Counterterrorism Blog

A top FBI official in an interview today commented on Adam Yahiye Gadahn's rise as Al Qaeda's most prolific vee-jay of violence next to No. 2 video thug Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the deputy of Osama Bin Laden. FBI Assistant Director John Miller was alternately dismissive of Gadahn's importance to Al Qaeda while acknowledging the coup that the L.A.-reared citizen's defection to the terror group signifies.

"I think they found a tool and they’re leveraging it," Miller said in an interview taped today for C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program, which airs Sunday at 10 a.m.

Before joining the FBI a few years ago, Miller was counterterrorism chief for the LAPD and before that the co-anchor of ABCNEWS' "20/20" show. In 1998, he interviewed Osama Bin Laden for ABC.

I quizzed Miller, with my colleague Lara Jakes Jordan of the Associated Press, about the emergence of Al Qaeda's Jewish-American spokesman, known as "Azzam al-Amriki," who grew up in California, converted to Islam, was recruited by Al Qaeda and was indicted last year in Los Angeles for treason and giving material support to terrorism.

Read more about the FBI's view of Gadahn at the Daily News' Mouth of the Potomac Blog. I'll post more from the Miller interview on the Counterterrorism Blog on Thursday.