Experts Analyze UK Airline Terror Plot and Terrorism at Large

MARGARET WARNER:

What can we tell from today's announcements in London and Washington about the plot, the plotters and their weapons? For that analysis, we're joined by Magnus Ranstorp, chief scientist at the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defense College. He's written widely on jihadist movements and terrorism, and he joins us from Copenhagen, Denmark.

And Daniel Benjamin, a former director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff under President Clinton, he's co-author of the book, "The Age of Sacred Terror," about the rise of al-Qaida.

And welcome to you both.

Mr. Ranstorp, beginning with you, from what we have learned about this alleged plot and about the young men who were arrested in connection with it, what kind of an operation does this look like to you?

MAGNUS RANSTORP, Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies: Well, it looks like a very serious operation with the potential, of course, of realizing, after the arrests, that it was very imminent that something would be happening. And I think that it would be very likely that it probably would be some type of connection back to Pakistan.

I would be very surprised if the tentacles did not stretch back to Pakistan, because we've had similar incidents in the past whereby some senior individual in Pakistan have directed and dictated this type of operation. So I think that it's a very serious issue when you're dealing with Pakistan.

It was also similarly from what we can gauge from some of the other comments made by the police that it was expected to be a synchronized, multiple operations, that it would be involving different components smuggled in through security. That would involve liquid explosives; that would involve some type of timer, some type of release mechanism, electrical circuitry.

So I think that, overall, this is probably one of the largest plots that has been uncovered since 9/11.

MARGARET WARNER:

Dan Benjamin, does this look like the kind of operation that could have been pulled off by a homegrown cell or cells? Or would something of this complexity, so many moving parts and the technology involved, do you think required real direction, and training, and planning from outside?

DANIEL BENJAMIN, Former NSC Director for Counterterrorism: Well, it's a very good question. I think that, in the world we're living in, it's increasingly possible for homegrown cells, if they have the right kinds of scientifically trained members, to do very sophisticated attacks.

My guess would be that this was a group of people who originated, who were motivated while they were at home in Britain, and of course we have very little information here, but if they looked like the group that carried out the bombings in the London tube last year, that they then reached out to radicals in Pakistan for additional training, inspiration, methodology, and so on and so forth.