You’ve been handed a bona fide intelligence brief about an extensive terrorist plot to attack America.
That’s the essence of the book, AL-QAEDA 2.0 – The Upcoming Attack on The United States and Europe Unveiled (Understanding Global Jihad). Unfortunately, this is not a Brad Thor or Jack Carr action thriller, it’s a thorough briefing written by William Archer and a think tank of former intelligence analysts and operatives from the Transatlantic Intelligence Consortium (TIC).
AL-QAEDA 2.0 is a sober and in-depth expert assessment of the conditions that have spurred this threat, the convergence of Islamic players that formulated the plan, and specific recommendations to strengthen domestic security and response measures.
The threat itself is described as a simultaneous attack on designated cities across America and Europe. The method of assault is patterned after the bloody Mumbai (India) terrorist attacks of 2008, in which a group of only ten jihadists wreaked havoc in a series of coordinated attacks at various locations using small arms fire and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Archer and his team show that Al-Qaeda is very much alive and their current plan of attack against America involves Mumbai-like teams of terrorists initially deployed against high-profile public locations.
Their mission is to launch attacks simultaneously, creating chaos, psychological shock, and overwhelming the ability for first responders to cover the incidents.
Some cells are tasked with attacking military and law enforcement facilities in order to further disrupt emergency services and to secure weapons and ammunition. The authors describe that “by attacking police stations and military outposts, the terrorists hope to create a perception of widespread anarchy.”
Al-Qaeda plans to continue these attacks for several days with the overarching objective of cutting deeply into the Western psyche, or in present-day language -- to live rent-free in the conscience of the West for years to come.
Aware that the veracity of Archer’s and TIC’s assessment rests on the believability of their means and methods, the authors provide a chapter titled, “Sources and Credibility.”
Cited are multiple independent and well-placed sources within both Al-Qaeda and the Taliban whose information was cross-referenced by signals intelligence (SIGINT), geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), and open-source intelligence (OSINT).
In other words, AL-QAEDA 2.0 isn’t like the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of 2016 Russian election interference that was concocted by the Obama-Brennan-Comey triumvirate. Rather, the conclusions in AL-QAEDA 2.0 have been rigorously pressed through a multilayered intelligence grid that confirms the plan as both real and active.
In fact, this threat has been substantiated by former CIA targeting analyst and Al-Qaeda hunter, Sarah Adams, who described similar details about Al-Qaeda and their plan to attack America on a December, 2024 episode of the popular “Shawn Ryan Show.”
AL-QAEDA 2.0 doesn’t delve into why the U.S. government hasn’t come to a similar conclusion, but in fairness let’s not assume they haven’t.
The reality, however, is that even the brightest security minds are not impervious to errors of judgment, a conclusion made clear by the 9/11 Commission report: “The most important failure was one of imagination. We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat.”
So let’s hope that FBI Director, Kash Patel, and Director of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, have already let loose the dogs of counter-terrorism to identify and arrest the jihadists already in the country.
In the meantime, an important truism is that understanding the nature of a particular threat is the key to being mentally prepared and situationally aware. With that in mind, the less-than-one-hundred page AL-QAEDA 2.0 is a must read.
Eerily, the bottom line of the TIC’s assessment is offered in the same straightforward and unvarnished style as the rest of the book: “We cannot stop this attack: The plan is set in motion.”
Only the Divine knows whether or not the attack is unstoppable, but you’ve been handed a bona fide intelligence brief about an extensive terrorist plan to attack America, and the only thing remaining is to suppress your internal normalcy bias and instead find the fortitude to read and prepare for what may be coming.
Joachim Osther is a freelance writer focusing on the intersection of culture and Christianity, and a contributing commentator at The Stream.org. Osther has also published on American Thinker, and contributed to RaymondIbrahim.com, chronicling the relevance of historical clashes between militant Islam and the West.
