The report found that 71 people in the United States have been charged with Islamic State-related activity since March 2014. | Getty Report warns of 'unprecedented' support in U.S. for Islamic State

The Islamic State’s mobilization in the United States has been “unprecedented,” a report released Tuesday found.

According to the George Washington University study, “Isis in America: From Retweets to Raqqa,” authorities have spoken to roughly 250 Americans who have at least attempted to travel to Syria or Iraq to join the Islamic State and have a total of 900 active probes against Islamic State supporters in every state.


Since March 2014, the report found, 71 people have been charged with Islamic State-related activity — 56 arrests have come in 2015 alone, the largest number of terrorism-related arrests since 9/11.

“The profiles of individuals involved in ISIS-related activities in the U.S. differ widely in race, age, social class, education, and family background,” the report reads. “Their motivations are equally diverse and deny easy analysis.”

Among those charged, an overwhelming majority are men, the report found, and the average age at the time of charges is 26, though arrests range from an unnamed 15-year-old boy to Tairod Pugh, a former Air Force mechanic who was 47 when he was charged.

The report highlights that the vast majority of Islamic State sympathizers are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, though 73 percent of those charged weren’t involved in plotting terror attacks on the homeland. And while the Islamic State’s radicalization isn’t limited to social media, the study found that sympathizers were “particularly active on Twitter, where they spasmodically create accounts that often get suspended in a never-ending cat-and-mouse game.”

The release of the six-month study, conducted by GWU’s Program on Extremism, comes on the heels of the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks that struck Paris and amid increased scrutiny over the Obama administration’s plans to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees next year.

President Barack Obama last month — just one day before the Paris attacks — suggested the Islamic State was “contained,” telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that U.S.-led airstrikes had “contained the momentum that ISIL had gained.” A senior administration official, however, told POLITICO at the time that Obama was referring to the military situation on the ground rather than the Islamic State’s ability to stage attacks in the West.

In a TV interview on Tuesday, Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said that the White House had ignored his warnings about the Islamic State. Headed by Flynn, the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012 alerted the administration of the potential rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Soon after, though, Obama referred to the terrorist organization as the “JV team.”

“You know, I think that they did not meet a particular narrative that the White House needed,” the former DIA chief told CNN’s Jake Tapper, adding that he thought the people close to Obama had advised him incorrectly.

“I think the narrative was that al Qaeda was on the run and [Osama] bin Laden was dead, and they were dead and these guys, we’ve beaten them,” Flynn said. “And we knew that. I mean, we’ve killed more leaders in al Qaeda, ISIS, AQI, Boko Haram — more leaders than we can say, and they continue to just multiply.”

The Defense Department’s investigator general is examining claims that intel reports on the Islamic State were revised or covered up to exaggerate U.S. military successes in the Middle East.

This article tagged under: Terrorism

Syria

ISIL

ISIS