A ‘defeated’ IS just as deadly, CIA boss says
WASHINGTON — Islamic State militants are capable of orchestrating and carrying out an attack against the United States, possibly downing an airplane, even after being evicted from their selfdeclared Syrian capital of Raqqa, the CIA director said Thursday.
Mike Pompeo said the U.S. is threatened by other militant groups as well.
“IS’s capability to conduct an external operation remains,” Pompeo said. “But I wouldn’t put them in a singular bucket. AlQaida in the Arabian Peninsula has for a long time had this mission statement, which includes the taking down of a commercial airliner bound for a western country. Certainly, among those would be the United States.”
Speaking a day after President Donald Trump’s acting homeland security chief invoked the possibility of another 9-11style attack, Pompeo said America’s enemies “are intent upon using commercial aviation as their vector to present a threat to the West.” However, he also worried about a terrorist capability “we just don't see.”
The typically blunt threat assessment came during a wide-ranging discussion at a Washington thinktank , in which Pompeo also underscored Trump’s intent to counteract North Korea. He said Pyongyang is only months away from perfecting its nuclear weapons capabilities.
“They are closer now than they were five years ago, and I expect they will be closer in five months than they are today, absent a global effort to push back against them,” Pompeo said. “From a U.S. policy perspective, we ought to behave as if we are on the cusp of them achieving that objective.”
On another nuclear concern, Iran, Pompeo stressed that Trump wants to ensure the U.S. foe has no pathway to developing the bomb. To that effect, he said, the Iran nuclear deal President Barack Obama and America’s allies negotiated with Iran was insufficient.
The notion that the agreement would “curtail Iranian adventurism or their terror threat or their malignant behaviour has now ... two years on, proven to be fundamentally false,” said Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas who keenly opposed to the seven-nation accord when it was reached.
He said the Iran deal put the United States in a better place with respect to inspections of Iranian facilities. But from an intelligence perspective, he said, even more “intrusive inspection” is needed.
— The Associated Press