Direct Al Qaeda influence on Western attacks overrated, says NYPD intel director

Mitchell Silber

Al Qaeda’s influence on terror plots and attacks in the West isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, said Mitchell Silber, director of intelligence analysis at the New York Police Department, and it’s becoming less evident as time goes on.

That’s doesn’t mean the group is less dangerous, just that its ideology has metastasized like a cancer to other parts of the globe, where it has become harder to fight, he said. Silber has written a book, “The Al Qaeda Factor, Plots Against the West,” based on meticulous review of court records of 16 Al Qaeda-associated plots since 1993 in North America, Europe and Australia.

In a discussion of his conclusions at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute on Jan. 5, Silber said in reviewing the court documents of the most significant Islamist plots ranging from Faisal Shazad’s 2010 bomb attempt in Times Square, Umar Abdulmutallab’s 2009 Christmas Day plot, to shoe-bomber Richard Reid’s 2002 bomb attempt and even attacks before 9/11, like the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, striking organizational similarities appear.

Silber said Al Qaeda’s influence in Western plots can range from direct involvement, to suggestions, to completely hands-off. Many of the plotters had some sort of facilitator, who had only loose connections to Al Qaeda. The plots in United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia and the U.S. shared surprisingly common environments and traits, he said.

He said each Western plot grew out of a local “scene” that involved a small group of radicalized ideological or politicized leaders there. The core groups, he said, were initially involved in a larger activist community in their localities, but broke off from that group because they deemed it “all talk” and no action. The leaders surrounded themselves with like-minded followers and a looser group of peripheral individuals that helps with operational activities, but isn’t directly involved on a day-to-day basis. Little actual recruiting was done by Al Qaeda in most cases.

“Al Qaeda doesn’t have to actively recruit” radicalized individuals, he said. “Al Qaeda is opportunistic. They take advantage of Westerners who show up.” That means either in person, or electronically via the Internet.

Silber said Al Qaeda as an operational force is not what it used to be, but other groups in hard-to-reach places, like al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen, Al Shabaab in Ethiopia, Lashkar e Taiba in Pakistan and even Boko Haram in Nigeria currently hold more threat than Al Qaeda itself. Anwar Awlaki, AQAP’s Internet propagandist may be dead, but his online legacy of lectures and ideological call to arms is immortal, said Silber.