The NPR Politics Podcast - Sources & Methods: Two wars escalate abroad, political violence at home

Episode Date: September 13, 2025

Today, we're sharing another episode from NPR's newest podcast, Sources & Methods. Each Thursday, host Mary Louise Kelly breaks down the week's biggest national security news with NPR's team of reporters covering the military, State Department, and spy agencies. NPR correspondents stationed around the world also join the conversation. This episode, national security correspondent Greg Myre and domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef join Mary Louise Kelly discuss how U.S. national security changed after the September 11th attacks. Will the structures put in place to prevent another attack survive the Trump administration’s cuts to intelligence agencies? And did a focus on militant Islamism mean turning away from threats posed by white supremacist groups?And Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, argues that America’s political division is its greatest national security threat — and the best defense is rebuilding the middle class.Find new episodes of Sources & Methods on the NPR App or wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith here with a Saturday bonus episode for you. It's the most recent episode of NPR's new national security podcast, sources and methods, where NPR reporters who cover the military, state department, and spy agencies break down the biggest NACC news of the week. We're going to share these shows each Saturday

for a couple of weeks because their show is a lot like ours. We think you'll like it, and you might even hear us on there from time to time. New episodes drop every Thursday, and you can follow the show wherever you listen to this one. So here you go. It's sources and Methods, the new national security podcast from NPR. Being in New York on that day, even in a place as cynical as New York City, people had their flags out, they were decent to each other, we were all on the same team. And I'm so concerned with how far we feel from that moment. An Israeli airstrike inside U.S. ally Qatar, Russian drones in NATO airspace, meaning

big escalations in the two big wars that have dominated U.S. foreign policy and resources lately, very different wars than the one that arguably began 24 years ago today with the attacks of September 11th. This is sources and methods from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Every Thursday, we discuss the biggest national security stories of the week. Later, this episode, we will do that with Senator Alyssa Slotkin, who sits on the armed services. committee. But first, our regular roundtable with my colleagues from NPR's NADSEC team, covering the military, the State Department, the Intel community. Today, we have Odette Yusef on the extremism beat for NPR. Odette. Welcome. This is your debut on the pod. I'm glad to be here. Thanks.

And back with us again, just recently and very happily, safely returned from your latest tour in our Ukraine Bureau, Greg Miree. Welcome back. Welcome home. Good to be back. I will note your regular beat is the Intel community, which has been in all kinds of up people since you left. Security clearance has yanked. People fired. I'm sure it will calm down completely now that you're home. Sources are telling me that. I'm a little skeptical. I would be too. Well, this week had already served up half a dozen significant Natsack stories to discuss. And then Wednesday night, the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking on a college campus in Utah. So, Odette, I want to start there because domestic extremism is your beat.

There's still a lot we don't know at this hour on Thursday afternoon. We are taping now at just past noon. We do know we're living in a country where political violence represents a growing threat to national security. So what questions are on your mind as you track what just happened in Utah? So obviously the question is, who did it? You know, we are at this time of taping still without a. a suspect in custody. There were two arrests yesterday, but both of those individuals were released. And so we're really still in the dark about who's responsible and any motivation that there may have been. And I think what's been very concerning to see is that in this time that's elapsed, this vacuum of any knowledge, there's been a lot of finger pointing and a lot of assumptions made about who's responsible for the political violence. And so I'm just very concerned that the longer we go, some of this really incendiary rhetoric that we've been seeing on social media and

elsewhere is just going to keep on churning. Let's head overseas, because I mentioned escalations in two wars. To recap, on Tuesday, Israel attempted to kill Hamas leaders in an airstrike in Doha. Qatar, Qatar, again, a U.S. ally that has been hosting for years now, ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas. That's war number one. Then Wednesday, NATO announced it had scrambled fighter jets to take down Russian drones that were violating Polish airspace. Russia, of course, is actively attacking Ukraine, which is just across the border from Poland. Greg, Myrie, you have been reporting on both these wars on the ground in recent months, Middle East and Ukraine. A top line takeaway or two on this week's news. Yeah, it's a clear escalation carried out by leaders who are going directly against the wishes of. of President Trump, seemingly because they think they can and there won't be any repercussions.

