After Charlie Hebdo

Summary

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

Episode Title: After Charlie Hebdo
Date: January 16, 2015
Host: Dorothy Wickenden (Executive Editor, The New Yorker)
Guests: Steve Coll (New Yorker staff writer, author of "Ghost Wars"), John Cassidy (New Yorker staff writer)

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Episode Overview

This episode of "The Political Scene" dives into the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, examining the evolution of jihadist terrorism, the effectiveness (and costs) of Western counterterrorism policies, challenges of Muslim integration in Europe, debates around free speech versus hate speech, and the delicate balance between civil liberties and security. With insights from Steve Coll and John Cassidy, the discussion unpacks both the immediate and long-term issues raised by the attacks.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Evolution of Terrorism in the Modern Era

• From Large-Scale Plots to Smaller Attacks:
  • Steve Coll traces jihadist tactics from "Made for TV, spectacular" attacks (e.g., 9/11) to smaller-scale, less sophisticated but persistent violence (e.g., Charlie Hebdo, Fort Hood, Paris supermarket, Kenyan mall attack).
  • Quote: “A lot of small scale groups, either self-radicalizing and self directing or trained sort of along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, or veterans of Iraq or Syria ... They usually work in relatively small groups ... They find it very difficult to cross borders because they’re usually on lists. So they have to limit the scale of their ambition.” — Steve Coll (03:17)
• Fedayeen Attacks:
  • A shift toward suicide-by-police tactics (so-called "Fedayeen"), where attackers target difficult or “impossible” targets (e.g., Mumbai), maximizing casualties before being killed.
  • “There was a sort of dignity that arose as a counter to the suicide bombing tactic ... a sort of more Hollywood and kind of manly form of suicide attack.” — Steve Coll (05:31)

2. The Role of Yemen and Training Grounds

• The persistence of regions like Yemen as key sites for terrorist training is emphasized, contextualizing how attackers may originate or be radicalized.

3. The Clash of Civilizations Debate

• Revival After Attacks:
  • John Cassidy notes that Huntington’s "clash of civilizations" theory resurged in discussions post-Charlie Hebdo, especially in France’s context with its large Muslim population and right-wing nationalist backlash.
  • Quote: “So a lot of people did say, look, you know, this is the sort of next stage of the war of civilizations. I think, encouragingly, there was a sort of backlash against that backlash ... especially given the enormous sort of unity demonstration in the Place de la République, which Obama inexplicably missed.” — John Cassidy (06:57)
• French Assimilation Challenges:
  • France’s strict secularism, its colonial history (notably in Algeria), and policies like the burqa ban are said to fuel alienation and radicalization.
  • Quote: “The great French secular tradition ... and the Muslims who want to wear their burqas and keep to their own ways present a challenge to that. ... In France we've got these actual policies where they ban the burqas ... That’s, I think, fed the feeling in certain parts of the Muslim community they're stigmatized.” — John Cassidy (08:04)

4. Free Speech vs. Hate Speech

• Legal Traditions Diverge:
  • Steve Coll and John Cassidy compare the American and European approaches, noting the U.S. robust First Amendment protection vs. European restrictions on hate speech.
  • Quote: “Certain kinds of direct incitement to violence are not protected in some circumstances ... European or French law, which does ban hate speech that is not directly tied to the incitement of violence.” — Steve Coll (09:15)
  • “A lot of these European laws, of course, were originally introduced to stop hate speech by the radical Imams.” — John Cassidy (09:50)

