U.S. faces terror threat from within

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano offered a sobering assessment of the terror threat facing the United States on Wednesday, saying it was at perhaps the "most heightened state" since the Sept. 11 attacks nearly a decade ago.

Napolitano, appearing before the House Homeland Security Committee, said the threat from al-Qaeda, the group that planned the assaults in 2001, has been augmented by al-Qaeda-inspired groups and the emergence of homegrown radicals in the USA.

"One of the most striking elements of today's threat picture is that plots to attack America increasingly involve American residents and citizens," she said. "We are now operating under the assumption, based on the latest intelligence and recent arrests, that individuals prepared to carry out terrorist attacks and acts of violence might be in the United States, and they could carry out acts of violence with little or no warning."

During the past two years, more than 120 people have been indicted in federal court on terror-related charges. About 50 of them were U.S. citizens, said Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., homeland committee chairman, citing Justice Department statistics.

King described the threat as "serious and evolving," adding that increasing domestic radicalization marked a "game-changer" in the anti-terror effort.

"We must confront this threat explicitly and directly," King said.

Hours after the hearing, the Justice Department announced that another U.S. citizen, Daniel Patrick Boyd, 40, of North Carolina, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping to "advance violent jihad" in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"This case proves how our world is changing," North Carolina U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding said. "Terrorists are no longer only from foreign countries but also citizens who live within our own borders."

Though Leiter said the homegrown threats are "less likely to be of the same magnitude as the tragedy this nation suffered in September 2001, their breadth and simplicity make our work all the more difficult."

Lawyers for U.S. suspects in two recent terror cases in Oregon and Maryland have argued that their clients — one accused in an attempted attack in November on a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the other in an attempted bombing in December of a military recruitment center in Baltimore — were victims of entrapment with no actual means to carry out the attacks.

Don Borelli, a former FBI counterterrorism official who helped oversee the 2009 inquiry into a plot to bomb the New York subway by Denver shuttle driver Najibullah Zazi, said Napolitano and others are right to be concerned. Zazi pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing.

"I don't think she's overreacting here," said Borelli, a senior vice president for the Soufan Group, an international security firm. He said the homegrown threat will require a change in strategy to help identify people vulnerable to radicalization.

"I think that what you've got is a stage that is certainly set for something to happen," he said.