Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Michael McCaul is warning Americans that the threat from ISIS and other Islamic terror groups has "gone viral" and that the problem is only going to get worse.
"We're seeing these directives on almost a daily basis. It's very concerning," McCaul said. "We have this phenomenon in the United States where they can be activated by the internet and really, terrorism has gone viral."
McCaul is currently overseas in Paris meeting with counter terrorism officials about slaughter of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists earlier this year. Last weekend a Draw Muhammed Art contest in Texas was attacked by two men reportedly inspired by ISIS. Luckily, that attack was thwarted by law enforcement officials.
The FBI has warned ISIS has potentially thousands of sleeper agents ready to carry out "lone wolf" attacks inside the United States. McCaul thinks the numbers are higher than the FBI is letting on.
"I think these numbers are low and I think the real numbers are higher. Remember, we face two threats. One is from foreign fighters coming out of the war region in Iraq and Syria, where I just visited, getting into the United States and the other threat are the thousands of people in the United States who will take up this call to arms when ISIS sends out an internet message, a tweet, to launch a terrorist attack like the one we saw in Texas," McCaul said. "This threat is like finding a needle in a haystack sometimes and it's going to get worse, not better."
"I think the threat environment [inside the U.S.] is one of the highest I've ever seen," he continued.
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