transcript

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LISA MULLINS: President Bush made one point over and over again in today's news conference. In his words, “there's still an enemy out there that would like to inflict damage on America”.

BRUCE HOFFMAN: The President is absolutely correct. It would be very difficult in the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks to take any different position.

LISA: Georgetown University Professor Bruce Hoffman is an expert in terrorism and insurgency.

BRUCE: From my mind this is one of the fundamental lessons of 9-11, which is firstly that we can't be complacent, and can't assume there will not be an attack. But secondly if we've learned anything from 9-11 is that Al Qaida's most dangerous when it has a sanctuary or safe haven from which to operate. And clearly as every assessment, not only in the United States has pointed to in recent years, Al Qaida has that sanctuary and safe haven now in Pakistan.

LISA: In Pakistan and elsewhere as well?

BRUCE: The elsewhere I think is more of a question of in terms of a sanctuary or safe haven, but the elsewhere is an important issue because what we've seen over the past year is that Al Qaida surrogates or associates in places as distant as Algeria with Al Qaida in the Magrab, but also with Lashkar-e-Taiba which is clearly a group with close ties and affiliations with Al Qaida.

LISA: This is the group that was accused of the Mumbai attacks.

BRUCE: Precisely. Operating and becoming more active and even more daring in South Asia. So you put those two phenomena together you do have I think what still remains a world wide threat.

LISA: Well this is a time of tremendous unease with the Bush administration having been through its tenure since 9-11, accused of exploiting the fight against terrorism for political gain. So if you say they have not, meaning terrorists have not lost the US from their sights, is there any evidence that shows that people are cynical about for instance the colored warning system, about the threat level, about the potentiality and capability of a terrorist threat on US soil?

BRUCE: Well I think firstly this is overall a problem in successfully countering terrorism is that in the mind of the public especially with an administration that has embraced some unpopular policy in its struggle against terrorism, that there is a certain cynicism that even though the dog barked there was no attack. That therefore some of these could have been exaggerated or politically motivated. I don't think that's the case. But I, I understand why people feel that. But more to the point, there was a BBC, a British Broadcasting Corporation poll conducted just before the election, which showed I think even more cynicism that a majority or a large number of Americans believed that the war on terrorism had either left Al Qaida about as strong as it was on 2001 or in fact that it had become stronger. In fact if you put those questions together a majority of Americans believe that the war in terrorism had either no effect on Al Qaida or that Al Qaida was even stronger. And this reflected a global pattern as well. So I think this continues to underscore the challenges that we face in effectively countering terrorism, and indeed a public that has become somewhat wary of always being on alert. But I think that's unfortunately a fact of life in the 21st Century.

LISA: Barack Obama has started to get security briefings now, I assume every day, and getting information that he was heretofore not privy to. Do you know what kind of information he would now have access to that he didn't prior to his election?

BRUCE: Well presumably from what one reads in the open press he's been getting the equivalent of the President's daily brief which means he's getting not only intelligence assessments and intelligence warnings hot off the press, but really, you know the cream of the crop, the most important intelligence assessments. In addition to that of course he's met with a wide array of people in the US intelligence and defense communities. So all in all I think that the, both the amount of information he's receiving and probably the quality of the analysis completely eclipses anything he would have had before he became the President-elect.

LISA: So then with that added information have you yourself noticed any kind of change or nuance in Barack Obama's positions that you had not detected before?

BRUCE: I think that overall one has a sense of a tremendous appreciation of both the intractability and the difficulty of some of these challenges, and the fact that they won't be resolved easily. I think one of the key positions that's remained constant is the President-elect's belief that the central front on the war on terrorism is now in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and not as much in Iraq and every indication has been consistently that the United States will shift it's attention from the Middle East to South Asia in terms of the war on terrorism.

LISA: Bruce Hoffman is a Professor in Georgetown University's School Of Foreign Service. Thanks very much.

BRUCE: You're very welcome.

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