EXPERT Q&A — Christine “Christy” Abizaid was sworn in as director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) in June of 2021, as the threat of terrorism was already on the rise. Domestic terrorism investigations had grown by 357% over the decade prior to her swearing in as the new head of the organization tasked with collecting and sharing information on those threats with federal, state and local government partners.
Just months after Abizaid was sworn in to the role, The Cipher Brief sat down with her at The Cipher Brief Threat Conference in her first public interview as director, to talk about how the terrorist threat to America was changing.
“First of all, we've got to recognize just how ideologically diverse the threat is,” she said during the onstage interview. “If you think about where the threat to the homeland is most likely to emerge from, it's most likely to emerge from individuals who are inspired to act by some ideology, whether that's a domestic violent extremist ideology, or whether it's an Al-Qaeda-inspired ideology.”
Three years later, as she prepares to retire, the threat landscape is no less diverse.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told the House Appropriations Committee in April that he was hard-pressed to recall a time “where so many threats to our public safety were so elevated all at once” telling the committee that, “we’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole ‘nother level after October 7.”
“We've got Sunni jihadist terrorism, we've got domestic violent extremism, we've got Iranian-sponsored terrorism,” director Abizaid told The Cipher Brief earlier this month. “And all of this is happening below the radar in ways that we as the intelligence community, have to build an indications and warning architecture, so we stay ahead of it.”
The Cipher Brief sat down with Abizaid in an exclusive exit interview as she turns the helm over to Acting Director Brett Holmgren, to talk about her three years in the role, how the threat of terrorism has changed and what she’s most concerned about today.
(You can listen to this interview and other interviews with national security leaders by subscribing to The State Secrets podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts).
The Cipher Brief: NCTC was stood up after 9/11 to ensure that the multiple intelligence agencies in the United States shared information in time to address the kinds of threats that we saw on 9/11. What is NCTC's mission today?
Director Abizaid: It's broadly the same. We serve as the knowledge center for the United States government on all things counterterrorism. We have to maintain a known and suspected terrorist database, which is really fundamentally about identity intelligence and how we can understand who presents the threats and how we as a government should respond to them.
We integrate and analyze all terrorism information across the board, and that includes information that if it's an FBI holding, then CIA can have it. If it's in CIA's holdings, we make sure that if FBI needs it, they can have it. It includes information out of NSA and DHS. This sort of integration function of both holding important terrorism data, but then also making sure that we understand what it means about the threat environment and how the threat environment has evolved, is really important.
When I think about all of the different functions that Congress mandated for NCTC, there's a strategic operational planning component. There's a watch and warning component. All of those are hugely relevant today. And in fact, in some ways what Congress told us we needed to do almost 20 years ago now, is more important now than ever in an environment where there are fewer and fewer organizations and agencies whose sole purpose is to do counterterrorism. So, the center serves as this stabilizing function for what is a persistent threat that we must be postured against as the United States government, but also allows other agencies to go deal with other major national security challenges, knowing that the threat is covered down at least by NCTC and the functions we serve.
The Cipher Brief: In an increasingly complicated world unfortunately, issues related to terrorism don't really make the headlines until an event occurs. So how should the average American be thinking about the terrorist threat today versus 20 years ago?
Director Abizaid: I hope the average American doesn't have to think about the terrorism threat today as much as they had to in previous decades, in part because we've done a good job as the United States government across successive administrations in keeping that threat at bay. The way I think about it is let's not have the public have to worry about this, let's make it the job of the counterterrorism enterprise to have to worry about it.
And to be honest, we've got our work cut out for us. We are in a very complex threat environment. It's not at all like what we dealt with immediately after 9/11. It's very different than when ISIS came onto the scene after having declared a global caliphate. But it is no less complicated, no less concerning, and you want our intelligence agencies, our law enforcement agencies, our border security and homeland security agencies to be focused like a laser on preventing the effects of terrorism in the United States homeland and globally. So, it does not bother me that it is not at the top of American's minds. In fact, I think that's a sign of our success. And our job is to do our best to keep it off of their minds.
The Cipher Brief: I'm interested in diving into how this work gets done. Can you talk a little bit about the workforce and the efforts that go into making NCTC good at what it's doing?
