(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In a wide-ranging interview with NBC published Tuesday, FBI Director Chris Wray forecasted a terrorist event in America similar to ISIS-K’s alleged attack on Russia last month, when members of the Islamic group killed nearly 140 people at a concert hall in the suburbs of Moscow.
“We are increasingly concerned [about] the potential for some kind of coordinated attack here in the homeland, which may be not that different from what you saw against the concert hall in Russia a few weeks ago from ISIS-K,” Wray told NBC’s Lester Holt.
Wray didn’t mention that Russia has accused the U.S. of being behind the ISIS-K attack. While such an accusation may seem absurd to some, recent investigative journalism has shown that ISIS-K is led by a NATO contractor.
This information has been scrubbed from Wikipedia, but @bsarwary and other Afghan journalists obtained ID cards that show that the reputed leader of ISIS-K was a security contractor for the US client state in Afghanistan. His license to deal weapons was issued by NATO. https://t.co/vwkdEsWJVL pic.twitter.com/4LOvbY1ZPJ
— Seth Harp (@sethharpesq) March 24, 2024
Moreover, Facebook now seems to be censoring reporting about ISIS’s conneciotns to the U.S. security state. The Grayzone said last week that Facebook users have reported being banned, or having their posts censored, after sharing an investigation by The Grayzone’s Kit Klarenberg into CIA and MI6 involvement in the creation of ISIS.
In any event, Wray also told NBC he’s worried that China, Russia and Iran may seek to interfere in the upcoming election, and that all three countries continue to conduct cyber operations against the U.S. Such operations “would allow them to induce panic or break America’s will to resist in something like, let’s say, an effort by the Chinese government to move on Taiwan,” he said.
Along with scaremongering, Wray spread lies on NBC about the FBI’s activities. Perhaps his biggest doozy was insisting that the FBI doesn’t monitor protests.
FBI Director Chris Wray: "We don't monitor protests" pic.twitter.com/ecQKA7p9rV
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 23, 2024
Wray’s comments were roundly mocked online from both conservatives and leftists. The latter pointed to numerous Black Lives Matter protests the FBI has monitored, while conservatives referenced Jan. 6 and other recent events.
As Headline USA reported in January, the FBI doesn’t even have to acknowledge how it monitors protests in court. A federal judge ruled then that the FBI can keep secret its aerial surveillance footage it took of the August 2020 riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin—where Kyle Rittenhouse shot three protestors who had attacked him, killing two of them.
“Disclosure of the FBI surveillance-program practices, moreover, would be reasonably expected to risk circumvention of the law. Criminal and national-security adversaries could use the non-public information to adjust their behaviors and avoid aerial surveillance,” U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said in January.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
