Ever since the San Bernardino shootings took place CAIR and the authorities have gone to great lengths to hint that it was the Pakistani wife, Tashfeen Malik, of Syed Farook who was instrumental in radicalizing Farook. This narrative had a lot to commend it in the beginning. We learned Malik belonged to a radical Islamic group while in university. We know members of her family have ties to identified militant Islamic organizations. We know that she lied about her address when she applied for her fiance visa. For instance:
One U.S. official said there appears to be nothing in Farook’s history that would implicate him as the driver of the attack.
Separately, a law enforcement official said investigators are looking into whether Malik was radicalized in the Middle East, where she spent considerable time, and used her 2014 marriage to Farook to penetrate the U.S. and commit violence. But the official said it is only one among a number of theories that are being pursued.
This narrative has a lot of advantages for virtually everyone involved. US intelligence and law enforcement can say that there is no problem because no one could have anticipated that a woman entering the US as a bride could sufficiently enrage her husband to turn him into a killer in only a year. (The are missing, of course, the fact that the whiny hectoring of Arianna Huffington made her husband gay.) CAIR and its platoon of lawyers can throw up their sweaty hands and proclaim that there is no problem with radical Islam in the United States but there were bigots where Farook worked that may have sent him over the edge.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t see to be true. It appears that Syed Farook was an Islamic militant and terrorist in waiting for sometime. Via CNN:
Investigators believe San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook may have been plotting an earlier attack in California with someone else, two U.S. officials said.
One of the officials said the two conspired in 2012 and a specific target was considered. Neither of the officials could say how serious the plotting got.
One official said the two decided not to go through with the earlier attack after a round of terror-related arrests in the area.
“They got spooked,” the official said.
Law enforcement officials in San Bernardino and Los Angeles may have investigated Syed Farook one week before the shooting on the community development center on December 2, 2015, that left 14 dead and 17 injured, according to a review of police communications immediately following the attacks.
Federal and local authorities have insisted that neither of the attackers had aroused suspicion before the assault earlier this month and that both Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were unknown to law enforcement and US intelligence. But conversations between law enforcement officials in the hours after the shootings leave a different impression.
Farook is first identified by name at approximately 11:40am local time, just a half hour after the shooting began. The information came from a county worker, who noted that Farook had been acting nervous and left the holiday party twenty minutes before the shooting began.
He was under investigation and yet did not appear on any terror watch list? And why was the investigation stopped? Was it because of the pernicious effect of CAIR waving their stained Islamophobe undies whenever a Muslim… or a mosque… comes under suspicion of terrorism.
And this breaking from the FBI
“These two killers were radicalized for quite a long time,” Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday regarding the couple behind last week’s San Bernardino shootings that killed 14 people. “Our investigation to date shows that they were radicalized before they started courting or dating each other online, and as early as the end of 2013, were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and married and were living in the U.S.”
Comey added, “We believe they were inspired by foreign organizations. We are working very hard to see if anyone else was involved in assisting, equipping or helping them. And did they have other plans?”
Comey’s announcement about the couple’s past takes the investigation in a new direction, suggesting that Farook, a U.S. citizen, purposely traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to find a partner to help him carry out what became the worst foreign terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001.
He said that according to information collected so far, Malik “was radicalized before she connected with the other killer.”
Asked if the marriage might have been purposely arranged by a foreign terror organization to get two terror operatives into the U.S. to pull off the attack, Comey said, “I don’t know the answer to that yet.”
And now the father’s account and what we know of the mother makes more sense. Is it possible to believe that Syed Farook lived with his mother for at least three years, planned a terror attack, stockpiled munitions, and found a jihadi mate and his mother and family had no knowledge?
Investigators are believed to be dubious of claims of total ignorance by certain family members, and that skepticism could prompt a Family Court judge to decide it is in the best interests of the baby for her to not be raised by blood relatives, said California-based criminal defense attorney Troy Slaten.
Investigators will be closely looking at the grandmother and the rest of the family, Slaten said, but the grandmother will be a particular target given that she resided with them and “was probably at least aware of all the preparations they were making.” Family court advocates could use this during family court proceedings to push for custody outside the family circle, he said.
We face a very real challenge from practitioners of radical Islam. Our intelligence organizations have proven singularly unable to detect the plots. Our law enforcement unable or unwilling to intervene to break up the plots. Our visa process seems to be a form of kabuki theater rather than any real barrier to Islamic radicals entering the country. It leads one to ask that if Barack Obama had set out to make the US vulnerable to Islamic terrorism what would he have done differently?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member