Retired Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer and America First Policy Institute Vice Chair Fred Fleitz told Newsmax on Thursday that due to the Biden administration's lack of immigration policy enforcement, the United States is "as vulnerable now" as it was before the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Right before 9/11, we had issues with people in the government not believing that we could be hit," Shaffer said during an appearance on Newsmax's "American Agenda." "Well, we were. And now here we are again, deja vu all over again. So [FBI Director] Christopher Wray has stated correctly there are indicators across the board.
"I'm a member of law enforcement in Virginia," he continued. "I got a call from my boss recently, and he asked me for specific guidance of what I thought he should do to increase his posture to secure his county. His county is just south of Quantico. Quantico is one of the targets within northern Virginia. So what I can say is this, without giving away any intelligence: There are clear indicators that the people who are coming across the border may well be organizing into cells."
Shaffer said there are organizations such as the New York Police Department and others that share information about terror threats.
"God bless the NYPD that organizes an informal information-sharing network. And we're doing everything we can to be vigilant of what terrorists may do," he said. "They would do essentially precursor actions, reconnaissance, and rehearsal. So those are the things we're looking for because, to your point, [Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas, DHS [Department of Homeland Security] has not done their job. And because they haven't done their job, we are literally as vulnerable now as we were right before 9/11."
Fleitz rejected the idea that discussing the report constituted "fearmongering" and said the report was probably "very accurate."
"Bear in mind that [former national security adviser] John Bolton and [former Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo and [former national security adviser] Robert O'Brien have Secret Service protection because of Iranian threats to assassinate them," he said. "An Iranian man was arrested in the U.K. because he had put a hit out to kill Bolton. We know that there is an Iranian-American journalist in New York who Iranian agents tried to kidnap in 2022.
"I think this is very likely to be true. I think it's part of Iran's efforts to cash in on [President Joe] Biden's weakness in the run-up to the 2024 election to intimidate the United States to try to drive it out of the Middle East. I don't think that will succeed.
"But there is some good news here," he continued. "The good news is that we have intelligence that this is being planned. For all the criticism of the FBI and our intelligence agencies, they have a pretty good record at stopping these terrorist attacks. There are quite a few of these attempts that you don't know about that have been stopped, and I'm hoping that this intelligence means the administration will put in place very good efforts to detect this type of attack and to prevent it."
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Nicole Wells ✉
Nicole Wells, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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