a threat to the u.s., now the debate begins -- how to stop the terrorists. this morning we'll discuss the options with a former fbi special agent and we'll tackle the growing argument over settling syrian refugees close to home. good morning and welcome to nbc10 "@ issue." i'm keith jones. the paris attacks are having an impact here at home. governor christie saying his state will not accept syrian refugees. >> i do not trust this administration to effectively

vet the people to come in in order to protect the safety and security of american people, so i will not permit them in. >> the lehigh valley has one of the largest syrian populations in the country and they're expecting more. as nbc10 tells us, even as members of that community tells us they're even worried about that round of refugees. >> reporter: what is to prevent terrorists to slip into the united states the way analysts say they slipped into paris? the lehigh valley has one of the largest syrian communities in the country. >> you have to have compassion, but by the same token we look at the safety aspects of it and so the vetting would be very important to me. >> we still have to have our sense of security while inviting them in# r their security. >> he came from syria 24 years ago. >> helping refugees is a noble thing by our government. >> reporter: but he worries the

latest wave isn't refugees at all but isis fighters and war criminals. >> to bring the ideas they were using in those so-called tough neighborhoods or terrified neighborhoods, this would use them over here. >> nobody wants to bring a terrorist intoou into this country. >> reporter: the lutheran family services resettled those refugees and says less than a third approved by the united nations and most are rejected by homeland security checks. >> our u.s. refugee program is built on the will. american people. and if that is not there, there will not be a refugee program. >> reporter: doug shimell, "nbc10 news." >> a retired aegt-h agent with the fbi, philadelphia supervisor of the philadelphia joint terrorism task force for almost 13 years. he also spent time with the fbi in washington, working on homeland security investigations. right now, jeff teaches criminal

justice justice. thank you. we appreciate you being here. >> thank you for having me. >> you're very familiar with the situation up in the lehigh valley. a very large syrian population there. how are they different than the refuse geese expected to come across our border. >> fortunately, ixñ+ had the opportunity to work with the refugee community in allentown, and they are truly a fabric and a part of the lehigh valley. they work, they won't businesses. they're in all walks the life. they have assimilated into the lehigh valley. they're an important part of the community. my interactions with them over the course of several years has always been positive and helpful. and so they're actually going to be very supportive and helpful in this situation as it relates to the refugee situation. >> this used to be a gigantic debate. the presidential candidates are now cashing in. what are the options when it comes to accepting refugees? governor christie of new jersey

says no way. tom wolf says yes. jack markell says yes in delaware. what are the options? >> the options for intelligent community and law enforcement community to accept whatever decisions by the politicians. they're elected. they set the standard. there will be a short-term and long-term strategy. if it's decided the refugees are going to be coming, the hard part is how to vet them. it's never going to be a 100% solution. however, communities like the syrian community in allentown could be a part of that vetting process. they don't have to be excluded. it can be a situation where potential refugee frts syrian community come to the united states, maybe they're sponsored. maybe they know somebody here. that helps us vet from ysd the united states out as opposed to the difficulty of trying to vet somebody through a syrian government that, quite frankly, isn't there. >> i think the president has thrown out numbers. 75,000 refugees expected in

2016. 100,000 in 2017. again, expected numbers. what is the rbi doing in in preparation for that. >> ak you waiting what's been done over the last several years. now we have to create a reelgtsship with the community. it has to have been there already. in the city of allentown, bet will beth will he hem, those community programs come into play. it's not just going to be the fbi alone. it's not going to be law enforcement alone. it's a collective toefrt say as best we can, who's the safest to come into the country and who's not. >> the pride in being american and working with that community. the community in lehigh valley, many are syrian christians. could they be targeted? >> they could be targeted both at home, within the community.

there's unrest and concern who's coming in. there -- again, good, hard working people. part of the concern, quite frankly, it's a sincere and honest concern, are the family members that are back home. so, syrian community in allentown have a lot of family members back home. what pressures come to bear on them as it relates to decisions that are made here by the syrian community. >> one thing we learned from these paris attacks recently. of course, the mastermind, if you want to call him that, of the paris attacks were killed in the overnight raids on wednesday. how secure are our borders? right now they're looking into how the heck he even got into the country. >> right. to step back. mastermind is a term -- >> yeah. >> maybe a ringleader, someone who's locally organizing things but mastermind might be a little overstatement, at least in my opinion. >> yeah. >> but as far as trying to secure the borders, big issue for a lot of years not just for

terrorism, but for transnational crime organizations. and so the issue becomes for law enforcement, intelligence and the front line law enforcement for homeland security, is how the best we can with the information we have. this is why it's really important to have those relationships with the international intelligence communities, foreign governments like the french, the fbi would be on the ground helping them, but at the same time, we're trying to assess what we can learn from there to make our homeland safer at the border crossings. >> how much support do the local authorities get? say, philadelphia, how much support does philadelphia get, or even allentown, get from the fbi? >> so, after 9/11 and 9/11 commission, it's a must situation. information must be shared in order to give law enforcement the best they can because they're on the front line every day dealing with the public to try and push the information that will give them the best chance to identify something before something happens.

