SPY VS. SPY: FDD Senior Fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht says that al-Qaeda’s use of a double agent as a suicide-bomber reveals that the terrorist organization
is capable of running sophisticated clandestine operations with sustained deception.
Whereas al Qaeda is showing increasing proficiency, the same cannot be said for the CIA. Competent case officers can get duped by a good double. And the GID [Jordan’s intelligence service], whose skill has been exaggerated in fiction and film and by Hashemite-stroked American case officers, isn't a global service. Take it far from its tribal society, where it operates with admirable efficiency, and it is nothing to write home about. ...
[President Obama] did not come into office pledging to reform the CIA, only restrain it from aggressively interrogating al Qaeda terrorists. There is near zero chance that the president will attempt to improve the Agency operationally in the field. His counterterrorist adviser, John Brennan, is as institutional a case officer as Langley has ever produced. If Attorney General Eric Holder is so unwise as to bring any charges against a CIA officer for the rough interrogation of an al Qaeda detainee during the Bush administration, the president will likely find himself deluged with damaging CIA-authored leaks. Mr. Obama would be a fool to confront the CIA on two fronts.
But the president is likely to compensate for systemic weakness in American intelligence in substantial, effective ways. Mr. Obama has been much more aggressive than President George W. Bush was in the use of drone attacks and risky paramilitary operations. One can easily envision him expanding such attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere. ...
Obama may have foreclosed the possibility of the CIA again aggressively questioning jihadists, but he's kept the door wide open for the rendition of terrorists to countries like Jordan, where the GID does not abide by the Marquess of Queensbury rules in its interrogations. …
The deadly attack in Fort Hood, Texas, by Maj. Malik Hassan in November, the close call in the air above Detroit on Christmas Day, and now the double-agent suicide bombing in Khost have shocked America's counterterrorist system. Mr. Obama surely knows that one large-scale terrorist strike inside the U.S. could effectively end his presidency. He may at some level still believe that his let's-just-all-be-friends speech in Cairo last June made a big dent in the hatred that many faithful Muslims have for the U.S., but his practices on the ground are likely to be a lot less touchy-feely. This is all for the good. These three jihadist incidents ought to tell us that America's war with Islamic militancy is far -- far -- from being over.
More here.
The Washington Post’s David Ignatius says his sources cite
a series of warning signs that the agency wasn't paying enough attention to the counterintelligence threat posed by al-Qaeda. These danger signals weren't addressed because the agency underestimated its adversary and overestimated its own skills and those of its allies. …
As the Khost attack made painfully clear, the CIA needs better tradecraft for this conflict. …
Muslim extremists are using increasingly sophisticated tools -- sometimes the very techniques that have been deployed against them. One example is the software used by Hezbollah to analyze patterns of cellphone calling and expose an Israeli spy network in Lebanon last year. Iran, too, uses sophisticated pattern analysis to study which of its nuclear scientists might have been recruited by the West. …
More here.
GOING GREEN? FDD Freedom Scholar Michael Ledeen reads here that President Obama is considering helping Iranian dissidents. He’s dubious and suggests that
the re-evaluation demonstrates a grudging recognition that the Intelligence Community once again failed to understand events in Iran. Obama’s words in support of the Green Movement are indeed encouraging, but in order for the Wall Street Journal’s heading to be correct, the United States has to actually DO some things. Those things are easy, proper, inexpensive, and non-violent, just like the Green Movement itself.
Here a few such actions:
First, provide aid to the families of the political prisoners, and of the dissident martyrs. This should be accompanied by public calls for the release of the prisoners and an end to torture and all human rights violations in Iranian prisons;
Second, provide modern communications devices to dissidents. In the Cold War we sent fax machines to Soviet dissidents; today’s freedom fighters need modern telephones and servers;
Third, bring an end to the regime’s successful jamming of radio and TV broadcasts into the country (nowadays, BBC, VOA, PARS and Farda are effectively off the air, while Iranian broadcasts on the same Hotbird satellite–including no less than seventeen TV channels–broadcast with no difficulty. Iranians need to know what is going on in their own country, and they need to hear encouraging words from the West.
