Next big terrorist attack on US will be postmarked 'Pakistan': CIA analyst

A former CIA analyst, who helped President Barack Obama formulate his Pakistan-Afghanistan policy, sees “a very serious possibility that the next mass casualty terrorist attack on the United States will be postmarked Pakistan.”

“What we’re seeing going on in Pakistan now is a very dangerous phenomenon,” says Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington think tank.

“The ideology of al Qaida, the ideology of global Islamic jihad that all jihadists should focus on the United States as the ultimate enemy, is gaining ground with groups beyond al Qaida,” said Riedel, who chaired a special interagency committee last year to develop Obama’s Af-Pak policy.

Obama and previous Bush administrations have been pressuring Pakistan for years to shut down completely the jihadist Frankenstein that was created over three decades in Pakistan, Riedel said. But “no Pakistani government has yet been willing to take on the entire network of terrorist groups.”