NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly: ‘Terrorist threat is still very much alive’

New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly sits down with Starting Point’s Soledad O’Brien to discuss continued counterterrorism efforts and One World Trade Center.

Kelly says, “We think that certainly core Al Qaeda has been significantly degraded I think to a large extent to the predator attacks, but these types of findings show they are still very much functioning. We’re certainly concerned about Al Qaeda surrogates in Somalia, in Maghreb, in other parts of Africa. And we’re concerned of course about the lone wolves. The last three people we’ve arrested for terrorism here have been lone wolves, in essence, although Al Faisal Shahzad did go to Pakistan for training. We need a 360-degree perimeter, and Al Qaeda and the terrorist threat is still very much alive.”

He continues, “There’s lots of threats out there. Obviously we’re concerned about nuclear threat, nuclear event the thing that concerns us the most. But the information about planting bombs inside people — the intelligence community has been looking at that for a while.”

On One World Trade Center Kelly says, “There’s no other building in the world I believe that’s built like World Trade Center One. It has cost a lot of money largely because of the security aspects of the construction. So it is a very powerfully built structure. But sure, we’re concerned about a lot of targets. We have a lot of iconic targets in New York City. We know New York is the number one target in the United States for terrorism. The intelligence community tells us we have 14 plots against the city since 9/11. We are vigilant. We have over 1,000 police officers every day devoted to our counterterrorism efforts. We feel we have to, as a time when we’re down in head count we still make the major commitment, because New York is still at risk of a terrorist attack.”

Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien airs weekday mornings from 7-9am ET on CNN.