CIA Director John Brennan said on Monday that officials had "strategic warning" about the terrorist attacks in Paris that claimed the lives of more than 130 and injured hundreds more, also saying that Islamic State likely has more operations in the pipeline.
"It’s not a surprise this attack was carried out, from the standpoint of we did have strategic warning," Brennan said at a Center for Strategic & International Studies forum. "We knew that these plans or plotting by ISIL was underway looking at Europe in particular as a venue for carrying out these attacks."
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Brennan did not assert that the CIA or the West more broadly had specific indications about the shootings and suicide bombings in Paris, but he did warn that the Friday attacks were not likely a "one-off event."
"This is something that was deliberately and carefully planned over the course I think of several months," he said. "I would anticipate that this is not the only operation ISIL has in the pipeline….it’s not going to content itself with violence inside of the Syrian and Iraqi borders."
The blunt comments from Brennan come as the Islamic State in a new video on Monday threatened all countries taking part in airstrikes against the terrorist group, specifically saying Washington could be a target, just as Paris was last Friday.
"We say to the states that take part in the crusader campaign that, by God, you will have a day God willing, like France's and by God, as we struck France in the center of its abode in Paris, then we swear that we will strike America at its center in Washington," a man in the video said, according to Reuters, which could not verify the video's authenticity.
The video comes hours after U.S. warplanes bombed 116 oil trucks in eastern Syria, in a new effort to cut off the group's ability to transport crude oil that it has been producing in the country.
Brennan also talked about how the global intelligence community has been hamstrung to a degree after new privacy protections were put in place in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations on government surveillance.
"In the past several years, because of a number of unauthorized disclosures and a lot of handwringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists, there have been some policy and legal and other actions that are taken that make our ability collectively, internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging," he said. "I do hope that this is going to be a wake-up call particularly in areas of Europe where I think there has been a misrepresentation of what the intelligence security services are doing by some quarters that are designed to undercut those capabilities."
In another apparent allusion to the Snowden leaks, Brennan claimed that terrorist operatives have "gone to school" recently on techniques that render their communications more difficult to intercept. "There are a lot of technological capabilities that are available right now that make it exceptionally difficult both technically as well as legally for intelligence security services to have insight that they need to uncover it," he said.
Brennan's comments come after Michael Morell, former deputy CIA director under Obama, had some sharp words over the weekend for the administration's approach to confronting Islamic State. "I think it's now crystal clear to us that our strategy, our policy vis-à-vis ISIS is not working and it's time to look at something else," Morell told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.