Did the CIA Brief the U.S. Military on an ISIS Bombing Plot on the Texas Border?

According to a confidential and highly reliable source, Major General Stephen M. Twitty, Commanding General of the 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss Military Reservation in El Paso,Texas, was briefed on Friday, August 29, 2014 by the CIA on a credible threat by ISIS against the US. Based on intelligence from chatter and intercepted radio transmissions, General Twitty was told that a truck bomb or other Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED) attack along the US southern border may be imminent.

Further information revealed by Judicial Watch indicates that the attack may emanate from the border city of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, across the border from El Paso, where terrorist groups, including ISIS, have been very active. This report flies in the face of Friday’s statement by White House spokesman Josh Earnest that “There is no evidence or indication right now that ISIL (ISIS) is actively plotting to attack the United States homeland.”

Washington cross-talk notwithstanding, we have been alerting our readers over the last few months that ISIS has targeted the US and already has agents within her. They are escorted by ‘coyotes’ as ‘special customers’ for as much as $50,000 per head. The probability that once here they will attempt to attack American targets is very high.

ISIS terrorists are savage, brutal, and deadly. They fervently believe in their cause – the global caliphate according to the strictest interpretation of Shariah law. They welcome death as part of their belief system. You cannot intimate those you are not afraid to die. This enemy, with billions of dollars in financial resources to support its efforts, is more dangerous and more committed to our destruction than any terrorist group we have yet faced. Yet, despite the CIA warning, there seems to be little urgency in the White House. The President flew to New York to attend yet another fund raiser, after having admitted on open mike that he has “no strategy” to deal with ISIS.

Michael Morell, former Deputy Director of the CIA in a CBS interview on August 21, 2014 said:

After explaining what he thought needed to be done to defeat the terrorists (more targeted strikes and better intelligence), he said that “if an ISIS member showed up in a mall in the United States tomorrow with an AK-47 and killed a number of Americans I would not be surprised.”

“Over the long-term, I worry that this group could present a 9/11-style threat,” he added, noting the group presents both a short-term and long-term threat.

We drew attention to exactly this scenario in a New English Review article in June 2009 on the Somali Émigré threat. The article discussed the threat posed by recruitment of dozens of fighters in the Twin Cities to join Al Qaeda affiliate Al-Shabaab, Foot Solders of Islam. We warned of a possible swarming attack by returning Al Shabaab veterans on a mall in the US or Canada.

We hypothesized:

Such attacks could be perpetrated by homegrown Jihadis like those naturalized American Somali youths, alleged to have ‘disappeared’ to join Al Shabaab militia groups in Somalia. Those returnees could constitute cadres to train fellow American Somali youths. They could orchestrate swarming attacks against public facilities in this country using so-called low tech means: cheap weapons and pickup trucks. These possible swarming attacks could be devastating ‘mini- 9/11events.’ The casualties from such orchestrated swarming attacks could be devastating and the economic impacts, significant.

Just think of the Nairobi Westgate Mall attack in September 2013. Our report was entitled Al Shabaab is a Threat to the World at Large. Exchange ISIS for Al Shabaab and the threat looms considerably larger. Given the new information about the latest threat, we should be adding a Kansas City bombing scenario to the possibilities.

The situation on the southern border is not our only vulnerability. Neither border is secure, nor are the over 15,000 airports in the United States, including 378 primary airports that support scheduled commercial air service, and 2,952 other landing facilities including 2,903 general aviation airports, 10 heliports, and 39 seaplane bases. Most of the smaller airports represent a significant threat to the US, because they are generally close at sunset, have minimal security, and represent a large vulnerability gap which is exploited by traffickers, cartels, gangs, and terrorists.

The northern Canadian border is porous from Maine to the State of Washington. A recent trip along the northern border of New England showed just how porous it is. Not far from customs stations, one could cross from one country to the other by using logging roads which crossed the border through heavy forests, across open lakes, rivers, and open fields. Helicopters crossed the border unchecked, and during this trip, the co-author witnessed a drug drop from one of them.

Even at the check points, security is lax. Algerian Ahmed Rassem nearly got through a checkpoint at a US border crossing at Port Angeles in Washington on December 14, 1999, when he tried to cross with a car load of bomb making materials, intended for a New Year’s Eve attack on the Los Angeles International Airport, the so-called LAX Millennium Plot. Only an alert customs inspector who found Rassem’s behavior odd stopped him before he could carry out his plot. An explosives expert later concluded that the bomb making materials in his car could have produced a blast 40x greater than that of a conventional car bomb at one of the world’s busiest airports.

There are more than 500 Canadians who are estimated to have joined ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Add to that the American ISIS contingent of at least 150. Their return home from the training fields of Iraq and Syria using  their valid passports opens the possibility of ‘home-grown’ terror attacks in Canada and the US.

Four American ISIS fighters were killed in Syria this past week, including 33 year old Douglas McAuthur McCain. The four came from the Somali émigré community or were converts associated with that community. Three came from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and McCain came from San Diego. Instead of journeying to Somalia, they evaded the FBI, found the means of entering Syria via Turkey, and joined up with ISIS in Syria.

In another instance, a young Vero Beach, Florida man, Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, undertook a massive suicide truck bombing of a Syrian military base in March 2014. In a recent video he explained his reasons for joining up with the Al Qaeda militia, Jabhat al Nusra. He said that the FBI was tailing him, but he was never detained by the FBI, and they did not stop him from accomplishing his deadly mission.

Canada’s major cities, especially Metro Toronto and Montreal, have large communities of Somalis, Middle Eastern or Asian extremist Muslims. There are reports that some of these ISIS fighters may have already slipped into the US over the easily traversed US/Canadian border. Another 3,000 ISIS fighters may carry foreign passports that give them access to this country under the visa waiver system.

The news that a senior US military commander has been briefed on the credible threat of an ISIS jihadi team successfully infiltrating  our southern border to conduct a devastating truck bombing only heightens concerns as we approach the 13th commemoration of 9/11.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the New English Review.