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Analysis: Foiling Terrorists in Our Midst

Council on Foreign Relations

June 29, 2007
Prepared by: Eben Kaplan

British authorities discovered a car bomb (Times of London) Friday morning in London that they say could have caused “significant injury or loss of life.” In the two years since backpack bombs wreaked havoc on London’s mass transit system, British police claim to have unearthed several terrorist plots in their nascent stages. In this case, however, the police appear to have gotten lucky, stumbling upon the car packed with gasoline and nails after receiving reports of suspicious activity.

Britain’s recent brushes with terrorism have followed a disturbing trend; many of the plotters have been British-born Muslims who fell under the persuasion of the radical ideology preached by al-Qaeda. These homegrown terrorists then either planned their own attacks or reached out to broader terrorist networks for support. Across the Atlantic, this pattern has caused anxiety over the risk that U.S. Muslims will succumb to the same radicalism. Already this past spring, police claim to have foiled two homegrown plots involving Muslims that targeted New Jersey’s Fort Dix (WashPost) and New York’s JFK airport (CNN).

The prospects of both homegrown terrorism and foreign terrorists on U.S. soil have sparked debate over what tools the intelligence community should have to protect the homeland. Michael McConnell, the top U.S. intelligence official, tells CFR.org that monitoring domestic threats presents a new challenge for an intelligence infrastructure that historically focused exclusively outside the United States. McConnell points to Britain as the nation with the most experience in combating a domestic threat; this Online Debate weighs the pros and cons of the British system. Meanwhile, the White House and the Democratic-led Congress have locked horns (LAT) over a warrantless electronic surveillance program authorized by President Bush shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Domestic surveillance could prove a hot topic in the 2008 presidential election as well.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.