it has to be scaled. the u.s. government needs to put together some task force and look at all the different types of well-known places where the crowds will start to come together. a sporting events in the cities and all the other national and religious places where the crowds form, and then start to put up counterterrorist measures so that the bollards, when they are brought in with the control officers, i will add another one, probably one of israel s best-kept counterterrorism secrets. plainclothes officers. the more eyeballs you have sprinkled undercover, the more the force multiplier you have. the problem in this country is that we do not allow the plainclothes officers to get involved. that s for liability reasons. that needs to change. trace: jim hansen, i know you differ on this on this producing instead of securing the side, you should secure the source or make sure that the source is preempted from these types of attacks by making sure that the muslims assemble and
of the israeli counterterrorist unit. he is in los angeles and joins me now. and the fact, aaron, that this was a low-tech attack, in other words, that there was no sophistication like a suicide vest or anything like that, makes it much harder for counterterrorist agencies to detect this type of thing because there might not have been any training abroad or even any direct communication with a terrorist group like isis. well, exactly right. which is why the security apparatus as far as defense goes inside of england, which is literally a terror a siege at this point, a city under siege, has to be dramatically increased. monuments, national structures, schools. let s just think about other places where three non-affiliated wannabe jihadists who can grab machetes, blades, and take a vehicle can also create acts of terror. there s thousands of
and it was just horrific. well that poor little boy. well cnn national security analyst skeef hall joins from us tucson arizona. good to have you with us. the obvious situation is why didn t the intelligence officials in this case the brits counterterrorism why didn t they why didn t they intervene before hand? why didn t they pick this up on the radar? give us your assessment of basically how efficient brisht counterterrorist officials are? how do they measure zblup the british counterinterrelation system is extremely good. and really the it s not emotionally satisfying. but at the end of the day it s just extremely difficult, the fact of the matter is, to try to track each and every attempted terrorist attack, especially if it s dsh a single ton type of i can t which as far as we know right now it was. that s not to say that it was a lone wolf style attack, somebody
authorities are trying to find out who was behind this. joining us now, cnn national security analyst and author, and former cia counterterrorist official. can you imagine for 90 minutes that sound blaring in your hometown? people there thought i mean, that s the emergency system that alerts people to either severe weather, say like a tornado or bombing or missile strike. people didn t know what to make of what was happening. how did this happen? so, no, they absolutely scary. here s the bigger issue is you worry about people will ignore sirens that come in handy, in particular during climate events. it looks like this was a not sophisticated, but a direct attack, someone clearly wanted to get into the system. my mind immediately goes to an insider threat so they are probably looking at the people, did someone get recently fired with access to the codes?
whoever is responsible for it has been neutralized or stopped or whether there are multiple incidents under way in london. unfortunately, london has a fair amount of experience with terrorism. and as a result, how would you evaluate their ability to respond to something that sounds like a call for a gunshot? oh, well now, you know, certainly after the 7/7 attacks in the previous decade, the british have amped up their armed response throughout the city. it s not like it used to be with unarmed bobbies everywhere. they have very, very strong counterterrorist. they have unmarked patrol vehicles all over the place. they look like bmw m6s. but they are four-man s.w.a.t. teams. you ll not get away with anything if you do it in a high-profile place like this or some other major tourist area like trafalgar square. what you re going to get is