportunities and meet the general prevention would have softened the blow of that. maybe it could have created with the community what was going on. we as al qaeda geeks seem to

assume koppel every muslim knows about the al-aulaqi. many parents are confused about that as my parents and their for education and awareness is important because they might have picked up on that much earlier and that would have been a second step at which intervention could have taken place and the net the point they call the fbi, counterrad could have provided support rather than entrapment and you have this so-called channel program that provides community intervention in the case is just like mohammed communities come together with a government provides court, psychological support, socioeconomics apart, the change that might prevent someone like mohammed from going down. all these options that i just described i think would have been preferable to the fbi

entrapment option. none of these options i very much hope over the course of next year we can start developing them because it would actively in the sense of what karen talked about provide us with the more honest account the number in the country. thank you branch. [applause] i want to thank peter for inviting me here. i recently left the obama administration and the department of homeland security and wanted to give my reflections ten years leader of 9/11. i was just thinking i am keeping a segment for nickelodeon, any of you if kids know nickelodeon

and newt's. here we go. i've spent the last five years on the counterterrorism side than the terrorism analysis side indecently the politics of the state and local government as well as the federal government and my role the department of homeland security was working with as the term intergovernmental will play essentially the homeland and that is what makes the counterterrorism policy in the united states so interesting and varied because it isn't monolithic. the best example i can give this to look at logan airport that has a history with regard to september 11th.

if you are driving to logan airport you are essentially on the highway facilities that are governed security wise by the state police. the state police report up to the apparatus which i oversaw the did report to the governor. if you're coming from the city streets in boston, the security apparatus of the boston police who then report to the commissioner and then the mayor. once you get there there's an intricate cooperation certainly between the two security apparatus that would governor if you are going to logan and then getting your ticket and then once you get to the security arena it falls over which reports that through this purpose of homeland security to secretary napolitano and then of course president obama and that

is just one airport. you can imagine the interplay of the local state territorial trouble and then of course federal in securing the homeland and i say that because a lot of times i discovered the department a lot of times we tend to feel a lot of this as federal and is certainly is not. we are a small piece of the team to describe in this administration described as the homeland security enterprise i will talk to at the end but it's important to lay out at the beginning. the second thing you wanted to just remind folks is the richest consumers of intelligence. i don't -- malkoff synnott interested but i just want to be a consumer. there's simply too much information out there. i think bruce talked that the overwhelming amount of threats but what that means is we are entirely dependent on a very good intelligence agency which there are just a lot of

tremendous work going on but we are simply just receiving at so if you wonder why he is their someone doing this is because the intelligence is driving it that way. it's the way that it ought to be put in terms of counterterrorism given the debates going on here you can imagine how difficult it is for the police chief i don't know what city the dentist what is in but what ever we talked about so let me talk about three overarching changes in the last ten years in homeland security so one is money. my husband used to joke with me for those of us in the academy on 9/11 is essentially anyone that wasn't could get a lot of support in bruce eluted to this over the ten years that's certainly not true, the world rightfully and the united states has moved on and that is just

plan on the state and local tilted ways the church just tremendously apparent in the fiscal debate going on in each state and each cities and just imagine if you're a governor or a major to become mayor and looking at rising crime and your inability to educate children in urban areas are looking at health care costs or state employee retirement funds, whether for the debate is at the moment, and you are not talking, thinking more precisely the government or republican i have to focus my state or local apparatus on security that is one of the consequences of their being essentially no successfully attack on u.s. soil it's just out there so it's not part of the the date and the homeland certainly it's in the room like this and the national security and federal government but it's the dynamic is so

different once you get out into the homeland. second, the narrative. it's important to remember that there's only one governor who was still in office and that's gonna perry from texas and then that is just to be played in every city that isn't true of the national-security apparatus on the federal side, most people who are in our crossing the partisan politics and the people you've heard from those of us change but the people that have been there 20 or 30 years, it doesn't matter who, it matters who the president is that those aren't going to have the sort of an significant changes on the day-to-day the and narrative and political culture is who was in place at the time of

