US Facing ‘Highest Level’ of Potential Terrorist Threat: House Intelligence Chair

Chairman Michael Turner (R-OH) speaks at a hearing with the House (Select) Intelligence Committee in the Cannon Office Building in Washington, on March 12, 2024. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The United States is currently at its “highest level” for the possibility of a terrorist attack occurring on American soil, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) says.

During a June 16 interview with CBS News, Mr. Turner was asked about reports of recent arrests of individuals with ties to the ISIS terrorist group in the United States.

“What’s important about these reports and what we’re seeing, especially in conjunction with [FBI] Director [Christopher] Wray’s public statements, that we are at the highest level of a possible terrorist threat, that the administration’s policies have absolutely directly related to threats to Americans,” Mr. Turner said.

He told CBS News that the threats are “no longer speculative” and “no longer hypothetical,” in light of public comments made by the FBI director during multiple congressional committee meetings in the past six months or so.

“We have actual administration officials stepping forward and certainly our committee and our committee members have concurred on the intelligence that we’re seeing,“ Mr. Turner told the outlet. ”That as a result of the administration’s policies allowing people to cross the border unvetted, we have terrorists that are actively working ... inside the United States that are a threat to Americans.”

His comments came in light of reports, citing unnamed U.S. officials, that claimed that at least eight Tajikistan nationals with alleged ties to ISIS were arrested in several major cities including New York and Los Angeles. The Epoch Times has not been able to independently verify those reports.

On June 14, meanwhile, the U.S. Department of State and Turkey announced they would impose sanctions on three individuals who have ties to ISIS and are involved with a network involved in facilitating travel into the United States.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) sent a letter to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about requesting a classified briefing for all senators about ISIS threats, he told Fox News on June 12.

“I have never been more worried than I am right now about an attack on our homeland” after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, combined with what he described as lax border security,” Mr. Graham wrote on X. Two days prior, he wrote on social media he has “been sounding the alarm for over two years” that the United States currently is at risk of a 9/11-like terrorist attack.

Earlier this month, Mr. Wray told a Senate committee the United States currently faces threats posed by foreign terrorists that “rise to a whole ‘nother level” following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, which punctuated the start of the ongoing Israel–Hamas conflict.

“Looking back over my career in law enforcement, I’d be hard-pressed to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once, but that is the case as I sit here today,” the FBI director said at the time, while pushing for increased funding for the federal law enforcement bureau.

He also made reference to a terrorist attack at a concert hall in Moscow that left scores of people dead for which ISIS-K, or Islamic State Khorasan, claimed responsibility.

“We’ve seen a rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies,” Mr. Wray said, adding that what is “increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, akin to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia Concert Hall in March.”

Mr. Wray had also sounded the alarm on his concerns about possible human smuggling operations along the U.S.–Mexico border and that Mexico should also provide more support.