December 21, 2023 • 9 mins
With the mass, unvetted entry at our border, should terrorism be a concern?
Josh Campbell, CNN Security Correspondent, former FBI counterterrorism agent, Navy veteran, and friend of Armstrong and Getty for over fifteen years talks to Jack Armstrong!
Listen to The Armstrong & Getty Extra Large Podcast below!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This next guest comes recommended by our friend Mike Lyons,
who we've been talking to for years about anything that
happens military wise. He said, you got to get Josh
Campbell on Josh Campbell's CNN Security correspondent, former FBI counter
terrorism agent, Navy veteran. It says, here, friend of the
Armstrong in Getty Show. For over fifteen years, you've been
a listener, Josh, Welcome to the show. How you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I have Jack, It's a pleasure to be on listening
a long time. And if you indulgent me just a
quick story. I actually learned about the A and G show.
I was on a FBI team that was working overseas
counterterrorism cases. And it was actually a Navy seal who said, hey,
you guys have to listen to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
And I'm in La, so I'm already a Californian.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
But one story in particular, we were out on counter
terrorism mission and you know, you have your logistics. An
important part of that is how do you feed your crew?
And this defense contractor who's responsible for our food screwed
up and they basically had an entire case of hot
dogs as our food. And this just happened to coincide
as we're sitting around the campfire listening to the travails
(01:03):
of positive Sean and his hot dog episode. So there
were we were, you know, listening eating our twentieth hot
dog of the week, thinking, man, we feel your pain.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Brother.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
All right, that's what I paid our producer, Sean one
thousand bucks if he could eat seventy hot dogs in
a week, which you did, and I paid him a
thousand dollars. So you're in LA. You're listening to us
then on KABC in Los Angeles, which we are proud
to be on. I was in LA the other night.
I was at LAX, and Lax had that feeling that
(01:33):
the airports have sometimes when security is ramped up a bit,
am I imagining that or not with the FBI say,
and all lights are blinking for terrorism attack and all
that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
No, you are, you know, since the attack by Hamas
on Israel, I mean we've seen that then reverberate across
the country. I was using across the world where you
have intelligence services, security services around the world now on
a high alert to include here in the United States.
You know, the FBI director recently said that you know,
anti Semitism. What the FBI is seeing is unlike anything
(02:04):
uh that it seems certainly in the modern era.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And so you know, they are prepared for any type
of attack. I mean, we know that there are different
types of terrorism. You have you know, cells and groups,
but a particular concern to the FBI is the so
called lone wolf and that's someone out there who you know,
is online, who's on the receiving end of all of this,
you know, vitriol and garbage and you know, all the
anti anti Semitism that we're seeing, who might opt to
(02:28):
actually act with violence. And so that's something certainly that
they're watching.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, the lone wolf thing, which I know is is
a hard thing to stop for obvious reasons. And then
you get a porous border also. Uh so you know
a cell coming together doesn't seem like a big stretch.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
No, you're right, I mean, that's I have to tell you.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I mean, that is one particular concern is you know,
obviously when you talk about people coming into the United
States who the government isn't able to keep tabs on,
I mean, that is a lucrative mode of entry, so
to speak. You know, if you're a terrorist group, wondering
how you actually secrete people in the United States. That's
obviously one vector. I mean, go to the place where
you know, people aren't being screened, or if there is screening,
(03:10):
it's you know, it's very cursory.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
And so you know that that's something interesting.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Obviously when we talk about immigration, I mean I don't
cover politics for CNN, but I cover security, and that
is certainly a concern.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Obviously, they're the the immigration laws that have been debated,
you know, for for years and years. But on the
security side of the House, law enforcement, the FBI, state police,
you know, along the border, they're certainly concerned that among
you know, people coming to the United States, it could
be people trying to cause ill intent and that's a
great vector to try to get someone in the United States.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
So you talked about chatter and the and the FBI
Director Ray saying he hasn't seen all the lights flashing
like this since nine eleven. What other than posts on
Twitter and Facebook are you guys talking about when you
say you know, all the lights are blinking.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Well, I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I mean, we've seen, you know, threats to Jewish institutions
here in the United States, both physical threats that have
manifested in vandalism and destruction, but also the online threats.