Director Abizaid: NCTC is like no other place in government. There are so many unique things about being here. One of them is that we exist to be almost a melting pot of the IC. We have detailees from other agencies, CIA, DHS, FBI, NSA, we have representation from all sorts of agencies, Secret Service, Coast Guard, diplomatic security, State Department, NGA. We make sure that in doing the work of counterterrorism, you're doing it in a fundamentally collaborative way that understands not just what our job is here - to analyze a threat and produce products that help policymakers - but to know how the entire CT enterprise is supposed to function and to make sure that functioning is happening in a way that prevents the next attack.
This sort of swivel chair analysis where you can turn around and talk to your counterpart who has a great knowledge set based on the good work they've been doing at FBI, but now are doing as a detailee at NCTC, is really phenomenal. So, the work is looking at all of the terrorism information available to the United States government and discerning what the threat is to the American public and communicating that as clearly as possible. And our job is not just to communicate that to the policymaker, to the president of the United States, but it's to communicate it to the first responder, the state and local tribal territorial authorities. We have a broad array of customers that are responsible for keeping our communities safe, and we think very broadly about our mandate to make sure they know what they need to know to protect Americans.
The Cipher Brief: As director for the past three years, what would you say have been NCTC's most significant achievements?
Director Abizaid: That's a really good question. It's been three years and I keep telling myself I need to reflect. I have not yet had the chance to reflect. But there have been some pretty seminal moments in my time here. It started with the fall of Kabul and this incredible whole of government effort to evacuate American citizens and Afghan partners from the city and the country and bringing them to the United States in a way that they could start a new life with the safety and security here.
And NCTC has a big part of that mission and making sure that the people that come here are the people that are those partners and allies we care so much about while protecting against bad people who might want to enter the country. And so there was a significant effort that we put forth on a 24/7 basis with volunteers from across the community to come here and be part of what was a major crisis period for the United States government. And it was my first couple of months here and I was just incredibly proud of that. Right after that, we had the 20th anniversary of 9/11. President Biden came to our ops center and we talked to him about how we thought about the overall threat environment.
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We were a key part of evaluating the impact of the death of Ayman al-Zawahiri sitting in downtown Kabul and helped the president think through that decision by providing analysis on what it would mean. We worked across DOD, the IC, other agencies when we determined that an individual in northern Somalia was key to ISIS's global financing realm and worked through the decision-making process, provided the analysis that was critical to that to inform the president's decision to take on a pretty risky mission and take that individual out.
We've got this post-October 7th environment which is ahistoric, there is no historical context for the counterterrorism environment like we're seeing in the post-October 7th environment. And watching my team respond both to an Iranian threat network or the way that ISIS is capitalizing on it, or how Al-Qaeda might respond, or looking at racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists and how they're borrowing lessons from Hamas's attack on October 7th, just trying to predict what Hamas's end game is and how it thinks about itself as a global actor, not just an actor in Gaza. These are all really important critical questions that help our government determine its way forward, not just in the Middle East, but globally from the counterterrorism perspective. And seeing my team respond in so many different ways to the demands of that has been incredible. We've just dealt with a major disruption here in the United States, and the work that the intelligence community did to support that, that we're still doing to make sure that we understand what's happening here in the context of this heightened global threat environment is important.
The Cipher Brief: Can you talk about that major disruption event?
Director Abizaid: A little over a month ago, DHS and FBI took law enforcement action to disrupt several Tajik individuals who are here in the United States who had ties to ISIS leaders overseas. And the presence of these individuals in the United States raised significant concern to us for all the obvious reasons. But it was happening in this context of a global threat, where ISIS in some ways is resettling after a period of disquiet, ISIS-K has accomplished these major attacks in Iran and Russia using individuals of a similar profile to who we found here in the United States. And it really raised the specter for those of us in the counterterrorism community of the possibility of an attack like that happening here in the homeland.
We've seen disruptions over the course of the last couple of years in Europe that have this same sort of profile, and it's the kind of threat, the kind of change to the threat environment, that we exist to understand and respond to. In helping enable DHS and FBI to take action against one of the most concerning terrorism developments that I've seen in my tenure was... That's the job. That's what we're here for. And I was incredibly proud to see this whole community operate the way that we're supposed to when faced with a real challenging situation.
