TerrorismLawmaker says more needs to be done to counter domestic radicalization
House Homeland Security Committeechairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) says the Obama strategy to defeat ISIS fails to discuss plans for battling home-grown terrorists. McCaul wants the White House to appoint a lead agency to oversee the government’s counter-radicalization programs, adding that the Obama administration has no clear way of measuring the impact of its current initiatives to counter terrorist recruitment efforts.
After President Barack Obama last Wednesday unveiled his strategy to defeat the Islamic State (IS), House Homeland Security Committee chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas) raised the alarm on what he called Obama’s failure to discuss plans for battling home-grown terrorists.
The Washington Post reports that McCaul wants the White House to appoint a lead agency to oversee the government’s counter-radicalization programs, adding that the Obama administration has no clear way of measuring the impact of its current initiatives to counter terrorist recruitment efforts. “Many initiatives are largely untested and have no clear way of measuring their impact,” McCaul wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial. “I am alarmed that we are still grappling with such basic issues when the threat environment is changing so quickly,” he added.
DHS chief Jeh Johnson recently warned that foreign fighters with Western passports could enter the United States without scrutiny from security officials; noting that at least 100 foreign fighters in Syria or Iraq hold U.S. passports. Nicholas Rasmussen, deputy director of the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterterrorism Center, points out, however, that while customs officials are implementing more intense security checks at U.S. points of entry, IS poses its greatest threat inside Iraq. “As we move further from that base of strength, ISIL’s (IS) ability at present to develop and execute significant, large-scale, sophisticated attacks diminishes,” Rasmussen said.
To combat home-grown terrorism, the National Counterterrorism Center is maintaining a database of known and suspected terrorists to match individuals or groups to possible threats. “We are absolutely relentless in the efforts to ensure that the data … is as accurate as possible, that it’s entered accurately and that our records are as comprehensive as they can be,” Rasmussen said during a Senate hearing last week. In one instance, recent research on a suspected Syrian foreign fighter “revealed the identity of a new suspect, a co-traveler, which provided previously unknown information to the investigation and expanded our intelligence framework,” said Troy Miller, acting assistant commissioner for the Intelligence and Investigative Liaison Office- Customs and Border Protection, at a recent hearing in the House.