5. Effectiveness of Counterterrorism & Intelligence Policy

• Border Controls and Information Sharing:
  • Coll emphasizes defensive and intelligence-sharing measures—making movement harder for known suspects—as most effective in reducing attacks.
  • Quote: “Probably the most effective policies ... involve making things harder when people with violent intent who have already been identified try to move ... That kind of defensive measure is unfortunately sort of the world we’re in.” — Steve Coll (11:06)
• The Limitation and Oversight of Surveillance:
  • Discussion of mass surveillance, metadata collection, and secret warrants highlights the lack of public visibility, efficacy, and potential overreach.
  • “My own sense is there’s a lot we don’t know about the use of both those kinds of surveillance because they’re secret ... our governments ... prefer to argue by assertion. Trust us, this stuff works.” — Steve Coll (12:16)
• Policy Stagnation Post-Paris:
  • Cassidy argues the attacks will likely stall reforms aimed at curtailing post-9/11 surveillance powers (e.g., the defeated USA FREEDOM Act).
  • “I think ... the Paris attacks ... make less likely ... any major changes to the Patriot Act ... now the Republicans are in power and we’ve had this other big terrorist attack. I think there’s very little chance that anything much is going to change.” — John Cassidy (13:12)
• Effectiveness Questioned:
  • Coll is skeptical that metadata programs have been critical in disrupting attacks, beyond what traditional warrants would allow.
  • “I don’t see the specific evidence that information that couldn’t have been obtained by warrant was obtained through metadata and was essential to the timely disruption of an attack.” — Steve Coll (13:55)
  • Cassidy agrees, noting intelligence officials prize lower thresholds for secret warrants more than bulk data.

6. The Limits of Technology and Value of Human Intelligence

• Coll criticizes over-reliance on algorithms and technology vendors, emphasizing the irreplaceable value of traditional policing and “the human equation” in monitoring suspects.
  • “What the system really needs is timely, actionable information that is recognizable for its significance. ... There’s no algorithm that can do that.” — Steve Coll (15:32)

7. Long-term Approach: Beyond Security

• Root Causes:
  • Cassidy stresses reducing youth radicalization by weighing the potential long-term consequences of counterterrorism on community alienation.
  • “We’re never going to get to grips with this problem unless we reduce the number of kids going into sort of jihad ... you’ve got to take a two-part approach ... are they going to have sort of counterproductive effects in the long term?” — John Cassidy (16:56)
• Violence Beyond Ideology:
  • Coll reminds the audience that mass violence isn’t unique to Islamist terrorism—parallels exist with secular mass shootings in the U.S., often tied to access to weapons and early warning failures, not ideology.
  • “... mass violence from deranged individuals is hardly limited to the particular stream of sort of jihadi nihilism that surfaced in Paris.” — Steve Coll (17:26)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The real capacity of the transnational jihadist movement is a lot more like what you saw in Paris. And that’s been true really for 10 years.”
  — Steve Coll (03:17)
• “The clash of civilizations view ... got a bit of a boost after the attack, but then it got knocked down again.”
  — John Cassidy (06:57)
• “There’s no substitute for the human equation and you’re going to miss some.”
  — Steve Coll (15:32)
• “We’re never going to get to grips with this problem unless we reduce the number of kids going into sort of jihad.”
  — John Cassidy (16:56)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:45–03:17: Terrorism after 9/11—shift from large-scale attacks to small, self-radicalized cells (Steve Coll)
• 05:16–05:31: Yemen and evolving “Fedayeen” suicide-by-police tactics
• 06:43–07:53: Huntington “Clash of Civilizations” in France, immigration and backlash (John Cassidy)
• 08:04–09:11: Muslim integration, French vs. British approaches, secular traditions (John Cassidy)
• 09:11–09:50: Free speech vs. hate speech; differences in U.S. and European legal frameworks
• 11:01–12:08: Intelligence cooperation; effective policies in thwarting terrorism (Steve Coll)
• 12:08–14:44: Surveillance, secret warrants, and Patriot Act debates (Steve Coll & John Cassidy)
• 15:32–16:56: Limitations of technology, necessity of human intelligence (Steve Coll)
• 16:56–17:26: Reducing radicalization and the importance of long-term strategies (John Cassidy)
• 17:26–18:05: Broader context: mass shootings and violence outside ideological motivations (Steve Coll)

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Summary

This episode offers a nuanced post-Charlie Hebdo analysis, combining security, policy, cultural, and philosophical reflections. The conversation challenges simplistic narratives about the “war on terror,” foregrounds the limits and ethical complexities of surveillance and intelligence work, scrutinizes the societal challenges in France and Europe, and underscores the importance of not sacrificing civil liberties. Both guests argue for hard-headed realism but caution against believing that either technology or repression alone can solve the deep-seated issues behind radicalization and political violence. The discussion closes by linking the problem of violence to broader social dynamics, reminding listeners that the roots and manifestations of such brutality are far-reaching and complex.

