US Attorney General Eric Holder said that even though the
"decimation" of Al-Qaeda’s core has compromised the group's ability to
carry out another 9/11, the possibility of new terror attacks in America
is still present.
Holder told CBS's "Face the Nation" program that key affiliates
like Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have called on
people to carry out smaller attacks.
"They have inspired people negatively around the world to
engage in these really small attacks that involve only one or two
people, a small number of arms that can have a devastating impact
as we have seen in France. We have been in this phase of the
fight against terrorism for some time," he said.
Holder spoke from Paris, where he met with law enforcement
counterparts from around the globe after 17 people were killed by
Islamist militants in several attacks in the French capital last
week.
"I think the possibility of such attacks exists in the United
States," Holder told Bob Schieffer.
"It is something that, frankly, keeps me up at night worrying
about the lone wolf or a very small group of people, who decide
to get arms on their own and do what we saw in France this
week," he said.
Holder said authorities haven’t yet determined whether AQAP or a
group like the Islamic State was responsible for the deadly Paris
attacks. According to several senior Yemeni sources, the two
brothers who carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo, went to
Yemen in 2011, where AQAP is based, for weapons training, Reuters
reported. Meanwhile, Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who perpetrated
the attack on a Paris kosher grocery, earlier appeared in a video
pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State group.
The French prime minister said on Saturday that his country was
at war with radical Islam. “It is a war against terrorism,
against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that
is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom and solidarity,”
Manuel Valls said.
Up to 1.6millon people, over 40 world leaders among them, took to
the streets of the French capital on Sunday in an act of
solidarity. Much to everybody's surprise, US President Barack
Obama did not join British Prime Minister David Cameron, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, just to name a few, to pay tribute to the victims of
the Islamist attacks. Following wide criticism of the Obama
administration for not sending a senior official to Sunday's
rally, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday he will
travel to Paris "to make it crystal clear how passionately we
feel about the events that have taken place there."
Holder, who appeared on four Sunday TV shows, said that while
America, France and other allies have been sharing information on
potential terrorists, "there's a greater need for us to share
information, to knock down these information-sharing barriers, so
that we can always stay on top of these threats," he told
ABC.
"One nation cannot by itself hope to forestall the
possibility of terrorism even within its own borders," he
told "This Week" program.
He also told CNN's "State of the Union" that about 150 Americans
had gone or attempted to travel to Syria or Iraq to fight with
militants there, and about a dozen were there right now.
On February 18, the White House is set to convene a summit in
Washington DC in a bid to eradicate violent extremism.
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