‘It’s like the devil sitting on their shoulders, saying kill, kill, kill,’ says FBI director James Comey

By NewsGram Staff Writer

Keeping in mind a recent attack during a Prophet Mohammed Cartoon contest held in Texas, the FBI director James Comey has said that Islamic State is leveraging social media to recruit people in the US.

"Hundreds, maybe thousands" of people across the country are receiving recruitment overtures from the terrorist group or directives to attack the US, he told reporters on Thursday, according to USA Today.

At a time when US is surrounded with problems like racism, the Islamic State took the opportunity to recruit a large number of youth from the badly affected states of Texas, Mississippi, Buffalo and other areas. "It's like the devil sitting on their shoulders, saying 'kill, kill, kill,'" Comey said while talking about a recent attack at Garland in Texas.

Comey said that Texas case is symbolic to counterterrorism and we are repeatedly trying to find the operative unit of IS in America. IS recruiters operating from safe havens in Syria are making initial contacts with recruits, mostly on Twitter, and are then "steering" them into encrypted venues where their subsequent communications are "lost to us," he said.

"The haystack is the entire country," Comey was quoted as saying. "We are looking for the needles, but increasingly the needles are unavailable to us. This is the 'going dark' problem in living color. There is Elton Simpsons out there that I have not found and I cannot see," he added.

The FBI is investigating around the country with a focus on every violent organization with inquiries open in all 56 of the FBI's field divisions, he said. "ISIS is a very popular fad among a lot of disturbed people," he concluded.