Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) just told Andrea Mitchell that she’s worried. Worried about the safety of Americans in light of the terror strikes in Paris. As the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, she’s one of the few politicians people listen to.
“I’ve never been more concerned. I read the intelligence faithfully. ISIL is not contained--ISIL is expanding. They just put out a video declaring their intent to attack this country,” Feinstein told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “Hopefully France will go for a Chapter 5, which will bring NATO into it. Hopefully we will work with our allies to put together the right kind of coalitions and attack plans at a given time,” she added.
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Feinstein seemed impatient with the President’s minimal approach against ISIS. “We certainly need more than 50 special ops. We need to be able to work with Russia and Iran in Syria. ISil took down a major aircraft. It had a major attack in Beirut. They are on the march and I don’t think bombing runs alone can really make a difference. We’re going to have to look at new themes and ask our military how we can contain ISIL and defeat it.”
Feinstein insisted, “There’s only one way we’re going to diminish them and that is by taking them out because they are growing in more than a dozen countries now. They have a kind of secret way of conducting secret operations that can’t be pierced.”
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She mentioned that Director Comey of the FBI has reported that investigations are being carried out in virtually every office of the FBI. But her most disturbing comment was about our lax internal document systems. “We have a broken passport system. We have 45 million stolen passports floating around. We have international travel documents floating around. We have a visa waiver program that allows somebody if they come back from Syria to France to come into this country,” Feinstein said.
Feinstein added, “All of these things have to be explored and changed—and they have to be done quickly. Three big attacks in a month have to be taken seriously.”
