Terrorism expert: London attack could happen in Seattle

An explosion at a train station in London injured 22 people Friday morning.

Fortunately, there were no fatalities, but it easily could’ve been worse. The improvised explosive device used partially failed. London Metropolitan Police are treating the attack as a terrorist incident.

Stratfor Chief Security Officer and terrorism expert Fred Burton says it’s not hard to imagine something like this happening here.

“Before the Internet, you had the Anarchist’s Cookbook to figure out how to put these together,” Burton told 770 KTTH’s Jason Rantz. “Now you can learn how to do this on the Internet. You can cobble together the components at your local hardware store. So, yes, it becomes that simple.”

Burton’s a former deputy chief of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service of the counter terrorism division, he said there are strategies law enforcement agencies can use to try to prevent these kinds of attacks.

“The Joint Terrorism Task Force in Seattle, for example, or elsewhere,” Burton said, “how many suspects do have under surveillance that are predisposed to this kind of behavior? What’s the probability of one of these persons doing that?”

Sometimes, though, it’s regular people that can stop an attack, Burton explains.

“It boils down to good, old citizen reaction, meaning somebody reporting something’s suspicious or just doesn’t look right,” Burton said. “As corny and as simplistic as that sounds, that does prevent acts of terror.”

Listen to the entire interview with Burton here.

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