LAURA INGRAHAM: In the "Unresolved Problem" segment tonight, a disturbing anti-American video surfaces on the Internet. Last month a Statue of Liberty replica was stolen from a coffee shop in Brooklyn, New York, and then this popped up on YouTube. The video maker sent the clip to the owner of the coffee shop and a local newspaper. Steve Emerson joins us now, the executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Steven, is this anything that we should be concerned about? I mean, it's -- it's just bizarre.
STEVE EMERSON: He's got his 15 seconds of fame, maybe his 8 seconds of fame. This is not an al Qaeda warning. If al Qaeda wanted to do something, they'd blow up the actual Statue of Liberty, OK? It reminds me of the anthrax letters who tried to mislead the people to believe it was from al Qaeda. It wasn't. Al Qaeda has got enough serious plots underway they don't need to do something like this.
INGRAHAM: Now, your group monitors activity on the Internet: communications, Web sites, and so forth. And you try to, you know, do a composite sketch of where the terror threat might be today.
EMERSON: Also in the United States.
INGRAHAM: And in the United States.
EMERSON: We do undercover reporting and informants. Use informants, as well, here.
INGRAHAM: What is the most disturbing thing you've seen lately about the terror trend?
EMERSON: The independent cells that are developing, like the Bronx plot three weeks ago to blow up two synagogues and shoot down a National Guard plane. The shooting of the National Guard recruiter in Arkansas. The number of jihadists in the United States is way higher, way, way higher than the Washington Post or the New York Times or any other politically-mainstream newspaper would ever admit. The FBI knows this, and they're having a very difficult time tracking them, but they know the problem is there. And the American public is being mislead.
INGRAHAM: And William Long, Private William Long, who was gunned down. That's how are talking about outside the recruiting station. He was killed by a convert to Islam; is that right?
EMERSON: Convert to Islam who went to Yemen and you the pretense of teaching English. And there are dozens of those black American converts who go to Yemen, get taught in the madrassas how to carry out jihad and come back here. They are ticking time bombs.
INGRAHAM: He was -- he was actually arrested over there...
EMERSON: Right.
INGRAHAM: ... for traveling on a passport he wasn't supposed to be traveling on. Then he came back here. They opened up a general investigation, I guess, the FBI. But then nothing came of it, and he was casing out the recruiting area.
EMERSON: Listen, just over the weekend there was a radical Islamic conference held here in Washington. The guy calls for a jihad. He's the former head of prison, Islamic prison system in New York state. And he had supported al Qaeda.
This is a guy that has influence over tens of thousands of inmates.
INGRAHAM: This -- this prison stuff, the lid has to be blown off this. I know you're doing a lot of work on this. I want to have you on my radio show. We'll go into it in greater detail. But thanks for the heads up on all this. Steve, as always, it's good to see you.