Two DHS Secretaries Agree: Another Terrorist Attack is Going to Happen
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com
September 9, 2016
“How many terrorist attacks do you think we will suffer in the United States in the next year?” journalist and author Steven Brill asked the former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and current Secretary Jeh Johnson on Thursday.
Ridge refused to “speculate” on a number, but he said terror attacks are inevitable: “Let’s reflect of our past 15 years. We’re safer now than we’ve ever been. There’s still gaps, let’s close the gaps and let’s accept it. And don’t ever, ever change what we do because were fearful of another attack. Because another attack is going to happen.”
Ridge said the U.S. must “accept the reality” that the nature of the threat has changed: “The number of actors has increased. The profile of those actors is significantly different than it was on September 10, 2001,” he said.
“There’s an inevitability to the attacks. There’s no way, if you take a look at what’s happened in France over the past six months, there’s a variety of means by which they can inflict their damage and, you know, affect the psyche of a country and bring pain and suffering to families and communities.
“They had a stabbing in Paris, they had a truck running over dozens of people in Nice, the mass shooting on November 13th and yesterday (Wednesday), they found gas cylinders in an automobile outside of Notre Dame (in Paris). So…I think we should just accept the inevitability. But after 15 years in reflection, what I really think the country needs to do is accept the reality that it is a global scourge. Accept a reality that it will probably happen again, here.”
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