THE West could face a repeat of 9/11 if leaders don’t act now to fight an ISIS resurgence, the former head of the CIA has warned.
Michael Morell, former director of the intelligence agency, believes the world feels the same now as it did before the devastating terror attacks of September 11, 2001.
Morell briefed President George Bush on the morning of 9/11 and stood with President Barack Obama 10 years later in the White House situation room as US forces killed Osama Bin Laden.
When asked if he fears the possibility another attack like the Twin Towers horror, Morell told The Sun: “Yes. Absolutely. 100 per cent.”
He said: “The feeling in the Bush White House and in the CIA after 9/11 is that we can never let this happen again.
“We need to do everything we can to protect America. We need to get back some of that feeling now to protect ourselves.”
Following the catastrophic events of 9/11, when 3,000 people lost their lives, President Bush declared the beginning of the War on Terror.
Ten years ago today, on June 29, 2014, ISIS seized huge swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and announced the establishment of a caliphate.
Its leader, infamous terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was declared as the caliph and “leader for Muslims everywhere”.
That same year marked the beginning of Operation Inherent Resolve – a US-led mission in the Middle East to destroy the Islamic State death-cult.
ISIS-K, or the Islamic State in Khorasan, is a deadly faction of the bloodthirsty group which operates out of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Morell said the decision to pull American troops from Afghanistan in 2021 has formed the basis for the fresh threat the West now faces.
ISIS ‘lone wolves’ will attack Britain in months as MI5 ‘prepares to raise threat level’, warn terror experts
He told The Sun: “Leaving Iraq created the basis for the threat from ISIS originally.
“And now the leaving of Afghanistan has created the basis for the creation of the ISIS-K threat in Western Europe and in the United States.”
The former CIA boss even warned that the UK could be at a greater risk than the US for a terror attack.
All these groups are out there now calling for attacks in a way that they haven’t done for a long time
Michael Morell
He told The Sun: “The threat to Europe and to your readers is even higher than it is in the US, even higher than what we say it is for the US.”
“They’ve already tried it in Western Europe. They’ve already done it in Russia,” he said, referring to the Crocus City Hall attack in March.
A group of ISIS-K gunmen stormed a busy concert venue and opened fire, before setting fire to the building, killing some 140 people.
IS HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?
Morell told The Sun he’s had calls, texts and emails from former CIA colleagues who all share his fears about the counter terror environment.
He told The Sun: “CIA officers who I worked with at that time, during the pre-9/11 period… calling me up, sending me notes, sending me texts, sending me emails.
“Saying, ‘have you been following the testimony of the FBI director? Doesn’t it feel the same to you as the pre-9-11 period?’
“And I would say, yes, yes, yes.
“They were people who went through the pre-9/11 period and are sitting back now in retirement, watching everything that’s happening.”
The threat to Europe and to your readers is even higher than it is in the US
Michael Morell
In the years leading up to 9/11, the then director of the CIA, George Tenet, raised the alarm repeatedly to government and the White House about the terror threat.
Just two years before Osama Bin Laden had his terrorists kill 3,000 people in the bloody attack, Tenet warned: “There is not the slightest doubt that Osama bin Laden . . . [is] planning further attacks against us.”
Director of the FBI Christopher Wray now shares eerily similar fears and has said the terror threat is at a “whole ‘nother level”.
GROWING THREAT IN AFGHANISTAN
Morell explained how a variety of factors have come together to form the “heightened threat environment” now faced by the West from terrorists abroad.
He is most concerned about ISIS-K and said “ISIS-K in Afghanistan has grown significantly in capability and the area in which it operates since we all left Afghanistan”.
“It was the coalition presence in Afghanistan that kept a lid on ISIS-K,” he told The Sun.
“The Afghan government kept a lid on ISIS-K. The Afghan security services kept a lid on ISIS-K.”
Michael explained: “When all those things are gone, even though the Taliban continues to fight them, and sees them as a mortal enemy, they’ve grown in capability.”
He referenced the huge ISIS-K attack in Moscow in March which killed some 140 people, the worst terror hit in Europe for 20 years.
The counter terror expert said: “And then in Iran before that, which is the worst terrorist attack in Iran since the revolution.
“And then two failed attacks in Western Europe. One in Cologne and one against the Swedish parliament.”
What happened in the years leading up to 9/11?
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
MICHAEL Morell told The Sun the risk now feels like it did in the years before the horrific Al-Qaeda attack on New York City’s Twin Towers.
Along with his friend and former assistant US Secretary of Defence Graham Allison, the two intelligence experts laid out a series of chilling similarities in think tank magazine Foreign Affairs.
For four years between 1997 and 2001, then director of the CIA George Tenet was raising the alarm about Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
He testified an incredible ten times to the US government about the terror threat posed by them.
In 1999 he warned: “There is not the slightest doubt that Osama bin Laden . . . [is] planning further attacks against us.”
Fast forward almost 30 years from those initial warnings in 97, and FBI director Christopher Wray is making alarmingly similar claims.
Alongside private conversations with president Biden, Wray has testified in front of US Congress and made statements to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He told them: “When I sat here last year, I walked through how we were already in a heightened threat environment,” adding that post October 7, “we’ve seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole nother level.”
Chief of United States Central Command (CENTCOM) General Erik Kurilla has also warned about terror forces in the Middle East, particularly the Islamic State and ISIS-K.
And in June US Attorney General Merrick Gardland said the the “threat level… has gone up enormously” for a terror attack on US soil.
‘MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH’
Another piece of the puzzle is the unrest in Africa, where terrorists like Jihadist group Boko Haram or Islamist Al-Shabaab exist.