Transcript

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about Politics. It's Thursday, January 15th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the.

[Michael Hayden]

New York Big Mass Casualty attacks against iconic targets. We're slow moving, complicated, multiple actors and we've gotten good at preventing those. Now they they just take too long to evolve. So now what we have are drive by shootings and and self radicalized individuals and SUVs in Times Square. The attacks that we saw in a shopping mall in Kenya. And now what we saw, what we saw yesterday.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

That was former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden speaking on the Today show after the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Steve Kahl and John Cassidy are here today to talk about the ongoing struggle against Islamic terrorism here and abroad. Steve, I particularly wanted to talk to you today. Over a decade ago you published Ghost wars, which showed how the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies inadvertently gave rise to Al Qaeda and to other branches of Islamic radicalism. And US counterterrorism efforts since 911 have been marked by everything from the torture of suspects to the collection of metadata on US citizens to targeted drone strikes against Al Qaeda leaders. All of these methods still have strong defenders, even torture, as we've heard from Dick Cheney recently. Yet there's been a rise in radical Islam and in jihadi strikes in the last decade. How do you explain that?

[Steve Coll]

The evolution of terrorism in the media age really starts with the Palestinian spectacular, the Made for TV spectacular. But as Brian Jenkins once put it, in those days terrorists wanted a lot of people watching but not a lot of people dead because it undermined their claims to legitimacy and nationalism to have mass casualty attacks. But they did want the attention of the big terrorists. So what 911 represented was a kind of nihilism where Bin Laden and his colleagues, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed imagined the benefits of the big spectacular, the made for TV shock event, but they also ideologically wanted a lot of infidels dead. In the response to that, there was initially over the first couple of years a genuine panic about how capable Al Qaeda was of creating events on the scale of 9 11. Probably wasn't until 2003 or so that anybody really figured out that actually they're not that good. So the real capacity of the transnational jihadist movement is a lot more like what you saw in Paris. And that's been true really for 10 years. A lot of small scale groups, either self radicalizing and self directing or trained sort of along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, or veterans of Iraq or Syria. They usually work in relatively small groups. They don't have a lot of money. They find it very difficult to cross borders because they're usually on lists. So they have to limit the scale of their ambition. And so you've seen one attack after another of this character, not just in the United States. Remember Major Hassan, who shot up Fort Hood? That's maybe five years ago. The SUV at times wear that didn't go off. The underwear bomber, who was one bad fuse away from blowing up an airplane over Detroit on Christmas Day. So there have been some near misses and there have been some horrors, usually abroad as in Nairobi and the shopping mall.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

You get back to what we've known for a long time and Even on this program, we've talked on and off for years about Yemen as a primary training ground for terrorists. And let's talk a little bit about that in relation to the Charlie Hebdo attack and the attack in the supermarket.

[Steve Kahl]

One other thing to say about the pattern of terrorism over the last six or seven years, you have seen more and more incidences of what in South Asia used to be called the Fedayeen attack, which is actually an Arabic word meaning kind of suicide by police for terrorists. There was a sort of dignity that arose as a counter to the suicide bombing tactic of basically attacking impossible targets in small groups of young men with automatic weapons and killing as many people as you possibly could before you yourselves were taken. A sort of more Hollywood and kind of manly form of suicide attack. Mumbai was an example of that, a big one. And it started before Mumbai and Kashmir, these Fedayeen attacks. And they've become part of the landscape. And Kenya was one and Paris was one. And you don't need a ton of training, obviously. You just need to learn how to use an automatic weapon if you're going to hit a really soft target. But if you want to get past a barricade, then you may need to do some training about how you initially attack the wall and get past the guards and that sort of thing. But it's really not deep kind of military expertise that's required.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

John, just to change the subject a little bit, one trope has resurfaced in the discussions about the west versus radical Islam, and that's Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations, which you wrote about this week in your blog. Talk about that a little bit.