september 11th so when you think of the governors and mayors that our new that isn't a part of the sort of government history and i think it's important to remember how we approach the anniversary that is a different field certainly at the end of the bush administration but certainly in the early years after and something to just note as we are coming to that anniversary. florida, while everything is political i do believe that having dealt with the local politics i think we shouldn't look at it as just a democrat and republican but politics and the intergovernmental elective politics than. and that has made to the homeland security apparatus and counterterrorism more difficult i think over time for the bush administration when it wanted to solve correct and for the obama

administration that came with a different viewpoint at different things so the perfect example is the color code system. i think by the end of the administration, the bush administration they had essentially stopped using it. we certainly came in thinking it wasn't a helpful tool. secretary napolitano led a change in the interagency to get better and how we are informing the public. nonetheless, it took a while even coming in to 18 months since we came into office to change the system and i think the reason why -- one of the reasons why isn't just a federal interagency the amount that has again gone on in the system out on the field and state and local but you could imagine if every state, every city urban police department with trigger to the color system or the color alert system, ways airports were

thinking about securities of it's just a colored that actually corresponded with how many people were in the field. there is an antiyour apparatus and political apparatus tied to color coding. another perfect example is the challenges, and i'm not -- i am a lawyer but i don't practice any more so i just want to talk about the politics of gitmo and that the administration wanted to do regarding whether they were trials in new york or bringing the detainees on to u.s. soil are confounded not only by the politics but to have to remember by local politics. when you say i want to bring detainee's to the united states you or not, you are bringing them to a state with a governor and the jurisdiction of a mayor or commission whatever it's going to be in the those are just multiplied because we are dealing with the homeland so i want to leave time for questions

and answers. let me go through a few things i think our challenges and changes as we approach the ten year anniversary. i think people just need to hear 1i think intelligence sharing with state and local is still incredibly hard. the bush administration tried to begin to bring down and share intelligence. we continue to do that in the obama administration with a number of programs infusion centers and whatever else to share information. but for the most part the intelligence being shared is just difficult to make actionable. what are we supposed to do, so you have a lot of intelligence information being shared but i think that is a challenge that is a sort of primary or a priority of secretary napolitano. she was a governor to change in terms of our orientation. i see that your points are right

finding the space between the fbi and leaving everyone alone. i think it's just very -- i look forward to the recommendations that came out because the government has a lot to do from people doing that. on resiliency to think this is a good story. i don't know why it's a good news story because i think both after september 11th and hurricane katrina and i think we might have the bp oil spill the have more to do with getting serious about resiliency that the government doesn't matter who's driving it. it's good news and i think our capacity to get back to normal is something that the government is very focused on or supporting the private-sector more can be done certainly but i think that that is a much better story and that gets to the fourth point which is the homeland security and to please only fourth and

last point and tone of homeland security and terrorism because i think when you talk about terrorism and al qaeda didactic dhaka that puts the u.s. and the public responding. someone said in the earlier panel and it's true until you enter the government you don't really know the zero tolerance for the mistake and it's not the 01% rule it is literally how unforgiving people are or how unforgiving it seems when you're in the government about the potential that there could be terrorism or terrorist attacks. rational people in the real world are much more adult about this and recognize that there are bad things in the world and they can come from mother nature or from private industry or a bad terrorist and i think that

if there is anything that we should look at as the tone about how our leadership talks about counterterrorism and the terrorist threat not simply as it applies to the islamic community but i think writ large one of the successes and nine others criticisms on the panel about how far this ad ministration has taken it because i think one of the major pluses is given the number of real terrorist attacks in this administration that the tone is not your all-time to make the american public fearful. that is a conscious decision we should think about being able to explore that dialogue as well. there have been terrorist attacks of route the course of the last 18 or 19 months and

other political leadership on the state and local to sort of talk in the same way it's going to be i think hopefully long term after the tenth anniversary. thank you very much. [applause] >> no barry lynn. >> thank you, patrick. my job today i guess is to delivered the not so good news. julia mentioned the word resiliency and said that there is some good news as the government the systems have been made somewhat resilient and what i do is to look at the resiliency with the private sector within the industrial system and, you know, frankly