Russia's Vladimir Putin has stepped up attacks on Ukraine. I saw that firsthand when I was in Ukraine. Now we sent at least nine drones into Poland. Seemingly is a way to see how the U.S. and NATO might respond. And so far, they just say they're assessing. Testing the waters or testing the airspace as the case may be moved. That's what it seems so far. And in the Middle East, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyan Anahue unleashed this airstrike in Qatar as Hamas leaders gathered to discuss a peace plan backed by the Trump White House. Trump says he wants to end both these wars, but leaders are stepping up, expanding attacks, and so far, they're not facing any consequences. Still a lot of things we don't know about both.

I'll inject a little on the ground reporting our colleague Aya Batrawe is in Doha, in Qatar. She went to try to see the Hamas residents and the locations that Israel hit. She couldn't get there because it's all cordoned off. But she said, I'm looking around. And it's right in the middle of a neighborhood and embassies and schools speaks to the real violation this was of Qatar. And as you say, of how President Trump appears to have hoped that things would go. Yeah. And Qatar is sort of the Switzerland of the Middle East.

No mountains, no snow. But it's a safe space where people can get together and talk. that's sort of been Kotter's deal. And we'll see whether they want to continue hosting those talks and where that goes in the days to come. So let me spin both of us. These wars in Ukraine and Gaza are the international, national security crises du jour. But the three of us are sitting here speaking on the anniversary of 9-11. And so I want to spend our time today looking at the long shadow of those attacks, how we got here.

And I want to back us up, Greg, I think I'm right in saying that many moons ago, you were based in Pakistan, where you could kind of sort of start seeing the outlines of what might have been coming in the late 90s. Just tell us where you were, where you were seeing. Yeah, I was based in Islamabad in 1995. And one morning I woke up and we started hearing reports that Ramsey Yusuf, who was accused of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, where a law. A large vehicle was packed with explosives and killed six people, wounded 1,000. So a major attack at the World Trade Center, he was accused, he was captured. It was about a mile from my home in Islamabad, a little shopping, near a shopping area where I went too often. So I raced over there. I asked some guys, you know, have you seen this guy? And they said, yeah, he's living at that guest house, the Sukhasa guest house.

And they said he went to that video store. So I raced to the video store and said, could we see this? guy's video rental card. And they pulled it right out and knew exactly who he was. And I swear to you, the last video, the last movie Ramsey Yusuf rented before he was captured was fugitive among us. Oh, geez. You couldn't make it up. Absolutely not. And but there were some even more important developments coming out of that. They seized his computer and they found a plan to simultaneously blow up multiple U.S. airliners, and it later emerged that his attack in 1993 on the World Trade Center was funded by his uncle, a guy named Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who would go on to mastermind the

9-11 attack six years later. So here in 1995, we knew the potential target, the World Trade Center, which had already been hit. We knew the method using multiple airliners, U.S. commercial airliners, as weapons and the family, Ramsey Yusuf and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And we know that Ramsey Yusuf had bad taste in movies, but that's a sidebar. I mean, it's reminding me of, you know, all that was known in the late 90s, then CIA director, George Tenet, talked about going to the White House and trying to brief them and, you know, that his hair was on fire because of all the incoming. In the end, U.S. intelligence was not able to connect the dots.

the 9-11 attacks happened. I mean, Greg, one more to you, and then, Odette, I want to bring you in, but you cover the CIA. 24 years on, how has the agency changed in the wake of that massive intelligence failure that was the attacks of 9-11? Well, I think it's changed a couple times, but at that point, it was transformed from an agency that gathered and analyzed intelligence, something it had been doing really for a half century. It became this paramilitary force that was suddenly involved in fighting. fighting battles in the Middle East, capturing, interrogating prisoners. It became a very different agency. The CIA was first into Afghanistan. They beat the Pentagon troops into Afghanistan after 9-11.

