Sources & Methods: Two wars escalate abroad, political violence at home

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Being in New York on that day, even in a place as cynical as New York City, people had their flags out.

They were decent to each other.

We were all on the same team.

And I'm so concerned with how far we feel from that moment.

An Israeli airstrike inside U.S.

ally Qatar, Russian drones in NATO airspace, meaning big escalations in the two big wars that have dominated U.S.

foreign policy and resources lately, very different wars than the one that arguably began 24 years ago today with the attacks of September 11th.

This is Sources and Methods from NPR.

I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

Every Thursday, we discuss the biggest national security stories of the week.

Later this episode, we will do that with Senator Alyssa Slotkin, who sits on the Armed Services Committee.

But first, our our regular roundtable with my colleagues from NPR's NATSEC team, covering the military, the State Department, the Intel community.

Today, we have Odette Youssef on the extremism beat for NPR.

Odette, welcome.

This is your debut on the pod.

I'm glad to be here.

Thanks.

And back with us again, just recently and very happily safely returned from your latest tour in our Ukraine Bureau.

Greg Myri, welcome back.

Welcome home.

Good to be back.

I will note your regular beat is the Intel community, which has been in all kinds of upheaval since you left.

Security clearances yanked, people fired.

I'm sure it will calm down completely now that you're home.

Sources are telling me that.

I'm a little skeptical.

I would be too.

Well, this week had already served up half a dozen significant NATS stories to discuss.

And then Wednesday night, the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking on a college campus in Utah.

So Adette, I want to start there because domestic extremism is your beat.

There's still a lot we don't know at this hour on Thursday afternoon.

We are taping now at just past noon.

We do know we're living in a country where political violence represents a growing threat to national security.

So what questions are on your mind as you track what just happened in Utah?

So obviously the question is who did it?

You know, we are at this time of taping still without a suspect in custody.

There were two arrests yesterday, but both of those individuals were released.

And so we're really still in the dark about who's responsible and any motivation that there may have been.

And I think what's been very concerning to see is that in this time that's elapsed, this vacuum of any knowledge, there's been a lot of finger pointing and a lot of assumptions made about who's responsible for the political violence.

And so I'm just very concerned that the longer we go,

some of this really incendiary rhetoric that we've been seeing on social media and elsewhere is just going to keep on churning.

Let's head overseas because I mentioned escalations in two wars.

To recap, on Tuesday, Israel attempted to kill Hamas leaders in an airstrike in Doha.

Qatar.

Qatar, again, a U.S.

ally that has been hosting for years now ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

That's war number one.

Then Wednesday, NATO announced it had scrambled fighter jets to take down Russian drones that were violating Polish airspace.

Russia, of course, is actively attacking Ukraine, which is just across the border from Poland.

Greg Myri, you have been reporting on both these wars on the ground in recent months, Middle East and Ukraine.

A top-line takeaway or two on this week's news.

Yeah, it's a clear escalation carried out by leaders who are going directly against the wishes of President Trump, seemingly because they think they can and there won't be any repercussions.

Russia's Vladimir Putin has stepped up attacks on Ukraine.

I saw that firsthand when I was in Ukraine.

Now we sent at least nine drones into Poland, seemingly as a way to see how the U.S.

and NATO might respond.

And so far, they just say they're assessing.

Testing the waters or testing the airspace, as the case may be, Move.

That's what it seems so far.

And in the Middle East, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu unleashed this airstrike in Qatar as Hamas leaders gathered to discuss a peace plan backed by the Trump White House.

Trump says he wants to end both these wars, but leaders are stepping up, expanding attacks, and so far they're not facing any consequences.

Still a lot of things we don't know about both.

I'll inject a little on the ground reporting.

Our colleague Eya Batrawi is in Doha, in Qatar.

She went to try to see the Hamas residents and the locations that Israel hit.

