Former CIA Officer: Terrorism is Turning into Carjacking

A former CIA case officer thinks terrorism has evolved into a "carjacking" mentality, with no way of preventing it from happening.

"It's a local, crime-driven event that you just can't possibly prevent. You can't stop a carjacking attempt from happening," Patrick Skinner of the Soufan Group told WTOP. "They've applied the carjacking model to terrorist attacks."

Skinner said the Islamic State (ISIS), which was responsible for several terror attacks in Europe and north Africa in recent memory, is modeling itself after local gangs.

"These people have basically merged terrorism with gang crime, which is virtually impossible to root out," he said. "Police everywhere from Liverpool to Molenbeek to Los Angeles have struggled with this. How can you root out this type of crime? You actually can't."

He added that ISIS is starting to recruit low-level criminals in cities to join its group and commit acts of terror.

"What they've done is turn local thugs into international jihadists and we haven't figured out how to deal with that," Skinner said. "They've completely upended our usual counterterrorism apparatus."

Officials are growing even more worried about local terror cells such as the ones who carried out the attacks in Paris and Brussels. The terrorists behind the Belgium attack, for example, were reportedly planning to hit France again but diverted their sights to the country's northern neighbor after the massive security and intelligence response to the November attacks that killed 130 people.

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