Simple, proper and non-violent, but effective measures against an evil, violent regime that is killing its own people and ours every single day.
More here.
Stanford’s Abbas Milani takes down Iranian Islamist regime defenders Flynt and Hillary Leverett:
For years, regime apologists in America have suggested that U.S. efforts to negotiate with Iran are half-hearted, or that all the clerics in Iran want is some respect. Events of the last seven months show the problem is not in Washington, but in Tehran, and with the nature of the regime. Khamenei knows that anti-Americanism is his raison d’etre. …
The U.S. can either stand with the people of Iran, and support their quest for democracy -- a democracy, incidentally, that offers the only solution to the nuclear problem as well -- or it can side with those who defend the moribund regime. In the past, every time the United States has listened to the Leveretts of the day, it has reaped nothing but the wrath of the people and a loss of influence. The same would happen this time.
More here.
CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR: Perhaps in an effort to answer critics who have charged that he doesn’t seem to understand that a global conflict is underway, President Obama said last week:
We are at war, we are at war against al Qaeda …
Well, yes, but somehow I can’t imagine Churchill or FDR saying
We are at war, we are at war with the Wehrmacht.
Why not? Because we were at war not only with the armed forces of Germany. We also were at war with violent, supremacist ideologies (e.g. Nazi, Fascist, Japanese militarist) intent on the destruction and conquest of the democratic nations.
As we are again today (e.g. radical Islam in both its Shia and Sunni forms).
My column last week looked at Paul Johnson's history of the 1930s, a time that seems remarkably similar to the present. Churchill understood the threat early on. Most others did not.
WHILE EUROPE SNEERED: Bruce Bawer reflects on the strange, ominous and growing alliance in Europe among radical Muslims, Communists, socialists, “organized anti-racists,” (defenders of even the most illiberal aspects of immigrant cultures) and the media. Fascinating -- and distressing, and it’s here.
ONE IN FIVE: Reuters reports:
A classified Pentagon assessment shows one in five detainees released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay has joined or is suspected of joining militant groups like al Qaeda, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. ...
A previous Pentagon assessment last April showed that 14 percent of former detainees had joined or were suspected of joining militant groups, up from 11 percent in December 2008. ...
Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the new Pentagon assessment showed the percentage had grown to 20 percent. ... There are 198 prisoners left at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, which once held 750, Pentagon officials said. Among those still being held there, roughly 91 are Yemeni.
FDD’s Tom Joscelyn has much more here.
PERHAPS THEY WERE LIKE THE VIDEO GAMES MY SON PLAYS: ABC News is reporting that:
The leader of the al Qaeda group that claimed responsibility for trying to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day was released from the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorists on the condition that he be sent to a terrorist rehab center in Saudi Arabia. . . .
The rehabilitation program is intended to deprogram radicalized militants who have been convicted of terror-related offenses by offering psychological counseling, classes in more moderate forms of Islam, and alternative ways to vent their energy, including art therapy, swimming, and playing sports and video games.
ABOVE THE LAW: Why did President Obama grant Interpol -- the international police force -- immunity from American law? Andy McCarthy, Co-Chairman of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism says this raises serious problems because if:
Interpol suddenly did start conducting operations that affected the liberty and privacy rights of Americans -- whether on U.S. soil or overseas -- it would now be immune from the provisions of law that can be invoked against, say, the FBI or the New York City Police Department. And if any American or official American entity -- a private citizen, the FBI, a court, or Congress -- wanted to inquire into what Interpol was up to, it would be unable to do so. The Obama order makes Interpol’s archives and other assets unreachable by search warrant, subpoena (administrative, judicial, or congressional), or the Freedom of Information Act.
More here.
DRONES: The Wall Street Journal notes that
President Obama has embraced and ramped up the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. As tactic and as a technology, drones are one of the main U.S. advantages that have emerged from this long war. (IEDs are one of the enemy's.) Yet their use isn't without controversy, and it took nerve for the White House to approve some 50 strikes last year, exceeding the total in the last three years of the Bush Administration.
