Big Think

Paul Cruickshank: The main reason Al Qaeda has failed to launch an operation against the United States since 9/11 is because it’s much tougher for them to do so.  They’ve wanted to do it.  They’ve, since the last two or three years, had an emerging safe haven in Pakistan where they’ve been able to plot operations.  They’ve been able to organize operatives; train people to launch attacks against the United States. So they’ve had, again, a training base emerging in Pakistan from which they are able to organize such operations.  But it’s very, very difficult for them to successfully organize such attacks because billions of dollars across the world are being spent on counter terrorism.  And intelligence agencies across the world have had a lot of success in going after Al Qaeda, and disrupting plots, and gaining information about the network.  Now does that mean that another attack is . . . won’t happen?  I can’t say that.  But it’s gonna be much, much more difficult for Al Qaeda to launch an attack again on a hard target like commercial aviation like they did on 9/11.  It’s much more likely that the model for attacks will be what we’ve been seeing in Europe recently – maybe an attack on commuter trains.  The New York subway is spoken about a lot as a potential target for Al Qaeda.  Certainly that would do a lot of economic damage to New York and the wider American economy.  But a spectacular attack like flying three jets into the key buildings in the United States I think is very unlikely now to happen.

Recorded on: Jan 14 2008