The Latest - Radicalization
Are More Underwear Bomb Plots in Progress?
Yesterday’s news that the CIA had recently thwarted a plot to destroy a plane bound for the U.S. using explosives concealed in the bomber’s underpants has been followed by the alarming news that more bombers may be out there. more...
Al Qaeda Spins Failed Plots as Successes Because They Ramp Up Security and Drain US Treasury
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, blamed for a thwarted plot to bring down an airplane using explosives concealed in the bomber’s underpants, has emerged as likely the most potent Al Qaeda-affiliated entity. more...
Assessing Interpretations of the New Bin Laden Documents
The documents recovered from Abbottabad that were released on Thursday represent the largest new trove of information about al Qaeda to be made public in years. more...
The Bin Laden Files
West Point's Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) has released 17 declassified documents captured during the May 2011 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. more...
Al Qaeda Graphic Hinting at More New York Attacks Likely Bluster and Not a Real Threat
An image posted on jihadi forums Monday caught the NYPD’s interest as a possible threat. In it, the city’s famous skyline at sunset is overlaid with the text: “Al Qaeda: Coming Soon Again in New York.” more...
Jamshid Muhtorov, the Islamic Jihad Union, and Joshua Foust
As regular Gunpowder & Lead readers will know, one of my preferred genres of writing is known informally as the “evisceration.” My recent piece on Fawaz Gerges’s proclamation that al Qaeda has died is one example of this genre (the thrust of which is probably evident from its rather descriptive name). more...
Five Trends Likely to Shape the U.S.’s National Security This Decade
My last post for Gunpowder & Lead began with the entirely accurate observation that few forms of writing are consistently less satisfying than “five myths” pieces. more...
The Death of al Qaeda: Fawaz Gerges Edition
Few forms of writing are consistently less satisfying than “five myths” pieces. The genre, by its nature, tends toward shallow analysis and the propagation of conventional wisdom under the guise of puncturing conventional wisdom. more...
Al Qaeda Round-Up, 2012
As we enter a new year, I wanted to outline the contours of, and analyze, a few issues that are likely to feature prominently in the fight between the U.S. and al Qaeda in 2012. more...
America’s 4-Prong Strategy for Somalia
After years of strategic drift in Somalia, the U.S. appears to have developed a new strategy for this battle-torn country. This four-part approach, which is based on our research and confirmed by U.S. government sources more...
Terrorism and the Coming Decade
Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, US officials are speaking openly of Al Qaeda’s impending death. Defense secretary Leon Panetta declared in early July of this year that the US is “within reach” of “strategically defeating” the jihadist group more...
What Will Anwar al-Awlaki’s Death Really Mean for al-Qaeda?
The apparent death of Anwar al-Awlaki -- a U.S. citizen hiding in Yemen, where he had worked with the local al-Qaeda branch -- comes amid a rash of bad news for al-Qaeda and its affiliates. more...
Bin Laden’s Death: Conspiracy Theories Edition
Last night a student journalist sent me an inquiry about Osama bin Laden’s death — inquiring whether I “really believe Osama Bin Laden is dead.” Blake Hounshell quipped, probably correctly, that I “should have just written, ‘Yes.’” more...
A Report Card for Homeland Security
While the U.S. faces severely constrained resources, the threat posed by violent non-state actors is unlikely to disappear soon. America is shackled by an economy that's in shambles and over $14 trillion in national debt. more...
Al-Qaeda Is Winning
A decade after the attacks of September 11, 2001, national security opinion leaders are converging around the ideas that the threat of terrorism has been substantially reduced over the past 10 years, and that al-Qaeda is on its death bed. more...
Al-Qaeda Isn’t Beaten Yet
Adecade after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. officials are openly declaring that victory over al-Qaeda is imminent. "Al-Qaeda is sort of on the ropes and taking a lot of shots to the body and the head," White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan told the Associated Press on Aug. 31. more...
Why al-Qaeda is Winning
One of al-Qaeda's major goals has been satisfied: America's economy is far weaker now than it was 10 years ago. In 1999, not only was the U.S. economy strong, president Bill Clinton thought the United States would be rid of its national debt by 2015. more...
Declaring War on the ‘Far Enemy’
On Aug. 23, 1996, Osama bin Laden, within a few months of arriving in Afghanistan, issued a manifesto proclaiming himself at war with the world's only remaining superpower. more...
Al Qaeda, the Internet, and the Arab Spring
On Thursday, I was a panelist at a National Counterterrorism Center-sponsored conference on the global threat posed by al Qaeda; my panel focused on terrorist use of the Internet. This entry is adapted from my remarks, which were forward-looking in nature. more...
Even Dead, Osama Has a Winning Strategy (Hint: It’s Muhammad Ali’s)
Osama bin Laden is dead. And the Obama administration that killed him is smelling the successful conclusion to the war on terrorism. “There will come a time when they simply can no longer replenish their ranks.” more...
Experts
Director, Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization