The Obama administration continues to refuse to disclose what – if any – changes are being considered to the K-1, or fiancée visa, program after the vetting process failed to identify Tashfeen Malik as a terrorist, according to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.
Though the administration has finally acknowledged that they’ll review the fiancée visa program, critics clamoring for swifter change before a repeat the deadly vetting failure that cost 14 American lives in San Bernardino two weeks ago.
The two San Bernardino shooters were radicalized at least two years ago — a year before Malik came to the U.S. one of these fiancée visa — and discussed jihad and martyrdom as early as 2013, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday.
Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee investigators believe that Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, were radicalized even before they began their online relationship and that Malik held extremist views before she arrived in the U.S. last year.
The comments suggest that the government’s vetting process apparently failed to detect Malik’s radicalization when she applied for the visa.
The couple, who lived quietly in a two-bedroom townhouse with their 6-month-old daughter and Farook’s mother, killed 14 people and wounded 21 last Wednesday before dying in a shootout with police in San Bernardino, California, about four hours later.
Malik came to the United States in July 2014 from Pakistan after being approved for the fiancée visa.
FBI officials had previously said that the couple had been radicalized for “quite some time,” but the disclosure Wednesday was the most specific yet about the timeline of their relationship and progression toward extremism.
Comey said the two “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.” He said the couple was clearly inspired by a foreign terror organization, but that investigators did not yet know whether their online courtship was arranged by such a group or developed naturally on its own.
“It would be a very, very important thing to know,” he said.
While evidence shows that the couple was “at least in part inspired” by the Islamic State, Comey said officials had not ruled out other sources of inspiration in part because the radicalization process took place before the terror group had become the global presence that it is today.
“We’re trying to sort out what other contributions there may have been to their motivation. At least in part, we see an ISIL inspiration,” Comey said, using an acronym from the terror group.
He also declined to say what role, if any, encrypted communications played in last week’s massacre.
Comey said he remained concerned that criminals, terrorists and spies were using technology to evade detection. “Increasingly, we are unable to see what they say, which gives them a tremendous advantage,” he said.
For example, Comey said one of the gunmen in last May’s shooting outside a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest in Garland, Texas had exchanged more than 100 messages with an overseas suspected terrorist prior to the attack that investigators still had been unable to access.
“We have no idea what he said because those messages were encrypted,” Comey said. “And to this day, I can’t tell you what he said with that terrorist 109 times the morning of that attack. That is a big problem. We have to grapple with it.”
The FBI has revealed little else of what it’s learned about Farook and Malik and their planning, except for details about the weaponry they had, materials they had to make more pipe bombs and that both had been taking target practice. A U.S. official said Tuesday authorities are looking into a deposit made to Farook’s bank account before the shooting. The official, who had been briefed on the investigation but was not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity, would not further characterize the nature of the deposit or what was suspicious about it.
The Associated Press contributed to this article
The news reports on tv for the past few days talk about the tragedy in San Bernadino, CA and how the female suspect easily got a visa to enter the U.S.. Then we see on the same news shows reporters and politicians criticizing Trump for wanting to keep these haters out of our nation.
Our corrupt politicians in Washington only see these freaks as votes to keep them in power. They could give a dam about the American People and what they want. It will only take about 20 years for these freaks to take power in Congress and Senate both in our State Houses and Washington. Then it will be to late to do a dam thing about it. That is the kind of leadership we have in this country we need big change.
I don’t have any emotional or sentimental ties to the south or it’s history. I’m a northerner. I would never fly a Confederate flag. However, I find it so hypocritical as to how our politicians and some celebrities demanded that the Confederate flag not be flown anymore. Then we see these same politicians making excuses for and praising an ideology of middle eastern hate and intolerance.
Despite what the “left” would like for everyone to think the Confederate flag is not a symbol of racism. It’s a symbol like a lot of other things that is part of our American history. For anyone to “think” that merely erasing something symbolic from history such as the Confederate flag is ludicrous. I like you find it to be a double standard when you can’t buy a Confederate flag in places such as ebay. But you can still buy all of the nazi paraphernalia that your heart desires. Like everything else the left does it’s double standards. Of course when you have politicians that are race baiting and leaders that are doing the same they’ve moved us back 100 years. All they’ve accomplished is inciting racist people and that does no good for anybody. politics has always been a dirty game but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it as bad as it is now and the worst of it is they’re so BOLD about it.
I was born in the North and still live here in Pa. I have visited the South many times, not my cut of tea but a lot of my friends have retired to the Southern States. All this crap about the Confederate Flag is to appease the so called poor blacks. I don’t own a Confederate flag but do intend getting one and flying next to my American Flag as both flags are part of American and it history. I am tired of bowing to the blacks that get everything for free. We as Proud Americans have worked to give them a free ride. We need big change in this country and that means starting with both Houses in Washington, replace them not with lawyers but business people who know what they are doing and leave our history alone.