She couldn't get there because it's all cordoned off, but she said, I'm looking around and it's right in the middle of a neighborhood, and embassies and schools speaks to the real violation this was of Qatar and, as you say, of how President Trump appears to have hoped that things would go.

Yeah, and Qatar is sort of the Switzerland of the Middle East.

No mountains, no snow, but it's a safe space where people can get together and talk.

That's sort of been Qatar's deal.

And we'll see whether they want to continue hosting those talks and where that goes in the days to come.

So let me spin both of us.

These wars in Ukraine and Gaza are the international, national security crises du jour.

But the three of us are sitting here speaking on the anniversary of 9-11.

And so I want to spend our time today looking at the long shadow of those attacks, how we got here.

And I want to back us up, Greg.

I think I'm right in saying that many moons ago, you were based in Pakistan,

where you could kind of sort of start seeing the outlines of what might have been coming in the late 90s.

Just tell us where you were, what you were seeing.

Yeah, I was based in Islamabad in 1995, and one morning I woke up and we started hearing reports that Ramsey Youssef, who was accused of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center,

where a large vehicle was packed with explosives and killed six people, wounded 1,000.

So a major attack at the World Trade Center, he was accused.

He was captured.

It was about a mile from my home in Islamabad, a little shopping near a shopping area where I went to often.

So I raced over there, asked some guys, you know, have you seen this guy?

And they said, yeah, he's living at that guest house, the Sukasa guest house.

And they said he went to that video store.

So I raced to the video store and said, could we see this guy's video rental card?

And they pulled it right out, knew exactly who he was.

And I swear to you, the last video, the last movie Ramsey Youssef rented before he was captured was Fugitive Among Us.

Oh, geez.

You couldn't make it up.

Absolutely not.

But there were some even more important developments coming out of that.

They seized his computer and they found a plan to simultaneously blow up multiple U.S.

airliners.

And it later emerged that his attack in 1993 on the World Trade Center was funded by his uncle, a guy named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who would go on to mastermind the 9-11 attack six years later.

So here in 1995, we knew the potential target, the World Trade Center, which had already been hit.

We knew the method using multiple airliners, U.S.

commercial airliners, as weapons, and the family, Ramzi Youssef and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

And we know that Ramzi Youssef had bad taste in movies, but that's a sidebar.

I mean, it's reminding me of all that was known in the late 90s.

Then CIA Director George Tennett talked about going to the White House and trying to brief them and, you know, that his hair was on fire because of all the incoming.

In the end,

U.S.

intelligence was not able to connect the dots.

The 9-11 attacks happened.

I mean, Greg, one more to you, and then Odette, I want to bring you in.

But you cover the CIA.

24 years on, how has the agency changed in the wake of that massive intelligence failure that was the attacks of 9-11?

Well, I think it's changed a couple times, but at that point, it was transformed from an agency that gathered and analyzed intelligence, something it had been doing really for a half century.

It became this paramilitary force that was suddenly involved in fighting battles in the Middle East,

capturing, interrogating prisoners.

It became a very different agency.

The CIA was first into Afghanistan.

They beat the Pentagon troops into Afghanistan after 9-11.

Oh, Dett, jump in, because what resulted after all those investigations and the hearings was suddenly this flood of money

to combating terrorism.

The whole US government is suddenly geared up to fight al-Qaeda and Salafi jihadists.

And the definition of terrorism that took hold and where all that money was channeled, you have been reporting that maybe that was too narrow looking back.

Explain.

I mean, it's so interesting because

I think 9-11 really woke people up to sort of what's the capacity, what were the silos that were existing within the intelligence community.

And it led to the creation of like a whole new department, the Department of Homeland Security, an enormous federal agency now.

And the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center.

None of those existed.

Aaron Ross Powell, the apparatus that was constructed right after 9-11 to protect the homeland was enormous.

But the attention at the time really was on these foreign terrorist organizations.

You know, that made sense at the time, but we also have to remember that just two years after that World Trade Center bombing that Greg referenced earlier, you know, back in 1995, Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City.