And just to give you an example, you know, I've
been reporting throughout this week. Over this past weekend, from
Saturday to Monday, there were over four hundred Jewish institutions
in the US that received bomb threats. And you can imagine,
(04:21):
you know, I've been speaking with Jewish leaders who say,
you know, they're going about their services, all of a sudden,
they receive a message saying that there is a incendiary
device in your institution that's going to go off. You
can imagine just the widespread chaos and fear and panic
that that would cause. And you know, you scale that
to over four hundred institutions, that's certainly something that law
(04:41):
enforcement is taking seriously. We're told that there are over
thirty FBI field offices in the US that are currently
investigating those threats. And you know, interestingly, as the FBI
conducted its investigation, they learned that this particular wave of threats,
the four hundred, were actually coming from overseas. And you know,
I talked with the Anti Defamation League. They actually have
(05:03):
their own threat watchers who are going onto the dark
web trying to find you know, these groups that are
that are talking about, you know, conducting these types of
threats in order to try to get that information to
law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
And they said that one of the.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Typical profiles that they're seeinger these groups are actually young gamers,
you know, people who are in these online gaming communities
who are you know, spewing hate and then you know,
get together and try to get attention and then go,
you know, do these types of digital threats in order
to try to see you know, the fear you know
that they that they'll cause, and you know, even more sinister.
I mean, a lot of these online services are streamed
(05:36):
online and so you know, these perpetrators can actually watch
in real time the chaos and fear, and so it's
certainly something that's very serious. It's it's a challenge for
law enforcement when you're talking about digital threats.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Obviously, the relative anonymity of the Internet makes that challenging.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
That said, the FBI and local law enforcement has had
successes in recent months, including right here in southern California
and Orange County. Just last week, the FBI arrested a
juvenile who was making threats to Jewish institutions, to African
American churches, and they said that this juvenile was part
of an online ring of people who are calling in threats,
(06:12):
and so they have seen successes, but these cases certainly
very difficult.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I've got a friend who's in your line of work
to be vague and always talks about trying to figure
out if somebody is a keyboard warrior or an actual threat.
That's got to be the real difficult thing. I mean,
cause it's really easy to shoot your mouth off as
a gamer where your head set to your friends and
sound like a tough guy, and try to figure out
whether that person is, you know, just shooting their mouth
(06:38):
off or danger. How the heck do you ever figure
that out?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
You know, it's difficult. I mean, in the security world,
you're looking for two things. You're looking for capability and intent.
You know, someone who has the actual capability to cause harm,
if they don't have the intent to do so, they're
obviously know less of a threat. Someone who has the
intent to kill people but isn't capable of doing so,
you know, that's obviously something that that could be mitigated.
But when you couple those together, someone who is dangerous
(07:03):
and has the ability to go out and cause destruction
or to hurt people. You know, that's something that's certainly
law enforcement is constantly trying to look for and chafing
when you talk about you know, words and you know speaking.
I remember when I was in the FBI. I mean,
that was a constant challenge. Where do you reach that
threshold from someone who's just spouting off, you know, to
actually someone who's inciting inciting violence. And you know, I'm
(07:26):
not a lawyer like Joe almost with the law school,
but that was a constant challenge. You know what what
is it that gets you over that threshold? And it's certainly,
you know, very difficult.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, you know, it's funny. I got a lot of
questions for you, but I don't want to ask them
because I don't want you to answer them. I don't
make people any any ideas or or know that you're
onto them. One thing I think often when I'm at
airports and I see the security is I feel like
we're so focused on like airports are the only thing
you can attack it. The only way you can possibly
ever kill people is with a plane or at an airport.
(07:55):
When obviously, there are lots of options out there is
security amped up in a lot of other arenas that
we just don't see outside of flying.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, you know, there's the scene and the unseen. I
mean that security posture that you see at an airport,
for example. A lot of that is to serve as
a deterrent. You know, when you roll up to lax
and you see you know the airport police officers there
who are doing their random checks. You know, they'll stop
every tenth or twelfth car or whatever it is. You know,
a lot of that is just to serve as a deterrent. Hey,
if you're intent on causing harm here, you may be
(08:26):
the person that gets caught up, you know, in this net.
But there are a lot of you know, systems out there,
a lot of intelligence collection platforms that are used that
tried to detect threats, and a lot of it, you know,
can be after the fact. I mean, I'll give you an
example of you know, here, there was a serial killer,
for example, here in Los Angeles in the last couple
(08:47):
of weeks, and this person was stopped by the Beverly
Hills Police Department because the department had installed license plate
scanners and so they had this technology that was in
place that wasn't a tent on signing any pot for
their person, but it helped after the fact because you know,
at one of the scenes of one of these killings,
they cops got a license plate, they entered it into
(09:08):
the system. The moment that guy popped driving through Beverly Hills,
they were able to go and capture him. But you know,
that's after the fact, right after the person's already done
certain crimes, and.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
So we're up against a hard break. Josh and I
want to have time to say thank you very much
for coming on, and we would love to have you
on a lot more during this next year. Glad to
get to know you, and thanks for listening all these years.
