» FBI director grilled by GOP on terror incidents,
Senators unhappy agency did not stop gunman, bomber.
Republican WASHINGTON — senators pressed FBI Director James Comey 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 at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee 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 Afghanborn U.S. citizen accused in the explosion, but found nothing that tied him to terrorism.
Sens. 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.
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 it has. 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.
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.
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 interest in terror propaganda. The FBI searched its databases and found no terrorist connections, and the review was closed within weeks.
Comey said Tuesday that Rahami’s actions do not point to a larger terror cell.
Separately, he said the U.S. remains concerned violent extremists will eventually flow out of Syria and Iraq and into other countries in hopes of carrying out attacks.