you just saw john kerry standing next to the russian foreign minister in vienna. that tells you how things have changed even since the u.n. meeting since september, where now 19 leaders are gathered in vienna to talk about what to do about the syrian civil war, which has bred isis. which really is a newly formed terror organization only in the last few years. if paris has been hit by isis, now the u.s. intelligence officials have a huge challenge because they were able to deal with the lone wolf. that is, you know, an attack which you can t really defend against, but what do you do if isis now has the capability to launch this kind of sophisticated attack and if they in fact as we do believe took down the russian airliner, if they were responsible for beirut, this has been an extraordinary three weeks forter organization. to say they re stepping it up is an understatement.
information to us. i m going to get reaction to that in a moment. however, first, a short time ago we heard from secretary of state john kerry who s in vienna reacting to the terror attack and here s that comment. we talked first of all about the events in paris, which follow events in beirut and events in iraq. and we are in absolute and total agreement that these kinds of attacks are the most vile, horrendous, outrageous, unacceptable acts on the planet. that under any category we don t know who did it, but they re acts of terror. so we are witnessing a kind of medieval and modern fascism at the same time. which has no regard for life, which seeks to destroy and create chaos and disorder and fear. and the one thing we could say to those people is that what they do in this is stiffen our
libya? you know, i don t think i am, to be honest. i very much want to continue covering these unbelievable events, events that a generation or before haven t witnessed in the arab world. i do want to see that. and i do want to cover that. but i think libya at this point, it would probably be taking a few too many risks at this point to go back. i think your family s happy to hear that. how are they dealing with the fact that you re going back to the middle east? i think my father still wishes i went to law school, but i think at this point after 15 years of doing this, he s kind of resigned himself that i ll be going back, you know, probably sooner rather than later. will you go to beirut? i am. bureau chief the beirut. i hope to get to egypt soon after. a lot of us who cover the region realized that as dramatic as events are in the arab world, egypt is still the fulcrum over where these uprisings and revolutions will end up. thank you very much for joining us. good luck.
nothing in terms of chatter as we re being told. there was nothing on the chat sites that are being monitored that said this is imminent? terror sites are one thing, but was there chatter amongst the terrorism community at that level about any planning or plotting for an attack on europe? was there any increase of that in the last couple weeks with all the operations that have gone on in the middle east? you know, don t forget there have been significant u.s. coalition operations including the attack on jihadi john, the front on the sinjar mountain to cut off isis which is a preparation for invading mosul. there s activity in ramadi as well. we had the airliner, the beirut bombing, all of this is will be
not see this as some grand plot that some masterminds are cooking up. these did disparate groups. when the attacks happen, the russian airline, the beirut attack, the paris attack, this attack now in mali, we tend to pool them all together and say there s this massive war going on. they are isolated for the most part. they do need to be seen as isolated. that will enable us to keep them in perspective and manage our response properly. this is somewhat unrelated. at the same time, think about just a couple of months ago. boats full of people not coming from turkey into greece but the boats coming on to the shore in spain, the boats coming on to the shore from north africa by the hundreds, bib ty the thousa right? there may not be a mastermind in this, but we re talking about a larger huge amount of dysfunction. that s chaos that s been created