By — P. J. Tobia P. J. Tobia Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/who-watches-the-watch-list Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Who watches the watch list? World Dec 17, 2015 2:44 PM EDT This is a podcast. That you listen to. Click on this link to subscribe. Many of the terrorists who carried out attacks on Western targets over the last decade were on government watch-lists prior to those attacks. For example, Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was interviewed by the FBI in 2011, two years before carrying out the terrorist plot. It made us wonder. What does tracking terrorists entail? And how is it that someone on a government watch list wasn’t stopped from carrying out such violent plot. Who watches the watch list? On this week’s Shortwave podcast, we talk to Bob Blitzer and Dale Watson, two former FBI agents who were at the very top of that organization’s counter-terror initiatives. They explain why it’s so hard to track every possible terrorist. The short answer, according to Blitzer: “There’s a lot of them, and a there’s few of us…That’s reality.” By — P. J. Tobia P. J. Tobia P.J. Tobia is a Foreign Affairs Producer at PBS NewsHour, covering the Middle East and North Africa. He is also the host and producer of the foreign affairs podcast "Shortwave." Prior to this Tobia spent two years in Afghanistan covering Afghan politics, life and the U.S.-led war. @PJTobia
This is a podcast. That you listen to. Click on this link to subscribe. Many of the terrorists who carried out attacks on Western targets over the last decade were on government watch-lists prior to those attacks. For example, Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was interviewed by the FBI in 2011, two years before carrying out the terrorist plot. It made us wonder. What does tracking terrorists entail? And how is it that someone on a government watch list wasn’t stopped from carrying out such violent plot. Who watches the watch list? On this week’s Shortwave podcast, we talk to Bob Blitzer and Dale Watson, two former FBI agents who were at the very top of that organization’s counter-terror initiatives. They explain why it’s so hard to track every possible terrorist. The short answer, according to Blitzer: “There’s a lot of them, and a there’s few of us…That’s reality.”