The FBI has gone public in asking for help in identifying individuals who have already gone or plan to leave the country to fight on the side of terrorist organizations against the U.S. and its allies.
On its website, the FBI has posted information on how the public can leave tips online and phone number to call about suspects who may be traveling overseas along with a video.
"We need the public's assistance in identifying U.S. persons going to fight overseas with terrorist groups or who are returning home from fighting overseas," Michael Steinbach, assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, said in a statement from the agency.
The FBI also said it was keenly interested in finding out who is the English-speaking individual and others seen in a recent propaganda video released in September by the group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.
The effort to reach out to the public comes after FBI director James Comey appeared on
CBS's "60 Minutes" where he addressed the danger of so-called lone wolf terrorist from this country.
"These homegrown violent extremists are troubled souls who are seeking meaning in some misguided way," said Comey. "And so they come across the propaganda and they become radicalized on their own independent study, and they're also able to equip themselves with training again on the Internet, and then engage in jihad after emerging from their basement."
According to Fox News, U.S. intelligence officials believe about 15,000 foreign fighters have traveled to Iraq and Syria to link arms with extremist groups, including ISIL. State officials reported to Fox News that at least two Americans have been killed and at least 13 have been arrested in fighting so far.
Comey told reporters at a news conference in September that the FBI believed about a dozen Americans, and not 100 as previously reported, are in Syria taking the side of terrorists and believed to be fighting alongside extremist groups, noted Fox News.
"When I use a number of more than 100, that means people who have gone and come back, people who have attempted to go and we locked them up, people who have gone and stayed," Comey told reporters. "The figure that I've been operating with is, ballparkish, a dozen still there fighting with terrorist groups."