Juval Aviv was the Israeli Agent whom the movie "Munich" was about... He was Golda Meir's bodyguard and she appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.
In a lecture in NYC a few weeks ago he shared information that EVERY American needs to know but our government has not shared. His bio is below, his book is "Staying Safe".
First, I am going to share what he discussed in regard to the Bush Administration, 9/11 and Iraq and then I will share his predictions for the next attack on the U.S.
He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week - O'Reilly laughed and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted him back on the show and unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack occurred.
Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the Middle East) to the Bush Administration about 9/11 a month before it occurred. His report specifically said they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments. The Administration ridiculed him and refused to respond. Congress has since hired him as a security consultant - but still the Administration does not listen to him.
He didn't agree with going into Iraq - said it didn't make sense if we wanted terrorists responsible for 9/11 (and also he believes in Golda Meir's approach which was to bring justice to the terrorists but do not take down civilians - killing civilians only creates more terrorists - but similar to Bush, Israel's subsequent leaders were not as insightful as Golda Meir) - however, when we did decide to invade Iraq we should have learned from Israel's past mistakes.
He very articulately stated that Israel's greatest mistake against their war on terror was to invade the West Bank and Gaza and stay there... He said they should have done the proven anti-terrorist strategy which was "Hit and Leave" instead of "Hit and Stay." Now we are stuck in Iraq and it is worse than Vietnam - Iraq is the U.S.'s West Bank/ Gaza. He doesn't think we will ever be able to truly leave because even when we are able to pull our troops back we will still have to go back regularly which will keep us quagmired. We should have hit hard and left immediately.
Now for the scary stuff.... He predicts the next attack on the U.S. is coming within the next few months.
Forget hijacking airplanes because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as the people on the plane will not go down quietly. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke- we are being reactionary versus looking at strategies that are effective.
1) our machines are outdated. They look for metal and the new explosives are made of plastic
2) He talked about how some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire - we now have to take off our shoes, a group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives - now we can't bring liquids on board. He is waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on their underwear and light up in a plane or in the terminal and then we will all have to travel naked!
3) We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates, he says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times and on the front end when people are checking in. It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom or get a drink and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved. Israel checks bags before people can enter the airport.
Now, back to his predictions: He says the next attack will come in a few months and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places that people congregate: Disneyland, Las Vegas, Big Cities (NY, SFO, Chicago, etc...) and there it will be shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, casinos, etc.. as well as rural America (Wyoming, Montana, etc...). The attack will be simultaneous detonations around the country (they like big impact) 5-8 cities including rural areas. They won't need to use suicide bombers because at largely populated places like the MGM Grand in Vegas - they can simply valet park!
He says this is well known in intelligence circles but our government does not want to alarm Americans. However, he also said that the US will attack Iran and Syria before Bush leaves office.
In addition, since we don't have enough troops The US will likely use small, strategic nuclear weapons regardless that the headlines the next day will read "US Nukes Islamic World" and the world will be a different place to such an extent that global warming will be irrelevant. He travels regularly to the Middle East and he knows his stuff.
On a good note - he says we don't have to worry about being nuked - he says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons - they like suicide as the frontline approach.
He also says the next level of terrorists will not be coming from abroad, but will be homegrown - having attended our schools and universities - but will have traveled frequently back and forth to the Middle East. They will know and understand Americans but we won't understand them - we still only have a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks and we need that to change he said...
What can we do? From an intelligence perspective he says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence but follow Israel, Ireland and England's example of human intelligence both from an infiltration perspective as well as trust citizens to help. We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens but our government treats us like babies and thinks we can't handle it and will panic.
He did a test for Congress recently putting an empty briefcase in 5 major spots in 5 US cities and not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago - someone tried to steal it! In Israel an unattended bag or package would be
reported in seconds with a citizen shouting "Unattended Bag" and the area cleared slowly, calmly and immediately by the people themselves. Unfortunately, we haven't hurt enough yet for us to be that concerned....
He also discussed how many children were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11 without parents to pick them up and the schools did not have a plan. Do you have a plan with your kids, schools and families if you cannot reach each other by phone? If you cannot return to your house? If you cannot get to your child's school - do they know what to do? We should all have a plan.
He said that our government's plan after the next attack is to immediately cut-off EVERYONE's ability to use their telephone, cell phone, blackberry because they don't want terrorists to be able to talk to one another - do you have a plan if you cannot communicate directly with those that you love.
Last week the Today Show began with a segment that Al Qaeda was resurfacing - the same kind of action on the Pakistani border occurred before 9/11... It is scary, but we do not have panic, we just need to be aware....
