Meeting the future terror threat.
Zubrod, Gordon A.D.
On February 23 FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III addressed the
Council on Foreign Relations concerning the ongoing jihadi threat facing
the United States in the coming years. He began with a chilling
description of armed cadres in rubber rafts landing in a financial
capital and, before law enforcement became aware of their presence,
murdering large numbers of innocent civilians, setting buildings ablaze,
taking hostages, and putting an entire city under siege. The
terrorists' sophisticated technology? Cell phones, backpacks, and
small arms. Mueller was describing the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai,
but made it clear that the Mumbai attack was a template for future
jihadi attacks here in the United States and elsewhere in the world.
Mueller's point was that the Islamicists have, in an age of
globalization, decentralized and organized around local "soft"
targets, using unsophisticated and easily-acquired technology to wreak
destruction and death on a scale high enough to rob citizens of their
sense of safety; in other words, to terrorize the population.
Moreover, according to Mueller, the terrorists, although strongly
influenced by overseas terror groups, are now homegrown--recruited,
indoctrinated, and radicalized in our own backyards. This, the Director
warned, ought to "reinvigorate" U.S. intelligence efforts. He
quoted Wayne Gretzky on the principle of success in hockey: Most players
skate to where the puck has been; Gretzky skated to where the puck will
be. In the same way, stated Mueller, we have to know where the threat is
moving and need to get there first.
Mueller emphasized the need for filling the intelligence gaps
between cases, being flexible in gathering intelligence in different
environments, understanding the uses to which the Internet is being put
in advancing a radical agenda, and asking key questions about the
background and threat posed by specific individuals. The likelihood of
success, in the Director's view, lay in building partnerships with
law enforcement locally, nationally, and internationally for the purpose
of disrupting a first attack and, if one occurs, to be prepared for a
second wave of attacks.
Perhaps even more importantly, Mueller emphasized the critical
necessity of community outreach. He pointed to immigrant communities
that are reluctant to engage with law enforcement. Their cultural
baggage includes emigration from communities where their prior contacts
with law enforcement engendered fear and mistrust. Mueller noted that
"the communities from which we need the most help are those who
trust us the least." In fact, it is these immigrant communities
where recruitment by Islamicists is most successful.
Peggy Noonan, in a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal,
contrasted Mueller's speech with recent remarks before Congress by
the new Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, who referred to
acts of terrorism as "man-caused disasters" in a nuanced
effort to "move away from the politics of fear." Noonan wrote
that while Napolitano's remarks were "only a nuance ... her
use of language is a man-caused disaster."
Combatants and nations on both sides of the issue are presently
assessing the new administration's willingness to take the fight to
the enemy. There are consequences to "nuanced" responses in
the midst of war. Only time will tell whether America's response
will confirm Ms. Noonan's warning of a "man-caused
disaster" or whether we will skate to where the puck will be.
By Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, FBI
Review by Gordon A.D. Zubrod, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Middle
District of Pennsylvania
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Mueller%20Prepared%20Remards%202-23-09.pdf