it's -- there hasn't been very much progress over the last ten years. generally we are going in the opposite direction what i wanted to start with is a sort of schley that gives you a picture of two ships so i will talk briefly about how the two ships were constructed to give you a sense about how well our industrial system is now constructed. the first ship is a ship that's called the great eastern and this was launched in 1858. this is the first ship that was said to be unsinkable and was designed by an engineer, very famous engineer in the england named tiemann, brunel and he made these amazing railroads and amazing bridges and buildings made of iron and one day he

turned and said this ship, so that nothing would ever talk it down and what he built into it was a double hull, he built three those of power, you've built a stem to the deck and 14 compartments. what happened is then four years after it was launched it hit a rock and that roc ripped a hole in the ship that was 9 feet wide but because the head of the compartments the managed to keep afloat and got into the port and spent the next 45 years sailing back and forth across the sea mainly a leading cable. the other ship you may recognize is the titanic which was launched 50 years after the great eastern hit that rock.

now the titanic was said to be unsinkable but the white star line when they were having the ship designed the at things left out. they wanted to be more efficient. i don't know if they wanted it to lower prices or raise profits, but if the left to of the modes of transportation, they left out some lifeboats as we learned afterwards. they also left out the bullhead debt deck. so when they got to the bottom of the sea and they were looking into ship the was a story there was a 300-foot long gash in the side of the titanic. it turned out not to be true. they found these little slits in the front of the titanic. the total loan amount of space that had been open was about 12 square feet, less than one-fifth

the amount of space opened with the great eastern. what happened is because there was no deck once the water got to the first compartment it spilled into the second department and then when it caught the second it spilled into the third and the ship went straight down and about two hours a hectic ..

now japan is operating again globally, the entire system north america, europe throughout asia. is operating at less than 30% capacity, and they don't know when they are going back up. they are saying maybe by november or december that they will be up to full capacity, maybe. honda is actually probably in worse shape than toyota and nissan is almost just as bad. ford this week shut down operations in taiwan, south africa, india, philippines. we are talking six weeks after this earthquake. we have also seen disruption at gm, chrysler bow bow fiat and peugeot. we have also seen disruptions and the ge production lines for aircraft engines.

there has been disruptions for ipad, smartphone, appliances, cameras motorcycle repair parts. a lot of this disruption is hidden. we see it mainly in the form of higher cost. if you buy a car this summer it will cost more. if ugoda rent-a-car and certain in europe the prices are up 30%. financially, the financial sort of impact bank of japan who came out this week and said the japanese economy is shrinking. the imf says this event, we are talking six weeks before they realized this, the asian growth is threatened by this event, because of the lack of fdi that will be coming out, foreign direct investment coming out of japan. goldman sachs said that this event probably is going to knock about one point, percentage point off of u.s. gdp up this year, up to a point between a half and 1%. this is going to be a robust year in growth so we are probably not going to see that

but if it isn't than last year that was a lot of potential growth that we have seen. we have to remember that we were lucky. this event was, no matter how bad it was, could have been vastly worse. one of the top managers who came out after the event just last week said it is an absolute miracle that we did not see a catastrophic shutdown of the entire system. so, why did this happen? we have found and it has been revealed to us since this event that single companies in northeastern japan and single sites. frentzen 60% of the key semiconductor residence of the global capacity, one side in the world. 60% controlled airflow and automobile engines. 90% use lithium batteries. 40% of microprocessors used are to control rakes.

these are global percentages and one factory web site in one place in the world. japanese companies and everyone of these cases and many more they control 100% of the -- within the borders of japan. so we have all of these essentially within engineering we call them single points of billiar. we can also look at them assorted keystones in these archways. when you pull out these keystone components, the entire system crashes. so what they have as we can see with our global industrial system, there is no compartmentalization. the system is not resilient. it is extremely rigid, extremely brutal, a disaster in one place is transmitted throughout the system almost instantaneously.

