Average Americans should take heed of FBI Director James Comey's warning to a Mississippi audience Tuesday that Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists are a real threat on U.S. soil, ex-Terrorism Task Force member Steve Rogers says.
"In the early 2000s when I was on the National Joint Terrorism Task Force, I remember reading al-Qaida's training manual," Rogers told Fox News Channel's
"Your World with Neil Cavuto" on Wednesday.
"This was a 10-, 20-, 30-year strategic plan to do what? To go after the big prize, take down the United States of America … in America."
"In that training manual, it was clear: Infiltrate their universities, infiltrate their schools, their neighborhoods, their market, infiltrate the news media, embed yourself in every neighborhood," he said.
No one should be surprised there are ISIS sympathizers within our borders, Rogers said. After all, there were Nazi sympathizers in the United States during World War II and Soviet agents during the Cold War.
"Mississippi is a great state," Comey said during a stop in that state,
The Clarion-Ledger reported. "But like all 50 states it has troubled souls that might look to find meaning in this sick, misguided way."
The FBI has investigations on possible terror suspects in every state but Alaska, Comey said.
"The challenge that we face in law enforcement is that they may be getting exposed to that poison and that training in their basement," Comey said. "They're sitting there consuming and may emerge from the basement to kill people of any sort, which is the call of ISIL (or ISIS), just kill somebody."
Rogers agreed.
"Look, I'm sure they're here," he said. "And I believe the FBI director was making it kind of through a back way of saying it, they're here. So you know what, be on the look out."
Ironically, the very administration for which Comey works has crippled intelligence capabilities, and isn't protecting the borders from allowing more people with terrorist ties to enter, Rogers said.
He joined critics of President Barack Obama who say he should label the enemy "Islamic terrorists."
"Mr. President, say these are Islamic terrorists, for goodness sakes," he said.
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