Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
US: Links between Florida base shooter and al-Qaida
Officials lash out at Apple for failure to aid in investigation
The gunman who killed three U.S. sailors at a military base in Florida last year repeatedly communicated with al-Qaida operatives about planning in the months leading up to the attack, U.S. officials said Monday, as they lashed out at Apple for failing to help them open the shooter’s phones so they could access key evidence.
Law enforcement officials discovered contacts between Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani and al-Qaida operatives after FBI technicians succeeded on their own in breaking into two cellphones that had previously been locked and that the shooter, a Saudi Air Force officer, had tried to destroy before he was killed by law enforcement.
“We now have a clearer understanding of Alshamrani’s associations and activities in the years, months and days leading up to his attack,” Attorney General William Barr said at a news conference in which he sharply chastised Apple for not helping unlock the phones.
The new details, including that Alshamrani had been radicalized before he arrived in the U.S., raise fresh questions about the vetting of Saudi military members and trainees who spend time at American bases.
The criticism directed at Apple could escalate divisions between the U.S. government and the massive technology company, which has rejected the characterization that it has been unhelpful. The company said Monday it does not store customers’ passcodes, does not have the capability to unlock passcode-protected devices and believes that weakening encryption could create vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers.
Alshamrani was killed by a sheriff ’s deputy during the Dec. 6 rampage at a classroom building at Pensacola Naval Air Station. He had been undergoing flight training at Pensacola as part of instruction offered at American military bases to foreign nationals. Besides the three sailors who died, eight other people were injured.
Once unlocked by the FBI, U.S. officials said, the phones revealed contact between Alshamrani and “dangerous” operatives from al-Qaida in the Arabian Pensinsula, or AQAP, including the night before the attack. They also revealed that he had been radicalized since at least 2015, before he arrived in the U.S., and had meticulously planned for it.
Alsharamni created minicam videos as he cased a military school building and saved a will on his phone that purported to explain himself — the same document AQAP released two months after the shooting when it claimed responsibility for it, said FBI Director Chris Wray, who called the attack “the brutal culmination of years of planning and preparation.”
“He wasn’t just coordinating with them about planning and tactics,” Wray said. “He was helping the organization making the most it could out of his murders.”
Asked whether al-Qaida had directed or merely inspired the attacks, Wray said it was “certainly more than just inspired.“
It was only with access to the phones that U.S. officials were able to establish certain suspicions as facts.
The Justice Department had asked Apple to help extract data from two iPhones that belonged to the gunman, including one that authorities say Alshamrani damaged with a bullet after being confronted by law enforcement.
Wray said Apple provided “effectively no help” in unlocking the phones, and that FBI technicians did it on their own — though he did not say how.
Barr used Monday’s news conference to forcefully call on Apple to do more to cooperate with law enforcement.
“In cases like this, where the user is a terrorist, or in other cases, where the user is a violent criminal, human trafficker or child predator, Apple’s decision has dangerous consequences for public safety and national security and is, in my judgment, unacceptable,” Barr said.
In a statement Monday, Apple said it had provided the FBI with “every piece of information available to us, including iCloud backups, account information and transactional data for multiple accounts.” It rejected the idea of weakening encryption for law enforcement’s benefit.
“It is because we take our responsibility to national security so seriously that we do not believe in the creation of a backdoor — one which will make every device vulnerable to bad actors who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers,” the statement said. “There is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys, and the American people do not have to choose between weakening encryption and effective investigations.”
Law enforcement officials had previously left no doubt that Alshamrani was motivated by jihadist ideology, saying he visited a New York City memorial to the Sept. 11 attacks over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and posted anti-American and anti-Israeli messages on social media two hours before the shooting.