The Hill News

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the U.S. has become safer from terrorist attacks, but she and Bush-era homeland security chief Michael Chertoff warned that serious threats remain and that the nature of the enemy is evolving.

“I believe we are safer. I believe, however, that there is no 100 percent guarantee,” Napolitano said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” acknowledging that the country will never be immune from threats.

She also noted, “we are always dealing with ever-evolving types of threats” and that “it is a very dynamic threat environment.”

Napolitano cited risks from Americans who are radicalized and travel overseas, and then return to the country. She acknowledged that “Our ability to collect intelligence is much more limited when U.S. persons are involved.”

Chertoff also noted evolving risks since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. “The threat is changing. The enemy adapts ! and readapts and that is an . . . ongoing process,” he said.

“What people are seeing now is, it is no longer just South Asia, which we were focused on over the last several years, it’s Yemen, it’s Somalia, it is now North Africa,” he said. “It is becoming more diffuse and that is, I think, an issue we are going to have to deal with over the next few years.”

A key concern for U.S. officials has been the American-born, Yemen-based preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who officials call a leader of al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula. He is alleged to have helped prepare Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for his failed attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day last year.