The Director of the FBI informed lawmakers Wednesday that even fewer Americans from before have been trying to join the ranks of the Islamic State (ISIL) in the past three months.
James Comey said in testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee that only six individuals attempted to hook up with the group over the last 100 days.
“We are seeing fewer people attempt to travel to join ISIL in Syria,” Comey claimed.
“We were seeing nine per month in all the months before that,” he added, describing the number of US nationals in ISIL overtime as a “curve that was going up like a hockey stick [then] flattens a bit.”
His remarks run counter to persistent concerns expressed by policymakers surrounding Americans’ supposedly significant desire to join the self-described caliphate. It has been the subject of numerous media reports and congressional hearings, including Wednesday’s, which more broadly focused on threats around the world.
During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in July, Comey pegged the total number of Americans who have tried to join ISIL at roughly 200.
US officials have claimed that 20,000 foreign fighters have joined up with ISIL, and that 3,000 of them are from Western countries.
Despite no evidence that ISIL’s rise has led to a spike in US citizens joining the group, the House Homeland Security Committee last month released a report blasting the administration for failing to prevent American defections.
“Of the hundreds of Americans who have sought to travel to the conflict zone in Syria and Iraq, authorities have only interdicted a fraction of them,” the committee claimed.
“We are losing in this struggle to keep Americans from the battlefield,” Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said after the report’s release.
In his testimony on Wednesday, FBI Director Comey couldn’t account for the drop-off, saying that one possibility is that “all of our efforts to lock people up and punish them for going is making a difference.”
He did hedge his claims somewhat, however, saying that the FBI might not be “seeing it the way we were” before, and that Americans might be “still going” to join ISIL.