The Cipher Brief: There have been several events over the past few years on a global scale, and you mentioned October 7th. A lot of counterterrorism analysts are concerned that the way that war is being carried out could be inspiring more terrorist recruits. Have you seen trends like that? And when you talk about disruption, have you seen differences in the three years since you've been here about how people are getting into the country?
Director Abizaid: In terms of the trends, we're quite concerned about how the post-October 7th environment will create a generational impact on terrorist adversaries for the next decade in a way that we've got to be on guard for and attentive to. And it'll affect the global threat landscape in some ways that we can't predict. We know that it has increased the susceptibility of many across the world to terrorism messaging, terrorism propaganda. It has inspired individuals who may not agree with Hamas, but who see what Hamas accomplished and want to find ways into a similar project.
It has inspired individuals who may have been looking for a reason to mobilize anyway, and all of a sudden, this attack happens. It’s almost like a whole new generation of individuals are being exposed to an age-old conflict for the first time and finding cause with it in ways that are encouraging some of those individuals - not all, and probably a very small percentage - to act out in ways that are highly unpredictable and could significantly increase the threat.
When we look at radicalization timelines across the terrorism landscape, it's something like an average of 20 months between someone experiencing a radicalizing event and their mobilization to violence.
I think we haven't seen the impact of Gaza on the global threat landscape. We've started to, but we haven't seen the full impact and probably won't for a couple of years. And that's happening in a social media environment that's unique. It's happening in a technological environment that's unique, and it's happening at a time when the threat landscape is more diverse than we have ever seen it making it highly unpredictable and very complicated as a matter of intelligence challenge.
The Cipher Brief: But I do want to talk about the challenges that do still exist and will be facing the next Acting Director. Sometimes when leaders pass the baton, they leave a letter for the incoming leader. Are you planning to do the same thing and if so, what would be in the letter?
Director Abizaid: I have not decided about a letter, but I am lucky enough to be leaving this job but having a really strong colleague and excellent CT professional come in and step in an acting capacity when I leave, Brett Holmgren. He's excellent, and we're doing a little bit of turnover. I'm not sure I need to put it in writing. But as I think about some of the most important aspects of this job, obviously understanding the threat environment and preventing the next attack is the number one challenge. There are a lot of pieces to doing that well. And some of those reside here in NCTC, but some of those are just about leadership across the CT enterprise, the entire executive branch that is in charge of keeping Americans safe.
And thinking broadly about this role, about the charge you have not just as a direct report to the Director of National Intelligence, but as a key advisor to the president on counterterrorism matters, having a complete view of how the counterterrorism enterprise is postured against that threat that you're otherwise predicting and being really precise about what you need and what you have and don't have to be able to deal with the threat today and where it will evolve to, that's the job. And it's in a time of shifting resources and a time of transformation for this community is just an incredibly important function that whoever sits in this seat should understand. They're carrying the weight of making sure we have what we need to keep Americans safe.
The Cipher Brief: You mentioned that it's a complicated world. You mentioned that you briefed the president some three years ago. If you were to brief the president today, would it be a different brief?
Director Abizaid: Yeah, in fact, I have recently briefed the president, and it was quite a different brief. The threat environment today is completely different than we were experiencing on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. At that point, I think I was saying, including publicly, but also to the president, that we are in an environment where the threat to the United States homeland is less acute than it had ever been since 9/11. And in the post-October 7th environment, in this environment of sort of a diverse landscape of different terrorist groups all sort of activated at the same time, in part by that, but also other geopolitical events like Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and you have something like the Olympics looming large and so many changes in the overall threat environment happening alongside it.
We're no longer talking about a less acute threat than at any time. We're talking about one that is elevating from the trough. Now, an elevated threat environment today is different than an elevated threat environment on 9/12 or in 2014, after ISIS's declaration of a caliphate. But it is elevating, and we've got to be really clear eyed about that as a terrorism community, as a US government, and focus on the kind of international partnerships, the kind of operational partnerships that are going to matter to keep that threat at bay.
