Podcast: Pre 9/11 Vibes with Ali Soufan

Transcript

Listen: "If you look at the eve of 9/11, the full membership of al-Qaeda was 400 people. But today the people who adhere to bin Laden-ism, to the ideas of Osama bin Laden, are thousands upon thousands. Some estimates put them at forty to fifty thousand."

The New Yorker has described former FBI agent Ali H Soufan as the person who came closer than anyone else to preventing 9/11. Today, his time at the agency is portrayed in the Hulu series "The Looming Towers," and he's a leading expert on ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the future of terrorism in an increasingly fragmented world.

Spoiler Alert: He does not bring good news.

TRANSCRIPT: Pre 9/11 Vibes with Ali Soufan

Ali Soufan:

Our intelligence agencies can do a lot and they can create significant damage to Mr. Putin and the Russians, but we're not rogue agencies. You need to get an order from the president, from the commander in chief to do something like this.

Ian Bremmer:

So no deep state.

Ali Soufan:

I wish we have deep states sometimes.

Ian Bremmer:

Hi, I'm Ian Bremmer, and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. I'm host of the weekly show "GZERO World" on Facebook Watch. In this podcast, we share extended versions of the big interviews from that show. This week I sit down with Ali Soufan, CEO of the Soufan Group, and a former FBI agent who investigated the 9/11 attacks. He's a leading national security and counter terrorism expert who the New Yorker described as coming closer than anyone to preventing 9/11. There's even a Hulu mini series, "The Looming Tower," that's partly based on Ali's time in the FBI. Today I'll ask him about turf wars in the US intelligence community, the future of terrorism, and the major threats facing the United States today. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

I'm here with Ali Soufan, one of the world's leading experts on counter-terrorism, CEO of the Soufan Group, author of "The Anatomy of Terror," and also the new Hulu show is critical to it, "The Looming Tower." Ali, welcome to the GZERO.

Ali Soufan:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

So you served in the FBI for about a decade. A lot of scrutiny around your former shop the FBI these days. Feelings of less legitimacy. I note that there's a photograph of you with Robert Mueller right behind you. How do you think the FBI's doing right now?

Ali Soufan:

I think this is not the first time that the bureau get criticized. Remember at one point in the 90s we were called, or people claim that we are part of a right-wing conspiracy against the president and against the administration. I think the bureau, definitely a lot of people get frustrated with all the constant attacks against the organization, but at this point, most of the people that I talk to inside the organization, they're just like toning it out. They will do their job, they continue to do their job, and let that chips fall where they may.

Ian Bremmer:

You think morale, among the people you talk to in the FBI right now, feels okay?

Ali Soufan:

It's not as high and it's not low. I think they are toning these things down and they are just focusing on the threat that they have. A lot of people in the bureau and in the intelligence community believe that we are under attack by the Russians. You've seen a couple of weeks ago the hearing in Congress where the heads of all the different intelligence agencies to include the CIA, the FBI, DNI, NSA, all of them said that the Russians not only interfered in 2016 election, but also in the same time they said that they are getting ready to interfere in the 2018 election. And I think we have a job, the bureau have a job with our brothers and sisters and the CIA and other-

Ian Bremmer:

And they've all agreed-

Ali Soufan:

They all agree.

Ian Bremmer:

... that this is going on.

Ali Soufan:

There is an agreement.

Ian Bremmer:

So we don't have the infighting, at least on this.

Ali Soufan:

This is one of the things. There's a lot of similarities to before 9/11 when a lot of people in the intelligence community and in the FBI, we were saying, "Hey, we need to pay attention to this guy Osama Bin Laden. And at the time, we didn't have much response from the political leadership. And now we have a similar situation where everybody, even more than in the '90s saying, "Look, we have to focus on this Russian threat." And unfortunately we're not getting any response from the political leadership. Our intelligence agencies can do a lot, and they can create significant damage to Mr. Putin and the Russians, but we're not rogue agencies. You need to get an order from the president, from the commander in chief to do something like this.

Ian Bremmer:

So no deep state?

Ali Soufan:

I wish we have deep states sometimes.

Ian Bremmer:

Twenty years now of a war on terror. How we doing?

Ali Soufan:

Not good. I mean, if you look at the eve of 9/11, Bin Laden has 400 members. The full membership of Al-Qaeda were 400 people. Today, the people who adhere to Bin Ladenism, to the ideas of Osama bin Laden are thousands upon thousands. And some estimates put them 40 to 50 thousands. Now we have [al-Qaeda], not only in Kandahar and in Kabul as we had on 9/11, but we have it in Libya, we have it in Tunisia, we have it in Al-Sahra region. We have it in Yemen, we have it in Syria and Idlib especially. We have it all over the Muslim world and the Arab world. I think if you look at the map today, the threat is way more significant than it used to be before 9/11. And that's very, very concerning.

Ian Bremmer:

How much is that threat oriented at the United States?