And so, you know, we have had throughout American history instances where there were threats here on the homeland against other Americans by Americans themselves.

And what we've been seeing more recently is that there has been a rise in political violence in the United States.

And the

most lethal and persistent threat on the homeland, according to former FBI

director Christopher Wray, has been violent white supremacists.

And so it's sort of been

one at the expense of the other.

And I think one of the issues that we're really facing the reality of today is that the threat landscape here in the homeland today is vastly more complex than it was 24 years ago.

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So let me bring us up to today: all of the work that was done post-9-11, all of the institutions that were created are now in a state of huge flux.

The National Security Council staff has been slashed.

The Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is trying to cut her staff by nearly half.

I could go on.

Who makes sure that relevant information is going to get to the people and persuade the White House this is important.

We need to pay attention to it now.

Right.

Well, that's a very big, tough question to answer.

But every day, the president does get a presidential daily brief, and that is run by the office of the director of national intelligence, and Tulsi Gabbard, therefore, is responsible for that.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And that continues, but she's going to have half the number of people standing behind her now.

That's true.

And it's also a question of what direction she provides.

The president might get a list of a half-dozen things that the intelligence community thinks are important on that particular day, but we've already seen very clear instances of top national security officials being dismissed because assessments about Iran or Venezuela are at odds with what President Trump has been saying publicly.

So as a career official in intelligence, do you really want to put your whole career and reputation on the line by writing something you may believe, but it's at odds with something that President Trump has stated publicly?

You just mentioned Venezuela, which is making me, of course, think of this strike that obliterated what the Trump administration says was a Venezuelan drug boat a few days ago.

Trump has defended that strike and claimed that the people on that boat were terrorists.

Which prompts a question to you, Odette.

In 2025, is there agreement on what terrorism is?

No, I mean, there's a lot of questions right now from the counterterrorism world on

this sort of reorientation of the definition of terrorism that we're seeing from the administration.

Drug cartels have not traditionally fallen under the ambit of national security work.

I mean, that's been typically a law enforcement matter.

And so there's, you know, concern that I'm hearing about, well, what is this going to mean when it comes to allocation of resources at a time when the counterterrorism or when the terrorism landscape is more complex than it's ever been?

Yeah.

Now, I'm going to let the two of you go before my interview with Senator Slotkin.

But first, I want to talk through some OSINT.

That is open source intelligence.

That is the way we usually wrap this part of the show.

OSINT, meaning kernels of intelligence, sometimes little tiny crumbs that are hidden in plain sight, but that have caught our eye or ear this week.

Greg, go first.

Tom Hanks.

Okay.

We're back to movies.

Yes.

If you're familiar with his screen career, you may have noticed he's played some U.S.

troops over the years in Saving Private Ryan and in Forrest Gump.

And off-screen, he's done an awful lot, been very involved in supporting U.S.

troops and veterans.

So the West Point Alumni Association announced that they were going to give him a big annual award for somebody who's not a graduate of West Point, but has done a lot to serve the U.S.

military.

President Trump got wind of this, complained publicly and loudly, saying Tom Hanks is way too woke, that he has supported Democratic candidates over the years.

And the West Point Alumni Association announced that they were, in fact, canceling the ceremony.

Really?

Has Tom Hanks said anything?

I have not seen any comment from Tom Hanks on this.

Interesting.

But we will stay tuned.

All right.

Odette, what you got?

I have something at the strange intersection of violent extremism and fashion.

Last week, the fast fashion brand Shein had to remove an image on its website for a t-shirt that that it was selling that appeared to be modeled by Luigi Mangioni.

You may remember Mangioni is the man that's been charged with killing the United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, late last year.

You know, my guess is that it was AI generated.

Sheehan attributed this image to a third-party vendor.

But I continue to be fascinated by the ways that Mangioni seems to have kind of captured the culture.

Yeah, I was going to ask, why would anyone want a Luigi Mangione t-shirt?

Why would that be fashionable?

