The Biden administration’s former Director of Hostage Rescue and Recovery and current Senior Vice President for Global Operations at The Soufan Group, Christopher O’Leary, told MSNBC that terrorist groups are “stronger now than they’ve ever been.”
MSNBC’s Christina Ruffini asked O’Leary, “Can you talk us through — I feel like it used to be something we heard about a lot more — are those organizations weakened or are they stronger, and how much impact can they have on somebody who might be inspired to take kind of this action?”
O’Leary responded, as reported by Breitbart, “I think it’ll surprise most people to learn that al-Qaeda and ISIS are stronger now than they’ve ever been, through their affiliates around the world.”
“So, to give people a reference point, al-Qaeda was roughly less than 500 members before September 11, mostly relegated to Afghanistan,” he said. “Al-Qaeda and ISIS — and ISIS grew out of al-Qaeda — and their affiliates are globally dispersed with over about two dozen countries around the world and compose roughly 40,000 members. So, to think that terrorism is behind us is really naive. And, unfortunately, the U.S. government has pivoted a lot of its attention and resources and authorities away from it.”
Former CIA targeting officer Sarah Adams said during the Shawn Ryan Show that al-Qaeda sleeper cells are likely planning an attack, Zero Hedge reported.
“I just want to clarify. You are 100% certain that there are 1,000 plus al-Qaeda-trained fighters within the US borders?” Ryan said.
Adams said, “Well, Al-Qaeda says they trained and deployed a thousand for this attack. First off, I think there are more than a thousand Al-Qaeda members in the United States, but for the Homeland Attack, that number is based on what Al-Qaeda is saying, so they could exaggerate it; however, they did have about 1,400 in the Hamas Attack so the number is not off from what they did in the first round of attacks.”
