not the united states anymore, but russia and that s because of russia s brutal campaign of air strikes in syria. the fact that so many sunni muslims inside places like aleppo have been killed in russian air strikes. that s angered the jihadi community and energized them. and groups like al qaeda and isis have said we re going to hit russia and there s some concern that some of these that have joined isis and other jihadi groups and there are a very large number of them, several thousand, may come back to russia and launch attacks. we ve seen some of the recruits from the region actually be part of international terrorism in the past few months including that attack on istanbul airport in june of 2016, wolf. so paul, when you say jihadi terrorist, you specifically referring to either isis or al qaeda. is that right? well, isis or al qaeda or groups affiliated or sympathetic
the fact it is not acting alone. it is part of a broader sunni coalition. it certainly involves baathist groups. while this sect seeking to discredit isis, it clearly didn t work even amongst perhaps a receptive audience in the jihadi community. isis has only gotten more popular. more popular meaning all this traction. much because of the propaganda. war front documentation they have been putting out on the meat. jason seagal from the daily beast. thank you so much. it is an interesting angle, this whole story playing out in iraq. thank you. coming up next, the main suspect in the benghazi attacks on a ship back to the u.s. is being questioned right now. we will talk live to an interrogation expert what could be happening on board this ship.
information may have come from u.s. officials and passed to the russians. so that s a good sign. but look, you ve got to be concerned. the closer we get, this is a dangerous region. clearly officials are hearing more threat information and it s concerning. do you see any indication there s the one bomb maker that a lot of people link these creative bombs to. is there any link to him on this? we haven t heard any of that. but as i say, often times, even if there s not a direct link, that sort of expertise gets shared throughout the jihadi community. is it fair for me to look at what s going on with the hotels and those types of preparations and see it as a correlation to the level of preparedness in general in. probably not. i can remember in the runup to
saying its goal is right now. is it difficult to uncover al qaeda plots? yeah, it is exceptionally difficult. why? because of the fact that the only places you can really uncover them are when people cross borders or when people communicate in a public area, right? and occasionally you get lucky with having spies. we pick up clues. we pick up conversations. we certainly pick up people that are planning on carrying out acts of violence. that s where you look at someone like omar abdulal la, the underwear bomber. this a guy who should have come to the attention of the u.s. government. he should have. but he was at the fringes of the jihadi community. he didn t look like what we were expecting. you and i talk on the air about this world a lot. and i have to tell you that every time i sit down to talk with you onset, something in the back of my mind says, should i be talking with you about these details? should i be putting information out there for anybody in the
smerconish, always good to see you both. thank you so much. tuesday is the anniversary of 9/11. in today s office politics my conversation with msnbc terrorism analyst evan coleman. i began by asking him about his greatest fear for an attack here on u.s. soil. my greatest fear, honestly, is that an al qaeda affiliate group. a group that we haven t been looking at that closely. aqap is a good example of that. before the underwear bomb plot, no one had heard of al qaeda in yemen. my concern is that you have an al qaeda affiliate group that s not being heavily focused in on. they identify u.s. nationals who they can work with who are under the radar who are home grown, who are esoteric or at the fringes of the jihadi community. those individuals are able to come up with a plot that is simple, is easy to carry out and causes major economic damage. that is exactly what al qaeda is