FBI director: Strikes on al-Qaida cell Khorasan did not wipe out threat to U.S.

By Michael Isikoff | Yahoo News 

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FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that he is “not confident” that a U.S. military strike against a Syrian-based al-Qaida cell has disrupted a plot to mount a terror attack aimed at the United States and that the group remains “at the top of my list of things that I worry about.” 

U.S. officials said this week that President Obama had ordered the Monday night strike by cruise missiles and U.S. bombers against the so-called Khorasan group after concluding that it was “near the execution stage” of an attack against European and U.S. civilian aircraft. One senior administration official told reporters on a call organized by the White House that the terrorist attack had been “imminent.”

But Comey, meeting with a small group of reporters, seemed to contradict some of those claims and emphasized instead just how little U.S. intelligence actually knew about precisely what the Khorasan terrorists were planning — or when.

“This is a collection of very, very bad terrorist operatives in a safe haven that we don’t have a lot of visibility in,” he said.

Asked about the assertion that an attack was “imminent,” Comey replied, “I don’t know what that means.” As for when the alleged plot was supposed to take place, Comey said: “It's hard to say whether it is tomorrow or three days from now or it's three months from now. We assume and act as if it's tomorrow.”

Comey spoke moments after Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announced at a press conference in New York that Iraq had received "credible" intelligence that Islamic State militants plan to attack subway systems in Paris and the United States. Asked about the Iraqi Prime Minister's comments, Comey said: "I don't know anything about it." 

Comey confirmed that the FBI has been monitoring the Khorasan cell for up to two years as a small group of seasoned al-Qaida terrorists migrated from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Syria, forging links with the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaida affiliate, and began recruiting westerners.

U.S. officials have expressed hope that the strike may have killed one of the Khorasan leaders — a veteran al-Qaida operative named Muhsin al-Fadhli — but said they have no confirmation of that.

In the meantime, the FBI director said the bureau has stepped up its efforts to identify sympathizers or so-called “lone wolves” who may be inspired to launch attacks in response to this week’s strikes. “I am concerned” that this week’s strikes “will motivate” extremists to launch attacks, he said, adding that "we have a lot going on on that front.”

A joint FBI-Homeland Security “intelligence bulletin,” issued Tuesday and obtained by Yahoo News, states that while the U.S. military strikes “may have temporarily disrupted attack plotting” by the Khorasan group, they could motivate “Homeland attacks” by “homegrown violent extremists” inside the United States. Plotting by al-Qaida and its affiliates “may accelerate,” the bulletin warned. 

Speaking more broadly, Comey said the terror threat is both "less and more" concerning now than when he previously served as deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush. It is less so, he said, because the U.S. is now far better organized and prepared to respond to a terrorist attack than it was after 9/11 and because the "highly centralized, functioning al-Qaida senior leadership" has been badly hurt by U.S. efforts. But it is also "more concerning," he said, because the terror threat has "metastasized" to "an increasing number of safe havens" and the message of terrorism is being spread more rapidly — and with greater sophistication — through the Internet.