Comey pressed on response to ‘threat’

Senators alarmed

WASHINGTON, Sept 28, (AP): Republican senators pressed FBI Director on Tuesday about whether anything more could have been done to prevent recent acts of extremist violence, including the Orlando nightclub massacre and the Manhattan bombing this month. Comey said the FBI admits mistakes when it makes them, but he did not agree that anything should have been done differently or that any red flags were missed.

The questions arose because the FBI has said it investigated Orlando gunman Omar Mateen a few years before the June shooting and interviewed him as part of that probe. The FBI in 2014 also looked into Ahmad Khan Rahami, the Afghan-born US citizen accused in the explosion, but found nothing that tied him to terrorism.

Two senators, in particular, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, said they were alarmed that both individuals had at one point been on the FBI’s radar but were not intercepted.

“What more do we need to do? What are the lessons learned, and if you need additional support, we need to know about it very quickly,” Ayotte said at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Paul, one of the Senate’s leading civil liberties champions, said he was troubled that the FBI appeared to often seek new tools but didn’t seem to adequately use the ones they had. Ayotte said she thought it was “obvious” that FBI agents in their earlier investigation of Mateen should have checked to see if he was saying anything online about terrorism, which Comey said he didn’t believe had been done — though he did note that the FBI had used other investigative methods to keep tabs on him.

Comey

WASHINGTON:

Criticism

Comey pushed back against the criticism, telling Paul that he had his facts wrong in characterizing the FBI’s investigations into both Mateen and Rahami. He said he had commissioned a review of the FBI’s past interactions with Mateen, who killed 49 people inside a gay nightclub, and would be doing the same with Rahami.

He declined to discuss specifics of the Rahami case since it’s pending in court.

“We’re going to go back and look very carefully at the way we encountered him, and we will find the appropriate (forum) to give you that transparency about what we did well, what we could’ve done better, what we’ve learned from it,” Comey said.

The FBI opened an assessment on Rahami in 2014 following a domestic incident. His father has said he warned the FBI that his son was drawn to terrorism, though law enforcement officials say he never discussed with them his son’s apparent radicalization or any interest in terror propaganda. The FBI searched its databases and found no terrorist connections, and the review was closed within weeks.

Rahami, the main suspect in the New York bombing, faces federal terrorism charges after a shootout with police. Prosecutors say the 28-yearold planned the explosion as he bought components for his bombs online and set off a backyard blast. They say he wrote a journal that praised Osama bin Laden and other Muslim extremists, fumed about what he saw as the US government’s killing of Muslim holy warriors and declared “death to your oppression.”

Comey said Tuesday that Rahami’s actions do not point to a larger terror cell.

Separately, the FBI director said the US remains concerned violent extremists will eventually flow out of Syria and Iraq and into other countries in hopes of carrying out attacks.

Traveling

The number of Americans traveling to Syria to fight alongside the Islamic State group has slowed to a trickle in the last year, but as the so-called caliphate is “crushed,” many militants from Western nations who are already there will stream out of the region and create new security threats.

“There will be a terrorist diaspora sometime in the next two to five years like we’ve never seen before,” Comey said.

Comey also was expected to be quizzed about why the FBI granted immunity to Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff as part of a now-closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.

Comey will be the sole witness Wednesday as the House Judiciary Committee reviews the FBI’s performance in what is likely to be the agency’s final oversight hearing this year.

Comey said agents granted immunity to Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff, because they wanted to inspect her laptop as part of the investigation into Clinton’s private email server. The immunity deal was limited to information contained on her laptop, Comey said.

Republicans have assailed Comey’s decision not to prosecute Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, accusing her of mishandling classified information.

“It defies logic and the law that she faces no consequences for jeopardizing national security,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia.

Also:

US Department of Homeland Security Secretary told a Senate panel on Tuesday the was cracking down on Middle Eastern migrants illegally crossing the southern US border.

Johnson, FBI Director Counterterrorism Center Director

all were pressed on a range of security issues by the Homeland Security Committee, including migration, cyber hackers manipulating voting systems and recent bombings in

and

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