Spotting the Terror Threat

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Britain's intelligence services have identified 1,600 potential terrorists in the U.K., but officials can keep constant tabs on only a few at a time. Terrorists no longer need to travel to Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq to learn their trade; they can just as easily obtain bomb blueprints and network with like-minded jihadists over the Internet. Information and expertise now flow in all directions. Car bombs, for instance, have become commonplace in Iraq, but not all Iraqi insurgent tactics originated there. "If anything," says Charles Shoebridge, a security analyst and former counterterrorism officer in the British army, "it's the insurgency in Iraq that has adopted the tactics of Western groups such as the IRA rather than the reverse."

After the car-bomb suspects were arrested, the Scottish Daily Record concluded, "It is reassuring that the bombers were not Scots. It would be more depressing if our attackers were homegrown." But getting fixated on national identities is a plan without a purpose. In the U.K., there are 1,985 doctors from Iraq, 184 from Jordan and 27,558 from India. One of the suspects in the car bombings is from Iraq, one is from Jordan, and two are from India. Whether al-Qaeda or other organized groups directed these individuals isn't all important. The vast majority of would-be terrorists are now freelancers and self-starters, which means that while we're going to see more duds like the car-bomb attacks, we are also likely to see a lot more attempts, period. The key is to think in a more nuanced way about the threat rather than focus exclusively on young men from the Middle East or homegrown radicals. The more that authorities target a particular group, the more terrorist groups will recruit outside that category.

PROTECTION VS. PREVENTION

The best way to protect civilians from terrorist attacks is to prevent them from being planned. One goal is not separate from the other. But governments still tend to focus much of their time and money on our last lines of defense--explosives sniffers at airports and haz-mat suits for firefighters. That's the equivalent of building a really deep castle moat and waiting for the invaders to arrive. "Unless you can arrest [terrorists] before they get to execution stage, your chances of averting bloodshed and death come down to luck," says a French former counterterrorism official.

The London and Glasgow cases are an excellent reminder of how thin the line is between a near miss and a catastrophe. An alert ambulance crew, an efficient parking-enforcement crew and a faulty bomb design may have prevented a massacre. And yet as the news of the car bombs broke, some politicians were more inclined to credit London's wondrous surveillance system. "The Brits have got something smart going. They have cameras all over London," said U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. "I think it's just common sense to do that here much more widely."

But gadgetry alone is inadequate. In June 2006, Glasgow Airport installed a high-tech license-plate-recognition system that would be the envy of many U.S. airports. The system activates a barrier at the entrance to the inside lane around the airport. Only taxis and buses with registered numbers are allowed through. When the men in the green Jeep pulled up, however, they simply tailgated behind a registered car and sped past before the barrier closed.

So far, the Department of Homeland Security has given states more than $40 million to invest in video security systems. But in March, the Washington metropolitan police department admitted that the dozens of cameras it has had in place since 9/11 have so far netted zero arrests. What the surveillance cameras can do is help investigators piece together the details of plots after they are attempted, gather forensic evidence and identify suspects--all of which deepens their understanding of how terrorist networks operate. "Terrorism prevention is about information gathering and intelligence," says Richard Pildes, a co-director of New York University's Center on Law and Security. "It's not about defensive measures."

The New York City police department offers a model of sorts. The NYPD has officers based in 10 cities around the world, including London, Tel Aviv, Amman, Paris and Lyon, France. By building relationships with other police forces, the NYPD hopes to gather data about threats before they show up in New York City. "What we have to do is get as much information as we can and respond accordingly," says Commissioner Ray Kelly.

The next and most urgent task is to infiltrate terrorist groups. This is hard but not impossible. Israel, for example, has managed to set up a web of Palestinian collaborators. Last winter a would-be suicide bomber took refuge in a Palestinian house after his explosive vest failed to detonate on a bus. Unbeknown to him, the father of his host was an informer for the Israeli domestic intelligence service. The father contacted the police, and the man was arrested.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to disrupt the radicalization and recruitment of terrorists to begin with--to fight motives, not just methods. That, most counterterrorism experts agree, is a job we could be doing much better right now by, for example, monitoring and swiftly responding to radical propaganda online. The long-term challenge facing the U.S. and its allies is harder but even more crucial: bolstering the credibility of those within the Muslim world willing to stand against the forces of extremism. Otherwise, says the Rand Corp.'s Brian Jenkins, "we are condemned to stepping on cockroaches one at a time. This will be endless."