US fears escalate of inside terror attack

THE Islamic State group’s effort to inspire troubled Americans to violence has become more of a terror threat to the US than an external attack by al- Qaeda, the FBI director said yesterday.

FBI Director James Comey told the Aspen Security Forum that Islamic State, which has proclaimed a caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq, has influenced a significant but unknown number of Americans through a year- long campaign on social media urging Muslims who can’t travel to the Middle East to “kill where you are.”

Twitter handles affiliated with the group had more than 21,000 English- language followers worldwide, he said, thousands of whom may be US residents.

The FBI has arrested a significant number of people over the past eight weeks who had been radicalised, Mr Comey said, without specifying a number. He repeated his previous disclosure, without elaborating, that several people were arrested who were planning attacks related to the July Fourth holiday.

The bureau has hundreds of investigations pending into such cases across the country.

Mr Comey said it was too soon to say how Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, the Chattanooga gunman who killed five US troops last week, became radicalised.

Abdulazeez’s relatives have said he had a history of drug use and depression. Mr Comey noted that “the people the Islamic State is trying to reach are people that al- Qaeda would never use as an operative, because they are often unstable, troubled drug users”.

Asked if the threat from the Islamic State group had eclipsed that of the rival organisation that attacked the US on September 11, 2001, Mr Comey said, “Yes.”

The US had tracked dozens of Americans, ranging in age from 18 to 62, who had travelled to Syria or Iraq to fight with the Islamic State group, he said.

“I worry very much about what I can’t see,” Mr Comey added, because he said Islamic State recruiters use encrypted communication software to avoid US eavesdropping.

Mr Comey has sounded the alarm about domestic radicalisation before, but his remarks signal a deepening concern among US officials about the impact of the Islamic State’s effort to inspire terrorist violence.

As recently as September, senior US intelligence officials were downplaying the group’s capacity to attack the US.

Matt Olsen, then head of the National Counter Terrorism Centre, told Congress in September that the US had “no credible information that ISIL is planning to attack the United States”.