Pres. Obama: "These lone actors or small cells of terrorists are very hard to detect and very hard to prevent." https://t.co/cgOibjIQj4
— ABC News (@ABC) June 14, 2016
President Obama on Tuesday called together top administration officials to “review and intensify our campaign to destroy” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“We currently do not have any information that a foreign terrorist group directed the attack in Orlando,” Obama during a press briefing Tuesday, two days after a gunman killed 49 people and left dozens injured at a gay nightclub.
{mosads}Obama said Omar Mateen “took in extremist information and propaganda over the internet.”
Obama spoke after a meeting with his National Security Council attended by more than two dozen top administration officials including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.
Obama said the meeting was planned before the attack in Florida.
The Orlando shooter “appears to have been an angry, disturbed, unstable young man who became radicalized,” Obama said, noting ISIS’s intense online efforts to recruit fighters.
Obama said Mateen had “absorbed” some of the group’s propaganda.
The president touted progress by the U.S.-led coalition to defeat ISIS, saying the militant group had lost half its populated territory in Iraq and is losing ground in Syria.
“Our coalition continues to be on offense, ISIL has been on defense,” Obama said, using a different name for the group.
Obama said that the U.S. had reduced ISIS’s revenue streams by “millions of dollars per month,” saying the group has been forced to cut salaries of fighters.
Updated at 12:33 p.m.