his decisions and causing a lot of tension between the president and his top military advisers to where they believe as president biden told us earlier today he believes he is firing his senior advisers or placing them under house arrest because he is so displeased with what has been happening in ukraine because of course remember going into this the u.s. had assessed putin believed they could take kyiv in about 72 hours. obviously that has not happened. they have tried. it has been fruitless for them so far. so the white house believes there is a sense of frustration between the president and his military advisers, that he is not really getting the full picture. the president did today when talking to us add a caveat saying this isn t hard intelligence or hard evidence this is just information and intelligence that we ve gathered but it does paint a picture of what they believe is happening inside russia and something that has been confirmed by other governments intelligence agencies
do you know if they were specifically trying to target this guy called jihadi john we now know his name or the leader of isis abu bakr elleal baghdadi? i don t know the answer to that and at this point i m not able to even confirm the identity, the united states and britain aren t making any confirmation of these press reports. that s not something i m able to confirm. that s what i don t understand. i assume you have been briefed on all this but now that the name is public and we know the british and u.s. governments have known the name for months and months without giving us any classified information or anything congressman, why can t you give us more information about him, at least confirm what we all know his real name? well let me talk generally about why we often don t confirm people s identity. it s for one of a couple reasons. it may be because it would reveal some kind of source the intelligence used to identify that person that we don t want to expose. or it may be tha
i think this points up one of the real dangers here is that they don t have to have a direct link. they don t have to be taking orders. i think one of the greatest threats we face is what they call lone wolf. people who are in america who have been radicalized. they can t get over to join this army. they do something on their own, go to a mall or an airport or whatever. i do think though if there s any good news in all of this both in the london case in the jihadi john case and in the new york case law enforcement and intelligence and cooperation between our countries worked. we tracked these guys down. we knew who they were before they were able to do something damaging to our country. i think we have to acknowledge that the fbi and the other the intelligence agencies you know they had successes today. hopefully, they will maintain that. you can succeed a lot. but if you fail once clapper
that s his name. we all know now that s his name. do you understand what s going on here? well, kwie offquite often when you have a non-confirmation they don t want to reveal operational details or give away knowledge that they have obtained order how they obtained it. there s usually some reasonable basis for that. as you say, it s pretty widely known. i m not going to confirm it. but i think it s an operational intelligence reason for not owe fushlly ly fishl if you can t confirm it you don t have to confirm it. we know his name. senator, we have a lot more to discuss. stand by, if you can. more on our top story. the identification of jihadi john. what happened in brooklyn with the terror plot. much more coming up after this.
said that out of the relatively small number of americans who have returned from fighting in syria, officials have not identified any of them engaged in active plotting. wolf he did say and reiterate that the homegrown violent extremists post the most likely threat. let s go in-depth. joining us senator angus king of maine. a member of the intelligence and armed services committee. senator, thanks very much for coming in. yes, sir. james clapper, the director of national intelligence saying last year was the worst year in 45 years as far as terror attacks are concerned. secretary kerry says it s pretty good right now. there seems to be a very very huge disconnect there. i don t know where secretary kerry was getting his information. it s inconsistent with what i am hearing. jim clapper was clear. the records are there, 2014 was the worst year we have had.