things, but they are happy to accept freelances. the message from al baghdadi has been clear. you don t have to come to syria or iraq to participate in any of the training. you may not be even in direct contact with us. as long as you re willing to give us the credit for it, we re happy to take the credit for it. that s what they are doing in acknowledging the supporters of the islamic state. that s them owning what happened. they are inspiring others to do the same. the signal to everyone is if you do something like that, we will give you essentially membership to isis. which for some of these people, that s what they want. the thing i keep coming back to is because they apparently perhaps never were in direct contact, they were never on anyone s radar. there were never communications that could have been intercepted. this is day three of the investigation. you feel the situation like this there s always one shoe left to be dropped. there s some information around
they think it was a good thing and they encourage more of it. they want to see more attacks on the west like this. if you have paris and you have these terrorists directly connected to isis in syria and then you have san bernardino, here they are this wife pledging allegiance to self-radicalization, wouldn t that be even more troubling to counterterrorism officials that they actually can t know how many of these people who are actually in communication so they can t intercede communication and locate these people and ping on a radar. that s what s most troubling to me me. very concerning that these two were not on the radar, that they may have been on the edge of the radar screen that this when attack happened they went back and established that they were in touch with people who were already on their radar screen. all of that very concern eing i
anti-isis coalition. they have great resources. more than 6,000 european extremists gone off to fight with these groups in syria and iraq. a big number coming back over 1500. these are unprecedented times. unpress debited times and the next wave is fear. whether it s france, the united states, potentially the uk, it s fear and then it s precisely what they want. i want to keep you two around. stay with me. live pictures there in san bernardino. any minute now we ll see the san bernardino sheriff give details o on what appears to be increasingly likely this self-radicalized couple carrying out just absolute horror and bloodshed in a place you would never imagine. . i m brooke baldwin. you re watching cnn. we ll be right back.
investigators are also telling cnn, quote, this is looking more and more like self-radicalization. the author of lone wolf terrorism joins me now. jeffrey, you were just listening to the fbi giving that briefing a moment ago. so it seems like from how they are answering certain questions perhaps not directed by isis but isis inspired. it would be the first deadly isis-inspired attack on u.s. soil. right, we have had a lot of case cans where individuals have indicated a sthympathy with isi or posted various things on facebook and things along those lines. what separates this is the carnage that was involved. but we have also had individuals who have tried to make the trip over to syria to join isis. if this was isis directed, they would have jumped on it and been boasting about it because it would have been the first time they were able to launch an attack in the u.s.
office. why did he choose this holiday party on wednesday to carry out this attack. and so what we know right now is that there s no indication that the fbi has found that this was directed by isis. this is not like paris where you have a cell that was working on a plan that came from syria. this appears to be more of the thing that frankly the fbi has been warning about and is extremely difficult to stop, which is people who were inspired by isis to carry out these attacks on their own, no sign of them on the fbi radar before they carry out this attack. that s what we have here. i want to pick up my next conversation and that excellent point, thank you. paul cruickshank, let me bring you in, our terrorism analyst. also graham wood is joining us, editor at the atlantic. so paul, correct me, but this would be the first deadly isis inspired attack. it would be the first