Odette jump in because what resulted after all those investigations and the hearings was suddenly this flood of money to combating terrorism. The whole U.S. government is suddenly geared up to fight al-Qaeda and Salafi jihadists. And the definition of terrorism that took hold and where all that money was channeled. You've been reporting that maybe that was too narrow looking back. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting because, you know, I think 9-11 really woke people up to sort of what's the capacity, what were the silos that were existing within the intelligence community. And it led to the creation of like the whole new department, the Department of Homeland Security,

an enormous federal agency now. Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center, none of those existed. The apparatus that was constructed right after 9-11 to protect the homeland was enormous, but the attention at the time really was on these foreign terrorist organizations. You know, that made sense at the time, but we also have to remember that just two years after that World Trade Center bombing that Greg referenced earlier. You know, back in 1995, Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City. And so, you know, we have had throughout American history instances where there were threats here on the homeland against other Americans by Americans

themselves. And what we've been seeing more recently is that there has been a rise in political violence in the United States. And the most lethal and persistent threat on the homeland, according to former FBI director for director Christopher Ray, has been violent. white supremacists. And so it's sort of been one at the expense of the other. And I think one of the issues that we're really facing the reality of today is that the threat landscape here in the homeland today is vastly more complex than it was 24 years ago. national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at our WJF.org.

So let me bring us up to today, all of the work that was done post-9-11, all of the institutions that were created, are now on a state of huge flux. The National Security Council staff has been slashed. The Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is trying to cut her staff by nearly half. I could go on. Who makes sure that relevant information is going to get to the people and persuade the White House? This is important. We need to pay attention to it now. Right. Well, that's a very big, tough question to answer. But every day, the president does get a presidential daily brief, and that is run by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Tulsi Gabbard, therefore, is responsible for that. And that continues, but she's going to have half the number of people standing behind her now.

That's true. And it's also a question of what direction she provides. The president might get a list of a half dozen things that the intelligence community thinks are important on that particular day. But we've already seen very clear instances of top national security officials being dismissed because assessments about Iran or Venezuela are at odds with what President Trump has been saying publicly. So as a career official and Do you really want to put your whole career and reputation on the line by writing something you may believe, but it's at odds with something that President Trump has stated publicly? You just mentioned Venezuela, which is making me, of course, think of this strike that obliterated what the Trump administration says was a Venezuelan drug boat a few days ago. Trump has defended that strike and claimed that the people on that boat were terrorists, which prompts a question to you, Odette. is that, you know, in 2025, is there agreement on what terrorism is? No, I mean, there's a lot of questions right now from the counterterrorism world on this sort of reorientation of the definition of terrorism that we're seeing from the administration. Drug cartels have not traditionally fallen under the ambit of national security work. I mean, that's been typically a law enforcement matter.

And so there's, you know, concern that I'm hearing about, well, what is this going to mean when it comes to allocation of resources at a time when the counterterrorism, or when the terrorism landscape is more complex than it's ever been. Now, I'm going to let the two of you go before my interview with Senator Slotkin. But first, I want to talk through some OSENT. That is open source intelligence. That is the way we usually wrap this part of the show. Ossent, meaning kernels of intelligence, sometimes little tiny crumbs that are hidden in plain sight, but that have caught our eye or ear this week. Greg, go first. Tom Hanks. Okay, where you're back to movies.

Yes. If you're familiar with his screen career, you may have noticed he's played some U.S. troops over the years in saving private Ryan and in Forrest Gump. And off screen, he's done an awful lot. I've been very involved in supporting U.S. troops and veterans. So the West Point Alumni Association announced that they were going to give him a big annual award for somebody who's not a graduate of West Point, but has done a lot to serve the U.S. military. President Trump got wind of this, complained publicly and loudly, saying Tom Hanks is way too woke, that he has supported Democratic candidates over the years. And the West Point Alumni Association announced that they were, in fact, canceling the ceremony. Really? Has Tom Hanks said anything?

I have not seen any comment from Tom Hanks on this. Interesting. But we will stay tuned. All right. Odette, what's you got? I have something at the strange intersection of violent extremism and fashion. Last week, the fast fashion brand Sheehan had to remove an image on its website for a t-shirt that it was selling that appeared to be modeled by Luigi Mangione. You may remember Mangione is the man that's been charged with killing the United Health Care CEO, Brian Thompson, late last year. Right.

