Christopher Wray, FBI Director: “When it comes to sort of homeland-based terrorist threats, we have two buckets really that we primarily focus on as the highest priority right now, what we call homegrown violent extremists, which is a reference to people here radicalized by foreign terrorist organizations and ideologies, and then domestic violent extremists who are radicalized more by everything from racial animus all the way over to anti-government, anti-authority.”
Christopher Wray, FBI Director: “We are concerned that with developments in Afghanistan, among other things, that there will be more inspiration to the first bucket, as well. So, I think we anticipate, unfortunately, growth in both categories as we look ahead over the next couple of years.”
Christine Abizaid, National Counterterrorism Center Director: “I think it is fair to to assess that it is that the development of those group’s external operations capability, you know, we’ve got to monitor and assess whether that’s going to happen faster than we had predicted otherwise. Afghanistan’s a very dynamic environment right now.”