Homeland Security Committee Chairman: “Violent Islamist Extremism Spreading Like Wildfire”

Uh oh, Obama is gonna be pissed.

From Homeland Security Today:

With estimates that 20,000 foreign fighters—including 3,400 Westerns— from 90 countries around the globe have traveled to Syria to fight for terrorist organizations, US counterterrorism officials are becoming increasingly worried that they will return to American shores to conduct an attack on the homeland. 

“We need to accurately define the threat – violent Islamist extremism – and recognize it is spreading like wildfire around the globe,” said House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX). 

“These fanatics want nothing less than destruction of our way of life, and now their ability to match words with deeds is growing at an astonishing rate. In recent years, their safe havens have proliferated and their ranks have swelled.” 

In the wake of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) barbaric display of the horrific murder of the Jordanian pilot, the House Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing last Wednesday to examine current efforts to thwart the dual threats of foreign fighters and homegrown terror. 

“This evolving Islamist terror landscape has given rise to the ―dual threats of foreign fighter returnees and homegrown terrorism,” McCaul said. 

“The recent terror attack in Paris, and other attacks and plots in Belgium, Germany, the UK, Australia, Canada, and here in the US are proof that the threat has surged and that the enemy is dead set on attacking the West.” 

Nicholas J. Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said the rate of foreign fighter travel to Syria is “without precedent,” and is due in large part to ISIS’ demonstrated mastery of social media and online tools as mechanisms for spreading propaganda. In fact, since the first of this year, ISIS has already published more than 250 official ISIS products online. 

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials told a congressional committee nearly a year ago that “the alarming number of countries that report very little — and in some cases no — lost and stolen passport data to INTERPOL for inclusion in the Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD) database” is “disturbing.” 

Additionally, nearly 13,500 passports were issued by the US Department of State to individuals who used the Social Security Number (SSN), but not the name, of a deceased person. Another 24,278 passports were issued to applicants who used a likely invalid SSN, according to the results of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) review last year of a 140-case generalizable sample and a 15-case nongeneralizable sample for these two populations, respectively. 

Francis X. Taylor, DHS Under Secretary of Intelligence and Analysis at the US, testified that “we are unaware of any specific, credible, imminent threat to the homeland.” However, he did express concern that Americans who join violent extremist groups in Syria “could gain combat skills, violent extremist connections and possibly become persuaded to conduct organized or ‘lone-wolf’ style attacks that target US and Western interests.”