On the recordMay 13, 2015
in February, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center estimated that nearly 20,000 foreign fighters had joined ISIS or other related groups in Syria. Among those, some 3,000 were from Western countries. In other words, many of them either had American passports or those that are part of the visa waiver program and could travel, really, without anything other than that passport in the country. Over 150 were from the United States. Just last week, in describing the widespread nature of this growing threat, FBI Director James Comey said that the FBI is working on hundreds of investigations in the United States, hundreds of investigations. In fact, according to Comey, all 56 of the FBI's field divisions now have open inquiries regarding suspected cases of homegrown terrorism--again, not people coming from Syria or Afghanistan or someplace in the Middle East, these are often Americans who have become radicalized due to the use of social media or the Internet--much as 5 years ago we saw at Fort Hood, TX, a major in the U.S. Army, Nidal Hasan, who had been radicalized by a cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki. Major Hasan actually pulled out his weapon and killed 13 people, 12 uniformed military, 1 civilian, and shot roughly 30 more in a terrible terrorist attack at Fort Hood, TX.…
Source
govinfo.gov




