NYC attack: US needs to focus on ‘physical surveillance,’ says fmr. Secret Service agent
A driver of a rental truck drove down a bicycle path in downtown New York City on Tuesday killing eight people and injuring 12.
During a press briefing, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called the attack an “act of terror.”
The suspect, a 29-year-old from Uzbekistan was reportedly armed with fake weapons and yelled “Allahu akbar” before he was shot by police and taken into custody.
Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino believes that these lone wolf-style attacks are going to occur more frequently and the U.S. needs to prepare for them by utilizing surveillance techniques.
“This is their M.O. now al Qaeda, ISIS, [and] various terror groups figured out post-9/11 that rather than spending $500,000 getting flight training and leaving investigative footprints everywhere for these spectacular style 9/11 attacks that all you need is a rented vehicle and the ability to drive, not even drive well. You can cause, maybe not the equivalent amount of chaos, but certainly enough carnage to get your faces on the television and to project your terrorist message,” he told FOX Business’ Lou Dobbs on “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”
President Trump soon tweeted after the attack, “In NYC, looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. Law enforcement is following this closely. NOT IN THE U.S.A!”
Bongino said that physical surveillance may be the key to stopping these types of terror attacks.
“We have to focus completely now on being arsonists; we have to go start fires. What I mean by that is surveillance. We have to focus more on physical surveillance. We fell in love with the collection of signal intelligence. We have to go back to old gum shoe type source development, physical surveillance in these communities to stop these attacks beforehand,” he said.