Josh Campbell's CNN security correspondent. You're going to hear a
lot more from him in future episode.
This next guest comes recommended by our friend Mike Lyons,
who we've been talking to for years about anything that
happens military wise. He said, you got to get Josh
Campbell on Josh Campbell's CNN Security correspondent, former FBI counter
terrorism agent, Navy veteran. It says, here, friend of the
Armstrong in Getty Show. For over fifteen years, you've been
a listener, Josh, Welcome to the show. How you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I have Jack, It's a pleasure to be on listening
a long time. And if you indulgent me just a
quick story. I actually learned about the A and G show.
I was on a FBI team that was working overseas
counterterrorism cases. And it was actually a Navy seal who said, hey,
you guys have to listen to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
And I'm in La, so I'm already a Californian.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
But one story in particular, we were out on counter
terrorism mission and you know, you have your logistics. An
important part of that is how do you feed your crew?
And this defense contractor who's responsible for our food screwed
up and they basically had an entire case of hot
dogs as our food. And this just happened to coincide
as we're sitting around the campfire listening to the travails
(01:03):
of positive Sean and his hot dog episode. So there
were we were, you know, listening eating our twentieth hot
dog of the week, thinking, man, we feel your pain.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Brother.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
All right, that's what I paid our producer, Sean one
thousand bucks if he could eat seventy hot dogs in
a week, which you did, and I paid him a
thousand dollars. So you're in LA. You're listening to us
then on KABC in Los Angeles, which we are proud
to be on. I was in LA the other night.
I was at LAX, and Lax had that feeling that
(01:33):
the airports have sometimes when security is ramped up a bit,
am I imagining that or not with the FBI say,
and all lights are blinking for terrorism attack and all
that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
No, you are, you know, since the attack by Hamas
on Israel, I mean we've seen that then reverberate across
the country. I was using across the world where you
have intelligence services, security services around the world now on
a high alert to include here in the United States.
You know, the FBI director recently said that you know,
anti Semitism. What the FBI is seeing is unlike anything
(02:04):
uh that it seems certainly in the modern era.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And so you know, they are prepared for any type
of attack. I mean, we know that there are different
types of terrorism. You have you know, cells and groups,
but a particular concern to the FBI is the so
called lone wolf and that's someone out there who you know,
is online, who's on the receiving end of all of this,
you know, vitriol and garbage and you know, all the
anti anti Semitism that we're seeing, who might opt to
(02:28):
actually act with violence. And so that's something certainly that
they're watching.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, the lone wolf thing, which I know is is
a hard thing to stop for obvious reasons. And then
you get a porous border also. Uh so you know
a cell coming together doesn't seem like a big stretch.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
No, you're right, I mean, that's I have to tell you.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I mean, that is one particular concern is you know,
obviously when you talk about people coming into the United
States who the government isn't able to keep tabs on,
I mean, that is a lucrative mode of entry, so
to speak. You know, if you're a terrorist group, wondering
how you actually secrete people in the United States. That's
obviously one vector. I mean, go to the place where
you know, people aren't being screened, or if there is screening,
(03:10):
it's you know, it's very cursory.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
And so you know that that's something interesting.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Obviously when we talk about immigration, I mean I don't
cover politics for CNN, but I cover security, and that
is certainly a concern.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Obviously, they're the the immigration laws that have been debated,
you know, for for years and years. But on the
security side of the House, law enforcement, the FBI, state police,
you know, along the border, they're certainly concerned that among
you know, people coming to the United States, it could
be people trying to cause ill intent and that's a
great vector to try to get someone in the United States.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
So you talked about chatter and the and the FBI
Director Ray saying he hasn't seen all the lights flashing
like this since nine eleven. What other than posts on
Twitter and Facebook are you guys talking about when you
say you know, all the lights are blinking.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Well, I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I mean, we've seen, you know, threats to Jewish institutions
here in the United States, both physical threats that have
manifested in vandalism and destruction, but also the online threats.
