FBI Director James Comey spoke at the University of Texas in Austin Thursday. He addressed national security threats facing the country as well as some of those happening right here in the Lone Star State.
Comey was invited to give the keynote address at a symposium of the Intelligence Studies Project at UT. He focused on foreign terror organizations like the Islamic State inspiring attacks on U.S. soil.
Comey told the packed house at UT’s student alumni center that tomorrow’s terrorist begins with a few clicks on the internet today.
“We’re still dealing with in the area of a thousand cases around the United States where we are investigating to understand where is someone on the spectrum between consuming the poison and acting on the poison.”
And Comey says the FBI’s open investigation of potential radicalized terrorists includes individuals in Texas that have visited known Islamic State recruiting websites.
Christopher Combs, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the San Antonio division, says they have open investigations in every one of their Texas offices, but could not go into detail about the nature of those investigations.
“What we’ve seen now and the arrests we made frankly here in Austin back in the summer of 2014 are homegrown US citizens who radicalize online and then bring the fight here in America.”
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw has said that there is a potential threat of Islamic State militants entering the US through the Texas-Mexico border. But Combs says while the FBI has remained vigilant about catching these potential terrorists crossing the Texas-Mexico border, he says so far there is no evidence of that occurring.