Well, you know, I think he's been getting a lot of fan mail in prison or in jail

just because of his appearance.

But, you know, there's also playing in San Francisco Luigi the Musical.

I don't know about you all, but I've seen on cars just driving around Luigi campaign bumper stickers.

Like, it's a different thing that seems to be happening around his legacy than I have seen in my lifetime

around any other person that's been accused of a crime like that.

The strange intersection, indeed, of fashion and extremism.

All right, I'm not sure I can top either of those, but I will inject into this mix NATO Article 4, which I'm raising because I don't think I could have told you what NATO Article 4 was until this week.

We all talk a lot about NATO Article 5, which is the collective defense, the cornerstone of the alliance.

But this week, Poland invoked Article 4 after, as we've discussed, these Russian drones crossing into Polish airspace.

So I was trying to bone up fast, what is Article 4?

What does that mean to invoke it?

So we called someone who should know, who sat in meetings on this, Rose Gottemuller.

She is a former Deputy Secretary General of NATO.

And she said, well, it's a way to very quickly gather members to consult in the event of an urgent security situation.

And I pushed her on that a little bit because they're all in Brussels anyway.

Couldn't they get together or just hop on a call without invoking Article 4 of the NATO treaty?

And she said, look, it's, you know, it conveys a seriousness of concern about what the response should be.

So there you go.

I offer it up.

Next time either of you have a family crisis, you can tell them you're invoking Article 4 and you can have an urgent security summit at the family dinner table.

NPR National Security correspondent Greg Myrie.

NPR domestic extremism correspondent Odette Youssef making her debut on sources and methods.

Thanks to you both.

Thank you.

Sure thing, Mary Louise.

And after a short break, my interview with Senator Alyssa Slotkin.

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When the planes hit the World Trade Center 24 years ago, Alyssa Slotkin was seven miles away.

25 years old, a grad student at Columbia University.

The smell of that, the burning buildings and that very sort of toxic chemically smell that was just hanging over New York for weeks, if not months, and it completely changed my life.

I mean, top to bottom.

Ladder Slotkin, speaking to the Washington Post, she told the paper that the 9-11 attacks led her to a job at the CIA, later at the White House, the Pentagon.

Her two-decade national security career evolved into a political one.

Alyssa Slotkin is now Senator Slotkin.

The Michigan Democrat serves today on the Armed Armed Services, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs Committees.

Senator, welcome to Sources and Methods.

Thanks for having me.

So when I started mapping out earlier this week what I wanted to ask you, I was definitely going to start with Israel's attack on Hamas leadership in Doha.

And then Russian drones flew into Poland and NATO scrambled fighter jets to shoot them down.

And suddenly we were watching NATO engaging enemy targets in NATO airspace for the first time.

And then in Utah, in our country's latest horror of political violence, the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed.

I find it hard some days to wake up and know where to start.

And I wonder if you feel that from your perch in the Senate.

Yeah, I mean, certainly I think I'm used to that in the national security context where

you can't control events that are happening abroad.

I think it's the combination of those with just the events that are going on inside the country, just every single day, something new and different.

It certainly feels saturating.

And I know a lot of people have, frankly, just kind of decided they're going on a terminal diet.

Which you can't do.

No, no.

No, nor can I.

It's the fire hose every day.

So the institutions that U.S.

intelligence and national security has to deal with these are the institutions that were created in the wake of 9-11.

And now the Trump administration is working to reshape many of those institutions, pushing through, for example, a nearly 50% cut at the Director of National Intelligence on her staff, pushing out the leaders of the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency.

I could go on.

What do you make of the current upheaval in the intelligence community in which you used to serve?

Yeah, I mean, look, it's difficult to watch.

I can't tell you how dangerous I think it is to politicize intelligence.

And, you know, it's very hard to see some of these moves as anything other than attempting to shape the intelligence community to the will of Donald Trump.

I believe that to be dangerous for the security of the United States.

