Countering Transnational Threats: Terrorism, Narco-Trafficking, and WMD Proliferation
By Matthew Levitt
Today, The Washington Institute release the second edited volume of lectures from its senior counterterrorism officials speaker series, entitled "Countering Transnational Threats: Terrorism, Narco-Trafficking, and WMD Proliferation."
This second volume features the next six participants in this unique speaker series: Homeland Security Advisor Ken Wainstein; Drug Enforcement Administration Assistant Administrator Michael Braun; National Intelligence Officer Ted Gistaro; Commerce Undersecretary Mario Mancuso; Chairman of the National Intelligence Council Tom Fingar; and Department of Defense Assistant Secretary Michael Vickers.
As the Obama administration’s counterterrorism team assesses the terrorist threat today, they will find that while much has been accomplished over the past eight years there is still much to be done. Global Jihadist terrorists remain intent on carrying out acts of spectacular violence targeting the United States and its allies, including attacks using weapons of mass destruction. While terrorists do not appear to have the capability to carry out a WMD attack today, they remain committed to that ideal. In the meantime, al Qaeda senior leadership are plotting attacks from the safe haven of tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan border while franchise groups and like-minded followers plot attacks of their own -- sometimes independently and sometimes in collaboration with al Qaeda planners. Helping to facilitate terrorist planning is a growing nexus between terrorism and crime through which terrorists not only gain access to significant sums of money but also develop cooperative relationships of convenience with violent criminal networks.
As the first volume of this lecture series stressed, the terrorists threat continues to evolve. Identifying and keeping pace with these changes is critically important for a successful counterterrorism campaign. To that end, the insights of the senior counterterrorism officials who participated in this series are timely indeed.
The full monograph, edited by myself and Michael Jacobson, is available here.
