>> a former self described jeff honest who worked with al qaeda and the former new york city intelligence officer responsible for having him arrested joined the discussion on combating violent extremism. the center forinternational studies posted the hour-long event in washington dc .

>> great group on a monday morning. thanks for coming. we got a great event today. we've got a few people still trickling in. before we start, a few quick comments. first, welcome to the center for strategic and international studies. my name is steph jones, director of the transnational project, it's cis and harold brown chair. our work is available on the website. we've had publications on anything from hezbollah activity in syria too, we will have a broader report on us counterterrorismthat will be published later this week . a couple other comments as well. we don't expect any emergencies but just in case we have one we've got exits in the back at multiple locations. we also have been to the right of the stage when you are facing it.

in general the rendezvous point for emergencies at cis is that the national geographic which is located right next door and if you haven't been over to their current exhibits, they are fantastic as well so i'm not being paid to say that but they are a great program for the britannica exhibit over there . i also wanted to thank the folks at the transnational project . from mass markets in front to charlie valley to nick and clayton who are helping as well. the way we're going to do the q&a is you will notice there are cards on your seat. we had a couple people that dropped those cards. after the initial discussion is over and we will move into a q and a from here but at any point if you have

questions, please write them down. charlie, do we have plates right here? okay. and i'll point to them when mitch is done with his introductory remarks. i'm happy to have a discussion today on the unmaking of jihadist and the current effort to combat violent extremism. we have mitch silber who is thecofounder of the guardian group . mitch is both a practitioner based on his work at nypd and also an author . his book on al qaeda plots in my counterinsurgency and counterintelligence classes so thank you for educating my students along the way and jesse morton, codirector of parallel networks. we will get into a range of issues regarding extremism and counter extremism during the discussion in the q and a

period so thank you for coming and i'm going to sit down and we're going to move the microphone . >> okay. so what i'd like to do is just begin by turning tojesse . we've got a really interesting background. and ask you if you can explain the origins jesse of revolution muslims and your eventual transition so your personal involvement and then he your transition and i want to go to mitch for the other, because for a chunk ofyears you were sitting on the opposite side . >> so revolution muslim was probably the first organization in the united states to unabashedly promote alqaeda and jihadist .

but we were one of the first organizations to experiment with the initiated and about 2007 so it was a transition from social media at one point to 2.0. we were one of the first organizations to be more social mediaoriented platforms . >> ..

>> and had returned to new york city where we operated from, became my best friend. he gave us an interesting dynamic at the core of our organization where you had a charismatic preacher with legitimacy having been educated in saudi arabia. you had me with a political expertise that was able to frame the jihadist narrative in a way that coincided to revolutionary politics, if you will. and then you had our third colleague, who had a reputation on-line that was somewhat viral that was able to push back and become what we called basically the clown. he was able to antagonize the right wing, for example, the antiislamic crowd to exploit that so that they could point to us as an organization that was calling for the implementation

of sharia in the united states. and an individual who could get on fox news any given time by doing something provocative. we had a template that evolved over time. we partnered with people to formulate the very first english language jihadist magazine. and from 2011 -- from 2007 till i was arrested in 2011 we set a template upon which jihadist pop gan da has evolved since -- propaganda has evolved since. not since the use of social media 2.0, but the development of the language, and also the private chat rooms that we see very similar the way isis used to for one-on-one recruitment. i fled to casablanca where i was living expecting to ultimately be indicted by the u.s. government, which ended up being the case. while i was there, though, i started a process, a long

process of deradicalization. i lived there in the beginning of the arab spring. was motivated by the fact that i was teaching people english and i was teaching economics at a local university in english and communicating with my students about what they wanted to see going forward in the state of morocco. i was enthralled by the fact that they were committed to liberal principles but still had an islamic identity. they sort of eradicated these sort of ideas i had about hypocrisy from amongst the moderate and muslim community and they opened me up to recognizing that really what people in the middle east particularly in morocco wanted were things that i took for granted. so osama bin laden released a piece of propaganda where he was trying to rebrand al qaeda. and essentially he had to talk about global warming which was an effort to try to portray him as more of the progressive intellectual as opposed to person who was calling simply for violence and terrorism. and that sort of fell flat because it was very irrational and didn't make sense. that's when i recognized that my

