US Vulnerable to a ‘Catastrophic Attack,’ Ex-FBI Official Warns

The U.S. is currently extremely vulnerable to a “catastrophic” terrorist attack, a former FBI assistant director said.

Chris Swecker, who retired from the Bureau as assistant director with responsibility over all FBI criminal investigations in 2006, told Newsweek in an interview that he has never seen America so open to Islamic terrorism.

His comments match those of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, which warned law enforcement earlier this month that the risk of an Islamic terrorist attack has greatly increased since the Israel-Hamas war began. Swecker said that Hamas and the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah “need to stir up conflict” with the U.S.

“I worked counterterrorism up close and I’ve never seen this country so vulnerable to a catastrophic attack,” Swecker said. “Much of this is caused by the open borders, which seem to me to neutralize all our other counterterrorism efforts.”

“Now we have the holidays when terrorists like to strike,” he said, adding that the U.S. is “projecting weakness.”

Swecker also said that while the FBI is focused on the far right, there are already Islamic terrorist cells living in the U.S. and no effective border control.

In 2000, while an FBI chief in North Carolina, Swecker indicted a group of Muslim men for funding Hezbollah.

One of them, Mohamad Youssef Hammoud, returned to Lebanon in June this year having served 21 years of a 30-year prison sentence in the U.S. for terrorism financing.

Swecker was also “on-scene commander of the FBI operations in Iraq,” according to an FBI press release when he retired in 2006. He is now an attorney based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

On December 5 of this year, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the risk of a terrorist threat has massively increased since the Israel-Hamas war began.

“I see blinking lights everywhere I turn,” he told the committee.

Wray said the number of threats is at a “whole other level” since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, adding: “I’ve never seen a time where all the threats, or so many of the threats, are all elevated all at exactly the same time.”

Wray warned that terrorists may try to exploit the U.S. southern border, and said the FBI is working to “identify and disrupt potential attacks.

“Our top concern stems from lone offenders inspired by — or reacting to — the ongoing Israel/Hamas conflict, as they pose the most likely threat to Americans, especially Jewish, Muslim and Arab-American communities in the United States. We have seen an increase in reported threats to Jewish and Muslim people, institutions and houses of worship here in the United States and are moving quickly to mitigate them,” he added.

In early December, a joint bulletin from the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to local, state and federal law enforcement warned that groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS will likely use the Israel-Hamas war “to increase calls for violence in the U.S. during the holiday season compared to prior years.”

It said the most likely “primary targets” could include churches, synagogues and members of the Jewish community, CBS News reported.