[John Cassidy]

I think it's been interesting. I mean, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, there was just such outrage. People sort of instinctively did refer back to Huntingdon's clash of civilizations in the European context. It basically applies to North Africa in the French context. North African immigrants of Algerian extraction. There are just a lot of Muslims in France now, an estimated 6 million. And there are these big anti immigrant backlash groups, including the National Front in France. So a lot of people did say, look, you know, this is the sort of next stage of the war of civilizations. I think, encouragingly, there was a sort of backlash against that backlash which I hope I was a little part of, you know, especially given the enormous sort of unity demonstration in the Plaster Republic, which Obama inexplicably missed. So I think the clash civilizations view, did you know, it got a bit of a boost after the attack, but then it got knocked down again and.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Yet many Muslims are complaining that France has a double standard about freedom of religious expression and that the country discriminates against Muslims. The law against burqas comes up frequently, among other things.

[John Cassidy]

I mean, obviously there is a massive problem in France of assimilating the immigrant population. You know, it goes back to the war in Algeria where the French did some terrible atrocities. And the Algerian immigrants have always been seen sort of as outsiders in France, the great French secular tradition, it goes back to the revolution and the Muslims who want to wear their burqas and keep to their own ways present a challenge to that. In Britain and especially, there's been a sort of a bit more live and let live approach to the Muslim immigrants. The national attitude has been basically to let them get on with it. There is some racism and anti Muslim sentiment, but it's never risen to the level of policy. Whereas in France we've got these actual policies where they ban the burqas, you know, you're not allowed to wear religious iconography on school uniforms, et cetera. That's I think fed the feeling in certain parts of the Muslim community they're stigmatized. And it certainly plays into the hands of the radical imams and self style radical imams like the one who seems to have played a role in radicalizing the Charlie Hebdo attackers.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And Steve, is there a line between free speech and hate speech?

[Steve Kahl]

Of course. I mean, we've recognized it in this country, even with our kind of extreme definition of free speech in the sense that certain kinds of direct incitement to violence are not protected in some circumstances. Of course, in the United States, with our First Amendment traditions and jurisprudence, the amount of speech that is walled off because it incites violence is pretty narrow compared to say, European or French law, which does ban hate speech that is not directly tied to the incitement of violence.

[John Cassidy]

Yeah, I think it's interesting on that, Steve. A lot of these European laws, of course, were originally introduced to stop hate speech by the radical Imans.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Let's take a break here for a word from our sponsors.

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

Steve, how can a government be proactive without infringing on civil liberties?

[Steve Kahl]

Well, the easiest place to start is with defense. So probably the most effective policies that have reduced the effectiveness of terrorists in the United States and Europe involve making things harder when people with violent intent who have already been identified try to move border information sharing, that kind of watching at the places where terrorists on the move are most vulnerable, most exposed in immigration lines, on airplane manifests, at borders, in cars, that has been by far the best return on $, in my opinion, than making things harder to attack. That kind of defensive measure is unfortunately sort of the world we're in. And one where I think there is broad public recognition that the safety benefits, as much of a pain as airports are, if they're intelligently implemented, you know, are worth the cost.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Is there enough cooperation among intelligence agencies around the world in getting information accessible to everyone who needs it?

[Steve Kahl]

I mean, it's improved. There are not, I don't think, huge gaps compared to where things were. Of course, all of this is secret, so it's very difficult for us in the democratic public to audit this. You know, you asked about mass surveillance. I think there are really two issues. One is the one that gets the most attention, which is the mass surveillance without a warrant of metadata or pattern analysis. The second is the use of secret warrants under the Patriot act or like laws in Europe, where the thresholds for getting permission to look at someone's email are lower than they would be in an open criminal case. My own sense is there's a lot we don't know about the use of both of those kinds of surveillance because they're secret and also because our governments, when they defend those programs, prefer to argue by assertion. Trust us, this stuff works. It's essential. It saves lives. Same arguments we heard about the torture program.

