you're seeing in new york this is a quantity problem. if you look at the criminal complaint, and i have these people should be charged for criminal stupidity. they were contacting people and doing things that any terrorist worth his salt would never do. but when you are facing dozens or hundreds of people like this you've got to depend on a hundred or 200 of them all to be stupid. that quantity problem is something that eventually will explode in our faces. you can't deal with that many cases at once and expect that you will catch every single one of them even if they are stupid. >> does this tell us anything about al qaeda, the actual threat that al qaeda poses to the united states right now? is it mainly through these apparently self-radicalized individuals in the united states reaching out through social media and the internet? >> i think it tells us more about what i would call al qaedaism. that is the movement al qaeda rather than the actual group al qaeda which has been damaged. these folks have probably never met an al qaeda person. they have very limited contact with al qaeda. 15 years ago we would have