views of a man who i once held to be 8 feet tall had come down to a more realistic understanding of what this person represented if this was a person responsible for making policy. it was very absurd. i was arrested three weeks after he was killed, set for extradition back to the united states. in that time, i interacted for five months in a moroccan prison with one of the chief charismatic preachers responsible for radicalizing those that went on to conduct attacks in casablanca. he sort of challenged my ideology because he himself had changed. i found that interesting. i was very scared about what i was facing and felt it was very difficult because i was already starting to change before my arrest. the u.s. government came on a private plane to fly me home where i found out that i was facing life imprisonment but i also found out that the united states over time, the u.s. government was not waging a war against islam that i once

promoted. they were primarily interested in stopping terrorist attacks. when they returned me to alexandria, virginia, across the bridge, i was held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, but there was a guard that felt solitary confinement was rather oppressive, and she would take me four hours a day for her ten-hour shifts to the law library which also has the jailhouse library. that's where i interacted with philosophers, read encyclopedias and read great books. that played my significant role in my going back to the cell for the day she wasn't at work and re-read the quran through a enlightening perspective. i took a plea that capped me at 15 years of sentencing. i had to undergo a debriefing process with the fbi. i developed an interesting relationship with a female fbi agent that showed me empathy but was also able to advocate for me

to be potentially an asset for the government going forward. some of the students of revolution muslim were able to travel to syria. we were able to track and monitor them. obama had released the strategic implementation plan for development of cbe. i was able to give input on that. i found that the fbi was not waging a black and white war against islam but they were primarily concerned with stopping acts of terrorism and identifying those that may go on to commit violence. ultimately i was originally sentenced to 1 1/2 years in prison. -- 11 1/2 years in prison and served almost four years of that before a judge reduced my sentence due to cooperation and i was leareleased in march of 2 where i continue to operate as informant and analyst in some capacity as fbi. went public as america's first former jihadist but then recognized as time went on that i had not actually done the work of deradicalization because i

had refuted the ideology, changed the ideology but never addressed the issues that ultimately facilitated my entrance into radicalization in the first place. i have been working for over a year and i've been doing work on myself but also trying to understand the realm of cbe a bit differently, taking a very different perspective with regard to intervention, countermessaging and etc. and working to sustain my deradicalization by making a contribution that makes amends to some of the harm that i caused under my former self. >> great. mitch, over to you, between 2006 and 2011 in particular, from the n.y.p.d. perspective, you were working directly against jesse, so could you talk about what he outlined from your perspective sitting on the other side, in part virtually? >> sure.

to some degree i was responsible for having jesse arrested and imprisoned so we will start there. my role at n.y.p.d. was director of intelligence analysis, so i oversaw the civilian analysts and detectives who were running investigations in new york city. during that period from 2006 to 2011, probably the most complicated and challenging investigation was that of revolution muslim and that specifically of jesse morton who led that organization. so from 06 to 11, thinking a little bit of it sort of as catch me if you can with jesse as leonardo dicaprio and us trying to catch him. in speaking with the u.k. security services, depending on the time that you're speaking to them, they would say maybe 25 to 30 percent of u.k. citizens who are gone on to join al qaeda or

some other jihadist organization spent at least some time there. so we understood in new york city we had a version of that, first the islamic thinker society and then frankly jesse's more extreme splinter organization, revolution muslim. we were highly concerned about that and at n.y.p.d. we were able to position an undercover n.y.p.d. officer in revolution muslim and in fact as the it administrator so he knew what jesse was having for breakfast most days. however it was very difficult because jesse was frankly a savvy operator. he knew where the line was in terms of 1st amendment and he was quite certain in not crossing it. he was really the chief ideologue for revolution muslim and one of the things we outlined in our paper earlier this summer is that there were 15 plots around the world that