Ali Soufan:

The main enemy is the United States, meaning the West, the Crusaders and the Jews. And eventually they're going to go back to that. But now they are taking advantage of an environment that's allowing them to operate, in a way, under the table. Build their network, recruit more people, develop more resources for their jihad. And when, in specific areas, they cannot do that anymore and they feel that they are under siege, they will try to attack the United States again. I have no doubt about that.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, how much is the far enemy relevant to them? How much is it about injustices, real and perceived, in their immediate surroundings now?

Ali Soufan:

This is a very good question. Al Qaeda, their theory goes with the management of savagery. And the management of savagery theory is, basically create chaos in different zones around the world. And when you have this chaos and you create instability, you try to fill that vacuum yourself and not allow others to fill it.

Ian Bremmer:

I take it that the failure of the Arab Spring in most of the region is one of the contributing factors that you would point to.

Ali Soufan:

The nation-state concept is something brand new to the Middle East. Happened after World War I and after World War II. If you look into, for example, a place like Iraq, what's Iraq without Saddam? It's a bunch of sects and ethnic groups. It's Shia and Sunnis and Turkmen and Kurds. There is no nation-state concept. What does it mean to be an Iraqi? I think for the Shia it means something very different than it means for the Sunni or it means for the Kurds. You have the same thing in Libya. Without Qaddafi, what does it mean to be Libyans? So you have the east versus the west. You have tribal elements. All contribute to the chaos that currently exists in Libya.

Ali Soufan:

So, I think definitely the Arab Spring created an opportunity for radical groups to recruit, to grow. We're seeing a lot of these groups just expanding because of a lot of the local issues. And that's why I believe any strategy needs to have diplomacy at its core. It's not only about military and intelligence. These are really important and we need to have them. But also most of the factors, at least in the Middle East, we're not talking about Western Europe here, but at least in the Middle East, that's contributing to this, is based on the geopolitical chaos that exists today in the Middle East. Our military, they do [a] great job in containing the threat, but towards the end we established, at multiple occasions, the conditions to have diplomatic initiatives. And unfortunately our politicians and our diplomats failed. So, we keep the whole thing in the hand of the military.

Ian Bremmer:

We haven't brought up Islam. And I wonder how you think about the Islamic religion, political Islam and the region as it is right now, as a contributing factor to the nature of the terrorist challenge that we have today.

Ali Soufan:

Interpretation of Islam is definitely a factor of the instability, and that's both on the Shia side and the Sunni side. We cannot just ignore it. Today, unfortunately, sectarianism is being used as a geopolitical tool.

Ian Bremmer:

The crown prince of Saudi Arabia has talked some very significant reforms across the board. Anti-corruption, economic reform, political reform, reform of political Islam as well. How seriously do we take that? Do we think it's actually making a difference in the way Islam works both there and more broadly?

Ali Soufan:

Let's see how it goes. We've heard that before. We've heard it after 9/11. We've heard it many times. I mean there is two different things that you have to think about when it comes to the Saudi alleged reforms. Number one is that reform... Does it include, for example, limiting Saudi regional powers using sectarianism? I don't think so. I mean, without radical Sunni Wahhabism, what is the link between the tribes in Iraq or the tribes in Yemen and the Saudis? There is no link whatsoever. So, now I think the reform is happening and, at least what I've seen, the reforms happening are basically to trying to control the voices that can oppose the new regime in Saudi Arabia.

Ali Soufan:

So, I think we have to take everything that we've seen going on in Saudi Arabia with a grain of salt until we see how they're going to move with this. Most of the people who have been really strongly advocating violence against others, based on their sect or based on their religion, they are still free in Saudi Arabia. Those who wanted to reform, whatever the meaning of reform is, the Saudi government from inside, those are in jail. So, we have to take that very carefully.

Ian Bremmer:

Back in 9/11, we didn't have Facebook, we didn't have the smartphones. We barely had Google. Used by both sides, the bad guys to communicate, the good guys to try to catch them, where's the balance there? Who's winning?

Ali Soufan:

Basically have a lot of positive and negative. The positive, that everything is happening in the open. And if you have good intelligence, you can control and see what's going on. The negative is you reach so many people around the world and even if a small little percentage of these individuals, 0.001%, believe in that specific message, that's a huge amount of numbers. And that what we've seen, ISIS, for example, utilizing very effectively.

Ian Bremmer:

Is that where our lone wolves are coming from?

Ali Soufan:

Most of the lone wolves that we've seen are people who are recruited, especially in the United States, recruited through social media. Not even recruited. They have been inspired in social media. Sometimes they don't even have any contact with anybody from ISIS. The situation in Europe is different. There's a lot of issues that has to do with assimilation. It has to do with feeling part of a country. And the foreign fighter phenomena in Europe has been mostly a francophone phenomena. Most of the numbers, the biggest amount of numbers are from France and from Belgium and stuff like that. And these [are] based on communities that came from North Africa and haven't been really assimilated well in the society. So the situation in Europe is a little bit different than the situation we have here in the United States.

Ian Bremmer:

Ali Soufan, keep up the good fight.

Ali Soufan:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

Thanks for being here.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for this week. Next week come back. We're going to have Peter Maurer. He is the president of the International Committee for the Red Cross. I'll see you next week.

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