How has terrorism evolved over the decades?

0:00And good morning on this 25th anniversary of the terror attacks of 9-11. It really kind of been in my head all day. I started out this morning when I'm normally on at 5 a.m. and had listeners remembering where were you when it happened. And since then my brain has just been pulling all of these detailed memories from that day from the depths of the cortex. And I've really almost been reliving it. And honestly I think that's a good thing. I think it is important that we remember. And that for those of us who are too young to remember, those what, 32 and younger who either aren't old enough to remember or weren't even born when terrorists attacked us on our own soil and the fur for the first time in any Americans lifetime, we got a feeling of what it's like to have a war at home, which none of us had ever experienced before.

1:07I think it's good that we remember. I think it's good that we take stock of where we are, that we understand where we've come from and make sure that where we're going is where we want to go and that we are not exposed and vulnerable and that we are safe. So I want to talk to you today. This hour and next hour we're going to be talking a lot about the state of international terrorism in this world. And what efforts here in the United States since 9-11 have been successful in preventing any other large scale terror attacks like those 25 years ago today and to help us appreciate where we are and where we're going. I think we need to realize how we got here. Joining us now is adjunct professor at Tulane Craig Wiles, Morning Professor.

2:09Good morning, Dave. I appreciate the opportunity to share some time with you on this important topic. Yeah, I'm glad you're here. I watched recently the docu-drama on Netflix called the bombing of Pan Am 103. And I don't remember a lot from when that actually happened when international terrorists for the first time blew up an aircraft and the impact that it had as they killed everyone on board and some people on the ground in Lockerby, Scotland and the many, many years of investigation and prosecution that followed and actually are continuing to this day. But that was the first taste that most Americans really got because of all of the US citizens who were on board that plane in most of our lifetimes of what international terrorism felt like and then we would all find out 25 years ago on 9-11.

3:10So let's kind of start with the history if you would of international terrorism as we know it now. How did this come to be that instead of wars being fought between countries, we got to a point where we had these different ideals being waged as wars now through individuals, some of them willing to give their own lives to take other lives in support of their cause and where aircraft and then other large public spaces became the targets. Yeah, I know those are very good points and absolutely it was so 190 Americans died on that flight including 35th University of Syracuse students who were returning home for Christmas from studying abroad. It represented a pivotal moment truly in the evolution of modern terrorism quite annually. You had a terrorist attack that crossed multiple international borders and involved state

4:12linked actors that exploited the aviation system and what needed to enhancements that were required for safety of aviation and are required unprecedented multinational investigation. We found in that particular case an aircraft as simple as leaving Heathrow flying to New York with a number of folks coming to the United States to celebrate Christmas. After 40 minutes in the air a bomb detonated in an alarm clock in a piece of luggage that was placed on the aircraft and multi transitioned in Frankfurt and Heathrow and then on the flight 103 it was listed under the name of Michael Bernstein who was not a passenger listed passenger

5:15on any of those flights. This was an unaccompanied bag that was transitioned. Even the FBI will tell you that investigation was a game changer. It demonstrated that terrorism had become truly international. It was at that time a major attack against Americans before 9-11. It represented an era of state-small terrorism, Libya and then as we know now is a matter of fact the third defendant has a status hearing on September 15th and that particular defendant is who they are suggesting they be in the FBI was the bomb maker, Libya Intelligence Officer. And this was in 1988 that this plane blew up and we still have seen only one trial, one conviction, one acquittal and still another suspect still awaiting trial.

6:15Yes sir, well it goes. It also speaks volumes to the dedication and the effort of these law enforcement agencies that will not rest and will not close a case until all boxes have been checked to include all individuals were off to justice. But we also found that it provided a, it can't only provided a big contrast to 9-11. So it was a stepping stone for international investigations. It was a truly a global effort. A number of countries were involved in this investigation. I led to a successful prosecution. 5,000 individuals participated in the crime scene and considered the crime scene was over 850 miles. Imagine that. It was largest crime scene to date. Yeah, the plane blew up at what, 30,000 feet. Yes, sure that is correct. And victims ran down over a much of very large area. Absolutely. It was one soldier and they had been directed and I'm talking about those that were participating

7:19in the walk through of the crime scene. They had been directed. If it did, if it does not appear as if it's grown from the earth, collected, considered evidence. And that's what they did. They found a circuit board and they were able to track the circuit board back to a company that had made those circuit boards and identified that only 20 of those circuit boards had been made and they were all made for the Libyan government. So they were able to continue that investigation after 10,000 interviews in a number of states and identify that circuit board was in an alarm clock that was in a piece of luggage. So a lot of due diligence, a lot of commitment and a lot of effort has allowed us to put us in a position we are today and that is the bomb maker who is in U.S. custody. We hope to see some type of judicial resolution.

