By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON- Terrorists from different extremist groups who unite against a common cause _ such as the United States - may be among the next big threats to America, the FBI’s newly promoted counterterror chief says.
FBI Assistant Director Joseph Billy Jr., named Thursday as the permanent chief of the agency’s counterterrorism division, said there’s no evidence yet of “crossover” extremists in the U.S.
But “there’s always the potential of the like-minded individuals rising up against their home country,” Billy said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“Groups cross lines, and we have to look at it less defined (instead of) to say we’re looking strictly at Hezbollah, looking at Hamas,” Billy said. “In a coffee shop, it doesn’t take much for the rhetoric to incite and recruit people. You may be aligned with one particular cause, but the fact is you have a common enemy. And the common enemy means that people can team up.”
Billy had been the FBI’s acting counterterror chief since June. He heads up one of the FBI’s largest divisions, overseeing 101 Joint Terror Task Force teams nationwide, with thousands of ongoing investigations at any given time.
August’s foiled plot by British nationals conspiring to blow up as many as 10 U.S.-bound airlines underscored the need for international counterterror coordination, Billy said. Such work, he said, could be likened to a sort of global terror task force _ even though the FBI’s investigations would remain in the United States.
“We’ve really moved beyond the borders of the United States, and really working as partners against this threat that faces many counties, not just the United States,” he said.
The soft-spoken FBI veteran of 20 years whose name plate on his desk is spelled out in Arabic, led the investigation of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing in Tanzania. That same year, he led a delegation of FBI agents to Northern Ireland to help local police on a terror investigation.
He also has worked in FBI field offices in New York and New Jersey.
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