Friday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Jeh Johnson, who was the DHS secretary under former President Barack Obama, said there is currently a “heightened level” of threats in the United States from “terrorist-inspired attacks.”
Johnson said, “We’re in the midst of an evolving, heightened threat picture right now. With the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, with the attack two days ago, I’m sure ISIS feels emboldened right now. And we have several major security events coming up. The inauguration for one, the Super Bowl in a couple weeks after that. And I would say what I did say to my people at DHS when I was in office, don’t just respond to the last attack, anticipate the next one, which may be of a very different character.”
He added, “You can see the terrorist threat to our country evolving from terrorist-directed attacks where a terrorist organization overseas directs a large-scale attack on the United States, 9-11 being the prime example, the attempted underwear bombing, you may recall, the attempted shoe bombing, Richard Reed, Those were terrorist directed attacks. We evolved from that in about 2013, 2014 to what we now refer to as terrorist-inspired attacks, where a terrorist organization on the internet will attempt to inspire someone who is living in this country to radicalize and take it upon themselves to carry out a terrorist attack. We saw a spate of these in 2014, 2015, 2016 when I was in DHS. And that threat has not gone away, and I’m concerned that it’s at a heightened level right now.”
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