U.S. Faces "Serious Threat" of Terror Attack, Expert and Former CIA Chief Warn

[Mary (Jer. 17:9, 10)]

U.S. Faces "Serious Threat" of Terror Attack,
Expert and Former CIA Chief Warn

AXIOS
Article Source
Dave Lawler


Hagi Abucar puts flowers on the 9/11 Memorial in Manhattan last year during a ceremony on the 21st anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/AP

Alarmed by repeated warnings from top FBI and military officials, a former acting CIA director and a legendary foreign policy thinker write bluntly in Foreign Affairs: "The United States faces a serious threat of a terrorist attack in the months ahead."

Why it matters: Michael Morell and Graham Allison write that there are striking echoes of the run-up to 9/11 — including warnings about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda by then-CIA director George Tenet.

Now, similar warnings are popping up from FBI director Chris Wray and Army Gen. Erik Kurilla — the commander of CENTCOM, which includes the Middle East.
Between the lines: Repeated warnings of this sort from national security officials and experts in the two decades since 9/11 have not come to fruition.

Over that time, terrorism has faded as a national fixation.
Go deeper: Read the full Foreign Affairs essay (email required).


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[Mary (Jer. 17:9, 10)]

'Just In Time For the Election’:
Signee of Hunter Biden Laptop Intel Letter
Warns of ‘Serious’ Terror Threat

June 17, 2024
Article Source
Frieda Powers

National security alarms by U.S. officials have triggered warnings that “the terrorism warning lights are blinking red again.”

But the latest portents of impending danger to the homeland are coming from a national security and defense policy analyst and a former acting CIA director who was among a list of purported ‘experts’ who smeared the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Former acting Director of the CIA Michael Morell joined with Graham Allison to pen a notice in Foreign Affairs that the “United States faces a serious threat of a terrorist attack in the months ahead.”

Comparing current conditions to the run-up to the September 11 terrorist attack in 2001, the authors pointed to warnings about Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda by then-CIA director George Tenet to current remarks from FBI director Chris Wray and Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, the commander of CENTCOM.

“Two and a half decades later, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, is sounding similar alarms. His discussions within the Biden administration are private, but his testimony to Congress and other public statements could not be more explicit,” they wrote.

“In the years since 9/11, other officials have warned about terrorist threats that, fortunately, did not materialize, but that does not mean Wray’s and Kurilla’s comments today should be discounted. The wax and wane of terrorism warnings over the years has generally corresponded with the level of actual risk. In many cases, too, those warnings triggered government responses that thwarted terrorists’ plans. Given the stakes, complacency is a greater risk than alarmism,” they continued.

Morell and Allison further noted that “policymakers should not underestimate the threat of a terrorist attack” and President Joe Biden “should launch a comprehensive campaign to halt any terrorist planning that may be underway.”

Outlining several “steps” and goals for the Biden administration to take in preventing another 9/11-type attack on the U.S., the authors suggested, “Congressional intelligence committees should convene unclassified hearings with the directors of National Intelligence, the CIA, the FBI, and the National Counterterrorism Center and ask each agency to offer its candid views.”

“A terrorist attack is a preventable catastrophe. As the threat increases, policymakers must rise to the challenge to protect the U.S. homeland,” they concluded.

In reporting on the piece published in Foreign Affairs, Axios noted, “Repeated warnings of this sort from national security officials and experts in the two decades since 9/11 have not come to fruition.”

“Over that time, terrorism has faded as a national fixation,” the outlet added.

Immigration analyst Alexander Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute agrees that the authors “don’t muster much evidence” to support their warnings.

Morell was one of 51 former US intelligence officials who called the story on Hunter Biden’s laptop “Russian disinformation” in a 2020 letter. But even after the Department of Justice and FBI confirmed the authenticity of the laptop, the ‘experts’ including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta continued to stand by their letter.

One social media user responded to the story, “Just in time for the election.”


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[Mary (Jer. 17:9, 10)]

Risk of terror attack on US soil rises to
alarmingly high level, experts warn
Porous southern border has allowed millions of unvetted people to enter US,
raising chances of major terror event, experts say

By Michael Dorgan
Article Source
Fox News
Published June 19, 2024 4:00am EDT

The threat of a major terror event taking place on U.S. soil is at a dangerously high level with big cities like New York City and Washington, D.C. most vulnerable to an attack, terror experts are warning.

It's been nearly 23 years since nearly 3,000 people perished on 9/11, but even though surveillance and airport security has been beefed up, the world has changed considerably since then.

Technology has become cheaper and more advanced, the internet is lightning fast and America’s open border means millions of unvetted people from all over the world are now living among the general population and continue to pour in at record rates.

FBI DIRECTOR WARNS OF JIHADIST ATTACK IN US, SIMILAR TO RUSSIAN CONCERT HALL: 'HEIGHTENED TERRORIST THREAT'

Smoke pours from the twin towers of the World Trade Center after they were hit by two hijacked airliners in a terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001 in New York City. Experts are warning the threat of a major terror attack is very high. (Robert Giroux/Getty Images

"We are in a period where a number of factors are combining to make a terrorist attack on the homeland far more likely than it perhaps had been," says Paul Mauro, a retired NYPD inspector who worked in counterterrorism for nearly 15 years.

