Meeting the future terror threat.

• Author: Zubrod, Gordon A.D.
• Position: Report

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...