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FBI Defends Prior Reviews Of Terror Suspects
Topic Started: Sep 27 2016, 10:25 PM (7 Views)
Webster
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MSN News: FBI Defends Prior Reviews Of Terror Suspects

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WASHINGTON – FBI Director James Comey defended the bureau's pre-attack reviews of operatives in recent U.S. terror strikes – including the gunman in the Orlando massacre and the suspect in the bombing campaign in New York and New Jersey – telling a Senate panel Tuesday that the agency has the resources to keep pace with the threat.

Questioned at one point about whether the bureau could have thwarted the Orlando attack and the recent New York bombing by pushing harder when agents were alerted to prior suspicious behavior by suspects in both cases, Comey repeatedly told Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that the lawmaker's descriptions of the FBI's actions were "wrong.''

"We are not perfect people,'' Comey told the Senate Homeland Security Committee. "We have the policies and tools to do this well.''

But the FBI director acknowledged that the agency was nearing the completion of an after-action report in the Orlando case and would "scrub'' its contacts two years ago with the family of New York bomb suspect Ahmad Rahami before he allegedly detonated a powerful bomb earlier this month in Manhattan. Rahami, captured in a gunbattle last week with New Jersey police officers, also has been linked to devices planted at three other locations, according to federal court documents.

In the Orlando case, Comey has said shooter Omar Mateen was the subject of a 10-month inquiry beginning more than three years before the June attack, which left 49 dead, after making inflammatory remarks to colleagues at a Florida courthouse where he worked as an armed security guard. Mateen was killed by police during the attack.

At that time, the director said, Mateen was subjected to a multifaceted inquiry, which included the use of confidential informants; attaching his name to the federal government's terror watch list; placing him under surveillance; and reviewing his financial holdings and foreign travel.

The inquiry was closed in 2014 after two interviews with Mateen. He was interviewed a third time after his name surfaced related to an investigation into an American suicide bomber in Syria. That inquiry also was closed when agents found no ties to the bomber.

Agents began an assessment of Rahami following a 2014 domestic violence incident at the family's Elizabeth, N.J., home where Rahami attacked his brother with a knife, prompting his father to refer to Rahami as a "terrorist.''

The FBI said the father, Mohammad Rahami, was interviewed twice and the inquiry was closed when the father told agents his comments were made in anger.

Comey declined to elaborate further on the bureau's prior assessment of Rahami on Tuesday, telling Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., that the bureau was still in the midst of criminal investigation. Rahami, who was shot multiple times before his capture, remains hospitalized in a Newark hospital and has yet to make a first appearance in federal court on bombing-related charges.

Following Rahami's capture, federal agents recovered a hand-written journal from the suspect who appeared to draw inspiration from a cast of international terror leaders, including slain al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike.

Meanwhile, Comey said U.S. authorities are preparing for an expected wave of Islamic State fighters fleeing the battlefields in Syria and Iraq during the next two to five years as coalition military forces make gains against the terror group, also known as ISIL.

As the ISIL caliphate is "crushed, they will try to come here,'' Comey said.

The FBI director said that is likely that "hundreds'' of fighters will flow from Syria and Iraq to seek new targets in Europe and the United States.

Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counter Terrorism Center, described the threat as "broader, wider and deeper'' than at any time since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
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