By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--May 9, 2017
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SEN. THOM TILLIS, R-N.C.: Director Comey, thank you for being here. I'm always impressed with your composure and your preparation. And I want to get to a couple of other things, maybe first and then if I have time come back to what the hearing has been predominantly about. When you briefed us last year, I think that you said that there were some -- that there were ongoing investigations on homeland -- on Homeland Security potential terrorist, either home grown or foreign inspired investigations in every state. Is that still the case? COMEY: Yes. TILLIS: Do you have roughly an -- can you give me roughly an idea of the number of investigations that is? COMEY: Yes it's just north of 1,000. TILLIS: Just north of 1,000.
COMEY: Yes. That case load has stayed about the same since we last talked about it. Some have closed, some have opened. But about 1,000 home grown violent extremist investigations in the United States. TILLIS: And do -- at the time I also asked the question about -- to what extent that you can discuss in this setting -- were people where the target of those investigations -- persons who came in through various programs where questions about vetting have been raised as to whether or not they're accurate. At the time there were a dozen a half I think that you may have estimated. Do you have any rough numbers about that? COMEY: Yes I do. If -- we have about 1,000 home grown violent extremist investigations and we probably have another 1,000 or so that are -- I should define my terms. Home grown violent extremists, we mean somebody -- we have no indication that they're intouch with any terrorists. TILLIS: Any foreign touch. Right. COMEY: Yes. Then we have another big group of people that we're looking at who we see some contact with foreign terrorists. So you take that 2,000 plus cases, about 300 of them are people who came to the United States as refugees.Keep in mind that this is just cases the FBI knows about. It's impossible to say how many refugees are involved with terror cells but have thus far remained undetected by law enforcement. But let's say for the sake of discussion that these 300 are the only ones who entered the country under the pretense of being mere refugees, but in fact are involved with the planning and eventually the execution of terrorist activity. How much damage can 300 terrorists do? (Does anyone remember how many terrorists were needed to pull off the 9/11 attacks? That number would be 18.)
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