FBI reviews handling of terrorism-related tips
The FBI has WASHINGTON — been reviewing the handling of thousands of terrorism-related tips and leads from the past three years to make sure they were properly investigated and no obvious red flags were missed.
The review follows attacks by people who were once on the FBI’s radar but who have been accused in the past 12 months of attacks in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub, injuring people on the streets of New York City and gunning down travelers in a Florida airport. In each case, the suspects had been determined not to warrant continued law enforcement scrutiny.
A senior federal law enforcement official described the review as an effort to “err on the side of caution.” It is essentially a review of records to ensure proper FBI procedures were followed, and an acknowledgment of the challenge the FBI has faced in predicting which of the tens of thousands of tips the bureau receives annually might lead to a viable threat.
FBI Director James Comey has likened the difficulty to finding not only a needle in a haystack but determining which piece of hay may become a needle.
The pace of the FBI’s counterterrorism work accelerated with the rise of the Islamic State and its social media campaign promoting self-radicalization, which Seamus Hughes, deputy director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, has enticed some people who were no longer under FBI scrutiny to get “back in the game.”
By the summer of 2015, Comey has said, the FBI was “strapped” in keeping tabs on the group’s American sympathizers and identifying those most inclined to commit violence.
The review covers inquiries the FBI internally classifies as “assessments” — the lowest level, least intrusive and most elementary stage of a terror-related inquiry — and is examining those from the past three years to make sure all appropriate investigative avenues were followed, according to a former federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Assessments are routinely opened upon a tip and are cataloged by the FBI. The bureau receives tens of thousands of tips a year, and averages more than 10,000 assessments annually.
Many assessments are closed within days or weeks when the FBI concludes there’s no criminal or national security threat, or basis for continued scrutiny.
The system is meant to ensure that a person who has not broken the law does not remain under perpetual scrutiny on a mere hunch that a crime could eventually be committed. But on occasion, and within the past year, it has also meant that people the FBI once looked at but did not find reason to arrest later went on to commit violence.
Each act of violence has raised questions about whether the FBI missed signs or should have been more aggressive in its investigation. With thousands of assessments pouring in, those decisions aren’t easy.
“If you’re looking at all the cases, if everything’s blinking red, you have to make a judgment call every time,” Hughes said.