FBI director: ISIS in touch with 'hundreds, maybe thousands' of potential U.S. recruits

“Those people exist in every state. I have homegrown violent extremist investigations in every single state. Until a few weeks ago there was 49 states. Alaska had none which I couldn’t quite figure out. But Alaska has now joined the group so we have investigations of people in various stages of radicalizing in all 50 states." “ISIL in particular is putting out a siren song with their slick propaganda through social media."

"In a dramatic assessment of the domestic threat posed by the Islamic State, FBI Director James Comey said Thursday there are "hundreds, maybe thousands" of people across the country who are receiving recruitment overtures from the terrorist group or directives to attack the U.S."

Indeed, Comey said that ISIL recruiters operating from safe havens in Syria are making initial contacts with recruits, mostly on Twitter, and are then "steering'' them into encrypted venues where their subsequent communications are "lost to us.'' "The haystack is the entire country,'' Comey said. “We are looking for the needles, but increasingly the needles are unavailable to us. ... This is the 'going dark' problem in living color. There are Elton Simpsons out there that I have not found and I cannot see.'' Comey said agents are working hundreds of investigations around the country involving suspected homegrown violent extremists. The director said the inquiries are open in all 56 of the FBI's field divisions.

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