The Obama administration has only 16 people working to counter online radicalization efforts in the United States by the Islamic State (ISIS) and other terrorists groups, Rep. Martha McSally said Wednesday.
"You would be shocked to find out that there are only 16 people across all of our federal government — with homeland security, the Department of Justice and the counterterrorism center — who are responsible for countering this radicalization," the first-term Arizona Republican told
Wolf Blitzer on CNN.
"Only 16 people. We have 20,000 IRS agents who are making sure that you and I are paying our taxes and making the right deductions, but 16 people responsible for countering radicalization here at home."
McSally, 49, is a retired Air Force colonel who serves on the House Homeland Security Committee and the House Armed Services Committee.
She told Blitzer that ISIS continues to be most effective in radicalizing Americans via social media. She noted that 57 people have been arrested in the United States so far — 10 percent of them women — for supporting the terrorist group.
"It keeps ticking up," she said. "This is in 19 different states and growing. This is not somebody else's neighborhood. This is happening right here in our own neighborhood.
"Part of what we need to do to address what is happening. We have got individuals being radicalized. So we have got to counter that — counter messaging, using social media ourselves — working with local law enforcement, working with faith leaders in the community … to make sure that those that we see who are taking that road to radicalization are somehow intercepted, and we counter that."
McSally, who said she knew of no specific terror threats planned for the July Fourth Weekend, slammed the Obama White House for "moving at the speed of bureaucracy," while ISIS is "moving at the speed of broadband" in its online counterterrorism efforts.
"ISIS is its own sort of terror franchise that is in the last year has been stepping up their sophisticated use of social media," she said. "We have got to be much more responsive to this change and this threat — and be more nimble to get out there and to counter it."
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