The Cipher Brief: Let's talk for just a minute about strategic shifts and countermeasures. Given the shift of the center of gravity in Sunni globally global jihad relating to Africa, how is the US adjusting its counterterrorism strategies to address that expanding influence of ISIS and al-Qaeda regional affiliates, in the Africa continent in particular?
Director Abizaid: This is a really important challenge. From an intelligence perspective, we're doing all the right things to try and understand what the contours of that threat are and what it means for the future of the threat to the West. In general, this transition of the center of gravity to different parts of Africa for both al-Qaeda, but also ISIS has meant a sort of localization trend that has focused these groups on expanding their purchase in these communities in especially west Africa, east Africa, but not necessarily projecting that threat from those regions.
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However, if you don't forestall their advancement now, the likelihood that in five years you'll face a transnational threat emerging from this new center of gravity is quite high. So the policy work, the operational work, the intelligence work is all about understanding the threat as best we can discern it, being able to position ourselves so that if that threat changes, if it becomes transnational, we understand it's coming and have done the work to stop the spread, and to enable our partners in the region, in some ways to generate new partnerships where other CT partnerships didn't exist in the past so that they can deal with this at its nascent stage, not when it's so advanced it's coming at us.
The Cipher Brief: Let's talk about emerging threats and intelligence assessment. The recent threat assessment, the latest one, highlights the growing risk of attacks using chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear materials (CBRN). Can you elaborate on the current capabilities of terrorist groups in that domain? How concerned are you that we might see a different kind of terrorist attack?
Director Abizaid: The evolution of terrorist TTPs is always a major concern. I would say that the CBRN capabilities of terrorist groups, especially on the Sunni extremist side, is about where it's been for the last several years. Where I'm very concerned is where state sponsors can introduce capability to terrorist actors in ways that have significant gains. When you look at organizations like Iraqi Shia militant groups, or Lebanese Hezbollah, those tie closely to Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism it's concerning.
Though, I would say that the evolution of TTPs that I'm most concerned about are less in the CBRN realm and more about the proliferation of drones and that being used as a tactic against us. We see that in Iraq and Syria against U.S. forces, including to really terrible consequences. But we're also worried about how easy that tactic is to replicate in other areas where you don't have major force protection schemes for U.S. forces or U.S. diplomats.
Other technological advancements that really matter tie into AI and ubiquitous encryption and all things that the democratization of technology is also enabling terrorist groups and terrorist elements in ways that we've got to keep peace with. And so there are a number of different ways in which we have to do that.
The Cipher Brief: How are you thinking about the vulnerabilities of Americans overseas? Can you talk about what you just did, which is state sponsors getting involved in these new alliances that are now forming between Russia, China, North Korea, Iran? Iran has been an active player in terrorism for decades.
Director Abizaid: Yeah, it's interesting. On the one hand, you have the Sunni extremist threat, the Al-Qaeda and ISIS type threat, which is, as I said, elevated from a relative trough, but still not what it was. Lower sophistication in actors, a little bit more informal in its formation than it was at least certainly in prior years. But you know that even though that threat is less sophisticated, they're always intent on attacks, and the more harm they can do, including to civilians, including against soft targets they will want to do.
That's really an intelligence challenge of understanding capability, not intent. When you look at state sponsors, when you look at Iran, you look at Hezbollah, you look at groups that understand the significant escalatory consequences to going too far, intent becomes a much more important part of the equation to understand how will this threat affect Americans. And then when you are in escalation periods like we are in the Middle East right now, knowing how those escalation periods could affect that calculus, what it means for the US presence worldwide. Because it's not so much whether they have the capability that it's whether they're willing to bear the consequences of using that capability in a terrorist act and generate the kind of response that the United States would then pursue.
And so we have an Iran that I think is probably more brazen as a state sponsor than we've seen in decades in this current environment. As they've been managing through what the consequences look like in the Middle East of further escalation, you've seen some pragmatism both from Hassan Nasrallah as the head of Hezbollah, but also by the supreme leader in Iran. But that can change quite quickly.
