San Antonio Express-News October 14, 2014

S.A. commander says Mexicans 'never mentioned anything to me about ISIL'

By Sig Christenson

SAN ANTONIO — The commander of San Antonio-based U.S. Army North said Tuesday his military counterparts in Mexico have never said anything to him about ISIL terrorists operating on the border.

While cautioning that he had not been briefed on possible Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant activity along Mexico's side of the Rio Grande, Lt. Gen. Perry Wiggins said the subject hasn't come up in talks with top commanders of Mexico's army.

"I can tell you definitively. I've met with them quite a few times. They have never mentioned anything to me about ISIL," he said. "I will tell you they have talked with me on numerous occasions about long-term relationships with the United States and building together, working together, to build a cooperative defense of North America."

Wiggins spoke with reporters during a conference call in Washington, D.C., where he attended the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting.

Border security issues quickly arose, as did the specter of Ebola and ISIL terrorists threatening the United States.

He said officials were "constantly planning and watching" the evolving Ebola crisis, and that Army North was looking at "capabilities that might be called upon to support" its parent organization, U.S Northern Command, which oversees the military's response to homeland defense.

The conservative group Judicial Watch claimed this summer that "Islamic terrorist groups," ISIL specifically, were operating in Juárez, Mexico, and were planning to attack the United States. The group later said Fort Bliss was "in danger of terrorist attack."

Fort Bliss spokeswoman Jean Offutt dismissed those assertions, however. She said an email last weekend affirmed "that we had no concrete information from any of our law-enforcement officials in the community that would lead us to believe there was any immediate threat to Fort Bliss from Mexico" concerning ISIL.

Recent changes in access to the post at some of its gates, she added, were instituted solely to bring Fort Bliss into compliance with Army security standards.

But John Pike, director and founder of GlobalSecurity.org, a military information website, noted that the first clue anyone had of an attack on 9/11 was when the terrorists took over passenger jets.

"I don't know what problem people think they're solving by talking about no imminent attack, but they are implying that we are going to have high-confidence information about an attack before it takes place, and we won't," he said.

Wiggins expressed concern over ISIL's potential to use social media to radicalize someone in the United States to launch a terrorist attack.

Attacks like the one by former Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan that left 13 people dead and 30 wounded also were high on Wiggins' mind. Since Hasan's Nov. 5, 2009, shooting spree, a second Islamic radical, Naser Jason Abdo, was given life in federal prison for plotting to blow up a Killeen diner and kill its patrons in 2011 as they fled.

Wiggins, whose command at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston helps coordinate homeland defense efforts, called the possibility of an "insider" attack on a U.S.-based military installation "disconcerting."

"To me, you're absolutely concerned, a concern for senior mission commanders. As you well know, wire and barbwire don't mean a whole lot if somebody's already on the installation," he said.

"A lot of people look at ISIL as being 7,000 to 9,000 miles away, so you a false sense that 'OK, we have time.' It's the guy who's influenced by these individuals to go out and do something similar to what you're talking about, those concern me," Wiggins said. "And the inside attack sort of thing, we've had those in the past. Do I think that we are through with those? No."