In the aftermath of Wednesday's terror attack in New Orleans and Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas, Danny Coulson, founding commander of the FBI hostage rescue team, and Steve Gray, retired special operations counterterrorism surveillance unit FBI agent, stressed the importance of mitigating intelligence failures when it comes to terrorism by planning for the worst case scenario.
"Unless these people come to the FBI's attention, or the attention of some other law enforcement agency, you don't know about them," Coulson told Newsmax's "The Chris Salcedo Show" on Thursday, referring to the suspects in both attacks. "[Outgoing FBI] Director [James] Comey used to call them lone rats. It's just impossible. I know that you don't want to hear that. In my business, in the security business, you don't necessarily rely on your intelligence; you rely upon intelligence failures. You assume every time you do one of these events that you will miss something or something will not come to your attention.
"So, you have to do and play this game, it's called worst case scenario," he continued. "Every entity that puts on a public event has a duty and a responsibility to plan for it, to rehearse for it and get ready for it, and that's my concern here. We're always going to have intelligence failures … You're going to miss something. We missed 9/11. We missed the Oklahoma bombing. The problem is how do you mitigate it?"
Gray said he can see why the FBI is hesitant to announce any parallels between the Bourbon Street attack in New Orleans' French Quarter and the explosion of a Cybertruck that was packed with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters in Las Vegas. The suspects in both incidents reportedly spent time at Fort Liberty, formerly known as Fort Bragg.
"There's a lot of evidence here that needs to be looked at, and I can understand why this deputy assistant director is saying there's no parallels right now, but he needs to, and I'm sure that he is right now, getting men on this military base, and they're combing over every single file that these men appear in or any type of unit that they were in, or any other personnel that they had contact with," Gray said. "This is very important because if they don't have that information, especially the individuals that they've had contact with in the past, then there's no sense in even investigating the coincidence between the two."
Asked to comment on a Wall Street Journal editorial that suggested the New Orleans attack was a good reason for President-elect Donald Trump to retain the U.S. military base in Syria, Coulson said that he would rather see the troops come home because the perennial conflicts in the Middle East are not the United States' responsibility.
"I just don't buy this business about keeping somebody in the Middle East to protect us here," Coulson said. "I think we should be there on certain occasions, but I want to bring our boys home, our women home. Bring them home and let them be safe. That's not our war, it's not our fight. It's extremist Muslims killing extremist Muslims. That sounds kind of cold-hearted, but that's not our fight."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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