Morell told The Sun: “Africa is the most dangerous place on the planet for terrorism.
“[It] has been growing over the years because local groups like Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, some of which are affiliated with either Al-Qaeda or ISIS, some not, have grown in capability.
“The environment there is so rich for it. Economic problems, political problems. It’s just allowed them to thrive.”
The war between Israel and Hamas, Michael explains, has upped the terror risk in two ways.
He told The Sun: “One is simply October 7 and Israel’s response to October 7 just creating more extremists and radicalising people, not only in the Middle East, but also in the West.
“Radicalising them on either side… you’ve got to worry about attacks on Jewish targets, you’ve got to worry about attacks on Muslim targets.
“And then the second piece of October 7 was it led international terrorist organisations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda to call for anybody, anywhere to rise up and strike the West or strike Israel.
Africa is the most dangerous place on the planet for terrorism
Michael Morell
“All these groups are out there now calling for attacks in a way that they haven’t done for a long time.”
While Morell compares the 2024 atmosphere to America in the years before 9/11, he explained that the specifics of an attack now would be different.
The intelligence pro told The Sun: “It would not be a 9/11-style attack. It would look like a Moscow concert attack.
“They would come here without weapons, they would get weapons here and they would go to a public forum where there were a lot of people.
“A forum that might be a symbol of America, and that’s what they would attack.”
Morell said his “lead worry” is that ISIS-K would be the group to carry out such a violent attack.
WHAT DO WE NEED TO DO?
In terms of shoring up our detection and defensive abilities, the West needs to follow a series of steps, he explains.
Intelligence vetting, which failed to detect extremist links for eight men with ties to ISIS-K who recently crossed America’s southern border, needs to be diligent.
The West needs to maintain a vigilant state of awareness and we should work on finding new ways to gather fresh intelligence, Michael said.
He told The Sun: “One, scrubbing all the information that has come in to make sure that we haven’t missed anything.
“Step two is to generate new intelligence.
“And then three, kind of go on a heightened state of alert, so that you find things you didn’t find before, you protect things in a way you didn’t before.
“The last step is actually taking the fight to the terrorists again. We recommend holding our nose and working with the Taliban against ISIS-K.
“We’re not talking about putting US troops on the ground. We’re talking about just working with the Taliban to collect intelligence on what ISIS-K is doing, and helping the Taliban deal with them.”
A UK PERSPECTIVE
Former British Army officer General Sir Richard Barrons, who served as Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff from 2011 to 2013, spoke to The Sun about the ISIS threat.
Gen Barrons also worked as Commander of the Joint Forces Command – with some oversight on Operation Inherent Resolve.
Throughout his military career, he served in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
He told The Sun: “Al-Qaeda and ISIS and indeed the intervention into Afghanistan was meant to remove Afghanistan as a safe haven for terrorism.
“One of the challenges 10 years on is that we’ve now got more than terrorism to worry about.”
Because of rising conflict around the globe, the focus on Islamic extremist threats has been dragged elsewhere.
Gen Barrons said: “There’s a tendency to somewhat take the eye off the ball and that is a pity.
“We are clearly seeing a resurgence in both radicalisation and a resurgence in the ability of terrorist organisations.
“The clearest example is Afghanistan where it is absolutely clear that the Taliban are not just failing to prevent but actively cooperating with and tolerating organisations that wish to project harm against the West.”
The military expert told us this resurgence is thanks to “the outcome in Afghanistan and the radicalisation that’s accompanying the war in Gaza”.
He said: “The question we all need to consider is are we moving back into a place where terrorism will strike?”
The Rise, Spread and Return of ISIS
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
ISIS, also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ISIL or Daesh, is a murderous terrorist network that officially formed in 2004.
The group, known for its barbaric public executions and beheadings, was originally part of al-Qaeda – the terrorists responsible for 9/11.
They took advantage of instability in Iraq and Syria after 2000 to make a power grab but following an injection of American troops into Iraq in 2007, ISIS lost some of its power in the region.
It began to reemerge in 2011 and on June 29 2014 its leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi declared a caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
That same year the US formed Operation Inherent Resolve, a coalition operation that saw western airstrikes aimed against ISIS in Iraq.
In 2014, ISIS was the most powerful, best-equipped and wealthiest Islamic extremist group the world had ever seen.
By 2015 it had branches operating in at least eight other countries.
That October, their Egypt network bombed a Russian plane and killed over 220 people.
In November 2015, 130 were murdered and over 300 injured during one of their most brutal attacks on the West in Paris.
And in June 2016, a gunman who pledged himself to the murderous organisation killed at least 48 people at a nightclub in Florida.
But by December 2017, ISIS had lost 95 per cent of its stolen territory following Western intervention abroad.
Its core ideologies, which included a burning hatred for the Western way of life, continued to inspire countless terrorist attacks around the world.
While American combat in Iraq was officially axed in December 2021, 2,500 troops were left stationed there to work as advisers and trainers for Iraqi security forces trying to fend off extremist forces.
There are believed to be less than 1,000 still stationed in Syria.
The US forces completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan on August 30th 2021.
Early this year, The Sun warned that the West was facing a new War on Terror as counter terror experts told us how volatile the landscape was becoming.
In the months since, ISIS and its copycats have crawled out of their respective holes and reared their ugly heads around the globe.
In January ISIS-K, an offshoot of the terror group in Afghanistan and Pakistan, set off a twin bombing in Iran killing around 100 people.
In March they shot up and set fire to a concert hall in Russia, killing around 140 people.
It marked the deadliest terror attack in Europe since 2004 and put the world on high alert.
In April, Dutch intelligence agency AIVD revealed that ten jihadist attacks were foiled across Europe in just the last year.