Reactive not proactive.
Via FOX News
The outgoing and longest serving head of the Transportation Security Administration says the threat from terrorism is worse now than when he took the job four years ago, but the U.S. is better positioned to combat foreign plots.
“The threat today is unfortunately more expansive than what it was four and a half years ago,” John Pistole told Fox News during an interview before he leaves at the end of the month, concluding 31 years of government service, including 27 at the FBI, where he rose to the rank of deputy director.
“…With that being said, we also have better insights into who the potential bombers are,” he added.
From Pistole’s unique position at the TSA and FBI, he watched Al Qaeda’s strategy evolve from the 9/11 attacks that murdered nearly 3,000 Americans, to the failed underwear bomb plot to bring down a jet on Christmas Day 2009 and the non-metallic explosive devices buried in cargo a year later.
Although Al Qaeda experimented in 2012 with surgically implanted bombs before apparently abandoning the idea as impractical, Pistole suggested they are now focused on devices held close or strapped to the body.[…]
Pistole was in Australia days before the hostage situation unfolded in Sydney last weekend, telling Fox it fit the profile of a classic lone wolf attack. “I am not aware of any intelligence about it as of last week, there was no talk about something like that,” he said.
But it’s not that kind of attack that keeps Pistole up at night.
“My greater concern, rather than just a lone wolf, is simultaneous attacks such as you saw on 9/11…with that being said, we also have better insights into who the potential bombers are,” he said.