Andrew McCabe: Terrorism Resources Spread Too Thin

Former FBI deputy Director Andrew McCabe suggested on Tuesday that the bureau is "spreading" its "terrorist resources too thin" as agents are being diverted to handle illegal immigration.

McCabe raised the concern on CNN while discussing the agency's domestic terrorism task force, aimed at investigating a surge in vandalism targeting Tesla vehicles. According to McCabe, the FBI shouldn't need to "move resources" for such efforts because there is already a "long-established domestic terrorism section ... that was built to do exactly this."

"So this raises questions for me about why isn't the current state of the bureau's defense domestic terrorism investigators good enough to handle this?" McCabe asked. "And could it be because they have recently [been] distracted and tasked with engaging in immigration activity?"

Citing recent reports that thousands of federal officers — including some from the FBI — have been reassigned to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, McCabe said relying on the Joint Terrorism Task Forces for immigration enforcement was "not a good idea."

"We don't want our terrorism forces to be doing something other than terrorism," he warned.

The new Tesla vandalism task force is comprised of 10 agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

"They'll try to disrupt" the acts of vandalism, he added, "with things like arrests and to basically mitigate this threat. And then that gives them some time to decide if they need to move resources to address this sort of thing permanently. The question whether they need to is a really interesting one, though."

McCabe compared the situation to similar acts by animal rights and environmental extremists during the '80s and '90s.

"That was something that the domestic terrorism program addressed very effectively," he added.

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