you can trace the individuals who participated in that and then being followers or interacting with revolution muslim and it was a pretty wide span. you've got two individuals from new jersey who radicalized and wanted to join al shabab. you have another who was a u.s. citizen from brooklyn who traveled to pakistan at n.y.p.d. and interact as a u.s. ambassador to have him turn around in islamabad sent back to the u.s. but make no mistake his intention was to join al qaeda. you have plots in the u.k., a plot to attack the london stock exchange over christmas in 2009. you had the stabbing of a u.k. parliamentarian by a woman where she attacked him for his support of the iraq war. you had a plot against the new york city subway following the

instructions in inspire magazine how to make a bomb in the kitchen. he made it in his mother's kitchen. so these were potentially deadly plots around the world that all traced their origin back to revolution muslim. there was even a plot in boston where they wanted to use a drone to attack the pentagon. if you look at inspire magazine, the first issue of it, had its list of enemies, and as jesse mentioned, samir khan the primary author of that magazine had been a member of revolution muslim before he left for yemen. in that magazine he listed enemies of al qaeda which featured me which triggered police protection for my two sons and wife for a period of time by the n.y.p.d. we were working in opposition to each other very much the case. the last summer, the attack on the london bridge, where it turns out one of the primary attackers was in fact a member

of this group. the story hadn't really been talked about. i knew jesse had been released from prison. so i reached out to jesse and said why don't we tell the story of n.y.p.d. versus revolution muslim and more importantly the different techniques that revolution muslim pioneered, internet 2.0, english language magazines, social media interaction on-line, things that have been adopted by isis. as isis moves into the state of more of a virtual caliphate there are likely techniques that isis has adopted that were pioneered by revolution muslim that we need to look at more closely if we're going to figure out how to adequately fight a virtual caliphate. this partnership kicked off, and we created -- or jesse created this nonprofit organization called parallel networks. and the idea is really to do three things, use formers to number one, do ct and cve

research. number two, use these formers for targeted interventions in a pre-criminal way for that 15, 16-year-old who hasn't really crossed the line to criminality but is spending time on the isis websites and is going down that road. and then thirdly, interacting with people who have gotten out of prison who need to rehabilitate but have a ct background and we know that there are about 100 people who will be getting out of prison in the next five years in the u.s. and to date there's no formalized program to help rehabilitate those people. that's a quick summary of sort of my part, the other side of the jesse and where we are now. >> so before going to jesse with a couple of questions and then back to mitch, wanted to remind everybody that they have cards if they could pass them down, charlie, over here and nick over here can pick them up. they will come around so again, feel free as we're talking to write down questions. they will pick them up, bring

them up to the stage and we will read as many as we can at the last part of the q&a session. two questions for you, jesse, to get this started, one is, can you talk a little bit about your concept of the virtual caliphate and how it differed or in part is similar to the way the islamic state when it really began in 2014 picked up pace in 15, 16, 17 and even now 18, how it differed or was similar? let me start with that, and then i've got a follow up question for you. >> okay. i think it is very important to pay attention to the historical evolution of on-line propaganda efforts to radicalize and recruit. what we have seen is the development largely similar to the template that revolution muslim set of an ability of people that in the beginning it was all people living in the west and espousing an ideology that was just generalized.

but we had the very first case of propagandas that were known in the west that had a western version of al qaeda's narrative that appealed in many ways, much stronger than the stuff that was coming out of the middle east. now they were embedded with al qaeda in the arabian peninsula and they weren't able to say this is the ideology and you should adhere to it but they were able to show you how to act on it. one of the fundamentally fascinating things for me working as an informant in prison and creating a narrative of a prominent individual who was one of my students that travelled to syria in the beginning of this idea of a virtual caliphate is coming to the awareness that isis uses propaganda particularly when it comes to targeting westerners. it is a western import. a lot of people that were affiliated and had a heavy understanding of how to make the message appealable to those in the west, embedded themselves in raqqa and were living in a safe

