FBI admits it failed to follow up on tip about suspected gunman
Revelation increases political pressure on bureau embattled by Russia inquiry
The FBI received a tip last month from someone close to Nikolas Cruz that he owned a gun and had talked of committing a school shooting, the bureau revealed Friday, but it acknowledged that it had failed to investigate.
The tipster, who called an FBI hotline on Jan. 5, told the bureau that Cruz had a “desire to kill people, erratic behavior and disturbing social media posts,” the FBI said.
The information should have been assessed and forwarded to the Miami FBI field office, the bureau said. But that never happened. On Wednesday, Cruz, 19, killed 17 students and teachers at his former high school in Parkland, Fla., law enforcement officials said.
The tip about Cruz appeared to be the second in four months, after another person told the bureau about online comments from Cruz that he wanted to become “a professional school shooter.”
The news comes as the FBI is under considerable pressure over its investigation into President Donald Trump, with frequent attacks focused on the work of Robert Mueller, the special counsel’s office overseeing the inquiry into Russian election interference.
In an unusually sharp public rebuke of his own agents, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday that the missed warnings had “tragic consequences” and that “the FBI, in conjunction with our state and local partners, must act flawlessly to prevent all attacks. This is imperative, and we must do better.”
Gov. Rick Scott of Florida said the bureau’s failure to act on the tip was “unacceptable” and called for the bureau’s director, Christopher Wray, to resign. “Seventeen innocent people are dead and acknowledging a mistake isn’t going to cut it,” Scott said in a statement. Sen. Marco Rubio of
Florida also asked for Congress to investigate.
Wray said in a statement that he was “committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public.”
The FBI’s admission opened up a new avenue of attack by conservatives who have questioned the impartiality of the bureau in its investigation into Russian intervention in the 2016 election.
“Last September, FBI was sent a screenshot of a comment by nikolas cruz,” Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator, said in a post on Twitter. “Unfortunately, the FBI was busy running down Clinton campaign leads about a nonexistent Russian conspiracy with Trump.”
It is not the first time that the FBI has come under fire for being aware of a threat and failing to stop an attack.
Congress criticized the bureau for not preventing the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, in which the gunman was known to the FBI. The bureau also knew of one of the two brothers who carried out the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. And Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people in an Orlando nightclub in 2016, had been investigated by the FBI for months before the attack. That case was closed before the shooting occurred.
After those incidents, FBI investigators compared themselves to hockey goalies, fielding a relentless barrage of pucks. Sometimes, they said, they could not keep things from making the net.
“The public expects the FBI to keep them safe and in the overwhelming majority of the instances, the FBI does just that,” said Lauren Anderson, a former top FBI official in New York.
The FBI was not the only law enforcement agency to be warned about Cruz. Sheriff Scott Israel of Broward County said Friday that his office had received about 20 calls regarding the suspected school gunman over the past few years.
Israel said Friday that his office was still reviewing what it knew about Cruz before the shooting.
The earliest known tip to the bureau came from a bail bondsman in Mississippi who told the FBI in September about a worrying comment left on his YouTube channel from a “nikolas cruz” saying “Im going to be a professional school shooter.”
Agents from the FBI’s Jackson, Miss., field office looked into the comment but could not identify who had posted it from database and open-source searches, the FBI said. The bureau was also reviewing what happened after the agents received the information.
Law enforcement agencies have long asked people to call in, making the slogan “if you see something, say something” part of the public consciousness.
Several politicians echoed those words again Friday, noting that failures to act on tips about Cruz undermined years of effort to make the public part of the crime-fighting process.
“We constantly promote ‘see something, say something,’ ” Scott said in a statement. “A courageous person did just that to the FBI. And the FBI failed to act.”
The president and congressional leaders have accused the bureau of political bias in its handling of investigations of both Trump and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate.
In December, Trump said the FBI’s reputation was “in tatters” and the “worst in history.” This month, Trump said the FBI and the Justice Department had been “a disgrace” and “should be ashamed” of their behavior. The deputy FBI director, Andrew McCabe, was pushed out under pressure from the White House and Sessions. Some inside the building have feared that Wray would quit.
The criticism of the FBI has only increased after Mueller began to ensnare associates of Trump, including Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager, and Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser.
Mueller released another indictment Friday accusing Russian nationals and companies of committing federal crimes while seeking to interfere in the U.S. political system.
While Anderson, the former FBI official, described the response to the tip on Cruz as a “tragic failure,” she also said that the past 18 months had been extremely difficult for the FBI.
We constantly promote ‘see something, say something.’ A courageous person did just that to the FBI. And the FBI failed to act.” Florida Gov. Rick Scott