they used encrypted applications allowing them to conceal plans from law enforcement. joining me now former cia operative bob baer and also the president of the security firm crowd strike, shawn. great to have you here. tremendous amount of experience to talk to on these topics. bob, i want to start with you. new abc news/ the washington post poll shows this morning 70% of those surveyed are not confident in the government s ability to stop a lone wolf attack. i wonder if that s sort of something we got to live with, right? because are there really ways that you could stop true lone wolves who don t talk to anybody conceivably before they carry out an attack like this? is that the truly invisible plot for counterterror officials? i think that s their worst nightmare. they ve been talking about this for years now the people they can t see that worries them the most. you look at san bernardino and as far as you know what i ve
question becomes how and perhaps by whom, right? no question, listen, the sad fact is, it s very easy to become radicalized today. the paris attacks, i was told by french investigators, the radicalization process today, typically in the past, their experience had been, it would take months, now it can happen in two or three weeks. it s happening so quickly it s hard for them to keep up. we don t know how long it took here but it just speaks to the difficulty in tracking this kind of thing as it happens. and we know groups such as isis and others have a very powerful social media presence, they ve been fantastic at magnetically attracting recruits to this extremist cause. that s one thing. you heard the president say just a short time ago this possibility it was terrorism. the president saying that from the oval office often unless there was something to back that unand we re seeing now one reason why that may be. again, as evan perez was reporting there, law enforcement, counterterro
from the beginning, counterterror officials, law enforcement officials, looking at all of these things, multiple shooters, the weapons that they had, this speaks to forward planning. they don t know the motive, but to them, very early on, it didn t look like a crime of passion. but then you have this confusion because he was at that holiday party. there s talk of a possible dispute. you and i covered these things, crimes of passion, very rarely do you have the weapons stashed. you come up with military gear, an escape plan, et cetera. these are hard questions that got to be answered. there s no question about it. and it s been very tough from these guys from the beginning. remember, they got a call this was at the developmental center. there are people develop mentally valued there. and they found out it was the
and i ve talked to u.s. intelligence officials, counterterror officials, who have been watching this as well. is it possible that groups such as isis would use this flood of migrants to sneak more people in? but i should also note this, john. that even if that is true, the fact that people from isis, cisse supporters, isis veterans from syria, before this flood of migrants, were already returning to europe, because you have hundreds of europeans who have gone to fight there, and using their passports, have come back even before you had this migrant influx. and, in addition to that, what we know about this investigation, as you noted, just before, is that at least one of those who took part was french, was local, in effect. so someone who may not have had to come in from anywhere, but was radicalized here and took part in these attacks. it s a very complicated issue. it s extremely political sensitive, but it is an interesting development, for sure. and indeed, jim, it is what the int
advantage. today, defense secretary ashton carter said they re taking dangerous advantage of yemen s collapse. you see them making great gains on the ground there, as they try to take territory, seize territory. reporter: u.s. counterterror officials consider al qaeda in the arabian peninsula one of the most severe terror threats to the u.s. homeland and to aviation. the group s master bombmaker still remains on the loose in yemen. aqap is a group we re very concerned with. we all know that aqap has the ambition to strike western targets, including the united states. that s why we ve long conducted counterterrorism operations against aqap. reporter: those counterterrorism operations greatly diminished after u.s. special forces tracking the militants had to evacuate the country last month. the u.s. embassy and