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Communities, infiltrating the moss -- mosques or listening to folks' phone calls and twitter accounts? >> i'm talking about all of the above. and the nsa does not listen to anyone's phone calls, all they do is monitor phone numbers that are made from overseas into the united states. nobody can listen to anyone's phone calls without a court order, and the nsa doesn't do that. the main thing i would say in situations like this would be on-the-ground intelligence, people in the community, getting informants, getting people who are willing to, basically, report on what's happening in the community...

Going in and out of stations and the like. but we also need tract detention equipment as we are building high peed rail networks, hopefully those types of technologies can be built in to find tampering at the switches and the like. grants are being spent on rail security. americans need to understand these are inherently vulnerable transportation systems especially mass transit, much less amtrak. you have to be realistic about what is achievable here. jon: we saw what happened in places like london and madrid when al-qaida went off trains in those cities. we are getting ready to spend billions...

Security has gotten better? >> reporter: i think it's both. i think experts will tell you it's effective and determined counterterrorism efforts on the parts of the u.s. and it's diminishing resources in al qaeda. and now you have bin laden's death. so there's a lot of questions. what al qaeda can do. you can be sure that al qaeda and its affiliates will continue to deliver these threats, as they've done over the past couple of days on the heels of the killing of bin laden. but it's crucial, i think, to keep things in perspective and look at the facts of what they've been able to do. >> re rez...

He wants added funding for rail security and train monitoring and inspections. he's calling on the department of homeland security to expand its secure flight monitoring program to include the nation's trains. >> you can walk on any train with shoes, bags, no questions asked. >> the two congressmen from new york think some of the $25 million bounty on bin laden's head should be used to help victims of the 9/11 attacks, announced yesterday at a news conference at ground zero. congressman weiner and congressman mad her will introduce legislation to make it happen. based on early evidence it appe...

13 minutes past the hour now. holed up in a compound in pakistan for five years, time spent plotting moves in, perhaps, his reign of terror. a law enforcement source says al qaeda was plotting to try to attack trains here in the united states. homeland security department has issued an alert about rail security. joining us now from washington, our d.c. bureau is peter brooks, former deputy assistant secretary of defense and senior fellow with the heritage foundation. thanks for being with us. >> good to be with you. >> now assessing that information as we've talked about at quantico. the fbi t...