CONTESSA BREWER: Steve Emerson is a terrorism expert.

So, Steve, on one hand you have the President going to win hearts and minds, you have Osama Bin Laden trying to hold on to hearts and minds, is he still an effective communicator?

STEVEN EMERSON: That remains to be seen. My feeling is this tape that was released by Osama [Bin Laden] was probably made within the last month. There aren't many contemporaneous events that are referred to [in the tape]. The real substantive tape was made by his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has a large following in Egypt. There is going to be competition for the attention of the Muslim World between what the President says and what Ayman al- Zawahiri says. What I fear, however, is that the president has raised expectations to the point that the Muslim World feels he is going to deliver everything. That together with Ayman al-Zawahiri's critique of saying where the U.S. has engaged in crimes against Islam, I think, is setting up the President for a big fall. I hope I am wrong, but I fear that is going to happen.

CARLOS WATSON: Steve, so what kind of recruiting success are we seeing Al Qaeda and even the Taliban to some extent and other groups have in the last six months since Obama has taken office.

Do you know?

EMERSON: Well, that is a very interesting question. Obviously we saw in Pakistan that the Taliban has made very, very big progress in terms of advancing towards territorial control. In Afghanistan, they've made progress. In the United States, interestingly enough, we have seen now a series of Jihadist events: the Bronx plot last weekend, the shooting yesterday of the recruiter in Little Rock – I understand that is actually part of a larger network of Americans who went and trained in Yemen and came back with the idea of carrying out Jihad. So I think the Al Qaeda network is on the rise.