As the investigation into the Orlando attack unfolds, authorities on Monday said it appears the shooting was not part of a plot directed from outside the United States and that the gunman was likely a homegrown extremist.
FBI Director James Comey and President Barack Obama both said on Monday that at this preliminary stage in the investigation of the terrorist attack, it seems the gunman was probably inspired by extremist information he found online, but there is no clear evidence that the shooter was externally directed.
The shooting left 49 people dead and 53 injured.
“As far as we can tell right now, this is certainly an example of the kind of homegrown extremism that all of us have been so concerned about for a very long time,” Obama said after a briefing with Comey, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and his national security team.
Obama also noted that while it seems the killer announced allegiance to ISIS “at the last minute,” there is “no evidence so far that he was in fact directed by ISIL.”
“And there also at this stage is no direct evidence that he was part of a larger plot,” the president added. “In that sense, it appears to be similar to what we saw in San Bernardino, but we don’t yet know.”
Comey, who emphasized it is still the early days in the investigation, said “we are highly confident that this killer was radicalized and at least in some part through the internet.” He also detailed the FBI’s previous contact with the gunman, as well as three 911 calls he made from the club during the attack.
“During the calls he said he was doing this for the leader of ISIL, who he named and pledged loyalty to, but he also appeared to claim solidarity with the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing and solidarity with a Florida man who died as a suicide bomber in Syria for al-Nusra Front, a group in conflict with the so-called Islamic State,” Comey said. “The bombers at the Boston Marathon and the suicide bomber from Florida were not inspired by ISIL, which adds a little bit to the confusion about his motives.”
“And of course, we are working to understand what role anti-gay bigotry may have played in motivating this attack,” he added.
Comey also broke down the FBI’s prior contact with the killer, identified as Omar Mateen, detailing three interviews with him in 2013 and 2014.
The FBI first became aware of Mateen in May 2013, Comey said, after he made statements to coworkers about terrorism.
“First, he claimed family connections to Al Qaida. He also said that he was a member of Hezbollah, which is a Shia terrorist organization that is a bitter enemy of the so-called Islamic state, ISIL,” Comey said. “He said he hoped that law enforcement would raid his apartment and assault his wife and child so that he could martyr himself.”
After that was reported to the FBI, the Miami office opened a preliminary investigation and interviewed Mateen twice over the course of 10 months before the inquiry was closed.
In addition to the interviews, the FBI’s investigation “involved introducing confidential sources to him, recording conversations with him, following him, reviewing transactional records from his communications, and searching all government holdings for any possible connections, any possible derogatory information,” Comey said.
Mateen came back onto the bureau’s radar in July 2014 when they were looking to see if any links existed between him and American suicide bomber Moner Abu-Salha, who drove a truck filled with explosives into a Syrian government outpost before detonating it. The FBI interviewed the gunman for a third time and then determined he did not have any “significant contacts” with the suicide bomber, Comey said.
Comey said the FBI will reexamine its practices in the wake of the Orlando attack “to see whether there is something we should have done differently.” But, he said that so far, “I don’t see anything, in reviewing our work, that our agents should have done differently.”
“But we'll look at it in an open and honest way, and be transparent about it,” he said.
We sat down with former National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen to discuss the FBI investigation of Mateen, and what needs to be done to prevent future lone wolf attacks. In addition, we recommend an article written last fall by Patrick Skinner, a former CIA case officer and current Director of Special Projects at the Soufan Group, who discusses the power of ISIS’ message to inspire lone wolf attackers.
Mackenzie Weinger is a National Security Reporter with The Cipher Brief.
