Politico: "Why Didn’t the FBI Stop Omar Mateen?"

[lego 44,165]

(It's long, but worth reading. Two other articles are related, more on the links. Don't comment if you didn't read it all)

 

 

According to FBI Director James Comey, in the past few years Mateen confusingly expressed support for both the Islamic State and Hezbollah—even though the latter group is an avowed enemy of the Islamic State and is fighting against it in Syria on the side of Bashar Assad. The night he slaughtered 49 people in Orlando on Sunday, Mateen swore allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at the last minute and with apparent self-doubt. Mateen called 911 twice, hanging up at first before finally fulfilling ISIS’s injunction to self-starter terrorists to declare allegiance to the group publicly before they act.

Based on the accounts of his aquaintances and family, Mateen also appears to have been a deeply conflicted and possibly self-loathing homophobe who drank heavily, took drugs, dated men, frequented the same club he later attacked, Pulse, and used a gay dating app—not the sort of behavior one would expect of a faithful soldier of Islam.

Yes, Mateen was a terrorist—but what kind of terrorist? He had no known ISIS or Al Qaeda connection; he wasn’t getting operating orders from abroad; he hadn’t gone overseas to be trained; he followed no predictable course of radicalization. Mateen appears, in fact, to have been less a soldier than yet another deeply disturbed American (born in Trump’s own home borough of Queens), who was full of hatred and uncontrollable anger—an example of what law enforcement officials describe as an aspiring violent criminal searching for a larger justification for the acts he’s desperate to commit.

...

But perhaps the toughest thing to explain about the worst mass shooting in U.S. history is how a man who was interviewed three times by the FBI ended up buying, unnoticed, an entire arsenal and then gunning down, unsurveilled, more than 100 people. He’d been on the FBI’s radar because he had made comments sympathetic to terrorists and attended the same Florida mosque as a suicide bomber named Moner Abusalha, who had gone to Syria to blow up Syrian government soldiers in 2014. But Comey said this week that ultimately the FBI determined that there were "no ties of any consequence" between the two men. That’s one reason why the FBI stopped inquiring about him: no known “connections.” Comey indicated that the FBI’s concerns about Mateen were eased after a witness told the bureau that Mateen got married, had a child and found steady work.

The bureau’s approach was somewhat the same with Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was interviewed but dropped by the FBI, which left instructions to notify the bureau if he went abroad—as if that would be the only trigger they needed to worry about. (As it turned out, U.S. Customs might have failed to do even that.)

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/orlando-terrorism-fbi-omar-mateen-213971#ixzz4C8aQSuOq 
 

 

 

Sheriff Ken Mascara of Florida’s St. Lucie County told the Vero Beach Press Journal that after Mateen threatened a courthouse deputy in 2013 by claiming he could order Al Qaeda operatives to kill his family, the FBI dispatched an informant to "lure Omar into some kind of act and Omar did not bite."

While self-styled terror experts and former counter-terror officials have criticized the FBI for failing to stop Mateen before he committed a massacre, the new revelation raises the question of whether the FBI played a role in pushing Mateen towards an act of lethal violence. 

Since 9/11, the FBI has relied heavily on informants to entrap scores of young, often mentally troubled Muslim men and send them to prison for as long as 25 years. As Aviva Stahlreported for AlterNet’s Grayzone Project, the FBI recently encouraged an apparently mentally disturbed recent convert to Islam named James Medina to bomb a South Florida synagogue and pledge allegiance to ISIS, a militant group with which he had no prior affiliation. On trial for planning to commit an act of terror with a weapon of mass destruction, Medina has insisted through his lawyer that he is mentally ill.

Trevor Aaronson, a journalist and author of “Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror,” revealed that nearly half of terror cases between 9/11/01 and 2010 involved informants, including some with criminal backgrounds raking in as much as $100,000 from the FBI. The FBI's assets have often preyed on mentally ill men with little capacity to resist their provocations. “Is it possible that the FBI is creating the very enemy we fear?” Aaronson wondered.

The revelations of FBI manipulation have cast Mateen’s case in a uniquely troubling light. Though he refused to “bite” when an FBI asset attempted to push him into a manufactured plot, he wound up carrying out a real act of spectacular brutality years and, and allegedly swore loyalty to ISIS in the midst of it. 

“It looks like it's pretty much standard operating procedure for preliminary inquiries to interview the subject or pitch the person to become an informant and/or plant an undercover or informant close by to see if the person bites on the suggestion,” Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent and division counsel whose May 2002 memo to the FBI Director exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, told AlterNet. “In the case of Mateen, since he already worked for a security contractor [G4S], he was either too savvy to bite on the pitch or he may have even become indignant that he was targeted in that fashion. These pitches and use of people can backfire.”

To highlight the problematic nature of informants, Rowley pointed to the case of Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian physician whom the CIA used to gather intelligence on Al Qaeda,. The CIA ignored obvious warning signs like Balawi’s extremist online manifestos and never subjected him to a vetting process. While Balawi claimed to have penetrated Al Qaeda’s inner circle, he was actually exploiting his CIA security clearance to plan a major attack. On December 30, 2009, Balawi strode into Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, and detonated an explosive vest that killed seven CIA agents and wounded six more -- the deadliest attack on CIA personnel in 25 years.