8:19That really did change everything though, didn't it? And by the way, folks, the Netflix, DocuDrama is a great watch. It's a difficult watch but it really did give me some perspective because I was not at the time aware of what was happening and being able to consume that. So now having that knowledge and a better understanding of it, of how we saw that first international act of deadly terror, 13 years before 9-11 or 12 years, I guess, before 9-11, it's kind of where it started. How did we get from there to al-Qaeda training their soldiers around the world and creating these sleeper cells here in the United States to a point where they could then take over aircraft and crash them into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and wherever the fourth plane

9:25was headed before the passengers crashed it so that more death didn't occur. How did we get from the Pan Am bombing to the attacks of 9-11? Yeah, no, that's a good question because Lockaby wasn't the end of the story. In fact, it was a warning about where terrorism was going. We went from Lockaby and in 1993, we went to the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1998, the US embassies in Kenyan, Tanzania, 2000 USS Cole, where we were warned by a Somal bin Laden. He said, hey, listen, United States, basically you're not. I'm not getting your attention as he was leading al-Qaeda and in their efforts to remove United States and Western civilization from Muslim countries. Then he pushed forward and with a budget of roughly $400,000, it's been suggested. With 19 terrorists, cause what we know today to be the probably the most dramatic attack

10:32on the United States and global international partners. It wasn't just Americans that died in the World Trade Center. It impacted a number of countries. The message was clear and that's what they were pushing for. We want to get your attention. We want to change the current state of affairs and we want to do that by causing fear and causing anxiety. I guess it really comes down to without oversimplifying it. Why is? Why do people become terrorists? What are these organizations going after? Political grievances, religious extremism, revenge in some cases, perceived injustice, some type of self-identity that designate political objectives, create power, retaliation.

11:35The reasons are many. The reality is a grievance that necessarily terrorism. An ideology is a necessarily terrorism. Terrorism unfortunately evolves into violence or threat of violence and it's used to intimidate a course. The realities are that terrorism from Lakobi to where we are today, they haven't truly gone away. We can go after the heads of these organizations but unless we specifically target the organization and continue to chase that organization and utilizing all investigative tools available and dismantle these organizations, I don't know Dave, if we can ever eliminate terrorism. We talked about how the intense investigation into the pan-am bombing over Lakobi really

12:38fundamentally changed the makeup of investigatory practices by our federal government and governments around the world. We saw vast improvements in the way things were investigated but clearly what we didn't see were vast improvements in our early warning systems, in our red flag detection, in our ability to identify threats before they could carry out plots. We all know now that Osama bin Laden was able to get his operatives into the United States. He was able to embed them in communities across the country, even to a point where they were able to take pilot flying lessons. And even though an FBI agent was made aware that these individuals who would eventually lead the terror attacks on 9-11 had taken pilot flying lessons but said they didn't need the part of the lesson on how to land the plane.

13:38And even though that information went to the FBI, it was never acted on and it was too late by the time the pieces were put together. So have we since 9-11 improved our homeland security, our federal government's investigatory early warning system to a point where are we still vulnerable to these kinds of attacks? Because as you said, the ideologies never going to go away. So that means they're always going to want to kill us. Yeah, no, that's a good point, Dave. And there were a number of lessons learned from 9-11. First and foremost, the biggest lesson was quite candidly. Information is useless unless shared. So as a law enforcement community, we have become much better at doing just that. Specifically, the FBI has formed over 200 joint terrorism task forces.

14:41And these joint terrorism task forces located throughout the United States working a state and local agencies working with international partners have disrupted organizations or cells prior to actioning of some type of terrorist event. We have seen those. These arrests come and they go. But a couple of tools that they continue to try to monitor and they continue to try to work towards is that the internet, quite candidly, the recruitment for these organizations has changed dramatically. The internet and what you can find on social media. I mean, they in them themselves have become the strongest recruitment point. And we found that right here in our own city. The greatest counterterrorism challenge today probably is for these terrorist organizations

15:43in the fact that they can identify individuals without truly having to contact them, without having to interact with them. We found that in New Orleans New York's E-Day attacker as an example. He was influenced by ISIS propaganda and ideology without ever traveling to meet anybody in particular for a recruitment drive. So to your point, the saying you see something, say something, truly is as important today as it ever has been. We have a number of changes with the recruitment. And it's going to come down to community effort. It's going to come down to all of us taking apart in prevention. And I think that's, if nothing else today, I think that's the message we've got to share is that there are still people around the world who want to kill us, who want to destroy

16:50America and Americans. And we have to be not only aware of that, but involved. And I think that's why it's important that we talk about this today, especially with the younger people who didn't live through 9-11 or don't remember it because they weren't old enough, that we still have to be vigilant at all times. So this never happens again. Professor Craig Wiles, adjunct professor at Two Line, thanks for sharing some time with us on this 25th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks. Thank you, Dave, and my thoughts and prayers to the many out there that are continuing to suffer from those from the cancer from the rock. God bless. God bless. Thank you, Craig Wiles. I'm Dave Cohen. Coming up next hour, I'm clearing the guest lists and we're just going to talk to you in the 11 o'clock hour about how you feel on this day, what you remember on this day. And if you feel safe as an American now. And if you feel like we are at a point where we can trust and rely on each other to report

17:58what we hear and see and know about and on our government to act on that information and keep us safe. We'll do that next hour. Coming up after this, we'll talk to a man from New Orleans who took matters into his own hands after 9-11 with some of the people he worked with and jumped into action. We'll do that after this as we remember 9-11, 25 years ago today here on WWL.