CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Terror Threats and the Middle East Conflict

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

[17:20:27] BLITZER: Disturbing new assessment of the terror and danger the United States is facing. In a rare and exclusive interview of the FBI director, James Comey told me that ISIS now poses a bigger terror threat to the country than al Qaeda does.

Let's talk about it with the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Republican Congressman Mike McCaul of Texas.

Mr. Chairman, thanks very much for joining us. Do you agree with the FBI director that ISIS has surpassed as -- surpassed al Qaeda as the biggest terror threat to the homeland?

REP. MIKE MCCAUL (R), HOMELAND SECURITY CHAIRMAN: Yes, I agree with Director Comey. I think ISIS is the greatest threat to the homeland. Now they are the winning game in town. And so in the radical Islamist jihad world, you're seeing more and more of these recruits going over ISIS rather than al Qaeda. But as he talked about, this whole phenomenon over the Internet, you know, Wolf, this is not bin Laden anymore.

These are very young sort of cyber commanders, if you will, out of Raqqa, out of Syria, that's sending these direct messages to primarily a lot of young people in the United States. Thousands of followers that they're trying to activate, as Comey mentioned, to attack, to kill, to attack military installations and police officers. So this is a very different kind of threat and it's very difficult to stop this kind of thing and it's very difficult to track it all.

BLITZER: And they have a lot of money, ISIS. They stole a lot of gold and money from the banks in Mosul and these other towns that they've taken over in Iraq and Syria. And they can develop a lot of these encrypted software capabilities to really go dark.

MCCAUL: I think the dark space is one of the biggest concerns on the part of counter terrorism officials right now because it enables the terrorist to really communicate in darkness. I think Comey did a good job of explaining how they jump into direct messaging box and then from there go into platforms that are designed specifically to be secure. So that there's no way even if we have a lawful court order, to be able to access those communication.

So what's happening is the terrorists are communicating in darkness in the United States with individuals here in the United States, and there's no ability on the part of law enforcement to track these communications. That is what keeps me up at night as well.

BLITZER: Yes. He says that there are these investigations now in all 50 states, not just in New York City or Washington or Los Angeles, but all 50 states there are investigations the FBI is taking right now because of this threat.

Is the biggest concern right now, this lone individual threat from ISIS or some sort of cell, some sort of organized capability to conduct a large-scale attempt?

MCCAUL: Well, I think it's both. I think the traditional al Qaeda

strategy was to do a long-term planning, spectacular attack, as you saw of the killing of the leader of the Khorasan group, that's been greatly diminished in terms of threat to the aviation sector. But with these Internet directives, it's basically designed to hit anybody who's vulnerable that they could prey on to attack. So they could involve one person, but it could also involve a particular cell.

We saw, you know, individuals in New York, for instance, before the Fourth of July. That plot was broken up and busted. And so it can take all varieties and all forms, but again it's one case, the flags don't come up where the communications could happen in dark space. We don't know, for instance, if the individual in Chattanooga was communicating in dark space with these people in Syria or not. We certainly know that he was radicalized.

BLITZER: He may have been communicating with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, too. He was devotee, supposedly, of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American born cleric who was killed in a U.S. airstrike, a drone strike back in 2011.

Quickly before I let you go, Mr. Chairman. You heard Barbara Starr, our Pentagon correspondent, report that potentially a very significant development, Turkey, a major about-face, may finally start allowing U.S. war planes to launch strikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq from air bases -- or at least one air base inside Turkey. Give us your perspective about this. I assume you've been briefed.

MCCAUL: A very significant development to get Turkey to put some skin in the game. I think, Wolf, what happened, they've been turning a blind eye for a long time, these foreign fighters going in to fight Assad because they don't like Assad. He's a Shia, they're Sunni, but the fact is 20 of their diplomats got taken hostage, and then we saw just yesterday a suicide bomber, ISIS bomber killing 30 people inside of Turkey.

[17:25:05] And I think that's a wake-up call for them that they need to join the fight. I believe that there could be a coalition of these Sunni Arab nations to provide the ground force to fight ISIS. And I've met with Central Command about this very issue to try to get more these nations involved in the fight. Opening up this airbase in Turkey, though, will allow us to conduct more airstrikes very, very close to Raqqa, which is the headquarters of ISIS.

BLITZER: Yes, it would be a huge deal if that NATO airbase in Incirlik, for example, in Turkey, if the U.S. could use that, launch airstrikes with F-15s, F-16s, go from that base into Syria, that would be a major, major development. And it looks like it's about to happen.

Mr. Chairman, thanks very much.

MCCAUL: Thank you, Wolf.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source