Senator: FBI investigations into Omar Mateen need review
ORLANDO, Fla. _ The chairman of a Senate homeland security committee on Tuesday called for an independent review of the FBI's investigations into the Pulse nightclub shooter and an assessment of the terrorism watch list criteria.
Federal authorities had no way to know that 29-year-old Omar Mateen, the subject of two FBI investigations in two years, purchased firearms after being plucked from the database, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., wrote in the letter, made available to media Wednesday.
"If this information convinced the FBI to re-open its investigation of Mateen, law enforcement potentially could have uncovered information on social media or elsewhere of Mateen's radicalization," wrote Johnson, chairman of the homeland security and governmental affairs committee.
Johnson addressed his four-page letter to Michael Horowitz, inspector general for the U.S. Department of Justice. It's not unprecedented to conduct retrospective studies, Johnson wrote, citing the Boston bombings and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man who tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Eve 2009 with explosives sewn into his underwear.
Johnson questioned whether the federal government could have done more to potentially prevent Mateen's attack on Pulse, where 49 people died and at least 53 were injured during a Latin-themed dance night.
The FBI knew of Mateen prior to the shooting. It investigated him for 10 months in 2013 after his colleagues at the St. Lucie County Courthouse, where Mateen worked as an armed security guard, reported him for articulating ties to terrorist groups.
During this investigation, authorities placed Mateen on the terrorist watch list and interviewed him twice. They removed him from the federal database after failing to substantiate the claims.
Mateen again came under the FBI's scrutiny in 2014 after a fellow mosque-goer reported to the agency that Mateen took an interest in radical Islamic lectures. This happened after Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, who attended the same mosque, blew himself up in a terrorist attack in Syria. Mateen was not put back on the watch list during the second investigation, which also returned unsubstantiated claims.
_Orlando Sentinel
