Homeland Security and the Upcoming Transition: What the Next Administration Should Do to Make Us Safe at Home

by P.J. CROWLEY

If history is a guide, there will be a significant terrorist attack against the United States in 2009, or at least an attempted strike associated with the upcoming presidential transition. The first Bush Administration experienced the Pan Am 103 bombing in December 1988, a month before taking office. The 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers occurred within weeks and months after the inaugurals of the Clinton and second Bush presidencies, respectively. If there is currently a plot, and it is as carefully planned as September 11 was, the cell that will try to carry it out could already be in the United States.
Attacks associated with elections have, in fact, become a staple of al Qaeda and its sympathizers, the one terrorist movement that has shown both the interest and the capability to attack the U.S. homeland. The Madrid train bombings in March 2004 came two days before Spanish national elections and contributed to the defeat of the ruling coalition. Two foreign physicians attempted to explode car bombs in central London and subsequently crashed a vehicle carrying propane tanks into a terminal entrance at Glasgow Airport in June 2007, three days after Gordon Brown succeeded Tony Blair as the British Prime Minister. Most recently, the Pakistani government blamed a shadowy figure associated with al Qaeda for the death of Benazir Bhutto as she campaigned to return as Prime Minister.

Click here to read more