Jihadists Under Investigation

The system was blinking red for months prior to the June 12 terrorist attack in Orlando. Since early 2015, the FBI has repeatedly warned the American public that the threat of violent attacks is growing and that there are too many potential terrorists to track. Then Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old Muslim from Port St. Lucie, Florida, proved these warnings were anything but bluster. Using only firearms, Mateen killed 49 people and wounded dozens more at a popular gay nightclub.

The FBI's handling of Mateen will undoubtedly come under heavy scrutiny in the weeks ahead. FBI agents had investigated Mateen twice prior to the massacre at Pulse nightclub. Both times the bureau found troubling information but decided he was not a first-order threat. That assessment proved to be wrong—fatally so. The public needs to know what, if anything, the FBI could have done to stop the Orlando shooter.

This is a crucial question, especially because Omar Mateen was not the first terrorist to slip through the cracks, and it is reasonable to fear he won't be the last.

On at least four occasions since 2009, a jihadist has successfully carried out an attack in the United States after being investigated by the FBI. The shooting at Fort Hood, Texas (November 2009), the Boston Marathon bombings (April 2013), and the San Bernardino assault (December 2015) were all executed by terrorists who had been on the FBI's radar. The Orlando massacre is the fourth such instance. In each case, there was at least some incriminating information on the suspect, but the FBI determined it was not enough to prosecute or take other action.

During FBI director James Comey's press conference on June 13, the public learned some of what the FBI knew about Mateen before his night of terror. Mateen was first investigated in May 2013 after he made threatening comments to his coworkers. He was working as a security guard at a local courthouse at the time.

“First, he claimed family connections to al Qaeda,” Comey explained. “He also said that he was a member of Hezbollah, which is a Shia terrorist organization that is a bitter enemy of the so-called Islamic State, ISIL.” Comey pointed to this apparent discrepancy to suggest that Mateen's claims were not serious. But Mateen's boasting showed at the very least his fascination with two terrorist organizations that have in common a deep hatred of the West.

Comey also added this startling detail: Mateen “said he hoped that law enforcement would raid his apartment and assault his wife and child so that he could martyr himself.” This should have been a major red flag—only someone on a dark path would fantasize about becoming a “martyr.”

The first inquiry lasted 10 months and was then shuttered. But Mateen showed up on the FBI's radar again just months later. This time, in July 2014, the FBI learned that Mateen knew a young man who had become a suicide bomber for the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's branch in Syria. The FBI concluded that Mateen knew the bomber, Moner Mohammed Abu Salha, “casually from attending the same mosque in that area of Florida.” According to Comey, the pair did not have “ties of any consequence.” Perhaps that is true, but U.S. officials tell The Weekly Standard that Mateen's ties to Abu Salha, who blew himself up in May 2014, are currently being reexamined.

During the second investigation, the FBI learned another disturbing detail about Mateen. One witness indicated he was worried about Mateen “radicalizing,” because the future killer was watching videos of Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda cleric who preached the virtues of martyrdom. Comey attempted to dismiss this red flag, saying the witness dropped his concern because Mateen “later got married and had a child and got a job as a security guard.” But this shouldn't have been enough to make authorities lose interest. Married men with children have carried out suicidal attacks in the name of jihad on countless occasions.

There are distinct parallels between the U.S. government's handling of Mateen and its inquiries into three other notorious jihadists.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood terrorist, gave a presentation on his jihadist views to his Army colleagues at Walter Reed Medical Center and emailed Awlaki—the same cleric whose videos attracted Mateen—to ask about the permissibility of an American Muslim killing his fellow soldiers. It does not appear that Awlaki personally and directly blessed Hasan's attack, but he did publicly advocate such slayings. The Defense Department ignored complaints from Hasan's colleagues about the presentation, promoting him after the fact. The FBI concluded, implausibly, that Hasan's emails to Awlaki were “consistent with research being conducted by Major Hasan in his position as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center.” Hasan's correspondence with Awlaki had nothing to do with his research; it had everything to do with his desire to kill American soldiers. Hasan killed 13 people and wounded dozens more at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev set off alarm bells more than two years prior to the Boston bombings. The Russian government suspected by that time, in early 2011, that Tsarnaev was already a jihadist in contact with one or more of his comrades in Dagestan. The FBI investigated but “did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government [Russia] in the summer of 2011.” The FBI says it requested more information from Russia but none was forthcoming. Nevertheless, Tsarnaev traveled to Russia in early 2012 and may have met with jihadist rebels from Dagestan and Chechnya. He returned to the United States in July 2012 and began posting jihadist videos on his personal web pages—that is, he hardly concealed his sympathies. Yet the investigative trail was lost—three people were killed and more than 250 others wounded by the bombs set by Tamerlan and his younger brother on April 15, 2013.

The FBI discovered that Syed Rizwan Farook, who opened fire at a holiday party in San Bernardino, had “communicated with extremists, domestically and abroad,” a few years before the attack, according to the New York Times. Farook “had contacts with five people whom the FBI had investigated for possible terrorist activities,” including someone associated with Al Shabaab (al Qaeda's branch in East Africa) and another linked to the Nusra Front. “In all five cases,” the Times reported, “the investigations were closed and no charges were filed.” Farook and his wife went on to kill 14 people in the Islamic State's name on December 2, 2015. At the time, it was the deadliest U.S. attack carried out in the name of the so-called caliphate—that is, until Mateen's spree in Orlando.

America's homeland defenses are cracking. It is no longer the case that terrorists need to be experts in clandestine tradecraft to carry out successful attacks. The system is being overwhelmed by the sheer number of potential threats, which allows known or suspected jihadists freedom to operate.

FBI director Comey himself has frequently warned that this was the case. “We have investigations of people in various stages of radicalizing in all 50 states,” Comey said in February 2015. “This isn't a New York phenomenon or a Washington phenomenon. This is all 50 states and in ways that are very hard to see.” In October, Comey added that the FBI was actively investigating 900 men and women who may be on the path to jihad. Most of these suspects were thought to be inspired by the Islamic State.

And yet it was an Islamic State sympathizer who was not being actively investigated at the time, Omar Mateen, who would go on to commit the worst mass shooting in American history. Mateen was on the phone with a 911 operator multiple times during his assault. During one such call, he pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State. President Obama explained days later that Mateen “took in extremist information and propaganda over the Internet.” The president then cited the Islamic State's repeated calls for sympathizers to carry out attacks in the West, adding that Mateen “absorbed some of that and during his killing spree .  .  . pledged allegiance to ISIL.”

“Our work is very challenging,” Comey noted during his June 13 press conference. “We are looking for needles in a nationwide haystack, but we are also called .  .  . to figure out which pieces of hay might some day become needles. That is hard work. If we can find a way to do that better, we will.”

Comey is right that the FBI and other agencies face daunting challenges. They cannot be expected to stop every terrorist who threatens Americans. The FBI cannot be expected to bat a thousand. But even hitters who bat .300 try to improve their swing—that is, they “find a way to do that better.”

Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has served as a trainer for the FBI's counterterrorism division. Follow him on Twitter @thomasjoscelyn