Former counterterror chief: Imminent threat remains Washington (CNN) -- The former head of U.S. counterterror operations said Tuesday the imminent threat posed by an al Qaeda offshoot in Syria hasnt lessened after a U.S. air campaign there. Speaking to CNNs Jim Sciutto, Matt Olsen said by his analysis the threat from the Khorasan group is still in the same place as it was before President Barack Obama ordered airstrikes against the terror operation last month. This group was in a position to train without any sort of interference, they were able to recruit operatives, said Olsen, who stepped down as director of the National Counterterrorism Center in September. We saw that they were looking to test explosives. So they were in the advanced stages of plotting. They had both intent and that capability that put them nearing an execution phase of an attack. While Olsen said foreign fighters present a broad risk to Americans security, the potential for so-called lone wolf attacks by unaffiliated terrorists also worries officials. The propaganda circulated by ISIS online could allow Americans to be motivated by the group without ever leaving the country, he said. The other issue is somebody in the United States, who never leaves the United States, simply sits in their basement reading some of this hateful propaganda that ISIS puts out, he said. The concern is that somebody just reads that and they have something in their own mind that makes them think thats what they want to do. They would seek to carry out what we would think would be a relatively small scale attack, but a lethal attack nonetheless. ~ Kevin Liptak, CNN (cnn/2014/10/21/politics/olsen-counterterror-threat-interview-story/index.html)
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 22:20:35 +0000
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