this video is said to be from the turkish border area with syria. let s talk about all of this with cnn counterterrorism analyst phil mudd who s joining us right now. let s get back to brennan, very sober, no mission accomplished declarations. this is going to go on for years and years, you heard him say that. i assume you agree. i think you ve got to look at where we started years ago. when we sat at the threat table in 2002 for example, we knew where the target was focused. we had been surprised by september 11th. but the focus of the operations we had were in the tribal areas of pakistan where most of the al qaeda s leadership has gone. where would you focus today? boko haram in nigeria, al shabaab in somalia, al qaeda in the arabian peninsula in yemen? i haven t even mentioned isis yet. you look at how successful the al qaeda revolution has been we don t have the strategic threat with al qaeda. these young schoolgirls, 15
problems here. i sat at the threat table every morning when eric holder became attorney general. there were only about 12 of us. he has to think of the thing you mentioned, volume. in my old world, three people, five people, that s a lot of people to follow. you talk about dozens or hundred whose may have received training overseas. that volume issue is significant in the terrorism world. the second issue i mentioned is time. we re in 2014 now. what if this goes into next year, the year after? the war in syria is three or four years old and you expand to 100 kids, 200 kids. that combination of the volume of kids going over and the amount of time you have to watch this problem, to me, if i were sitting at the threat table could be daunting. robert, you have the situation for europeans, once you have a european passport, you can travel anywhere through europe. it s not as if your passport will be checked from going to france and germany or switzerland, wherever you go, you have free ac
problems here. i sat at the threat table every morning when eric holder became attorney general. there was only about 12 of us sitting around that table. he s got to think first about the thing that you mentioned that is volume. in my old world of counterterrorism, three people, five people, that s a lot of people to follow. now you re talking about dozens or hundreds who may have received training overseas. so the volume issue is significant in the terrorism world. the second issue i mentioned is time. we re in 2014 now. what if this goes into next year, the year after? the war in syria is now three or four years old. and you expand to 100 kids, 200 kids. that combination of the volume of kids going over and the amount of time that you have to watch this problem, to me if i were sitting at the threat table would be daunting. for europeans, i mean, once you have a european passport, you can travel anywhere through europe. it s not as if your passports are even going to be checked bet
why are weig four-game it? i hate to tell you this, but this is a rare case where i would say after 25 years in government, believe the government official, and the reason is twofold. first, when you re in the terrorism business, and i sat at the threat table with attorney general holder four years ago. when you re in the threat business in terrorism, every person counts. three cases, five cases, ten cases, if you make one mistake on one case, a shopping mall gets shot up. that s a disaster. in this case you re talking about dozens of kids coming home, and in the counterterrorism world that is a flood of people, so the first problem you re facing is volume. the second problem i would mention is time. we ve been at this civil war in syria for four years. isis has been on a roll for months. if you consider that already we ve had dozens of kids come home. what about 2015, 2016, when does this end? all right. so hold on a second, because from my perspective syria is a situation we ve b
threat table at the fbi, to be in washington as a politician, and to screw americans into the ceiling about a threat that s comparable to pre 9/11, i don t buy it. we ought to be concerned but don t overreact. you hear president obama saying al qaeda is on its heels. i think that s the quote. do you believe that s still the case? is one interpretation, that peter one idea that peter forwarded, is that this is a sign of desperation on the part of al qaeda central, trying to tell al qaeda in the arabian peninsula to do something? is that your read on it? my read is that al qaeda is on a long decline, but americans perspective of time is short. we measure time in this country in terms of months, years. al qaeda, when i talked to people debriefing al qaeda detainees, al qaeda talks about time in decades and centuries. the decline is very slow. there will be episodic threats that we re seeing today. we should not confuse that, though, with the resurgence of the al qaeda organization.