You know, my guess is that it was AI generated. Sheehan attributed this image to a third-party vendor. But I continue to be fascinated by the ways that Mangione seems to have kind of captured the culture. Yeah, I was going to ask, why would anyone want a Luigi Mangioni T-shirt? Why would that be fashionable? Well, you know, I think he's been getting a lot of fan-diality. male in prison or in jail just because of his appearance. But, you know, there's also playing in San Francisco Luigi the musical. I don't know about you all, but I've seen on cars just

driving around Luigi campaign bumper stickers. Like, it's a different thing that seems to be happening around his legacy than I have seen in my lifetime around any other person that's been accused of a crime like that. The strange intersection indeed of fashion and extremism. All right, I'm not sure I can top either of those, but I will inject into this mix, NATO Article 4, which I'm raising because I don't think I could have told you what NATO Article 4 was until this week. We all talk a lot about NATO Article 5, which is the collective defense, the cornerstone of the alliance. But this week, Poland invoked Article 4, after, as we've discussed, these Russian drones crossing into Polish airspace. So I was trying to bone up fast. What is article for? What does that mean to invoke it? So we called someone who should know, who said in meetings on this, Rose Gattemoller. She is a former Deputy Secretary General of NATO. And she said, well, it's a way to very quickly gather members to consult in the event of an urgent security situation. And I pushed her on that a little bit because they're all in Brussels anyway. Couldn't they get together or just.

hop on a call without invoking Article 4 of the NATO treaty. And she said, look, it's, you know, it conveys a seriousness of concern about what the response should be. So there you go. I offer it up next time either of you have a family crisis. You can tell them you're invoking Article 4 and you can have an urgent security summit at the family dinner table. And pure national security correspondent Greg Myrie.

And pure domestic extremism correspondent, Odette Yusuf, making her debut on sources and methods. Thanks to you both. Thank you. Sure thing, Mayor Louise. And after a short break, my interview with Senator Alyssa Slotkin. When the planes hit the World Trade Center, 24 years ago, Alyssa Slotkin was seven miles away, 25 years old, a grad student at Columbia University. The smell of that burning buildings and that very sort of,

of toxic chemically smell that was just hanging over New York for weeks, if not months. And it completely changed my life. I mean, top to bottom. That is Slotkin speaking to the Washington Post. She told the paper that the 9-11 attacks led her to a job at the CIA. Later at the White House, the Pentagon. Her two-decade national security career evolved into a political one. Alyssa Slotkin is now Senator Slotkin.

The Michigan Democrat serves today on the armed services. Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs Committee. Senator, welcome to sources and methods. Thanks for having me. So when I started mapping out earlier this week, what I wanted to ask you, I was definitely going to start with Israel's attack on Hamas leadership in Doha. And then Russian drones flew into Poland and NATO scrambled fighter jets to shoot them down. And suddenly we were watching NATO engaging enemy targets in NATO airspace for the first time. And then in Utah, in our country's latest horror of political violence, the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot

and killed. I find it hard some days to wake up and know where to start, and I wonder if you feel that from your perch in the Senate. Yeah, I mean, certainly I think I'm used to that in the national security context where, you know, you can't control events that are happening abroad. I think it's the combination of those with just the events that are going on inside the country, just every single day, something new and different, it certainly feels saturating. And I know a lot of people have frankly just kind of decided they're going on a media diet. Which you can't do. No, no. No, nor can I. It's the fire hose every day. So the institutions that U.S. intelligence and national security has to deal with these are the institutions that were created

in the wake of 9-11. And now the Trump administration is working to reshape many. of those institutions, pushing through, for example, a nearly 50% cut at the Director of National Intelligence on her staff, pushing out the leaders of the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency. I could go on. What do you make of the current upheaval in the intelligence community in which you used to serve? Yeah, I mean, look, it's difficult to watch. I can't tell you how dangerous I think it is to politicize. intelligence. And, you know, it's very hard to see some of these moves as anything other than attempting to shape the intelligence community to the will of Donald Trump. I believe that to be

dangerous for the security of the United States. You know, if there's a threat coming from abroad or, you know, something happening, you have to call balls and strikes on that or else people can get, you know, deeply hurt. I will note that Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, sees this totally the other way around. She says she is trying to get politics out of intelligence, that she's trying to restore the intelligence of the intelligence community. I wonder how fine a line it feels like you are walking as an elected U.S. Senator and a Democrat. When you criticize the Trump administration, does that risk wading into the politics of it all? Well, but the thing is, is oftentimes I think Trump has the wrong answer to the right question. It's the way he goes about it.