From Pakistan to Yemen, Islamic terrorists now fear the Predator and its cousin, the better-armed Reaper. So do critics on the left in the academy, media and United Nations; they're calling drones an unaccountable tool of "targeted assassination" that inflames anti-American passions and kills civilians. At some point, the President may have to defend the drone campaign on military and legal grounds.
The case is easy. Not even the critics deny its success against terrorists. Able to go where American soldiers can't, the Predator and Reaper have since 9/11 killed more than half of the 20 most wanted al Qaeda suspects, the Uzbek, Yemeni and Pakistani heads of allied groups and hundreds of militants. Most of those hits were in the last four years. …
While this aggressive aerial bombing is commendable against a dangerous enemy, it also reveals the paradox of President Obama's antiterror strategy. On the one hand, he's willing to kill terrorists in the field, but he's unwilling to hold these same terrorists under the rules of war at Guantanamo if we capture them in the field. We can kill them as war fighters, but if they're captured they become common criminals.
More here.
MIRANDIZING TERRORISTS: Charles Krauthammer is puzzled:
John Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, professes an inability to see any “downsides” to treating Abdulmutallab as an ordinary criminal -- with a right to remain silent -- a view with which 71 percent of likely voters sensibly disagree.
The administration likes to defend itself by invoking a Bush precedent: Wasn’t the shoe bomber treated the same way?
Yes. And it was a mistake, but in the context of the time understandable. That context does not remotely exist today. …
To be sure, after a few initial misguided statements, Obama did get somewhat serious about the Christmas Day attack. First, he instituted high-level special screening for passengers from 14 countries, the vast majority of which are Muslim with significant Islamist elements. This is the first rational step away from today’s idiotic random screening and toward, yes, a measure of profiling -- i.e., focusing on the population most overwhelmingly likely to be harboring a suicide bomber.
Obama also sensibly suspended all transfers of Yemenis from Guantanamo. Nonetheless, Obama insisted on repeating his determination to close the prison, invoking his usual rationale of eliminating a rallying cry and recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.
Imagine that Guantanamo were to disappear tomorrow, swallowed in a giant tsunami. Do you think there’d be any less recruiting for al-Qaeda in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, London?
Jihadism’s list of grievances against the West is not only self-replenishing but endlessly creative. Osama bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa commanding universal jihad against America cited as its two top grievances our stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia and Iraqi suffering under anti-Saddam sanctions.
Today, there are virtually no U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. And the sanctions regime against Iraq was abolished years ago. Has al-Qaeda stopped recruiting? Ayman al-Zawahiri often invokes Andalusia in his speeches. For those not steeped in the multivolume lexicon of Islamist grievances, Andalusia refers to Iberia, lost by Islam to Christendom -- in 1492.
This is a fanatical religious sect dedicated to establishing the most oppressive medieval theocracy and therefore committed to unending war with America not just because it is infidel but because it represents modernity with its individual liberty, social equality (especially for women), and profound tolerance (religious, sexual, philosophical). You going to change that by evacuating Guantanamo?
More here.
LOST INTEL? Andy McCarthy calls Abdulmutallab
an untapped well of operational intelligence.
He’d been training with al-Qaeda for weeks in Yemen, now one of the hottest hubs of terror plotting. He was undoubtedly in a position to identify who had recruited him, who had dispatched him on his mission, and who had trained him in fashioning and detonating chemical explosives. He was in a position to tell us what al-Qaeda knows, that Janet Napolitano apparently doesn’t, about our porous airline-security system. He was, moreover, almost certainly in a position to pinpoint paramilitary training facilities, to tell us about other al-Qaeda trainees being taught to do what he was trying to do, and to fill many gaps in our knowledge of the terror network’s hierarchy, routines, and governmental connections in Yemen.
That was not to be. …
President Obama could have designated Abdulmutallab an enemy combatant, detained him as a war prisoner, denied him counsel, and had him interrogated until we’d exhausted his reservoir of information. Indeed, the president could still do that. He could direct the attorney general to table the indictment. Then, some time down the road, he could hand Abdulmutallab back to the Justice Department for prosecution. No, we wouldn’t be able to use the fruits of his military interrogation against him. But as the indictment filed Wednesday shows, we don’t need those statements to convict him. We could convict him now.
