WASHINGTON – An attack by Islamic State in the US would not be surprising, the CIA chief said. 

While the US is more difficult for terrorists to infiltrate than it was before 9/11, ISIS has shown ability to inspire people already in the US using the internet.

“I would be surprised if ISIL isn’t considering carrying out attacks,” such as the Istanbul airport bombing in the US, CIA Director John Brennan said Wednesday, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
While Tuesday’s airport bombing looks like an IS operation, Brennan said the group may be reluctant to claim responsibility, because it still wants support of individuals inside Turkey.
The US still has “a ways to go” in defeating IS, which “still has a lot of momentum,” Brennan argued.

“This country has done a great job since 9/11 making the American homeland much more difficult for terrorist organizations abroad to penetrate,” Brennan added, but ISIS is pushing its narrative online, and the takeaway from the attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando is that individuals who decide to act can do a lot of damage before law enforcement and intelligence agencies can flag them as terrorists.
Most terrorist attacks are directed out of the group’s strongholds in Iraq and Syria, and addressing the threat requires collective, combined effort against both “upstream” leadership and “downstream” dissemination of instructions, Brennan said.