Fifteen years after the Sept. 11 attacks, America’s top homeland security official can’t say for sure whether the country is safer from terrorist attacks.
“It’s a mixed bag,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday’s “State of the Union.”
Johnson said U.S. intelligence and security officials have become “pretty good” at uncovering plots hatched abroad by terrorist groups. But he indicated that the government is facing a new challenge to try to prevent terrorist-inspired attacks hatched within the country’s borders, including those of the “lone wolf” variety.
“We are safer when it comes to the 9/11-style attack. Our government has become pretty good at detecting plots against the homeland,” Johnson said. “But we’ve got this new environment and new threat, which makes it harder, and we’re now seeing attacks in Orlando and San Bernardino that we’ve got to protect against. … This is a new phenomenon.”
Law enforcement officials have said that the attackers in each incident (the Orlando, Florida, shooting in June that killed about 50 people and the San Bernardino, California, assault in December that killed 14) were inspired by the Islamic State militant group, which controls territory in Iraq and Syria and has urged Muslims worldwide to fight on its behalf.
Johnson indicated that stopping such lone wolf attacks can’t be done simply by using traditional government intelligence tools. He urged all Americans to be “vigilant.”
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd, Johnson said, “Invariably, the high-probability, higher-probability type of threat, another San Bernardino, another Orlando, is uppermost on our minds. It is the thing that keeps me up at night the most.”
The Orlando killer was on an FBI terrorist watch list but was later removed, years before he bought the weapons used in the attack. (Being on an FBI watch list doesn’t preclude you from being able to buy a gun, though Congress tried without success to change that this summer.)
Johnson appeared on several Sunday news shows from a remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero. He said the attacks occurred on his 44th birthday and that he watched them unfold from his office in Manhattan.
“I kept wanting to see that tower emerge from the smoke and the dust,” he said. “And, of course, that never happened.”
The Washington Post