More here.
THE SAUDI CONNECTION: Ed Husain argues that Yemen is
not a willing home to al-Qaeda -- it is victim to an ideology exported from neighbouring Saudi Arabia. …
We are now being told that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) runs terrorist camps and this justifies "pre-emptive strikes" on Yemen. But what is AQAP except leading Saudi terrorists -- Naser al-Wahishi and Said al-Shihri -- who have now set up shop in Yemen, with a ragtag army of 200 men? Who is Osama Bin Laden except a Saudi who wanted political reforms in his own country, failed, and then turned his guns on the western backers of the Saudi regime?
Time and again, from September 11 to the attempted Detroit-bound airline attack last week, there are Saudi fingerprints -- ideological and practical -- on terrorist attacks and yet western powers stab in the dark in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now possibly Iran and Yemen with the unconvincing language of making us safer in our streets here. …
The strongest weapons available to our enemies are ideas of religious supremacy and perennial confrontation, backed with logistical networks, and repressive political conditions that help strengthen their narrative and network. Unless we in the west can combat their ideas with better ideas, puncture the alluring narrative of victimhood politics, question their self-assured martyrdom, and end perceptions of incessant enmity with non-Muslims then we will be confined to dealing with symptoms of terrorist attacks rather than healing the underlying causes. Nearly a decade after 9/11, when compared with military budgets, where is investment in these soft-power, counter radicalisation projects?
More here.
SAY NOTHING: The Wall Street Journal notes
The World Trade Center trials were successful in winning convictions, and they were understandable because at the time we didn't understand the war we were in. But more than a decade later, the real news in these Administration statements is what they don't claim: Whether Ramzi Yousef told U.S. interrogators anything of actionable value about al Qaeda and its future terror plans.
We now know that when Yousef was captured, in 1995, al Qaeda leaders were working feverishly to attack American targets. Yousef's uncle is none other than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11 and one of Yousef's co-conspirators in the failed Bojinka plot to blow up airliners across the Pacific Ocean.
Yet as far as we know, Yousef told U.S. interrogators little or nothing about KSM's plots and strategy once he was in U.S. custody. This isn't surprising, since once he was in the criminal justice system Yousef was granted a lawyer and all the legal protections against cooperating with U.S. interrogators. To this day, we don't recall any official claim that Yousef has provided useful intelligence of the kind that KSM, Abu Zubaydah and other al Qaeda leaders later did when they were interrogated by the CIA.
More here.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Mark Steyn writes that
this “war” is about the intersection of Islam and the West …
[I]f you can’t even address what you’re up against with any honesty, you can’t blame the other side for drawing entirely reasonable conclusions about your faintheartedness in taking them on.
More here.
DIVERSITY VISAS: Andy McCarthy notes that
the State Department has issued 1,011 "diversity" visas to Yemen in a program begun under the Bush 41 administration -- and continued apace during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. "Diversity visas," the report explains, "are designed to encourage immigration from countries that do not otherwise send significant numbers of immigrants to the United States."
Mark Krikorian reponds:
We've been issuing "diversity visas" for immigration through the Visa Lottery for 20 years now. The top countries for the current lottery are here, including Nigeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Morocco, Turkey, and Iran. Ukraine is the only one of the top countries that's not either majority-Muslim or home to a large Muslim minority.
In my House testimony a few years back, I'd calculated that about one-third of visa lottery winners came from Muslim-majority countries and that the lottery was a disproportionately important immigration vehicle for Muslims. …
Most Yemenis came here through family-chain migration (in 2008 1,631 out of 1,872), and most Sudanese as refugees (2,683 out of 3,598). So while getting rid of the lottery would be a security improvement, the rest of our immigration system is also a problem.
THE WAR WITHOUT A NAME – OR STRATEGY: Ilan Berman writes that when it comes to the larger struggle against radical Islam
there's still a great deal to be desired. To be sure, President Obama has gone on record as saying the United States is at war with al-Qaeda. And so it is.
