Hello, I'm Sue Lawley, chair of the BBC's Reith Lectures.

Thank you for downloading this podcast.

In her first lecture called Terror, Eliza Manningham Buller, the former Director-General of MI5, the British Security Service, reflects on the September 11th attacks on the United States.

Ten years on, she examines the lasting significance of that day and asks, was it a terrorist

crime, an act of war, or something different? Hello and welcome to the radio theatre in Broadcasting

House London to the second series of this year's Reith Lectures. They're called Securing Freedom. In the first

part, broadcast in June, we heard from

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader about her fight to see democracy created in her

oppressed homeland. Today, in the month that sees the 10th anniversary of the terrorist

attacks of 9-11, we're on territory more worryingly familiar to most of us.

The world has changed a lot since the World Trade Center in New York collapsed in the face of their suicidal onslaught.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the killing of Osama bin Laden seem to suggest that we're locked in a never-ending

struggle between freedom and terror. The West may enjoy democratic values that the people of Burma

can only envy, but how does it protect them from those who would do anything to destroy them?

How do we balance our belief in human freedom with the need to defend

ourselves against those who believe the use of terror can be justified? To try to answer these

questions and describe how countries such as Britain endeavour to secure their freedom, we're going to

hear three lectures from a former Director-General of the British Security Service, MI5.

In her first lecture, she'll take us back to that terrible day in September 2001,

explore its impact and assess its lasting significance.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Eliza Manningham Buller.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Eliza Manning and Buller. Eliza, just a few personal questions before we begin.

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