And so we're constantly monitoring that. We're constantly looking for ways to understand what that Iran threat, how it presents, where it's most likely to affect us outside of the obvious places in the Middle East and what we should do to combat it. And so when you see disruptions in Brazil of a Hezbollah plot, you certainly perk up.
The Cipher Brief: How are you thinking about potential terror sleeper cells in the U.S.?
Director Abizaid: I do not view our current threat in the United States as one of sleeper cells, as one of al-Qaeda having infiltrated and then gone to ground. Or even ISIS, even in relation to this last threat, having infiltrated or gone to ground. Hezbollah is very sophisticated. It's got all the sort of state actor concerns that we have. I am frankly more concerned right now about Iran, Iranian state agents working through surrogates to do assassination plotting against former U.S. officials and what infrastructure they're trying to use in the United States to make that happen.
The Cipher Brief: They're actively still working on these plots?
Director Abizaid: Absolutely. There is no question in my mind that the Iranians are still intent on or avenging the death of Qasem Soleimani. They're absolutely still intent on that. When they're willing to pull the trigger, in what way they're going to pursue it, who they've identified as potential targets for retribution, that's all sort of fair game, and we're constantly looking at that. But the strategic intent is there and it's not going to go away.
The Cipher Brief: And you feel confident you know who these targets might be?
Director Abizaid: There's a recurring list of individuals that we're always making sure we protect.
The Cipher Brief: In light of Hezbollah's ongoing provocations along Israel's northern border and it's anti-US stance, what are the current assessments of Hezbollah's capability to target US interests both regionally and globally?
Director Abizaid: I'm more worried about Hezbollah's intent than capability. They do have a capability. I think they've got a capability that is in Europe, it's South America, we're worried about what could be here. But whether or not they're going to be involved in a major escalation in terms of external attacks that I think is about whether they intend to be in this current environment, understanding the significant escalatory consequences. Something like a war in Lebanon is high on our mind for exactly those kinds of implications.
The Cipher Brief: What about the rise of transnational racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists posing significant challenges? What are the main drivers behind that movement, and how are you thinking about NCTC’s understanding of that environment?
Director Abizaid: The way that we see it manifest now, whether in attacks in the United States or attacks overseas or just threats overseas, goes all the way back to an attack in Norway by the Anders Behring Breivik who is constantly cited again and again, his manifesto, his ideology is sort of recycled through every subsequent attack, whether it's Christchurch that happened in New Zealand or El Paso here in the United States. We saw elements of Breivik's writing, Terrance writing, the El Paso shooters writing, a Poway attacker, all come through in a Buffalo attacker's shooting of black Americans at a supermarket in New York.
And it's this sort of ethos of leaderless resistance informed by many different ideas, but generally sort of a belief in replacement theory and accelerationism, a belief in the superiority of the white race. And in Germany, they talk a lot about neo-Nazism. We've seen some of that in places in Brazil. There are other aspects that can be quite anti-authority and anti-government. For us at NCTC, when we're focused specifically on the foreign nexus of a threat that presents here or anywhere else, these individual attacks that happen in different countries, seemingly disconnected, but all sort of sharing the same fundamental ideology all referencing each other in some cases, lionizing each other as saints makes it not a domestic problem in the United States, not a domestic problem in Germany, not a Norway or Nordics problem or something that's happening separately in Brazil or Australia. It means it's all interconnected.
And because it presents so differently than an al-Qaeda threat or an ISIS threat or Hezbollah or Iran threat, as a counterterrorism community, we're having to find new ways and new processes to understand what's happening in our individual countries as part of a global problem, not just individual domestic problem.
The Cipher Brief: And then sharing that information.
Director Abizaid: Sharing that information is always a challenge. But we have been actually working... I've been really proud of our team at NCTC, working closely with the White House, but also our counterparts overseas to make sure that we're engaging this conversation, understanding it's the next evolution of a different kind of threat that we have got to stay on top of.
