Oh dear. CIA has not found any link between Orlando killer and Isis, says agency chief [View all]

[tenderfoot]

So sorry to rain on the Islamophobe parade. Maybe it'll wash away all the egg they accused the left of having stuck all over their faces...

John Brennan told the Senate intelligence committee Thursday that CIA has no evidence of a connection between Omar Mateen and the Islamic State.

The Central Intelligence Agency chief has not been “able to uncover any link” between Orlando killer Omar Mateen and the Islamic State, despite Mateen’s stated allegiance to the jihadist group during Sunday’s LGBT nightclub massacre.


Reinforcing four days of internal government assessments across multiple agencies and a Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry, the CIA director, John Brennan, contrasted “lone wolf” killers in Orlando and San Bernardino last December with recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, which he told the Senate intelligence committee were “directed” by Isis leadership in Syria and Iraq.

Brennan described a spread-bet strategy by Isis as it loses territory in Iraq and Syria. The group’s “terrorist capacity or global reach” remain undiminished by US-led advances on Isis-held cities like Manbij and Fallujah, the latest developments in a war nearing its third year, and Brennan said the US should expect Isis to launch accelerating terrorist attacks worldwide, a reversion to its pre-2014 status quo.

“As the pressure mounts on Isil, we judge that it will intensify its global terror campaign to maintain its dominance of the global terrorism agenda,” Brennan said, using the administration’s preferred acronym for Isis.

But Brennan indicated that the shape of those attacks will vary. Isis is consolidating and “interconnecting” its foreign branches, he said, particularly its “most dangerous” branch in Libya, and also placing operatives in western countries, chiefly in Europe. It will also “inspire attacks by sympathizers with no ties to the group”, which Brennan said taxes security agencies’ ability to notice ahead of an attack.

More: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/16/cia-orlando-shooter-omar-mateen-isis-pulse-nightclub-attack?CMP=share_btn_fb