Mateen, for his part, displayed many of the psychological characteristics that typify both FBI informants and those they attempt to ensnare in bogus terror plots. Raised in a troubled home by an abusive mother and an apparently eccentric father, Mateen exhibited signs of erratic, violent behavior throughout his life. His ex-wife told reporters that he physically abused her and was “unstable and mentally ill.” He transformed from a chubby adolescent to a burly young man with the help of steroids, yearning all along for a career in law enforcement.

Seven months into a job as a prison guard in 2007, Mateen was fired for threatening to bring a gun to class. He settled on a career as a low level security guard for G4S Security Solutions, a global security firm that employed him for nine years. Though Mateen’s applications to two police departments were rejected, he was able to pass a G4S background check and receive several guard assignments. (The world’s third largest private employer, G4S has accumulated a staggering record ofhuman rights abuses, including accusations ofchild torture.)

While the full extent of Mateen’s contact with the FBI is unknown, the fact that an informant encouraged Mateen to agree to carry out a terror attack should provoke serious questions and further investigation. Whether or not manipulation by a FBI informant had any impact on Mateen’s deadly decision, there is no denying that the attempt to entrap him did nothing to protect the public.

“The FBI should scrutinize the operating procedure where they use undercovers and informants and pitch people to become informants,” said Rowley. “They must recognize that, in this case [with Mateen], it had horrible consequences if it did, in fact, backfire.”

http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/omar-mateen-committed-mass-murder-fbi-tried-lure-him-terror-plot

 

"Speaking on Weekend Edition Saturday, Dina says that al-Qaida and ISIS-inspired attacks tend to follow a different pattern. She explains:

"We know that during the attack the gunman posted messages on Facebook saying he was doing this on behalf of ISIS. But officials have yet to find any of the precursors usually associated with radicalization. They've interviewed dozens of people who either knew him or had contact with Mateen.

"And they say that they've yet to find any indication that he became noticeably more religious, which is one of the indicators of radicalization. He still was going to the same mosque. The way he dressed didn't change. His relationship with his family didn't change in any way. And these are all typically warning signs that parents and friends and educators are told to look for if they're worried that someone they're close to is radicalizing."

She adds "this isn't science," but so far the signs of radicalization aren't there, which has led investigators to wonder whether the 29-year-old invoked the name of ISIS to garner more publicity for his deadly attack.

The assault resulted in a hostage situation, and Mateen was ultimately killed in a firefight with law enforcement officers.

Investigators have also been struck by "how closely Mateen's biography adheres to profiles that they associate with typical mass shooters," Dina adds:

"He was bullied as a kid in school. He had well-documented behavioral problems. He was aggressive toward other kids. As he got older, things didn't get much better. He took steroids, he jumped from job to job, he had a history of domestic violence. And all these things together fit into a mass shooter's profile."

Dina says Mateen reportedly beat both his first wife and his second one — and "violence and control and power are often precursors to mass attacks."

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/18/482621690/investigators-say-orlando-shooter-showed-few-warning-signs-of-radicalization

 

 

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

Wow. This is getting interesting. Can't help but think of the music video for Alejandro as I read this.

[Boris2 9,239]

19 minutes ago, Lord Temptation said:

Wow. This is getting interesting. Can't help but think of the music video for Alejandro as I read this.

We are terrible... We make every news be Gaga news.  

 

[Whispering 18,865]

Why didn't they stop him? Because thet couldn't throw him in jail or deny him rights (due to current laws) based on suspicions and for his words. 

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

10 minutes ago, Boris2 said:

We are terrible... We make every news be Gaga news.  

 

I was just telling you what was on my mind as I read the article.

[lego 44,165]

On 20 June 2016 at 7:54 PM, Lord Temptation said:

Wow. This is getting interesting. Can't help but think of the music video for Alejandro as I read this.

 

There's more if you are interested 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[lego 44,165]

 

 

 

 

wtf... 

[BlondeQueenOfGGD 25,454]

I so wish he never died, I want to see him get tortured 

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

1 hour ago, YourSweet666 said:

 

There's more if you are interested 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you. I don't want this type of mass murder to reflect in any way a change in society where stigmatised gay men resort to terror attacks instead of seeking counselling. We need to understand Omar, and as crazy as it sounds, we need to feel compassion for him, if we are to prevent attacks like this from happening again. We need to provide support services for angry, disaffected young lonely LGBT men.

[Eighteen 5,430]

1 hour ago, Lord Temptation said:

Thank you. I don't want this type of mass murder to reflect in any way a change in society where stigmatised gay men resort to terror attacks instead of seeking counselling. We need to understand Omar, and as crazy as it sounds, we need to feel compassion for him, if we are to prevent attacks like this from happening again. We need to provide support services for angry, disaffected young lonely LGBT men.

yeah there's no conversation going on (at least not to the extent of the gun issue) about mental/emotional issues which i think are huge factors in these mass shootings. 

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

9 hours ago, 18 said:

yeah there's no conversation going on (at least not to the extent of the gun issue) about mental/emotional issues which i think are huge factors in these mass shootings. 

The media just wants to create a villain so the public have someone to blame. I would rather understand why a situation like this can happen in the first place. I hope alternative media explores the dialogue of angry young isolated men. We need to protect them because they are so vulnerable.