JUDY WOODRUFF: We return now to our top story: the attempted bombing this morning of a New
York City subway.
A short time ago, I spoke with Nicholas Rasmussen.
He's the director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
He will be leaving that post later this month, after 16 years of counterterror work.
I began by asking him what more he could tell us about today's attack.
NICHOLAS RASMUSSEN, Director, National Counterterrorism Center: This is the kind of event that bears
all the hallmarks of a terrorist event.
I'm certainly going to defer to my FBI and New York Police Department colleagues who
have been speaking publicly about it today.
They're the closest to the investigation.
But, again, what I'm hearing from them, what we're hearing from them suggests that this
is an individual who had a terrorist intent, and at least it seems as if he wasn't able
to carry out the kind of deadly attack that he might have hoped to.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Should New York City have been better prepared for this, or is this the kind
of low-tech event that Americans are just going to have to get used to happening?
NICHOLAS RASMUSSEN: I would put New York up there with any metropolitan police department
in the world, perhaps even above any metropolitan police department in the world, in terms of
their level of preparation and their level of capability.
So the last thing you will hear from me is any critique or criticism of how well New
York is prepared.
This is just a feature of the landscape we're living in, in the modern world, the kind of
terrorist attack that's very difficult to prevent, if it involves -- if, as it appears
as it might, involves someone who was acting alone, acting with relatively small-scale
material capabilities, that these are not the kinds of things that are easily prevented.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Someone who appears to be acting alone.
How does this fit into the larger picture of the terrorism threat that this country
faces?
NICHOLAS RASMUSSEN: Again, I want to be careful not to talk about this particular case, because
I think we have learned over time that these stories always have layers, and there will
be layers to be uncovered as the NYPD and the FBI investigate this individual.
But it, as I said, bears the hallmarks of the kind of terrorism we're seeing, individuals
who are not necessarily tied directly to a terrorist organization.
They're not operating at the command-and-control of some figure in Baghdad or some figure in
Syria, but they are often operating inspired by a terrorism narrative that they see and
attach to a group like ISIS.
And those individuals acting alone can be quite lethal and quite dangerous.
But they also, at the same time, don't -- often don't have the same high-level capability
of a terrorist cell of the sort we saw during the al-Qaida-dominated era of a few years
ago.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, you just referred to ISIS, the Islamic State, being driven out
of the terrorist that they had been holding in Iraq and in Syria, so how do you describe
the threat that they pose now to the United States?
NICHOLAS RASMUSSEN: Well, we have certainly done a great deal to counter the kind of threat
ISIS presented when it maintained that kind of territorial control over large swathes
of Iraq and Syria.
But now, having shrunk the territorial safe haven, the group is finding that it is adapting
its model, looking to inspire individuals operating overseas, rather than trying to
direct and command and control them, but instead looking to motivate individuals to act in
their own environment.
Don't come to Iraq and Syria.
Do what you can where you are using whatever tools at your disposal, whether that's a gun
or a knife or a vehicle, as we saw in New York some weeks back as well.
That's different model of terrorism.
It's harder to prevent.
It looks often more like a criminal model, but it still can be quite lethal and dangerous.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And what does that mean for Americans in terms of how Americans, people
who live in this country should think about terrorism?
NICHOLAS RASMUSSEN: I think it calls -- it puts us in a place where Americans need to
be responsible, in many cases, for their own security, looking around, understanding what's
happening around you, maintaining situational awareness, because it's not likely in most
cases that the FBI or the federal government is going to bust up a terrorist cell of this
sort in advance.
But, as I said, these acts almost operate at the level of criminal acts.
They're not very different from what criminals often do.
And so, much like other forms of criminal violence, see something, say something, you
know, reach out to the local law enforcement authorities if you see something that looks
amiss and be a participant in your own community's security.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, what would you say are the odds of another huge 9/11-scale attack
on this country?
NICHOLAS RASMUSSEN: I don't know that I would put a single number on it, but I do know that
the work we have done as a government against al-Qaida operating out of Pakistan and Iraq
-- Pakistan and Afghanistan over the last decade has made that kind of attack increasingly
difficult for al-Qaida.
And we face far less prospect of that kind of attack today than we faced a decade ago.
That's something I think Americans can feel pretty good about.
JUDY WOODRUFF: President Trump has taken, I think it's fair to say, a much stronger
anti-Islam stance than his predecessors.
How has that affected the work that you do?
NICHOLAS RASMUSSEN: I would say, at one level, it really doesn't impact the work that we
do.
The kind of direct security-service-to-security-service cooperation that we engage in with key partner
countries around the world, whether that's -- it's the British, the French, the Germans,
the Australians, the Canadians, all of our closest partners, I would argue that it really
doesn't impact day the day the kind of professional level law enforcement and intelligence operation
we engage in.
Where it can become complicating sometimes is that we need the support and participation
of Muslim communities in our effort to identify potential terrorists and to get ahead of or
disrupt potential terrorist attacks.
And anything perceived -- even if it's just a perception that the United States is anti-Islam,
anything that makes that process of community engagement more difficult, that just adds
to our challenges.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally, there's a lot of conversation lately about cuts at the State Department
and the diplomatic corps.
What have you seen in terms of staffing in your own field?
Have you seen cuts?
And how is the morale there?
The president has been pretty critical of the intelligence community in the past year.
How do you -- how do you...
NICHOLAS RASMUSSEN: Well, thus far, I think we have been able to sustain the kind of resource
picture that we need to carry out the functions that the American people would want us to
carry out.
And we have not experienced those kinds of cuts.
As far as morale is concerned, when you have a mission like counterterrorism, it isn't
hard to keep morale up in your organization.
My work force, my colleagues at NCTC, come to work every day knowing exactly why they're
there, and it's to keep fellow Americans safe.
They're also, I think, increasingly becoming used to the idea that everybody's better off
in our line of work if you can tune out politics.
And so I encourage them to do that, tune out politics of -- anything that you're watching
on TV that causes you to stop doing what you're doing is pretty not a good thing.
So, especially with younger officers, I try to keep them focused on the mission, keep
them focused on doing what they signed up to do, which is everything in their power
to keep their fellow Americans safe.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Nick Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center for
the next, what, 11 days.
NICHOLAS RASMUSSEN: That's right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Thank you very much.
NICHOLAS RASMUSSEN: Thank you, Judy.