Michael Scheuer Quotes

If terrorists attacked New York, Washington, or San Francisco with a weapon of mass destruction, the next day we will all be asking what steps we might have taken to prevent it. So the question is, “Why do we not take those steps now?”

I think the important thing to remember here is that we haven't been attacked again at home since September of 2001.

The threat of terrorism is great and with today's porous borders, someone could bring a biological weapon into our country or sneak a dirty bomb across unmanned portions of our borders.

The FBI's principal priority right now is protecting the United States against another terrorist attack.

The near-term attacks ... will either rival or exceed the 9/11 attacks... And it's pretty clear that the nation's capital and New York city would be on any list.

The greatest threat now is a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities...there's a high probability of such an attempt.

Well, our position, and our chairman has talked about this extensively, is that we had a lot of intelligence prior to 9/11. We knew that two al Qaeda operatives who ultimately participated in the 9/11 disaster were in the United States. We didn't find them.

The fact that we haven't faced another major terrorist attack on American soil since Sept. 11 is a very significant achievement, and one that's easy to forget - it's the dog that doesn't bark.

I believe, based on the activities, and I am not an expert on terrorism by any stretch, but I believe that when they attacked the United States and they attacked New York and Washington, D.C., they thought they could defeat us.

I think, as a nation, we didn't learn our lessons from the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. We should have been more careful in a whole host of areas.

In a brave new world, a post-September 11 world, anyone is going to make certain mistakes. The mistakes that have been made on homeland security, on protecting our Nation from another terrorist attack, are mistakes of omission. We are simply not doing enough.

The relevance for 9/11 is that what 9/11 marked was the beginning of a struggle in which the terrorists come at us and strike us here on our home territory. And it's a global operation. It doesn't know national boundaries or national borders.

The Commission's findings underscore that the nation is still vulnerable to attack and that we must move more quickly to make us safer. We must take the Commission's work and use it to make certain that such horrific attacks never occur again.

The anguish in London is a vivid reminder of why we cannot relent in taking the steps necessary to defend our homeland from the present terrorist threat.

I'm not concerned about weapons of mass destruction.

I am committed to protecting our country against the threat of terrorism.

I never know what I'm going to do for the Post next. Two weeks ago I had a piece on Homeland Security. This is one of my pig ongoing projects. How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack.

The federal government has a responsibility to protect all Americans from potential terrorist attack.

Look, we constantly live looking at the issue of the threat of terrorism.

The rise of terrorism and unconventional weapons will end the relative invulnerability of the U. S. homeland …. A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter of a century.

Biological terrorism poses the ultimate asymmetric threat but it should be considered in the same class as the nuclear threat.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, it became clear that the FBI's number one priority must be the prevention of another terrorist attack.

I think so. 9/11 has been a turning point in American history, there's no doubt about that.

Our top story, in 'Threat Matrix Reloaded' news ... Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Muller held a press conference today to announce that Al Qaeda is planning attacks somewhere inside the United States at sometime in the future. So go about your normal lives, but with a vague sense of foreboding.

The events of September 11 were carried out by people armed not with weapons of mass destruction, but with blades you can buy at a newsagent