A Terrorist Warning From the FBI Director Christopher Wray says multiple security risks are hitting at once.
The U.S. hasn’t suffered a terrorist or jihadist-inspired attack on the U.S. homeland in years, but that blessed respite may not last. That was the message Thursday from FBI director Christopher Wray in testimony to a House subcommittee.
“As I look back over my career in law enforcement, I would be hard-pressed to think of a time where so many threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at once,” Mr. Wray told lawmakers. “But that is the case as I sit here today.”
We realize many readers no longer trust the FBI, and some will wonder if Mr. Wray is talking his book to maintain funding after Donald Trump asked Republicans to cut funding. The federal bureaucracy is hardly above such pleading, and that includes law enforcement. Warning about an attack is also a form of political inoculation if there is an attack—though in that case the FBI would still be asked, perhaps rudely, why it didn’t prevent it.
GOP Rep. Mike Garcia of California, a former Navy pilot, made Republican skepticism clear when he told Mr. Wray that “I’ll be honest with you, and this pains me to say this, but I don’t trust you.” This shows how much credibility the FBI has squandered since the Russia collusion fiasco under the James Comey gang.
Yet there’s reason to pay attention to the warning as global disorder spreads. Of increasing concern “is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, akin to the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia concert hall just a couple weeks ago,” Mr. Wray testified. ISIS-K never went away but it now has a sanctuary in Afghanistan from which it planned the Moscow strike and one in January in Iran. European governments have been fortunate to stop others.
The world’s jihadists can also see that the U.S. southern border is essentially open if they want to make the trek. All the more reason for House Republicans to get over their internal disarray and reauthorize Section 702 authority to eavesdrop on foreigners overseas. Even if Mr. Wray is talking his book, it’s better to give him the authority to prevent an attack.
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