the wholesale slashing and burning of, you know, things and organizations because he didn't like what they did in the last administration. So you're not saying, hey, we couldn't do this better. You're saying this isn't the right of purpose. I would say even further, I think with Trump doing what he's doing, let's actually take this as a moment, not to just snap back to the same system we had before he came in, but take it as a moment to do a little rethinking of how we are organized as an intelligence community and a defense department and other issues as well. I don't like the democratic response that's like just maintain status quo. The status quo was not working. What do you see as the biggest national security threat facing our country today?

I really believe that the existential threat to the country is not coming from abroad. It's the shrinking middle class at home and what that does to our stability here. I mean, if you want to understand why we are at this moment in our history, this fractious authoritarian moment where Americans are turned against each other. I mean, look at what just happened to Charlie Kirk. I mean, if you want to understand, you know, why we are so polarized, to me, it is about the fact that just more and more Americans do not feel like they can save every month and live the American dream. And when you do that, when you can't provide for your kids what was provided to you, You feel shame. You feel anger. You feel cornered. And you start looking for someone to blame. And that is almost always someone who doesn't look like you or talk like you or pray like you.

So I was going to ask because I hear you being critical of the approach that the Trump administration is taking. But you've also argued this is a moment of huge opportunity. But give me an example. Sure. So we understand that it is important that we are, you know, Americans maintain leadership roles in the world. We know we've made a lot of mistakes. You know, if you're thinking about a different way of doing what we need to do to be postured for the future, I think we got to change the Defense Department. I think that our way of taking 12 years to go from idea for a new weapon system to actually fielding it doesn't work for the modern age. I think we have a problem with adopting technology fast enough. And that is a real threat to us when China can move, you know, from idea to fielding in five years.

So circle back to that pretty morning in New York. Obviously what happened on 9-11 was horrific. But in the dees that followed, the whole world stood with the United States. And Americans pulled together, set aside our political differences, which I'm describing that. And it sounds like a time capsule from a different planet. What if anything remains of that moment? What gives you hope? Yeah.

Gosh, I think about that moment. I thought about it a lot today because even in a place as cynical as New York City, you know, people had their flags out. They were decent to each other. We were all in the same team. And I'm so glad that I got to be there in that moment to see that. and I'm so concerned with how far we feel from that moment. Look, what gives me hope is that I go home every weekend, and the vast majority of Michiganders live in that 80% middle

that don't scream on the Internet, that don't want to hurt their neighbors when they happen to disagree. They just want team normal. I grew up, my dad's a lifelong Republican, my mom was a lifelong Democrat. It was totally normal when we grew up. And a lot of Michiganders really think about that time and wish for that time because we're very mixed politically. And that gives me hope that my practical, reasonable constituents get exhausted looking at the extremes and just want something normal. To find our way back to the middle.

To find our way back. That keeps me buoyed. Democratic Senator Alyssa Slotkin of Michigan, as you heard. Thank you for stopping by. Thank you. That's our show for today. A quick note that you can email us at Sources and Methods at NPR.org. That is sources and methods all spelled out, no spaces, and the link is in our episode notes.

Now, we do love to hear from you. Send us your feedback, ideas for topics, your reaction to anything we talk about here. It is all very much appreciated. Something else we would appreciate as a brand new podcast is for you to read and review. view us on whatever platform you use to listen. That actually goes a long way toward helping new listeners find us. Now, if you're not the rate and review type, we get it. We would settle for just telling a friend who you think will like the show. We're back next Thursday with another new episode. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Thank you for listening to sources and methods from NPR.

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