US Lawmakers Warned Of Threat From Domestic Terrorism

Domestic terrorism fueled by al-Qaeda brand of radical Islam has emerged as the latest threat to America's national security, top U.S. officials told a Senate panel on Wednesday.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Michael Leiter, head of the National Counter-terrorism Center, told lawmakers, separately, that "domestic radicalization" had become more pronounced.

Napolitano said terror outfits posed a heightened danger to the West, including European countries, citing stepped up "activity." She warned Senators that "a new and changing facet of the terrorist threat comes from homegrown terrorists, by which I mean US persons who are radicalized here and receive terrorist training either here or elsewhere."

Napolitano said the threat "is evolving in several ways that make it more difficult for law enforcement or the intelligence community to detect and disrupt plots."

She said the U.S. was now seeing "more diverse activity" from a more "diverse collection of groups" and she cited the case of U.S.-born terrorist of Yemeni descent, Anwar al-Awlaki, as an instance of a domestic terrorist spreading propaganda through the internet.

Mueller, meanwhile, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that terror networks were now trying to rope in U.S. nationals or Westerners to escape detection by security agencies.

"Groups affiliated with al-Qaeda are now actively targeting the United States and looking to use Americans or Westerners who are able to remain undetected by heightened security measures," he said.

Leiter though referred to a "spike in homegrown violent extremist activity" that was enabled by extremist groups abroad using the Internet.

According to Washington's National Counter-terrorism Centre, the number of terrorism plots hatched by home-grown terrorists have currently reached their highest level since September 11, 2001 when New York's World Trade Center came under attack from al-Qaeda backed terrorists.

Since 2009, as many as 63 American nationals have been jailed or slapped with terrorism-related charges.

As for the exponential rise in the threat posed by home-grown terrorism, Mueller said "it is possible more American extremists are feeling increasingly disenchanted with living in the United States or angry about US and Western foreign policy, making their decision to leave for extremist opportunities abroad all the more appealing."

For their part, the Senators sought to know whether the U.S. government had a clear strategy to counter the homegrown threat. However, the inference was that no agency was in charge of the effort. 

(courtsey rttnews)