Does Osama Still Call the Shots?

A book titled Leaderless Jihad would seem to explain itself. I was therefore both puzzled to read Marc Sageman's statement that the threat posed by al Qaeda Central "is still substantial" and relieved to see that Sageman has finally recognized the continued danger posed by al Qaeda's centralized command-and-control apparatus.

Three or four years ago, Sageman's "bunch of guys" bottom-up thesis about the nature of the contemporary terrorist threat may have seemed compelling. Less was known then about the extent to which al Qaeda had regrouped and reorganized along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. But ever since the July 7, 2005, attacks in London and the plot to bomb airplanes over the Atlantic that was foiled in August 2006, evidence has continually come to light about al Qaeda Central's top-down direction of these and other operations.

Rather than address such facts, however, Sageman claims that I have mischaracterized his work and selectively quoted him out of context. I have not. The book's very first paragraph -- exactly the place one would expect to find an author's statement concerning the fundamental thesis of his work -- argues that "the present threat has evolved from a structured group of al Qaeda masterminds, controlling vast resources and issuing commands, to a multitude of informal local groups," and the rest of the book expands on that point.

As for methodology, Sageman writes in these pages that "in science, the strength of the evidence should trump loyalty to authority." But he seems not to understand that science is cumulative. Sageman publicly shared his data on the "bunches of guys" he studied for his last book, Understanding Terror Networks, but he has not done the same with his data for Leaderless Jihad. The type of appendix that appeared in the first book, with the names of his subjects and brief biographies, is absent from the second. It is therefore impossible for a reader to determine if Sageman's new evidence really is superior to other existing data. It is also curious that an author who rails in his book against scholars who supposedly rely on information from "mysterious sources -- anonymous tips from the 'intelligence community' -- that cannot be verified" defends himself by citing "what I have heard from law enforcement agencies around the world during my extensive consultations with them."

Sageman alleges that my review of Leaderless Jihad was written "for the sake of scoring political points." This is offensive and absurd. I have been arguing that al Qaeda is on the march, not on the run, for two years now -- long before doing so was either fashionable or accepted wisdom inside the U.S. government or out. I reached this conclusion on the basis of empirical evidence indicating that al Qaeda Central had reconstituted itself in Pakistan's tribal frontier areas and from that base was again actively directing and initiating international terrorist operations on a grand scale. This dispute is not about personalities or politics or recondite academic theories but about the true nature of the United States' most pressing national security concerns. In such circumstances, the need for meticulous research and accurate analysis could not be greater.