it becomes, can easily become a disaster everyplace. and some of these disasters we can imagine being destructive. one of things we should understand is this is a new phenomena. the shipment of components of semiconductors from a town outside of taipei to the rest of the world was in a few days all of these factories all around shut down all around the world shut down. we saw industrial crashes after september 11, we saw a crash during the sars event during the west course portlock out. four years ago in japan there was a smaller earthquake that

knocked out one factory. we saw all 12 manufacturers shut down. the lehman event, the lehman shock of september 2008 not out both the supply of credit to the system and it also knocked out a lot of demand within the system and we saw a number of disruptions in the industrial system after that. other danger zones, pretty much anyplace where you see extreme concentration of capacity. in the south of japan much greater concentrations and the north any kind of event quite a bit less severe than this happened in the south the disruptions would have been worse. korea again had 80% -- made in seoul around seoul. global supplies. something happens with north korea you are going to lose access to those memory chips. indiaindia, number of companies do close to -- u.s. companies do

their back-office work in south india. you lose access to ndu lose access to their back-office work. those are things like ge, -- taiwan the earthquake there has been no change in the distribution in that capacity that we lost access to in the earthquake. we are talking 80 plus percent of the assembly of electronics takes place in china. drugs in this country, 80 plus percent of the raw materials that go into the drug supply of the united states come out of china. ascorbic acid that we use to preserve our foods in this country, all the foods and all the store shelves, ascorbic acid, vitamin-c. this is something that was synthesized by an american

scientist and first mass-produced by an american company. 100% now comes from china. we lose access for any reason to the supply from china you will have disruptions, perhaps severe within the supply of food. so we live in a world in other words in which a natural disaster can trigger significant, perhaps catastrophic disruptions within the industrial system. we can see it because of a pandemic. we can see disruption because of a financial disaster. also we can see disruptions because of unintended, unintentional political actions. if there were a spat between the united states in china there could be disruptions in the trade system, it even way before we ever went to war with china and those disruptions could cause severe disruptions to the larger systems. if the chinese people rise up again, tiananmen two tomorrow, we just saw a strike within the

port last week among the truckers -- they rise up. they rise up in the midst of our industrial system, the one that we rely on here to provide us with our basic foods and drugs and goods. india pakistan happens in the middle of our economy. and of course you have got intentional political events designed specifically to disrupt the supply of goods such as we saw last year with china and in the case of rare earth. they cut off where earth. rare earth. they embargoed it looking for clinical to coerce japan politically. and then we get to what you guys deal with which is terror. the fedex, the printer cartridgt october, if that is a case in which you actually see these

people using the systems that we also rely on for the transportation of all these -- so, this is kind of a fantastic story the fact that we have an industrial system that is quite radically different than what we think it is and it is radically different than the way it used to be. so just very briefly how did this come to be? 15 years ago the fact was that if there was an earthquake like what we saw in japan, we would have lost toyota or honda or general motors. what we saw now is that we lost toyota and general motors and honda. the reason is because -- the reason it didn't happen or would not have happened is because the system was doubly compartmentalized. it was competent -- compartmentalized within self-sufficient nationstates and

was self-sufficient industrial corporations, vertically integrated corporations. since been over the last 15 years we have seen what we call mobilization, which are sometimes called offshoring. this is essentially this blending together of industrial systems. we now share an industrial system with all these other nations. some nations do a and other nations to b but you have to connect abcd and e to have the products we use and then outsourcing is the other revolution, the disintegration of the integrated firm and what we have seen there as all these firms are used to do everything themselves now share many of their supply activities. now it is important neither globalization nor outsourcing or the disintegration leads to this concentration or this kind of risk. on the contrary both globalization and outsourcing should in theory lead to greater

distribution of capacity, greater distribution of risk. what actually resulted in this kind of concentration was another thing we don't talk about very much, abandonment of our anti-monopoly enforcement back in the 1980s and in this country it was the abandonment of our anti-mercantilist activity at the federal level back in the 1990s. what we did is we left a number of people freed to concentrate power. that is what they cease to do. in the process they have concentrated capacity and hence they have concentrated risk. now this political reasons they went behind this. but, the fact is that for our purposes today, two key facts stand out. one, the system that you guys are protecting is improperly engineered.

