Page 2 - Counterterrorism Capability News Today

Counterterrorism capability, and afghanistan, is not a peace deal. meanwhile back to the story that we reported just a short time ago, eric told us about it, the explosion at a wedding hall in kabul killing dozens of civilians. no word on who is behind that attack. but still, just 10 days of the taliban forces detonated a car bomb in the same area. so is this the right time to be talking to a u.s. taliban peace plan? >> you put your finger on it a lot of important things here. the taliban is str...

Afghanistan. we would go from about 15,000 troops to 8,000 or 9,000 under this plan. it would also involve a ceasefire between the u.s. and the taliban. but crucially it would not involve any kind of cease fire between the taliban and the afghan government. so that has also led to some fears that this would allow the taliban to take aim at the afghanistan government without u.s. intervention. so allies are raising concerns that this preliminary peace plan represents something of a surrender. lin...

So, again, im not talking hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground. we need to maintain a counterterrorism capability, we need to maintain our ability to grow the afghan army and their capability like we have the south korean army and others over the years to defend themselves on their own, and this is critical to keeping america safe. at the end of the day, like i said, were going to fight this in kabul or damascus or its going to follow us home to places like kansas city, orlando, san ber...

The turks, by the way, do not care about isis. if you look at the geography, dont have the capability to affect where they still remain. the turks care about the kurds. the united states has to lead and when we dont bad things happen. >> in afghanistan where hes reportedly want to drop from 14,000 troops to 7,000, that would be a significant and somewhat rapid draw down. whats your reaction to that? >> we need to maintain a counterterrorism capability. half the worlds terrorist organizations exi...

Is this something that changes year after year wholly or do we see the nypd responding to threats that theyve seen over the course of the year? >> effectively, what you have is a constant evolution of trying to prevent terrorist attacks. so, for example, in 2014 with the emergence of isis as a terrorist entity and caliphate for a short period of time in syria. my time as commissioner we significantly enhance what my commissioner kelly has put together in terms of counterterrorism capability afte...

And importantly, we built a counterterrorism capability that can sustain this pressure against any terrorist network in south asia that might threaten the united states of america. there was because of the work of our outstanding service members. moreover, that early decision to strengthen our efforts in afghanistan, allowed us to build the capacity of afghans to secure and defend their own country. so today, there are less than -- less than 10,000 american troops in afghanistan. instead of bein...

Threat here of a paris-type attack, and we have seen no connection at all between the paris attackers and the united states. isil and its supporters put out all kind of propaganda, individual joez magazines, but that is not credible intelligence. of course we investigate all propaganda threats. but instead, the threat here focuses primarily on troubled soles in american being inspired or enabled online to do something violent for isil. we have stopped a lot of those people this year, especially ...

At all between the paris attackers and the united states. isil and its supporters put out all kinds of propaganda like videos and magazines, but that is not credible intelligence. of course we investigate all of those propaganda threats. but instead the threat here focuses primarily on troubled souls in america who are being inspired or enabled online to do something violent for isil. we have stopped a lot of those people this year, especially leading up to july 4th. and there are others we worr...

Where you can nyou can never se it? >> well, you can do a lot to secure and weve done a lot about. but the lone wolf is always the most difficult to track down. the two successful terrorist attacks in america since 9/11 were carried out by lone wolves. one was nidal hasan who killed 14 people at ft. hood, the other was carlos bledsoe in little rock, arkansas. both in 2009. walked into a army recruiting station and killed a recruiter just because he had a u.s. army uniform on. but we are doing a ...