U.S. law enforcement authorities must be on the lookout for potential copycat attacks following this week’s shooting massacre at a satirical magazine in Paris, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Thursday in an exclusive interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Johnson said the attack in France — which left 12 people dead, including two police officers — highlights how the world has entered a new phase in which terrorists are using propaganda to inspire violence in other countries. The government is responding, Johnson said, by tracking would-be terrorists on the Internet and those who are leaving their native countries to do battle in Syria and elsewhere.
Johnson said he instructed authorities in November to begin seeking more information about people who are traveling here from countries that are exempt from U.S. visa requirements. Further, Johnson said he is traveling to Islamic cultural centers and other community organizations across the nation, encouraging them to build trust with local police and steer young men away from violence.
“Any time something like this occurs, you have got to be concerned about a copycat-like attempt,” said Johnson, who flew to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport Thursday to review security procedures following a major gun-smuggling bust there last month. “So in the short term I suspect we are going to evaluate a number of things we need to do in this country. This is something we have been concerned about for some time now.”
“We need to be concerned about discrete attacks from people who may be lurking in our homeland,” he continued. “Our intelligence community does a pretty good job of detecting plots at their earliest stages overseas… That is I believe one of our new priorities now in Homeland Security, in law enforcement and in the intelligence community of our government.”
Johnson also talked about the state of security at Atlanta’s airport before decrying Republican congressional attempts to block President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Please go to myajc.com to see more of Johnson’s interview with the AJC.
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