The New Year's Day attack in New Orleans comes as no surprise, as jihadists have been in the United States "for a while, and their numbers continue to grow," Ken Strange, a former FBI agent with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, told Newsmax on Thursday.
"It was a terrible, terrible tragedy, [but] I'm not surprised," Strange told Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "I've been saying for the last two years that it's not a matter of if, but when, and yes, they are here … unfortunately, you can anticipate more of this."
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, of Texas, the man who was killed by police after driving a pickup truck into a crowd on New Orleans' Bourbon Street early on New Year's Day, had served as an IT specialist in the military and was a U.S. citizen. The FBI said an ISIS flag was located in the truck Jabbar used in the attack, which has claimed 15 lives and left dozens hospitalized.
Police are still investigating the motive behind the attack, but Strange told Newsmax that part of the issue over the past few years is that the President Joe Biden's administration has been "kind of clocked out" and is being run by staffers.
"This is not a good look for anybody that is waging war against determined jihadists," Strange said.
Meanwhile, Jabbar was born in Texas and spent more than 10 years in the U.S. Army, including being deployed to Afghanistan, and Strange said he thinks the man became radicalized.
"Possibly, this person's life was not going well," said Strange. "He may have been spinning out of control. I understand that he'd been through several marriages and was missing some of his child care payments."
And with the "pro-ISIS, pro-al-Qaida rhetoric being spewed from the Middle East into the country, this may have been something that attracted him," he added.
"This was kind of a way out, and he would go out in a blaze of glory, so it's not surprising," said Strange.
Biden's comments after the attack, when said Jabbar expressed a "desire to kill" in his videos on social media, were a "little bit too late," said Strange.
"I was not assured by the president's words," he said.
He added that he wants to know why outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray has been on a "farewell" tour of field offices in the Midwest while New Year's Eve was approaching.
"This is a seminal moment for jihadists to strike," he said. "This is what they do best. They strike fear on New Year's Eve throughout the world. So that is another disconnect."
He added that the security in New Orleans for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day was "fairly poor."
"I think this person may have been looking at it, kind of scoping it out before the attack or having other people, maybe associates, checking it out and looking for that soft spot, that vulnerable spot," said Strange. "And again, I hate to say this, but the New Orleans PD has a less-than-stellar reputation as far as security."
Strange also discussed the New Year's Day explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck outside of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas and the potential connection with the New Orleans attack after it was revealed both men were in the military and had rented the vehicles they used through the Turo app.
"These are things that need to be looked at, and I'm sure they're doing that right now, both the [FBI's] Las Vegas field office and the New Orleans field office," said Strange.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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