And just to give you an example, you know, I've
been reporting throughout this week. Over this past weekend, from
Saturday to Monday, there were over four hundred Jewish institutions
in the US that received bomb threats. And you can imagine,
(04:21):
you know, I've been speaking with Jewish leaders who say,
you know, they're going about their services, all of a sudden,
they receive a message saying that there is a incendiary
device in your institution that's going to go off. You
can imagine just the widespread chaos and fear and panic
that that would cause. And you know, you scale that
to over four hundred institutions, that's certainly something that law
(04:41):
enforcement is taking seriously. We're told that there are over
thirty FBI field offices in the US that are currently
investigating those threats. And you know, interestingly, as the FBI
conducted its investigation, they learned that this particular wave of threats,
the four hundred, were actually coming from overseas. And you know,
I talked with the Anti Defamation League. They actually have
(05:03):
their own threat watchers who are going onto the dark
web trying to find you know, these groups that are
that are talking about, you know, conducting these types of
threats in order to try to get that information to
law enforcement.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
And they said that one of the.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Typical profiles that they're seeinger these groups are actually young gamers,
you know, people who are in these online gaming communities
who are you know, spewing hate and then you know,
get together and try to get attention and then go,
you know, do these types of digital threats in order
to try to see you know, the fear you know
that they that they'll cause, and you know, even more sinister.
I mean, a lot of these online services are streamed
(05:36):
online and so you know, these perpetrators can actually watch
in real time the chaos and fear, and so it's
certainly something that's very serious. It's it's a challenge for
law enforcement when you're talking about digital threats.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Obviously, the relative anonymity of the Internet makes that challenging.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
That said, the FBI and local law enforcement has had
successes in recent months, including right here in southern California
and Orange County. Just last week, the FBI arrested a
juvenile who was making threats to Jewish institutions, to African
American churches, and they said that this juvenile was part
of an online ring of people who are calling in threats,
(06:12):
and so they have seen successes, but these cases certainly
very difficult.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I've got a friend who's in your line of work
to be vague and always talks about trying to figure
out if somebody is a keyboard warrior or an actual threat.
That's got to be the real difficult thing. I mean,
cause it's really easy to shoot your mouth off as
a gamer where your head set to your friends and
sound like a tough guy, and try to figure out
whether that person is, you know, just shooting their mouth
(06:38):
off or danger. How the heck do you ever figure
that out?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
You know, it's difficult. I mean, in the security world,
you're looking for two things. You're looking for capability and intent.
You know, someone who has the actual capability to cause harm,
if they don't have the intent to do so, they're
obviously know less of a threat. Someone who has the
intent to kill people but isn't capable of doing so,
you know, that's obviously something that that could be mitigated.
But when you couple those together, someone who is dangerous
(07:03):
and has the ability to go out and cause destruction
or to hurt people. You know, that's something that's certainly
law enforcement is constantly trying to look for and chafing
when you talk about you know, words and you know speaking.
I remember when I was in the FBI. I mean,
that was a constant challenge. Where do you reach that
threshold from someone who's just spouting off, you know, to
actually someone who's inciting inciting violence. And you know, I'm
(07:26):
not a lawyer like Joe almost with the law school,
but that was a constant challenge. You know what what
is it that gets you over that threshold? And it's certainly,
you know, very difficult.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, you know, it's funny. I got a lot of
questions for you, but I don't want to ask them
because I don't want you to answer them. I don't
make people any any ideas or or know that you're
onto them. One thing I think often when I'm at
airports and I see the security is I feel like
we're so focused on like airports are the only thing
you can attack it. The only way you can possibly
ever kill people is with a plane or at an airport.
(07:55):
When obviously, there are lots of options out there is
security amped up in a lot of other arenas that
we just don't see outside of flying.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Yeah, you know, there's the scene and the unseen. I
mean that security posture that you see at an airport,
for example. A lot of that is to serve as
a deterrent. You know, when you roll up to lax
and you see you know the airport police officers there
who are doing their random checks. You know, they'll stop
every tenth or twelfth car or whatever it is. You know,
a lot of that is just to serve as a deterrent. Hey,
if you're intent on causing harm here, you may be
(08:26):
the person that gets caught up, you know, in this net.
But there are a lot of you know, systems out there,
a lot of intelligence collection platforms that are used that
tried to detect threats, and a lot of it, you know,
can be after the fact. I mean, I'll give you an
example of you know, here, there was a serial killer,
for example, here in Los Angeles in the last couple
(08:47):
of weeks, and this person was stopped by the Beverly
Hills Police Department because the department had installed license plate
scanners and so they had this technology that was in
place that wasn't a tent on signing any pot for
their person, but it helped after the fact because you know,
at one of the scenes of one of these killings,
they cops got a license plate, they entered it into
(09:08):
the system. The moment that guy popped driving through Beverly Hills,
they were able to go and capture him. But you know,
that's after the fact, right after the person's already done
certain crimes, and.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
So we're up against a hard break. Josh and I
want to have time to say thank you very much
for coming on, and we would love to have you
on a lot more during this next year. Glad to
get to know you, and thanks for listening all these years.
Josh Campbell's CNN security correspondent. You're going to hear a
lot more from him in future episode.
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!