>> speaking of that, then, terrorism, big picture here, how do we become for proactive and not necessarily reactive. >> so, since 9/11 and the establishment of the department of homeland security has really transformed the fbi's mission in terrorism and the homeland security because it allowed the fbi and its joint terrorism task forces around the united states to be proactive, to try and be out ahead of and allows department of homeland security to be the defense. so, within the rule of law, within the constitution, there the ability of the fbi to be proactive and not violate people's civil rights to identify people who are a threat to us, identify and disrupt before something happens. >> what makes isis so much more dangerous than what we've experienced? >> what makes isis different and dangerous? one, they've proven their capability. access means an ability. so, they have ak tess to the

soft targets. they have the means to do it by what we saw in paris and the ability to carry it out versus just words, propaganda. al qaeda is still out there. al qaeda should not be foregotten. the eyes should not be taken off them and they've shown they're ability to strike. >> what aren't we doing -- everyone has an opinion. what aren't we doing you think we should? >> i can't say what we're not doing because a lot of things aren't in the public. a lot of things the intelligence does with good oversight from congress as far as trying to identify threats, potential threats to our national security that don't make it into the media, that don't make it into the news. there are things going on every day. and they're fed to the administration through a daily threat matrix, what it looks like. that is shared across the community. if we see something here in philadelphia, for example, that is shared with new york, boss

torngs los angel -- boston, across the federal level. if they're successful, you don't want to make it public. >> exactly jeff, personally, what keeps you up at night? >> what keeps me up at night is the -- what governor cain said in the 9/11 report, failure of imagination. it's really important for the politicians and for the intelligence community and law enforcement is not to make assumption and think outside the box. all the possibilities that can be. that can only be done if the federal, state and local law enforcement are truly working together and communicating back and forth. and private businesses and the community. this is where this community policing becomes so critical, is for them to see something and say something and then make it to the right people who can analyze, does it fit something, into a larger picture. >> let's talk about the bomb that was placed allegedly on

that russian jet that went down. who put it there? how do we end up determining, you know, are there any protocols by which we can weed these people out if it was, perhaps, a crew member which some people are alleging at this point? >> there's always going to be, sadly, the after-action, the lessons learned. the fbi, if requested, would -- often egyptians and russian intelligence authorities, the ability to come in and assess it. it's critical so we can do our own assessment here. access, here, too, as an employee or not. what is that vetting process? there's a healthy ngs to going back and reviewing that. who has access to the planes? what's they're clearances? how often are those clearances updates? you do it once or on a routine basis? and so it's going to be the access points. it might mean heading into thanksgiving, a longer line,

tolerance, take a step back. better safe than sorry. >> we know we're expecting a lot of people to jump on flights to see family for thanksgiving. your confidence? >> i'm confident but it's never perfect. i'm confident they're going to do the best they can with the information they have. and the training and there's a lot of things that aren't seen by the public that go on every day. >> thanks for joining me. very good insight right there. next, the science behind the forecast. nbc10 chief meteorologist glenn "hurricane" schwartz joins us with details about a troublesome weather pattern that could have a big impact on us.

the central pacific ocean recently recorded its warmest

water on record for a single week. it's likely the result of a super strong el nino. even though it's happening on the other side of the world, it's already impacting our weather here. with me now is a familiar face, nbc10 first alert chief meteorologist glenn "hurricane" schwartz always great to talk to you. >> he's 6'8". >> yeah, right. 6'3". let's talk about this fall first. no one is complaining about how warm it is. >> there are snow lovers. i get e-mails from them, too, because they're afraid this warm start is going to be a warm start. not necessarily so. october and november have been especially warm. especially november. so far, close to 7 degrees above average for the entire month. if it's 3 or 4 degrees above average, that's pretty amazing. to be this much above average is exceptional. other parts of the country, the middle part of the country, it's even more extreme than what's

been happening this season. >> does this have something to do with el nino. >> yeah, it certainly has something to do with that. partly because we look at hift. we've seen previous el ninos and certain similarities to the weather patterns. what you see there, the bottom of your screen, that line of red, that's that super warm ocean temperatures. these are ocean temperatures compared to to average. this entire area, thousands of miles, is the el nino. look at it compared to the united states. the amount of energy and heat associated with this is just enormous. and since our weather generally moves west to east, we have to look at the pacific ocean and see what's happening there. well, everything in the yellow and red is above ocean

temperatures. with this amount of warm ocean, it has to have some impact on our weather. that's what has happened. near record el nino out there. it also allows for lots of moisture to into into our portion of the country. we likely get very wet winters as a result of it, because of the stronger jet stream, we get big coastal storms. big nor'easters. and then surges of warm air. this is set in stone, pretty much. too much heat and energy for this not to happen. the question is, what about those storms? are they snowstorms or rain storms? that's the difficult part. >> glenn, over the last couple of winters we've heard about a.o. and n.a.o. first off, what is that and how does that interact with el near noti -- el nino? >> so far we've just been talking about the pacific but we

have to look at the arctic and atlantic ocean. a.o. is arctic oscillation. we look toward the north pole. if there's low pressure up there, that traps the cold air. when we get the storms that come across, it's too warm. we get rain storms out of that. one after another after another. but if it's the opposite, negative a.o., high pressure near the poles, that pushes the cold air to the south. that allows the storms and the active jet stream to combine with the cold air and give us snowstorms. now, in the north atlantic, the positive one has low pressure up near green land, high pressure to the south and a strong west/east jet stream. warm air surges in and we get rain storms. the negative a.o., high pressure near greenland, then low pressure in the east. that allows the combination of

the cold air and the storms, many of our big notice storsnow history have occurred in negative a.o. patterns. that record winter in 2009-10 with negative a.o. for most of the winter. they're important, too. >> very interesting. let's talk about something else, another record here. the warmest weather on record in recorded history worldwide. how much of that is related to el nino or is it global warming? >> it's certainly el nino. el nino is providing so much heat through the oceans to go up into the atmosphere that it warms up the whole earth. it's always done that when it's been a strong el nino. but this strong el nino is warmer than the last strong el nino. so each el nino gets stronger. each la nina, the opposite, that gets warmer. and so there is an overall

warming impact, too. and maybe 20 years from now, when we get an el nino this strong, the earth will be even much warmer than this. >> very interesting. nbc10 chief meteorologist glenn "hurricane" schwartz. always a pleasure to talk to you. >> always a pleasure to talk to you. >> an education, certainly. next on nbc10 "@ issue," year after year after year people claim they get their flu shot and they immediately get sick right afterwards and they say the vaccination got me sick. true or false? >> flu vaccines fact and fiction. find out if getting the shot really can make you sick with the flu.

cases of the seasonal flu have already popped up in our area. doctors say getting vaccinated

is your best defense against the environment. not everyone is convinced. we asked dr. ellen o'connor, medical director at thomas jefferson university hospital, to help us separate the fact from fiction about the flu shot. >> we know if this one is a match for what we're about to experience? >> right now we believe it's a very good match as opposed to other years. so, we think it's going to really match what's circulating. it's really a good vaccine to get this year. >> we were talking about this before. i think last year it was only 19% effective against that particular strain. it had mutated. any reason to believe that will happen? is there any indicate of indicator, any kind of factor? >> right now the choice of vaccine subtypes is based on all the monitoring that's been done around the world. we think this is the virus that will be circulating, so we really think it's going to be a good match. too late to mutate right now. >> year after year after year, people claim they get their flu shot and they immediately get sick right afterwards and they

say the vaccination got me sick. true or false? >> false. >> false, unequivocally? >> correct. the vaccine can give you local irritation at the site of where the vaccine was given. it can make people feel a little achy but it does not give you the flu. shouldn't be a dramatic illness after the vaccine. >> doctor, what about the length between the vaccine and the syndrome, is there any link? >> estimates are 1 out of 1 million vaccine doses might be associated. >> might be? >> might be, right. it's really a very rare event. actually, some people don't even know it's associated with flu, illness itself, more than the vaccine. >> we get these vaccinations every single year. why doesn't our body build any immunity to it? >> it does build immunity and lasts through the season but tends to fade with time. so, we really need to do an annual vaccine because the virus changes and because our response

fades over time. >> who shouldn't get a vaccine? >> under 6 months of age. that's about it. >> that's it. that's a very easy guideline to follow. ages 6 months and up, vaccines. dr. ellen o'connor. doctors say it's not too late to get vaccinated.

your thanksgiving meal will take a bigger bite out of your wallet this year. according to the american farm bureau's average survey, annual cost for ten people will run you $50. up $1 from last year. blame it on higher turkey, pumpkin pie mix and stuffing. officially now i'm hungry. that's it for this edition of nbc10 "@ issue." i'm keith jones. join me weekdays starting at

5:00 p.m. have a great sunday. over 12 million people

located right along the moscow river and known for some of the most beautiful architecture in the world. and a look now at the small sports a rena of the host of this fifth spot on the grand prix series. >> easily number one. >> that was beautiful.