But the challenge facing the U.S. is substantially broader than just the Bin Laden network. It involves a resurgent Iran, the world's most active state sponsor of terrorism, which is now within striking distance of possessing a nuclear capability. It also encompasses the undecided voters in the Muslim world -- an enormous constituency of over a billion souls whose "hearts and minds" the West needs to win if it is to have any hope of persevering against Islamic radicalism.
For the moment, official Washington shows few signs of even understanding that these issues are interrelated - let alone formulating a comprehensive strategy to tackle each.
More here.
IRAN AND AQ – TOGETHER AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME? The Washington Times editorializes:
Some intelligence analysts downplay the idea of cooperation between al Qaeda and Iran because the two are ideological foes. But both detest the United States and have mutual interest in collaborative efforts that hurt U.S. interests. …
On Dec. 23, Yemeni House Speaker Shaykh Yahya Ali al-Rai said in an interview with the Saudi press that Iranian support for insurgents in Yemen was "beyond any doubt" and that "Iranian interference aims primarily at transforming Yemen into an arena for settling political scores." Tehran most likely seeks to make Yemen an arena for the kind of proxy wars already being waged in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Obama administration, eager to curry favor with the Islamic regime in Tehran, has downplayed the Iranian connection to al Qaeda in Yemen. In December, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman noted "theories" of Iranian involvement in Yemen, but said the United States does not have "independent information" corroborating them. In any case, he said it was in the "collective interest" of countries in the region to "narrow" the conflict in Yemen, though this assertion seems more based on a fervent wish for peace than a realistic assessment of Iranian interests.
More here.
TRADEOFFS: Dorothy Rabinowitz writes:
No guardians of privacy rights had weighed in earlier against the body imaging scanners than the American Civil Liberties Union. In October, 2007, the ACLU issued a statement decrying the use of [full body scanners] as "an assault on the essential dignity of passengers."
"We are," the agency declared, "not convinced it is the right thing for America." This reasoning is clear. The right thing is for America to reject the scanners. Its citizens may then face increased risk of being blown up in mid-air but their privacy would remain inviolate to the end. Who could ask for anything more?
More here.
SECURITY THEATER: From the Globe & Mail:
Airport security is a “show designed to make people feel better,” security expert Bruce Schneier says. It might catch stupid terrorists, but certainly not smart ones. He says only two things have made flying safer since 9/11: the reinforcement of cockpit doors and the fact that passengers now know how to resist hijackers.
But in the face of seeming failure, the authorities must be seen to take decisive action. This is the reason why those of you with weak bladders are now advised to take the train.
Some societies (such as Israel) build walls to keep the killers out. If this involves a certain collective punishment of the killers' neighbours, they figure, then so be it. Ours must be the first society in history that has tried to stop the killers by imposing collective punishment on ourselves.
More here.
WHAT DID ABDULMUTALLAB DESTROY? Rich Lowry says it’s
the notion that terrorism is the byproduct of a few, specific U.S. policies and of our image abroad. This view dominates the Left and animates the Obama administration. It informs its drive to shutter Guantanamo Bay, to get out of Iraq, and to cater to “international opinion.” If we are only nice and likable enough, goes the theory, the Abdul Mutallabs of the world will never be tempted to violent mayhem.
More here.
Former Governor and 9/11 Commissioner Tom Kean writes:
[T]he government’s handling of the intelligence leading up to the attack was eerily reminiscent of one of the most shocking -- and relatively underreported -- revelations to come out of the 9/11 commission’s hearings….
Despite the best efforts of the 9/11 commission and other intelligence reformers, budgetary authority over intelligence remains unaligned with substantive responsibility. Turf battles persist among intelligence agencies. Power is sought while responsibility is deflected. The drift toward inertia continues. …
The attempted Christmas bombing carries an eerie echo of the failures that led to 9/11 because those fundamental flaws persist. The challenge for President Obama and Congress is to resist superficial sound-bite solutions and undertake the harder task of reinventing our national security system. As the president stated, “The margin for error is slim, and the consequences of failure can be catastrophic.”
