breaking news, a deadly terror attack in new york city blocks from the world trade center. i want to bring in michael smith a tix terrorism analyst that testified before congressional committee. good to have you on. today i testified before congress on isis and terror.goo. today i testified before congress on isis and terror. before the day is out we re attacked here in united states what do you make of the attack in new york. i m still trying to make sense of it. this afternoon i looked at television channels trying to discern whether news reports might have something to do with the group and we started to see a flow of information posting about the news stories that rapidly transitioned into
in touch with central command in some part of syria and iraq and important understand isis exportation of jihad. they started making placns in te advance of the establishment of the kayla fit that it would one day crumble and they would dispatch all these fighters into europe, asia all over the world middle east of course to create cells that could coordinate and plan attacks without having anybody in the upper echon of isis to know about it. that s the what is known as counter terrorism circles as the virtual entrepreneurs who coordinate these things through the internet. virtual entrepreneur. yeah. my question all evening has been, we keep hearing le wolf, can you have a lone wolf? phrase and i think it is well past it sell by date. in fact most of the cases we
have a lot more communication going on between law enforcement which is not occurring at the same level over in euro. i think this is why we inrcontinental convenient in a sophisticated plan a lot quicker than they can in europe. he yelled god is great. first language for these guys is russian. a lot of them coming from the former soviet union and radicalized through civil war and campaigns being waged in these republics. the two former war ministers of isis last guy reportedly killed by the coalition not long ago was a tajic police commander in an elite squad known as oman
security analyst, and law enforcement analysts, good evening to all oyou. thank you for coming on. michael what stands out to you. this is a coordinated attack. the fact that pledge add leejance to isis in the form of a letter in the van. goes back to the isis mo in 2014 when their former spokesman issued a global injunction that muslims couldn t join the ranks of isi on the battlefld there should take up arms whereve they are, pick up a rock, smash down the infidels with a rock or get behind the wheel of a car. i ve heard of attacking around the world like this. it definitely is the hall marks of jihadist. the fact he said he did it in the name of isis how does that affect investigators. they will find out if he is
toad that except there is a degree of difference if you think of isis as being an enterprise or eco system between what we see, say, in europe or in the middle east and maybe what we re seeing today, i put caveats on what we re seeing today. we don t even know now if there were co-conspirators in the united states who helped him plan his attack let alone the kind of a contacts he had abroad. question is is it a loose affiliation with the eco system or much tighter and this was directed, based on what we re seeing right now now, you have to aume it was probably loose based on the information. i have to say the certainty of the new york pice commissioner solo attack.lieve that this is a i think they would not say that unless there was some informatn to lead them to believe that. they have no interest in, sort, minimizing the risk at this stage, they want to protect new