The Mutating Al-Qaeda Threat -Mitchell D. Silber
Ten years ago last month, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid boarded an American Airlines flight bound for Miami from Paris, intending to kill himself and all of the other passengers by detonating an explosive device he had concealed in his shoes.
What was unknown at the time is that Reid was not supposed to act alone. Saajid Badat - like Reid a British citizen - was supposed to ignite his own pair of explosive shoes on a different trans-Atlantic flight, but he dropped out in the plot's final stages.
A careful dissection of 16 of the most important "al-Qaeda" plots launched against the West since 1993 reveals a consistent trend.
They used men who radicalized to violence in Western cities such as Hamburg, Montreal, London and New York, who showed up on al-Qaeda's doorstep on their own initiative and then were trained, turned around and launched back at the West by al-Qaeda.
Whether it was the Madrid transit-system attacks of 2004, the bombings in London on July 7, 2005, or the New York City subway plot of September 2009, the bombers lived in the great cities of the West, were radicalized in the West and turned to violence in the West.
The writer is director of intelligence analysis for the New York Police Department.
(Washington Times)
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4 comments:
A scary trend that will hopefully not expand in scope. This is a risk just as legally entering travelers who stay to be educated in relevant areas was a risk at 9/11. A free society is also an open society to these risks but hyper-vigilance and the proper investment in intelligence will hopefully stay ahead of the terrorists.
Indeed...we need to be vigilant but remain an open society.
In this very regard i found a recent story about a group of Muslims in NYCity who protested the NY Police Department's anti-terror program as profiling...they declined to attend the Mayor's interfaith dinner.
I'm with the Mayor on this one.
I saw that. You saw at least one Rabbi joined them in their protest? He said he would not skip the dinner as he felt he should try to engage the mayor in a dialogue instead.
Yes, i did read about that rabbi.
Interestingly, President Obama has endorced the NY Police Dept's approach to anti-terror programs. Now that these clergy have polarized a perfectly effective program, it will be fascinating to see if Obama folds with the dangerously politically correct crowd.
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