House Homeland Security chairman warns Americans to ‘remain vigilant’ ahead of July 4th

Posted 2015-06-29 11:59 by Grunt Report with 0 comments

Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, warned Americans on “Fox News Sunday” to “remain vigilant” to homegrown terror threats as the July Fourth holiday approaches.

“I am extremely concerned about Syrian and ISIS recruiters can use the Internet at lightning speeds to recruit followers in the United States with thousands of followers in the United States and then activate them to do whatever they want to do,” McCaul said. “Whether it’s military installations, law enforcement or possibly a Fourth of July event parade.”

McCaul added that while violent extremism has gone viral in pushing its message, America’s response has been sluggish.

On Friday, terrorist left a bloody toll on three continents when they launched attacks in France, Tunisia and Kuwait.

In France, attackers zeroed in on an American-owned industrial chemical plant near Lyon where they tried to blow up the factory and decapitated a person. In Kuwait City, ISIS claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in one of the largest Shiite mosques in the area. At least 24 people have been killed, according to local and wire reports. In Tunisia, gunmen opened fire at a beach resort, killing 27 people.

“In light of the three attacks in three hours on three continents overseas shows us that ISIS is just regionalized like the administration says only in Iraq and Syria but rather demonstrates a global threat, that they can conduct external operations and they’re very savvy doing that over the Internet,” McCaul said.

In addition to the attacks abroad, the Federal Bureau of Investigations arrested 10 U.S. citizens plotting attacks on American soil over the past three weeks. Many of the calls for came from social media messages, Internet-based propaganda and other digital domains, he said.

On Thursday, McCaul introduced a bill that would establish a full-time federal office dedicated to combating violent extremism on U.S. soil. The bill would also develop a program that would target Islamic State propaganda and dull its message. The legislation calls for the program to be run out of the Department of Homeland Security.

Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden, who was also on the program, said he believed U.S. strategy for dealing with ISIS should be ramped up.

“Because (ISSI looks like it’s) been so successful on the battlefield, it looks like they’re acting as the will and the hand of God. I think we need to turn that around,” Hayden said. “We need to inflict battleground defeats on them, in their homeland, so they’re not nearly as attractive to these kinds of folks globally.”

When asked by host Chris Wallace whether the U.S. was winning or losing the war against ISIS, Hayden said, “I certainly would not claim we are winning.”