you know what i have had one of the top guys at motorola some years ago back when motorola was a great manufacture say we have broken all the rules of engineering. and then the second thing is almost no one that you know that really understands this, no one in washington understands this, none of the public officials, very few of the economist have any inkling of this. there was just sort of to wrap up here, last year for the first time wto, an economist at wto road and article in the world bank publication and this was after the panic of -- and this was the first sign these guys were picking up on this and he wrote, bulbul production networks have introduced new microeconomic dimensions that run parallel to the traditional macroeconomic mechanism of shock transmission. if a shock occurs in one of the

participating sectors or countries in the shock is transmitted quickly to the other stages of the supply chain through back and forward linkages. production have an an inherent magnification effect on shocks. that is a good start. but it is only starting i will leave you with this which is the fact that if this knowledge remains extremely isolated, for instance last week the federal reserve is trying to figure out what is going on with this economy. this is one of the headlines you might've seen last week which is impact japan's quake on u.s. factories surprises the fed. [laughter] so again it is like this is something that you know, is not well understood and so the stakes that are at play here are quite a bit larger than most people realize.

[applause] >> i love how mary ken lukas -- make us look like optimist. this was a great panel extraordinarily diverse, looking at i think what is a broad range of concerns and issues on the domestic theater. what i want to do is quickly turn over to questions and answers from the floor so that we can get a little bit more discussion and then i have been instructed that at 12 time to attend we are going to call it quits and shift to lunch and i will give you some instructions at that point. if our microphones are ready, all the way in the back would be great. and if you could wait for the microphone to comment state your name that would be very helpful. thank you.

>> thank you. can you hear me? i name is eric ambler and i'm with the drug enforcement administration and i question, at first specific to mr. greenberg and -- but then maybe in general terms and want to talk about some of the examples and i was going to ask you issue database tracking -- but those are specific to the united states because i want to point out successful prosecutions like that, depending prosecution as well as a successful arrests for title xxi u.s. 968 against members of the aqim. and how these factor into your analysis and the bigger picture and then also from our perspective, people like those individuals who come the earlier panel, some members of al qaeda aren't necessarily nuclear chemists or nuclear physicist or anything but individuals like these who have the access to maybe get larger scale wmd in

the hands of those people who want to use it to kill americans and also the successful conviction of title xviii conspiracy to kill americans so i just wanted to get your thoughts specifically and anybody else who cares to address that. >> thank you. >> it a really good question which you know these are the kinds of questions we could talk about all day long. susan in the back, and you can hit her up later for how we make these decisions but i'm glad you raised that. the way we skate -- each get into the database is 99% by the u.s. government willing to expand the category of to include these. that is basically but i don't think victor boot is there but most of them are. you would have to check with susan. but here is what i want to say. one of the reasons that we keep making these divisions like

these are jihadi crimes and these are farc crimes and these are whatever kind of drug crimes is that there is a large portion of the database separate from the data i was giving you that our drug crimes or sometimes criminal conspiracy crimes that involve some of the same charges of terrorism and yes they are in there. what is even more interesting about this is that, this is just sort of a footnote, but in terms of bringing these trials in the united states, the drug enforcement, va crimes use a different method and i think you know this in terms of how they they get the forensics and it fundamentally changes the way these cases are argued in court.

one of the most discouraging aspects of where we are right now 10 years later is the psyche of the american public. it was referred to in the first panel it could've easily could have easily been asked of them referred to again here of the zero-tolerance, that fear, that lack of resiliency even though in the psychological sense and i'm just wondering i wanted to ask assistant secretary about this. al qaeda claiming that even though the underwear bomber failed and many of these others failed they were still real

successes for them because we freaked, we panicked and took all the steps let's throw in another trillion dollars. is there anything we can do. the president the bully pulpit, the congress, the media, anything anyone can do to begin to get us out of this and that more like the way the israelis do when a bus gets bombed and the people sweep up. the dead in the next day the people are back the same bus stop to take the bus again. is there anything we can do to become as a nation more psychologically resilient? >> it is a great question and i will may be answered with some other questions because it is terribly ironic that the nation as big as ours and is populated as ours which is relatively few casualties over the last decade related to terrorism, is as you point out, the one most likely to react you know in that sort

of zero-tolerance big bad lots of money way the nations that are dealing with it every day or maybe it is not ironic. maybe that is because we just had no idea. i think people were so surprised by september 11, not just because of its size but because most people didn't even know what al qaeda was or bin laden was. i think it is predominantly -- i can bash the media and it is not just the federal media. if you see the local news, i mean it is crazy. oh i got a pen and a knife onto the airport. these are the big stories. these will be the stories around 9/11, trust me around the anniversaries of 9/11. there will be tremendous stories about reporters thinking on various materials that could have killed the pilot and everyone else. but i think it is the bully

