Blake Hall
According to CBS News national security correspondent David Martin, over the weekend the Pentagon notified service members whose name appeared on ISIS’s “hit list“. Authorities also contacted local law enforcement surrounding the bases where they live, in order to beef up protection and better ensure their safety.
Originally posted on YouTube, the list was taken down at the Defense Department’s request.
ISIS urged their members and sympathizers to kill the U.S. military personnel on the list, which included their names, photos and even addresses. Officials say the information was harvested from various sources, two of them being Facebook and newspaper interviews.
“This is very disconcerting, obviously, to the families,” Gen. Carter Ham said. “The specific families that were identified in this release, but more broadly across the armed services, that those who engage in social media, that that information now can be corrupted and used by a terrorist organization to threaten them.”
Many say threats are being ratcheted up due to the fact that ISIS is increasingly defenseless against U.S. air strikes in Iraq and Syria. At last count more than 8,500 fighters from the terror group have been killed with more than 5,300 targets attacked.