More here.
MANIPULATED INTELLIGENCE: Shouldn’t there be a Congressional investigation?
Obama's top advisers say they no longer believe the key finding of a much disputed National Intelligence Estimate about Iran, published a year before President George W. Bush left office, which said that Iranian scientists ended all work on designing a nuclear warhead in late 2003.
More here.
-Cliff May
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
"We will never forget the blood of our Emir, [Pakistan Taliban leader] Baitullah Mahsoud. We will continue to avenge his blood in America and elsewhere. This is a pledge taken by all the muhajireen, who were hosted by Baitullah Mahsoud. By Allah, we shall never forget our Emir, Baitullah Mahsoud, who used to kiss the hands of the muhajireen, out of the love he had for them in his heart. We shall never forget our Emir, Baitullah Mahsoud.
We shall never forget that he said that Sheik Osama Bin Laden was not on [Pakistani] soil, but if he were to come, we would protect him. He was true to his word, and he paid the price for these words in his blood. Allah willing, his successor, the Emir of Taliban Pakistan, Hakimullah, will follow the same path."
(01/09/2010) Jordanian double-agent and suicide bomber Hamam Al-Balawi, aired on Al-Jazeera TV, translated by MEMRI.
"These terrorist groups are scorpions in a bottle. They’re like a stew – once it’s made it’s hard to separate the ingredients."
(01/10/2010) US intelligence official, speaking anonymously to Washington Post, (commenting on the links among al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups).
"Our intelligence community failed to connect the dots … This was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had."
(01/06/2010) President Obama, after meeting with national security advisers about a terror plot to bring down a commercial jetliner on Christmas.
IN THE MEDIA
Is the Importance of Terrorist Ideology a Myth?
01/11/2010, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, The Long War Journal: Threat Matrix
Yesterday, Jessica Stern published an op-ed in the Washington Post debunking what she describes as "5 myths about who becomes a terrorist." Terrorism-myth-debunking pieces tend to be fairly automatic because there is a standard set of myths that researchers have pretty thoroughly disproved: that terrorists are poor and ill educated, that they are mentally ill, etc.
The Meaning of al Qaeda's Double Agent
01/8/2010, Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Wall Street Journal
The recent death in Afghanistan of seven American counterterrorist officers, one Jordanian intelligence operative, and one exploding al Qaeda double agent ought to give us cause to reflect on the real capabilities of the Central Intelligence Agency and al Qaeda.
Nineteen Thirty Something
01/7/2010, Clifford D. May, Scripps Howard News Service
A few days of vacation in the Rocky Mountains is a good time to catch up on one's reading. But if I was looking for escape from the issues on which I spend most of my time, I didn't find it in "Churchill," the brief but penetrating biography by Paul Johnson, among the world's greatest living historians.
African Hot Spots in 2010
01/7/2010, Dr. J. Peter Pham, World Defense Review
As I have been wont to do in this column space at the beginning of each year, the following is a broad survey of the most significant conflicts or flashpoints which will require the particular attention of the United States and its African and other international partners in the coming year.
Connecting the Dots
01/7/2010, Claudia Rosett, Forbes.com
President Barack Obama has just denounced the "screw up" in which his own intelligence team had the information to nab the Christmas Day underwear bomber but "failed to connect those dots."
Jihadism's War on Democracy
01/7/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, Debating the War of Ideas, edited by Eric D. Patterson and John Gallagher
The Jihadist (read it as an ideological movement) campaign against democracies began in the early 20th century and targeted Arab and Muslim societies first, then liberal democracies in the West particularly after the Cold War.
Washington is Narrowing its Options on Iran
01/5/2010, Tony Badran, NOW Lebanon
December 31 has come and gone, and with it the deadline set by the Obama administration for Iran to respond to the latest offer on its nuclear program. Where does the United States' policy on Iran now stand? Recentreports have come out that the administration is preparing to go once again to the UN Security Council in February to seek sanctions.
