For anyone wishing to understand the next post-9 11 generation of al-Qaeda planning
leadership and tactics there is only one place to begin: Southeast Asia. In fact such
countries as the Philippines Indonesia Thailand and Malaysia have been crucial nodes in the
al-Qaeda network since long before the strikes on the Pentagon and World Trade Center but when
the allies overran Afghanistan the new camps in Southeast Asia became the key training grounds
for the future. It is in the Muslim strongholds in the Philippines and Indonesia that the next
generation of al-Qaeda can be found. In this powerful eye-opening work Maria Ressa casts the
most illuminating light ever on this fascinating but little-known terrorist HQ. Every major
al-Qaeda attack since 1993 has had a connection to the Philippines and Maria Ressa CNN's lead
investigative reporter for Asia and a Filipino-American who has lived in the region since 1986
has broken story after story about them. From the early failed attempts to assassinate Pope
John Paul II and Bill Clinton to the planning of the 9 11 strikes and the 48 Hours of Terror
in which eleven American jetliners were to be blown up over the Pacific she has interviewed
the terrorists their neighbors and families and the investigators from six different
countries who have tracked them down. After the Bali bombing al-Qaeda's worst strike since 9
11 which killed more than two hundred Ressa broke major revelations about how it was planned
why it was a Plan B substitute for an even more ambitious scheme aimed at Singapore and why
the suicide bomber recruited to deliver the explosives almost caused the whole plan to fall
apart when he admitted he could barely drive a car. Above all Ressa has seen how al-Qaeda's
tactics are shifting under the pressures of the war on terror. Rather than depending upon its
own core membership (estimated at three to four thousand at its peak) the network is now
enmeshing itself in local conflicts co-opting Muslim independence movements wherever they can
be found and helping local revolutionaries to fund plan and execute sinister attacks against
their neighbors and the West. If history is any guide al-Qaeda revisits its plans over and
over until they can succeed -- and many of those plans have already been discovered and are
here revealed thanks to classified investigative documents uncovered by Ressa.
