After a gunman killed a soldier and stormed the Canadian Parliament building on Wednesday, a former CIA official is raising concerns that the United States might be targeted next for a possible terrorist attack, according to Thursday's interview on "CBS This Morning."
Mike Morell, the former deputy director of the CIA, stated that the U.S. stands at "a very dangerous time here" following multiple foreign terror threats.
"I am now more worried about a terrorist threat in the United States than I have been for a long, long time," Morell told CBS News. "We have the self-radicalization problem ourselves. We've got the possibility that ISIS might send fighters here to conduct attacks. We still have al-Qaeda in Pakistan, al-Qaeda in Yemen and the Khorasan group planning attacks," he said.
"And we have the fact that what Edward Snowden did has made it much more difficult for law enforcement and intelligence to track these guys, so we are at, I think, a very dangerous time here," he added.
Amid the chaos of Wednesday's attack, gunman Michael Abdul Zehaf-Bibeau, a recent Islamic convert, killed a Canadian Forces reservist standing guard at the country's National War Memorial and was on his way to ambush the Parliament building in Ottawa when Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers fatally shot him, CBS reported.
Referring to the controversial ongoing debate about the dangers of the Mexican border, Morrell said he felt more threatened by the idea of radicalized Canadians crossing the U.S. border without raising flags.
"I'm much more concerned about the Canada border than I am the Mexican border because it's much easier to come across the border," Morell said. "To stop somebody who has been radicalized in Canada from coming across that border requires that you know about them, that the Canadians know about them and tell us, and that they try to cross that border illegally. There's many, many ways to cross that border illegally, so I worry about that."
In addition, Morrell also explained the difficulties of attempting to locate and bring down a "lone wolf" who has been radicalized by certain terrorist organizations, citing the recent trend of hundreds of westerners fleeing to join the Islamic State, a terror group in Syria and Iraq.
"In terms of the insider threat, really the only thing you can do is monitor extremist websites and see who goes there and see what kind of conversations they have there," Morell told "CBS This Morning." "If those conversations start talking about violence, then the FBI can open up an investigation and take a look at that person, but that's a lot of ifs to be able to find somebody who's been radicalized."
It would prove more efficient if the country raised the terror threat now itself, he added.
"I think there's value in raising an alert level because it tells people that you're focused on the threat," Morell said. "I think there's value in raising security around sites that might be attacked because I think that deters people. I think all of that is positive."
Last week, federal officials warned that ISIS-inspired terror attacks might be carried out against U.S. law enforcement, including police officers and government workers, as well as "media figures."
Increasing calls for violence on social media forums and a recorded audio message urging lone offenders in Western countries to attack "soldiers, patrons, and troops ... their police, security and intelligence members" was cited by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security in a joint intelligence bulletin sent to U.S. law enforcement officials and confirmed by Fox News.