If there's a threat coming from abroad or

something happening, you have to call balls and strikes on that or else people can get deeply hurt.

I will note that Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence,

sees this totally the other way around.

She says she is trying to get politics out of intelligence, that she's trying to restore the intelligence of the intelligence community.

I wonder how fine a line it feels like you are walking as an elected U.S.

senator and a Democrat when you criticize the Trump administration.

Does that risk wading into the politics of it all?

Well, but the thing is, is oftentimes I think Trump has the wrong answer to the right question.

It's the way he goes about it.

The wholesale slashing and burning of things and organizations because he didn't like what they did in the last administration.

So you're not saying, hey, we couldn't do this better.

You're saying this isn't the right approach.

I would say even further, I think with Trump doing what he's doing, let's actually take this as a moment not to just snap back to the same system we had before he came in, but take it as a moment to do a little rethinking.

of how we are organized as an intelligence community and a defense department and other issues as well.

I don't like the democratic response that's like, just maintain status quo.

The status quo was not working.

What do you see as the biggest national security threat facing our country today?

I really believe that the existential threat to the country is not coming from abroad.

It's the shrinking middle class at home and what that does to our stability here.

I mean,

if you want to understand why we are at this moment in our history, this fractious authoritarian moment where people, Americans are turned against each other.

I mean, look at what just happened to Charlie Kirk.

I mean, if you want to understand,

you know, why we are so polarized, to me, it is about the fact that just more and more Americans do not feel like they can save every month and live the American dream.

And when you do that, when you can't provide for your kids, what was provided to you, you feel shame, you feel anger, you feel cornered, and you start looking for someone to blame.

And that is almost always someone who doesn't look like you or talk like you or pray like you.

So I was going to ask, because I hear you being critical of the approach that the Trump administration is taking,

but you've also argued this is a moment of huge opportunity.

Like give me an example.

Sure.

So

we understand

that it is important

that we are, you know, Americans maintain leadership roles in the world.

You know, we've made a lot of mistakes.

You know, if you're thinking about a different way of doing what we're, what we need to do to be postured for the future, I think we got to change the Defense Department.

Department.

I think that our way of taking 12 years to go from idea for a new weapon system to actually fielding it doesn't work for the modern age.

I think we have a problem with adopting technology fast enough.

And that is a real threat to us when China can move from idea to fielding in five years.

So circle back to that pretty morning.

in New York.

Obviously what happened on 9-11 was horrific.

But in the days that followed, the whole world stood with the United States and Americans pulled together, set aside our political differences, which I'm describing that and it sounds like a time capsule from a different planet.

What if anything remains of that moment?

What gives you hope?

Yeah.

Gosh, I think about that moment.

I thought about it a lot today because even in a place as cynical as New York City, you know, people had their flags out.

They were decent to each other.

We were all on the same team.

And I'm so glad that i got to be there in that moment to see that and i'm so um

concerned with how far we feel from that moment look what gives me hope is that i go home every weekend and the vast majority of michiganders live in that 80 middle that don't scream on the internet that don't you know, want to hurt their neighbors when they happen to disagree.

They just want team normal.

I grew up, my dad's a lifelong Republican.

My mom was a lifelong Democrat.

It was totally normal when we grew up.

And a lot of Michiganders

really

think about that time and wish for that time because we're very mixed politically.

And that gives me hope that my practical, reasonable constituents get exhausted looking at the extremes and just want something normal.

And I

to find our way back.

That keeps me buoyed.

Democratic Senator Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan, as you heard.

Thank you for stopping by.

Thank you.

That's our show for today.

A quick note that you can email us at sourcesandmethods at npr.org.

That is sources and methods, all spelled out, no spaces, and the link is in our episode notes.

Now, we do love to hear from you.

Send us your feedback, ideas for topics, your reaction to anything we talk about here.

It is all very much appreciated.

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We are back next Thursday with another new episode.

I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

Thank you for listening to Sources and Methods from NPR.

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