Terrorism

At Al Qaeda 3.0, leading policy makers, law enforcement officials, scholars and journalists from around the world will assess the current threat posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates to the United States, Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. The conference speakers will also explore what steps the next administration should take in combating al Qaeda and its affiliates both at home and abroad.

The conference will be moderated by Steve Clemons, Director of the American Strategy Program at the… more

In late May, some 40 Pakistani journalists received a summons to an unusual press conference given by Baitullah Mehsud, the rarely photographed leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who is accused of orchestrating the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, of sending suicide bombers to Spain earlier this year, and of dispatching an army of fighters into Afghanistan to attack U. S. and NATO forces in recent months. Surrounded by a posse of heavily armed Taliban guards, Mehsud boasted that he had hundreds of trained suicide bombers ready… more

Steve Coll, president of the New America Foundation and author of several books on al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, spoke with The Atlantic magazine about the possibility of a terrorist attack to correspond with the U.S. presidential election.

Though he ruled out a major attack on U.S. soil or associated targets, Coll said the potential exists for al-Qaida media releases and attacks in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

"They like to be heard at big moments in American politics, and this… more

"If [AQI members] were smart, they would say this requires kind of a strategic rethink and we need to be a more touchy-feely Al Qaeda in the future. I think there's been some very mild evidence that Al Qaeda in Iraq has done that, but not enough to really bring it back to the position where it was in 2006," says Peter Bergen, a prominent Al Qaeda expert and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit public policy… more

“Islam will defeat al Qaeda, we won’t,” said Peter Bergen, a scholar with the New America Foundation and noted writer on al Qaeda.

Don’t believe him? Consider, Bergen says, al Qaeda’s strategic errors: the bombings in Indonesia in 2002 and 2005, which killed about 222 and wounded 338; the bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2003, which killed about 35 and wounded more than 160; the hotel bombings in Amman, Jordan, in 2005, which killed about 60 and wounded 115; and, of course, Sept. 11, which killed nearly 3,000.… more

In May, terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank released an article titled, "The Unraveling: The jihadist revolt against bin Laden." The article was republished in media outlets around the world and became the subject for discussions on the current state and future of Al Qaeda. In this panel discussion, Messrs. Bergen and Cruickshank will discuss their continued research into the issue, with additional perspectives from panelists Contribuing Expert Evan Kohlmann and Stephen Coughlin and special guest… more

When you want cogent thinking about terrorism, you go to Steve Coll. Which is what I did this morning:

Jeffrey Goldberg: Do you think al-Qaeda is planning an "October surprise," an attack on an American target, here or overseas, in order to influence the election?

Steve Coll: AQ leaders, maybe because they spend a lot of time trapped and bored in safehouses, seem to be obsessed with calendars. They like anniversaries and they pay attention to elections abroad. So I'm sure they… more

Steve Coll discusses his new book The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, in which he details the complicated family history of Osama bin Laden, one of 54 children born to Mohammed bin Laden. LINK to video, audio, and transcript.

Osama bin Laden remains at large seven years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- and the United States is “incredibly unlikely” to capture or kill the al-Qaida mastermind anytime soon.

That was the assessment of Peter Bergen, a CNN terrorism analyst who interviewed bin Laden in 1997, in a speech Friday morning at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

“We know he’s in the northwest border region [of Pakistan], which is like saying we know he’s somewhere in Virginia,” Bergen told the… more

"When you hit the Haqqanis, what you hope for is a phone call from a grieving relative to somebody else you want to kill," said Al Qaeda expert Peter Bergen.

The "signals intelligence" intercepts "lead you to the next target," said Bergen, who once interviewed Osama Bin Laden. LINK