Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Sunday that U.S. intelligence had no advance information about the San Bernardino terror attack and acknowledged “it’s almost impossible to stop it all.”
“We didn’t see this coming,” the Texas Republican told “Fox News Sunday.” “You can’t stop it all. … It’s almost impossible to stop it all.”
The shooting attack Wednesday by the Muslim husband-wife team of Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people and wounded dozens of others.
Farook is an American citizen, and Malik came to the county from Pakistan on a fiancée visa. She publicly pledged her alliance to the Islamic State terror group before and after the massacre at a San Bernardino business complex.
McCaul suggested Sunday that Malik appeared to influence Farook.
“We think she had a lot to do with the ‘radicalization’ process,” he said. “She was looking to marry.”
McCaul also said that the United States intelligence community must do “a much better job of identifying early radicalization.”
However, he also argued that officials are dealing with a potentially overwhelming amount of information, including 200,000 daily Islamic State tweets and terror-related investigations in all 50 states.
McCaul said the GOP-led House is taking steps to protect Americans from foreign terror threats, including a vote Tuesday on tightening the country’s visa program.
He also was critical of what President Obama has done so far to stop the domestic terror threat and said that when Obama addresses the public Sunday night he must “tell the American people what that is.”