Director Abizaid: And can I go back on one thing? You asked about travel patterns to United States, and I didn't answer the question, not deliberately, but mostly because I went off in a different direction. I want to be pretty clear of the foreign terrorist organization attacks that have happened in the United States since 9/11, there's about 45, 46, 47 of them. None of them have been connected to somebody who has entered the country through our southwest border. In fact, the southwest border is a vulnerability, but all of our borders are a vulnerability. Our air borders, our land borders, north and south, our sea borders. And the work that we do in the counterterrorism community is not just about border security, it's about collection overseas that helps border security. It's about interior security and law enforcement work that responds to threats should they get through.
It's a layered defense that has to work and work together to make sure that we're dealing with threats and being clear-eyed when they present themselves. And so in this job, in the last three years, I've grown increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of our southwest border, but we've maintained attention to the security of all of our borders just as a matter of what the CT enterprise does.
The Cipher Brief: We've seen a big change in the traffic pattern across that border too from a decade ago.
Director Abizaid: Absolutely. It’s completely different. And you've got a process for some of these individuals entering the country where they're not trying to avoid border security agents. They're trying to find them so they can claim asylum. And that these are big populations of people, and whether we know everything possible about each individual as soon as we encounter them or not, is a really strong part of our border security screening and vetting enterprise. That's what a really big challenge as the volume of people encountered increases.
There's a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about encounters with watch-listed individuals on the border, and what that means about how deliberately terrorists are taking the opportunity of vulnerability at our border and trying to take advantage of that.
The Cipher Brief: Are you seeing state sponsors?
Director Abizaid: That's a little bit difficult to answer only because there's large migration patterns that are associated. And look, I'm well outside my lane. I'm not a border security person. But we're seeing lots of Chinese migrants. We're seeing lots of Russian migrants. We're seeing lots of central Asian migrants. We're seeing a lot of sort of what the border security and homeland security community will call extra hemispheric migration. Within that extra hemispheric migration. We're concerned about certain populations that could tie back to a terrorist group and that we should increase scrutiny on.
But we're also working really hard as a counterterrorism community to understand what terrorists overseas intend to do and whether in fact this is a pathway that they're trying to exploit. And so we're really clear-eyed about the challenge on the border. But I think that the conversation about the border gets really complicated really quickly for lots of different reasons. But from a threat perspective, it's something that we recognize as a vulnerability, but we're trying to be really balanced about understanding what's actually happening versus sort of the scenarios that can be imagined but aren't actually present in the country.
The Cipher Brief: It's got to be somewhat challenging to do that in a political environment where everything can be spun one way or another.
Director Abizaid: That's true, but that's always true for the national security community. Your job is to be objective, clear-eyed, exercise, sound judgment about what you know to be the threat, and that's what we do. So, politicization or not, we've got to be really focused on the real threats, not the ones that are imagined. And that's what we do.
The Cipher Brief: How has technology impacted your mission?
Director Abizaid: So definitely technology has impacted the way in which terrorist groups operate, both the tactics that they employ, but also the way that they can avoid scrutiny. And that's been a challenge. But we've got to be better as a United States government at leveraging technology to our benefit. You look at something like the debate around FISA 702, and that's fundamentally a story of U.S. technological innovation and the way in which it has affected the globe and how we need to make sure that we're taking advantage of that in ways that protect the country.
If you look at the big data challenge that every organization big and small are dealing with, that's true of the intelligence community. How do we understand what information is sitting in that big data and we use it to discover real threats? How do we reveal to ourselves what's going on that we should pay attention to from a terrorism perspective?
So the story of technology is not just about the threat, but it's how we respond to the threat. And any leader in this organization or the IC has got to get really creative about how to keep pace with technological change, and frankly, we've got to do it faster than we are.
The Cipher Brief: Final question. What are you going to miss the most about this role?
Director Abizaid: Oh, the people. I love this job. This is my favorite job ever. The organization is such a unique organization. And the way that CT professionals and NCTC professionals in particular just take on the responsibility of their job. This place in crisis is a real thing to behold. Seeing people charged with doing some of the hardest things we do as a government and watching them shine every time, it's been really inspirational actually. So I am actually incredibly sad to leave this job. It's been three years. It's time, but it's really hard to say goodbye.
Disclaimer: Our Interview with Director Abizaid was conducted using NCTC recording equipment in a secure facility. NCTC reviewed the audio before providing it to The Cipher Brief.
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