Former FBI agent weighs in on warning of rising foreign terror threats

America’s threat of a terror attack is comparable to the weeks after 9/11, and lawmakers and top security officials are blowing the whistle now ahead of a busy holiday season.

Names like Al-Qaeda and ISIS are being floated as churches, synagogues, and members of the Jewish community could be in danger.

WINK spoke to Bob Foley, who was in the FBI during the 9/11 attacks. He said the FBI is very different today than in 2001.

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In fact, 9/11 prompted many changes. The mission before 9/11 was to react and solve crimes after they happened. Today, the FBI is all about detecting and preventing terroristic attacks, be they at an airport like RSW, sporting events, houses of worship, or anywhere else.

In his appearance before the Senate, Judiciary Committee FBI director Christopher Wray said the U.S. is facing an unprecedented level of terror threats.

He warned that Al-Qaeda and ISIS may try to use the Israeli and Hamas war to spark violence in America during the holiday season.

WINK asked Foley what Wray meant by blinking red lights that he sees everywhere he turns.

“Traffic, and by traffic I mean intelligence traffic from every imaginable source, both through interception of communications, to information coming from field operatives, intelligence gathering, from computer networks, and other types of data that can be analyzed in context with other data,” Foley said.

Foley said the pros are analyzing all of this incoming intelligence, and if something reaches a certain threshold, agents get involved and hopefully prevent some sort of attack.

The good news is that our nation’s level of intelligence and investigation is much better today than in the days before 9/11.