FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday told Congress that the federal government cannot conduct thorough checks on all of the coming influx of 10,000 refugees from Syria.

Appearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security, Comey said Syrians who aren't already in the FBI's database are unknown to the agency, meaning their backgrounds cannot be adequately scoured for a risk of terrorism.

'We can only query against that which we have collected,' Comey told the committee under questioning.

'So if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them.

FBI Director James Comey said his agency is helpless to search the backgrounds of Syrian refugees if they are not already in its database because of suspected past terrorist activity or other crimes

President Obama announced in early September that the US would allow 10,000 Syrian refugees into America, although it has only allowed the entry of 1,854 refugees from that country over the past four years

This picture from June shows a Syrian man trying to lift a child over a broken border fence into Turkey. The Syrian civil war has created a total of 4 million refugees fleeing the fighting

A flood of 4 million refugees have fled the fighting in Syria during the four-year-old civil war, with the situation reaching a crisis level in recent months.

President Obama announced in September that the U.S. will allow up to 10,000 refugees, a far greater total than the 1,854 that has been allowed to date during the four-year war.

Republicans have criticized the plan, since it could potentially allow an influx of ISIS-trained militants posing as refugees - a possibility Comey essentially endorsed on Wednesday.

But the concerns have also crossed party lines. On Wednesday, for example, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, a Democrat, said there is widespread worry over the agency's limits.

'A lot of us are concerned about whether you have enough information available to you to do an accurate vetting,' Thompson said.

'You can only query what you’ve collected,' Comey responded.

Comey went on to explain that an influx of Iraqi refugees after the Iraq war was easier for the agency to cope with because the U.S. had been in Iraq for several years at the time.

The situation in Syria, Comey said, was 'different.'

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow this week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has recently launched airstrikes in Syria.

Pictures that emerged on Wednesday of the two meeting, however, clearly indicated a cozy relationship between the two men.

Comey, director of the FBI since September 2013, was deputy attorney general during the George W. Bush administration - the second-in-command job at the Department of Justice

Initial pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly indicated a cozy relationship between the two men - even though Putin has recently launched airstrikes in Syria

Obama has long called for Assad to step down from power, and in 2013 pledged an air campaign against his forces in 2013.

That changed when Congress and the American people refused to support another military incursion in the Middle East.

Most recently, the White House announced it was abandoning a disastrous plan to train and equip soldiers in Syria and Iraq to fight the Islamic State.

Instead of an initial estimate of 5,000 troops, the Pentagon last month admitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee that only four or five actual fighters remain on the battlefield.