pulpit is really the only -- from the president on down. i think he has been successful in that regard. i think you don't see this restlessness coming from the white house or from the department after -- after every attempted attack. infected is going to take any years and goodness knows the dialogue will be -- and of course it is the leadership on down to the state, and then i just think the american public is just -- is just got to grow up about this. given the evidence on the first panel this is not an ex-essential thread. this is a bad thread and it could get worse. we have done tremendous work but you know i could give you a long list of things that i'm more worried about for myself and certainly my kids than i am about this and we just have to figure out way in a way in which we educate each other about

this. i will say, just you know, you can talk to a roomful of terrorism experts like all of you. i am on as they said the consumer end of this and you all are really smart and think about this and about terrorist but then you asked the question if there was an earthquake in your town could you and your family survive for 72 hours which is much more likely to happen if you are from california or new england and the number of people who can't answer yes to shocking. part of it is just being sort of -- stuff happens. >> does anyone else want to take a crack at that? next question. in the blue, coming from behind you there. spew my name is bernard moore and i'm from the united states special operations command but don't represent them. for the purpose of this question. the question is aimed at peter

specifically. to what degree do you think possibly an aggressive united states foreign-policy over the last 25 years in the middle east has been a taboo subject or sacred cow cows not touched in the idea of a way of approaching counter-radicalization? in other words getting to the core of some of the radicalization might just happen to be policies which seem to be to others in the middle east rather assertive. >> i have answered that question may be a thousand times and prevented is always the first question that comes up to what extent is foreign-policy the reason for all of this? this? and the conventional wisdom used to be that it is. i am slightly less convinced, not that i reject the idea that foreign-policy is an important factor in this. i think the factor is the

narrative and how foreign-policy fits in. the narrative is the west is at war with islam and anything that seems to confirm that narrative bolsters the attraction of the ideology, and so if for example the u.s. does something like invading iraq for example, that feeds into that narrative. that will be used in order to exploit people in order to radicalize and her crew people. so all the sinks feature but similarly it can't be domestic things but it can also be fashioned in order to fit that narrative. so the foreign-policy is a function of the narrative rather than the other way around. foreign-policy itself i don't believe causes people to be radicalize. what i've been most astonished by and what no expert has given me a good answer to is why we saw such an enormous amount of obvious radicalization around the iraq war in 2003 in europe

but not in the country that was leading that invasion, namely the united states. and i still haven't gotten a full answer to that and i'm still getting to the ground and if i find an answer i will let you know. >> to follow on that, to what extent is economic prospects, and we talked about these somali kids whose economic future is not looking all that right necessarily, new immigrants who are struggling -- to what extent do we see economic conditions playing a role as well in the radicalization process? >> well again, i mean it has been said a thousand times by people that have studied this much more than i have that you know poverty is not directly related to participating in terrorism. however, it is very important to understand that an important component of the radicalization cycle is some kind of tension

that people can see and creates a cognitive open, that creates a vacuum that will be filled by an ideology and that is perhaps then will be mobilized by a terrorist group into action. it is not sufficient but it is necessary for someone to become radical. the perception of socioeconomic exclusion can be a grievance that plays a role. and certainly overall american muslims are earning a lot of money, are highly educated. the somali community in this country is one such pocket. and the somali community in this country is actually quite similar to many european muslim communities that are similarly deprived and similarly -- and i think for that particular community, measures that are in fact capacity building, building you centers, creating an

economic opportunity for people could actually help reduce the risk of people experiencing those cognitive openings. >> more questions from the field? okay, what that i will not stand between you and less. please help me tank or panels for a great presentation. [applause] [inaudible conversations] 

>> the what i try to do is tell a story with visuals instead of words so i'm basically writing paragraphs that happen to be with images. >> with four pulitzer prize for photography carol casillas won the award part by part in any other journalist. >> i think a great thing about being a journalist is the variety and that we get to experience so many parts of the human condition on so many different levels. >> she will talk more about her craft sunday night on c-span's q&a. you can also download a podcast of q&a. is one of our many signature and afe