Rep. [crscore]Michael McCaul[/crscore], chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, says “the tentacles of ISIS” are in the United States.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” McCaul told host Chris Wallace that there were “no warning signs or flags” prior to the San Bernardino terrorist attack.
“[Obama] seemed to indicate that going back to the fact that this could be an act of workplace violence,” McCaul said. “He has to get off this rhetoric. Make no mistake, this is not workplace violence, this is an act of terrorism and these occurrences are happening too frequently.”
“I think the tentacles of ISIS now are not only in Europe, but also in the United States of America,” he stated. “The FBI stats show that. We have 70 ISIS-related arrests — more than one per week. A thousand investigations in all 50 states.”
“I wanted to tell the truth to the American people about what the threat nature really is and what the threat itself is, and that’s radical Islamist terrorism,” McCaul said. “It does exist in the United States. We didn’t see this one coming. There were no warning signs or flags.”
He explained the two main “threat vectors” come from radicalization within the U.S. and foreign radicals who enter the U.S. from overseas.
“We need to do a better job identifying the signs of radicalization from within the United States. We also need to stop the foreign fighter from traveling overseas into the United States,” he told Wallace. “Those are the two main threat vectors. And Chris, we’re just not doing an adequate job to adequately protect the American people.”
McCaul later said the volume and chatter of ISIS is so high “that it’s almost impossible to stop it all.”
“You just can’t stop it all. And we stopped Garland Fourth of July plot,” he said, “we stopped a lot of bad things from happening, Chris, but you just can’t stop it all when you have 200,000 ISIS tweets per day on the internet coming into the United States to kill.”
“There were no flags, warning signs in this particular case, but the volume is so high and the chatter is so high that it’s almost impossible to stop it all. And I think that is what we are ramping up our efforts but you can’t be right every time,” McCaul said.
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