Ron Suskind: How to Stay One Step Ahead

By Ron Suskind

What are we to think, sitting in our living room or stranded on a tarmac, as harrowing details of the latest terrorist plot spill forth? Is this a victory of the spycraft and force on our side adroitly employed to avert disaster? Or is the plot--with its ingenious formula for off-the-shelf explosives--a frightening display of how many ways an invisible army of Islamic radicals might come at us?

What's clear: enemies are out there, as ardent and violent as ever. What's changing is our view of them. We in the easily distracted West may be becoming wiser, little by little. Hard experience will do that, like it or not. We are beginning to embrace--slowly and often against our will--that ancient dictum "Know thine enemy." Investigators rounding up suspects searched for a definitive link to al-Qaeda's leaders. Indeed, two of the would-be bombers seem to have met in Pakistan with an alleged al-Qaeda lieutenant and explosives expert. But a clear link may be beside the point. Osama bin Laden has become an ism--as much ideology as flesh--and al-Qaeda has largely devolved or maybe evolved into a franchise operation. Radical groups in various countries are largely self- activated and self-sustaining, though they may check in with top management before a major assault, as did the Saudi cell that in 2003 plotted hydrogen cyanide attacks in the New York City subways. Al-Qaeda No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, called off that scheme, preferring, U.S. officials believed, to prepare for something bigger.

The foiled London plot teaches us that al-Qaeda (or its offspring) sees patience as a virtue. We think in news cycles. Al-Qaeda thinks in years. Even while elected leaders in Washington were taking credit across two elections for there being no second-wave attack after 9/11, a long-standing thought inside the government was that al-Qaeda might have been simply taking its time in mounting the next big hit. At a 2003 meeting of virtually all the top intelligence, foreign-policy and law-enforcement officials in the White House Situation Room, the consensus was that the next attack would be as large as or larger than 9/11. Officials expected a long period of planning and an attack timed to coincide with roiling events--a major assassination, the start of an armed conflict--that would provide synergies of turmoil and create the perception that al-Qaeda was central to a titanic global struggle.

Three years hence, this analysis seems borne out by London. Not only was the attack moving toward execution as Israel and Hizballah ignited the Middle East, but 10 planes exploding over the Atlantic or in U.S. airspace would indeed have created what U.S. experts believe our jihadist opponents desire: an upward arc of terror and dread between a second-wave attack and whatever might follow, five or even 10 years down the road.

Here's another lesson from London. Human intelligence routinely trumps fancy and often legally problematic surveillance techniques. The key to discovering the plot was apparently a citizen from Britain's diverse Islamic community who, in the days after last summer's bombings in London, overheard something troubling. He contacted authorities. An investigation took root. Imagine: a Muslim man sitting across from a British intelligence official at a cafe, off hours. They have little in common. Some would say they are natural opponents. But a thread of shared interest leads to the passing of information and, a year later, to saving grace.

The U.S. intelligence community is in a poor position to replicate that. Concerned citizens in the Muslim world who are close enough to radicals to see or hear something pertinent seem less inclined than ever to sit down with an American. "They see us right now as an angry, reckless giant supporting the bombing of kids in Lebanon," says a top U.S. terrorism official. "If they were to see something troubling nowadays, they'd be more inclined than ever to simply look the other way. It's their inaction--on a vast scale--that'll kill us."

We talk in America's culture wars about the connection between personal behavior and public morality, a link that launches the country into divisive frenzies over abortion and same-sex marriage. Flip the equation. The angry public posturing of warring nations and messages sent from missile launchers and the turrets of tanks often stand in the way of unlikely human connections, improbable encounters that could save lives.

Good vs. evil? Blood quickening, yes. But it's never that simple. This week's offering from the cafes of London? Coffee--strong coffee--for two. Pull up a chair.

Suskind is the author of the best-selling book The One Percent Doctrine, first excerpted in TIME, about the war on terrorism