A former CIA director said Tuesday that the United States will not be able to stop terror attacks from happening if “we’re just playing defense.”
“It’s as if we’re in [a] big, really important hockey game and we deploy our entire team as goalies,” James Woolsey said on Fox News, just hours after an apparent terrorist attack killed 12 and injured 50 in Berlin. “We’re going to lose.”
“We can try to catch people after the fact, we can try to by vetting, screen people out. But if we keep going the way we’re going, we’re going to have continual terrorist attacks of major proportions,” said Woolsey, who is President-elect Trump’s senior adviser on national security.
“It’s very hard to find out which guy driving a truck is going to be a terrorist,” he added. “Trucks are all over the place. It’s not as if he has got some secret weapon that we can spot …”
Jim Woolsey, former CIA director: We’ll never be able to defeat terrorism if we keep playing defense, deploy “our entire team as goalies” pic.twitter.com/48MFlJEUSv
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) December 20, 2016
After the Berlin attack, Trump said Monday that the Islamic State must be completely eliminated. “Innocent civilians were murdered in the streets as they prepared to celebrate the Christmas holiday,” he said in a statement.
“ISIS and other Islamist terrorists continually slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad,” Trump added. “These terrorists and their regional and worldwide networks must be eradicated from the face of the earth, a mission we will carry out with all freedom-loving partners.”
The Islamic State, through the Amaq News Agency, claimed responsibility Tuesday for the Berlin terrorist attack.