Mauro said the risk of a potential new attack should be assessed in a criminal context – who has the means, motive and opportunity to successfully execute a deadly plot.

"The world has gotten a lot smaller since 9/11. You've got drones, the interconnectivity of the internet is more ubiquitous into areas that maybe didn't have that connectivity. You can get an uplink using something like an Elon Musk satellite. You can get online from the mountains of the Hindu Kush, you've got AI capabilities, you've had all that time to develop capabilities since 9/11 if you are still in the [terror] business."

Mauro said that threats would likely emanate from current hot spots around the globe, including the Middle East, where Iran is a live threat and is still seeking revenge for the killing of Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general who was taken out in a 2020 U.S. drone strike.

Those angered by Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks in Gaza also pose a real threat, as does a "nuclear capable" Russia, which has been battling against a U.S.-funded regime in Ukraine, Mauro said.

"We are in a period where a number of factors are combining to make a terrorist attack on the homeland far more likely than it perhaps had been."

— Paul Mauro, retired NYPD inspector

"It's not hard to see motives all over the place, motives that preexisted 9/11 and that continue and have only been exacerbated," he said.

Mauro said the opportunity for terrorists lies at the southern border.

Migrants are seen crossing the northern border. (Customs and Border Protection)

"We’ve let 10 to 20 million illegals into the country with little or no vetting. It's a canard to think that they're all just from small towns in Mexico or Bolivia or Ecuador or something," Mauro says.


"We're seeing a wave of migrant-related crime developing now, but you would have to be a fool not to take advantage of the ability to insert assets seamlessly and with no friction into the American homeland through the southern border… if you're sitting where Iran is, where China is, where Russia is."

FBI DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY CITES INCREASED FOREIGN THREATS
IN FISA REAUTHORIZATION PLEA: ‘ROGUES’ GALLERY'

FBI Director Christopher Wray warned of heightened terror threats on U.S. soil during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on June 4, 2024. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Mauro said that the eight Tajikistan nationals with ties to ISIS who were recently nabbed having allegedly crossed the southern border illegally was "an enormous red flag" and that there are millions of unvetted people streaming across the border in the post-9/11 world is "just utterly incomprehensible."

Former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell also sounded off in a recent Foreign Affairs op-ed, writing that the terror threat posed by vulnerabilities at the U.S.-Mexico border is "blinking red."

FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) Gen. Michael Kurilla said there are serious threats posed by terrorist groups like al Qaeda, ISIS, also known as the Islamic State and Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), the ISIS affiliate that operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Forces under Kurilla’s command have been battling ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria, killing or capturing almost 1,000 terrorist fighters last year in nearly 500 ground operations and 45 airstrikes, according to Foreign Affairs.

Kurilla, in March 2023 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, called particular attention to ISIS-K and warned that the group would be able to carry out an operation against U.S. or Western interests abroad in under six months with little to no warning. In January, two ISIS-K suicide bombers killed nearly 100 people and wounded scores at a ceremony in Iran to commemorate Soleimani’s death, while in March the group killed 145 people and injured 550 in a terrorist attack at a Moscow concert hall.

IRAN ATTACK THREAT PROMPTS US GENERAL VISIT TO ISRAEL, REVIEW OF MILITARY CAPABILITIES

A group of over 100 migrants burst through a fence on March 21, 2024. Experts say the terror threat posed by vulnerabilities at the U.S.-Mexico border is alarming. (James Breeden for New York Post / Mega)

Mauro said that New York City and Washington, D.C. remain the top two areas where terrorists are likely to strike, with several other densely packed cities also next on the list.

In terms of what type of terror attack we could see, it is anyone’s guess, Mauro said.

"The Holy Grail, I will tell you, and I'm not giving anything up by this… is a bio-chem event for the deployment of that weaponry. You get the most potential loss of life. You get contamination in an enclosed environment... and it's achievable, whereas the dirty bomb scenario which you often hear about, there are scientific and technical hurdles to overcome there that make that difficult," Mauro says.

'"The Holy Grail, I will tell you, and I'm not giving anything up by this…
is a bio-chem event for the deployment of that weaponry."

— Paul Mauro, retired NYPD inspector

"Never mind a real atomic bomb that you could get. Let's say Hezbollah buys it on the black market from some former KGB officer or something, sails it into a harbor and detonates… it was always the nightmare scenario."

"But what punches at a higher weight is the kind of attempts that we've seen around the world employing biochem agents and [it] really is the nightmare scenario. I mean, look at the damage that COVID did."

"So if you could manage to set off that kind of a thing in an enclosed area, in a train station, on a train, etc., you've got a serious, serious event. And that's one of the things that the kind of terrorism folks that I used to be a part of worry about all the time and work to prevent."


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