CNN: FBI Has 1K Active ISIS Investigations, But Few Prosecutions

The number of ISIS indictments or guilty pleas obtained by the U.S. has dropped precipitously since 2015 despite 1,000 active FBI investigations, according to CNN's analysis.

So far in 2018, there have been just four indictments or guilty pleas related to lone wolf would-be attackers embedded in the U.S. and just one publicly revealed arrest, CNN found.

Comparatively:

• 2015: 57 indictments or guilty pleas in U.S. courts.
• 2016: 34.
• 2017: 26.

There are a number of mitigating factors, one of them being that the FBI doesn't announce every arrest or indictment if it's just one facet of a larger investigation, CNN reports.

Further, given that ISIS has mostly been wiped out, its propaganda machine has been greatly diminished, too.

"As ISIS loses that propaganda machine, fewer people are going to be radicalized by it because fewer people are going to pay attention to it," former FBI agent Jeffrey Ringel told CNN.

However, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress last week - and reiterated his assertion from late last year - that homegrown terrorism related to Islamic extremism remains a concern.

However, there's not much to show for 1,000 active investigations.

"If you have a thousand investigations of any group and only a handful of prosecutions, it proves that those investigations aren't properly predicated," former FBI agent Michael German told CNN.

On the other hand, social media has likely played a part in adding to the FBI's investigations. While it takes time to track down a post that could be considered a credible threat, more often than not it's posters getting their kicks on social media platforms.

"Ten years ago, that same person might have been bragging to their friends in their bedroom and they wouldn't have come to the attention of authorities," Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told CNN.

"But occasionally, it does. The FBI's point of view would be … we don't want any people to die because we didn't take someone who said, 'I want to kill people' seriously."

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