house all together where they were concocting ways to utilize the internet, twitter in particular in the beginning and they have since navigated and adjusted to platforms the same way we used to. when they would take us down on youtube, we would have another channel up and running within days. when they would take down our domain name, we would have another domain name running. that's the game of cat and mouse. as we see us adapt to them, they are incredibly fluid and able to adapt as well. now we have this idea that virtual plotter, the virtual entrepreneur, somebody who doesn't understand the ideology, may have come from the west, migrated there, is able to articulate in english the views but also able to recruit and migrate to encrypt platforms in the same way we used to use a program to do so to their direct messaging applications where we were able to give a broad lecture, create an appeal, individual would reach out, say they wanted to have more questions of us, and then we could engage them in one-on-one conversation. we couldn't tell them how to do an attack. we couldn't encourage them to do

an attack. we could disseminate more understanding of the ideology to facilitate progression into the actual action upon the ideas. now we're faced with that difficulty and seen it rather effective. this is the problem going forward with the virtual caliphate that they can sustain without having any territorial control. they can sustain the idea of the caliphate. it is important to recognize that the reason so many westerns traveled to join is that there was a seed set in the minds of the people living in the west, that they have an obligation to work for the caliphate. even if you destroy the caliphate, it is that legacy that they established it and the desire of themselves to return it and the ability to refer back to periods of decline before and contraction before that will serve as an appeal. isis is essentially trying to sustain itself particularly amongst western audiences by migrating to different platforms and continuing to promote the idea in the event that another safe haven opens up, but at the same time, we see a new

phenomenon of competition between jihadists organizations that has led through the ultimate barbarity of isis and the entrance to a post isis world where al qaeda has been able to benefit from what social movements here, where their brand was originally considered delegitimized for their excessive violence, now the violence of al qaeda is considered moderate compared to isis and will have a broader appeal. it is not just about isis virtual caliphate. it is about a virtual caliphate with access on-line from different organizations. there will probably be splinters. these things continue to mutate. one of the important things that's recognizable in the paper that mitch and i wrote, the splinter is important to pay attention to because these things metastasize and they change into more and more

accepting of violence. you are stretching the narrative where you have groups in syria which have 30,000 people by most estimates and then you have the organization al qaeda which introduces an organization who now has about a thousand followers and fill -- filmed some of its first attacks and they will disseminate the ideology there. now in the lag time where the territory has been dismantled, what they will try to do is sustain themselves with the idea. we have an opportunity to attract for particularly for our western audience, particularly for the united states being isis delegitimize themselves to get to the heart of how do you refute that idea now. >> one question if i can ask you first and then go to mitch, there are a number of u.s. policymakers, this picks up on what you just said. there are a number of u.s. policy makers who have argued recently and i'm quoting here that the islamic state has been crushed, that it has been

eradicated. i think a number of americans, you know, it's been a while since the -- they have -- many have assessed there's been a notable -- certainly different from the british experience, french experience the last year or two. britain had a number of attacks at the ariana grande concert. how do you respond to this notion that the islamic state or other groups have either been crushed or eradicated, and what's your sense about the threat to the u.s. either the homeland directly or overseas today? >> i would suggest that we've been here before. i remember when i was arrested in may, after osama bin laden was killed, we started to debate, particularly in the mainstream press on whether the war on terror was winding down and whether it was over. that leads to an awareness that it is not about organizations,

that this is jihadist entity is one that runs on ideology, but it is a movement. it's now become a movement. it is bound together by similar principles, some of which people can differ on, and now you will have a competition, marketplace of ideas amongst jihadists if you will for competition. with regard to the threat to the homeland, i think that's what setting in for jihadist organizations that do have a better capability to direct and plot attacks, we went from a phase of command counterterrorism in the beginning to one of leaderless resistance that my organization helped to facilitate. i think now we're going back to a command situation where the internet or virtual caliphate makes that possible, there's a realization in the jihadist community that the law of diminishing returns is setting in regard to leader attacks i think both al qaeda and isis are aware that in order to claim or retain the mantle of jihad, they will have to do an attack that sort of outdoes or rivals to 9/11. i think our primary concern should be with regard to some of the threats of whether or not

there's a capacity in the united states, which is the ultimate price for jihadists, which something that i'm continuing to argue for is that we have a tendency in the jihadist community now to turn internal to the middle east but we still need to prioritize the head. we have to look and adjust for the possibility and important to recognize not to ramble on but the very first entity that was attacked once we announced a coalition against isis was not an isis target, it was an al qaeda aligned organization that was operating inside syria that had an ongoing attack ready -- they had a plot at least and a plan to conduct an attack in europe that was in its last stages that would have rivalled with regard to casualties as they saw at 9/11. so it's very important to pay attention to these fluid dynamics that evolve and the capacity to facilitate. now you don't have to travel to afghanistan, receive training or pakistan like a faisal to come