The Sick Man of Africa
01/5/2010, Dr. J. Peter Pham, The National Interest Online
While a great deal of attention has been focused on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab-the al-Qaeda-linked Nigerian who tried blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day as it was en route from Amsterdam to Detroit - it is the terrorist's home country which policy makers and analysts in Washington and other capitals should really be worried about.
The Terrorists Are In Charge
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, FoxNews.com
In 2002, one would-be shoe bomber forced millions of travelers to take off their shoes. In 1996, terrorists planned to bring down aircraft on transatlantic flights by smuggling liquid explosives onto plane. They were thwarted but they succeeded in preventing passengers from bringing liquids into airline terminals.
Africa's New Horror
01/4/2010, Dr. J. Peter Pham, Foreign Policy
Think the only Sudan crisis is in Darfur, or that the horror there is winding down? You're wrong. There's a new Sudan calamity in the making, and it may well come in 2010 with a unilateral declaration of independence by the enclave of South Sudan.
Creation Myths
01/4/2010, Claudia Rosett, Columbia Magazine
"Indispensable, if imperfect" is how President Barack Obama has described the United Nations, praising it as "vital to America's efforts to create a better, safer world." Yet, when it comes to nailing down just what those imperfections are, views vary widely. Critics of the UN have faulted it over the years for everything from being irrelevant to intrusive, timid to overreaching, inept to pernicious.
American Morning
01/11/2010, Reuel Marc Gerecht, CNN
The Khost bombing and the CIA's counterintelligence abilities.
Fox and Friends
01/7/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, Fox News Channel
How to improve airport security.
Quick Hits
01/6/2010, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, CBN News
Decision to try Abdulmutallab in civilian court.
Your World with Neal Cavuto
01/5/2010, Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland, Fox News Channel
How to improve airport security.
News Watch
01/5/2010, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, CBN News
The Khost bombing.
Newsweek On Air
01/11/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, Syndicated
Reforming airport security.
The Mark Carbone Show
01/11/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, CBS Radio
Reviewing US counter terrorism strategies.
On The Line
01/8/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, Voice of America
Homegrown terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan.
At Issue with Ben Merens
01/7/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, Wisconsin Public Radio
How to respond to the Christmas day terror plot.
Morning Edition
01/5/2010, Reuel Marc Gerecht, National Public Radio
The Abdulmutallab case.
The Fred Thompson Show
01/5/2010, Clifford D. May, Syndicated
Protests in Iran.
Nothing But Truth
01/5/2010, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, America Family Radio Network
The Abdulmutallab case.
The Francene Show
01/5/2010, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, WHAS - Louisville (KY)
The Abdulmutallab case.
Dateline: Washington
01/5/2010, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Radio America
The future of counterterrorism policy in Yemen.
Mornings with Keith and Gail
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, KCOL - Fort Collins (CO)
Airport security.
Steve & Leah in the Morning
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, WERC - Birmingham (AL)
Airport security.
Chip Franklin Mornings
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, KOGO - San Diego (CA)
Airport security.
Armstrong & Getty
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, KNEW - San Francisco (CA)
Airport security.
The Morning Show with Sean & Frank
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, WCBM - Baltimore (MD)
Airport security.
The Morning Show with Jim Polito
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, WTAG - Worcester (MA)
Airport security.
CNY Morning News with Joe Galuski
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, WSYR - Syracuse (NY)
Airport security.
The Charlie Parker Show
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, WOAI - San Antonio (TX)
Airport security.
Delaware this AM
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, WILM - Wilmington (DE)
Airport security.
Pensacola's Morning News
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, WNRP - Pensacola (FL)
Airport security.
Allman in the Morning
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, KFTK - St. Louis (MO)
Airport security.
Morning Newswatch
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, KZRG - Joplin (MO)
Airport security.
The Helen Glover Show
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, WHJJ - Providence (RI)
Airport security.
The Good Morning Show
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, KFAB - Omaha (NE)
Airport security.
Wills & Snyder in the Morning
01/5/2010, Dr. Walid Phares, WTAM - Cleveland (OH)
Airport security.