Feinstein warns police, military personnel to guard against lone wolf attacks

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein warned on Sunday that police and military personnel should be “on guard” for lone-wolf attacks inspired by Islamic jihad.

{mosads}”The police and the military have to be on guard,” Feinstein said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We need to think in some new ways.”

Last week, a lone-wolf attacker killed a Canadian soldier, and a man who had recently converted to Islam attacked four police officers with a hatchet in New York.

Feinstein said Internet propaganda and specific individuals are “really firing up this lone-wolf phenomenon.”

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has aggressively waged an online propaganda campaign, raising concern for officials of homegrown attacks.

“The multiplicity of attacks in 2014 is showing propaganda is having some effect,” she said, noting that she did not think recruits saw the “vicious side” of the Islamic extremism.

Feinstein said “the only defense is intelligence.”

“You have to ferret it out, you have to be able to watch it, and you have to be able to disrupt them,” she said.

ISIS’s online propaganda has also swelled the ranks of the terrorist group, which CIA officials have said number as many as between 20,000 to 30,000.

Feinstein said ISIS now boasts a membership of 30,000 to 50,000.

“They are on a march … they are going to slay everything in their way,” she said.