back, now you can literally just do it from encrypt platforms. it is quite dangerous. >> same question to you, mitch, isis crushed, isis eradicated and your sense of a threat to the u.s. either homeland or its interest overseas? >> sure, i do think we have been here before. i remember u.s., you know, government officials talking about the demise of al qaeda. you know, after bin laden was taken off the battlefield, after others were taken off the battlefield, and sure there was an ebb after that, but ultimately, you know, there was that revival. think about the 2012 to 2014 period, before isis stormed on to the stage, in iraq, and to some degree, i think that's where we are. we are in sort of the ebb. where will the new safe haven be? physical safe haven? unclear. will it be in libya? parts of syria? yemen? unclear, but there's no doubt that the ideology is still

there. and frankly, you know, what makes i think this situation maybe different from this first ebb in 2012 was that the number of european foreign fighters who have returned to europe and i have spent a lot of time in europe this year, in the u.k. and france and germany, i was just in austria, austria, hotbed of isis terrorism you wouldn't have thought. 370 austrians went to syria and iraq. a certain percentage have come back. i think we're most likely to see the first winds of a bit of a revival in europe, with foreign fighters who have returned, maybe inspiring some individuals who were radicalized at home and haven't even traveled to syria ena iraq. -- to syria and iraq. in the u.s., the targets may be u.s. targets overseas as well as sort of domestic targets. then i think, you know, the fact that we have many fewer u.s. citizens who have traveled overseas to isis land and even far few have returned gives us a

certain measure of protection, however virtual plotters and individuals who are radicalized in the west who are looking to do something can now be manipulated, can be operationalized overseas and i think that's -- those are probably the things i'm most concerned about when i look at the horizon. it is not purely isis. you have to factor in that al qaeda has used this time to regenerate themselves in different parts of the world where they have control of territory, where they have merged with the local entities and the al qaeda threat is certainly not off the table. >> let me ask you, mitch, a follow up question, and it is something that you guys wrote in the conclusion of -- from revolution muslim to the islamic state, and that is quoting here, one reason most of the plots linked to revolution muslim were thwarted was that the n.y.p.d. in your case successfully

integrated undercover officers into the heart of both the islamic thinker society and revolution muslim. then you go on to say increased use of digital human comprising digital undercover officers and informants, etc., etc. what's your general sense in combatting, countering on the u.s. law enforcement and intelligence side? some of the lessons you've seen. i'm going to get into a broader cbe issues in a moment, but from the intelligence and law enforcement standpoint, what's your sense of key lessons? >> i think one of the key lessons is that so much of this comes down to humans. you know, human intelligence, having the right sources placed in the right locations. and that's been an evolving phenomena over time. you know, it was physical locations for many years, looking at the, you know, greater new york state area, but frankly the u.s., and taking lessons from overseas. it might have been places where, you know, you knew there was a

radical mosque at one point in time and then it moved to a bookstore and it moved to a cafe and it moves to a barbershop. those are also physical locations where you could have an informant or an undercover to detect clusters of people radicalizing. now, as time has moved on, being on-line has turned out to be the place where you're most likely to encounter people using a virtual safe haven to meet. and now it's these telegram channels. and the only way you can be in those telegram channels and be able to have some chance of detecting something is by developing human assets who have the ability to interact in a way that's believable on-line. and in new york, we were fortunate to have police officers that were very diverse from, you know, country of origin perspective, so you have people who can speak farsi and arabic and be on those websites, in those forums, own those channels in a way that was

believable so that they could look like the bad guys who they were trying to detect. and you know, that's been successful. i think, you know, where things have failed have been we haven't had the right human resources in the right location, if you think about the chelsea attack -- >> please welcome the founder and national chairman of christians united for israel, the one and only pastor! thank you. good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the 13th annual summit of the christiansni