[John Cassidy]

I think, Dorothy, one of the sort of fallouts of the Paris attacks is going to make less likely, and it was already pretty unlikely that there's going to be any major changes to the Patriot Act. The big sort of initiative in that area was the Freedom act, which Patrick Leahy put together last year, which did introduce some sort of limitations on this metadata. Anyway, that went down in November, and now the Republicans are in power and we know we've had this other big terrorist attack. I think there's very little chance that anything much is going to change.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

But does that worry you, Steve, and you, John, that a great deal of money is going to some of this metadata where the jury is still out on how much it helps us actually prevent individual attacks?

[Steve Kahl]

Yeah, I think there's been an assertion that it helps prevent attacks, but I don't see the specific evidence that information that couldn't have been obtained by warrant was obtained through metadata and was essential to the timely disruption of an attack that's ongoing.

[John Cassidy]

There have been some intelligence officials who've said that the agencies could get away without the metadata if necessary. I think what they really are desperate to retain is the aspects that Steve referred to earlier, the ease of getting warrants from these, from the secret courts, from the FISA courts, and in the UK, from regular courts. The head of MI5 in the UK made a speech about this last week saying that that sort of ease of access to information when they need it is essential. And he was citing the Paris attacks as support of this.

[Steve Kahl]

And I think from a civil liberties perspective, that's actually more the worrying practice than the metadata or the mass surveillance, because the mass surveillance of the metadata doesn't reach content. What happens with these Patriot act kind of snap your fingers warrants is not only is the intelligence collected at a fairly low threshold of suspicion, but the information that is acquired can then be converted into criminal evidence in a very opaque way. So I think there's a lot of this that we don't see, we don't know about, and I'm afraid it's going to continue.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And, Steve, final question. Is there anything obvious that we should be doing that we're not, with all the focus on. On the Patriot act, are we. Should we be talking specifically about taking other measures?

[Steve Kahl]

Yeah. When you talk to people who work in the system and who do this every day, I mean, I am struck by how panicked they sometimes are when they just look at the sheer number of individuals who are coming out of Syria or coming out of Iraq and Syria or floating through Yemen used to be Pakistan, not. Not so much in the center of everyone's anxieties now, but just trying to keep track of these individuals, their potential to burst into violence, as the trio did in Paris. What the system really needs is timely, actionable information that is recognizable for its Significance, I'm afraid there's no algorithm that can do that. A lot of the money that gets wasted in the system in my kind of tours of it as a journalist seems to be on contract who promise a magic solution to the policing work of keeping track of so many hundreds of individuals with overlapping names and fragmentary biographies that somehow you can write an algorithm that'll kind of light up the stuff that matters. Well, you know, that kind of data analysis can be contextually helpful, but in the end it's really a kind of policing work with intelligence characteristics and there's no substitute for the human equation and you're going to miss some.

[John Cassidy]

I agree with that. Obviously we need to focus on more effective enforcement and surveillance, etc. But I think in the long run you've got to take a broader view. We're never going to get to grips with this problem unless we reduce the number of kids going into sort of jihad. So I think whatever policies we pursue, you've got to sort of take a two part approach to it. Are they going to be effective in the short term, but are they going to have sort of counterproductive effects in the long term in generating a bigger flow of disaffected young Muslims?

[Steve Kahl]

But look at the United States. I mean, in a secular context, the mass shootings in movie theaters and at workplaces and so forth. I mean, sometimes it's just as simple as correlating it to access to weapons and having early warning when people start to fall off the rails inside of families or inside of institutions. And because these attacks come at us from an ideology, and the ideology is quite real and powerful and important, we tend to think that that's what the subject is. But mass violence from deranged individuals is hardly limited to the particular stream of sort of jihadi nihilism that surfaced in Paris.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Thank you. Both Steve Kahl and John Cassidy are New Yorker staff writers. This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. This podcast is produced by Jill Debuff and Alex Baron. For newyorker.com I'm Dorothy Wickenden.

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[John Cassidy]

Foreign.

[Katie Drummond]

I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial Director. I'm Michael Kollory, Wired's Director of consumer Tech and Culture.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And I'm Lauren Good.

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

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[Katie Drummond]

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[Steve Kahl]

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[John Cassidy]

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