If Attorney General is going to place a gag order on FBI Director James Comey over the work of the FBI investigation into to the San Bernardino terror massacre, then leaks will be the order of the day. Additionally further details from foreign press will be important and fruitful.
The vetting process in Pakistan by our official at the State Department failed to perform a comprehensive investigation on Tashfeen.
Tashfeen could have had contact with the most dangerous and know mosque is Islamabad, Pakistan, THE RED MOSQUE.
The Siege of Lal Masjid (Urdu: لال مسجد محاصرہ, code-named Operation Sunrise[10][11][12]) was a confrontation in July 2007 between Islamic fundamentalist militants and the Government of Pakistan, led by President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. The focal points of the operation were the Lal Masjid (“Red Mosque”) and the Jamia Hafsa madrasah complex in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Since January 2006, Lal Masjid and the adjacent Jamia Hafsa madrasah had been operated by Islamic militants led by two brothers, Maulana Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi. This organization advocated the imposition of Sharia (Islamic religious law) in Pakistan and openly called for the overthrow of the Pakistani government. Lal Masjid was in constant conflict with authorities in Islamabad for 18 months prior to the military operation. They engaged in violent demonstrations, destruction of property, kidnapping, arson and armed clashes with the authorities. After Lal Masjid militants set fire to the Ministry of Environment building and attacked the Army Rangers who guarded it, the military responded, and the siege of the Lal Masjid complex began.
The complex was besieged from July 3 to July 11, 2007, while negotiations were attempted between the militants and the state’s Shujaat Hussain and Ijaz-ul-Haq. Once negotiations failed, the complex was stormed and captured by the Pakistan Army‘s Special Service Group. The operation resulted in 154 deaths, and 50 militants were captured. It also prompted pro-Taliban rebels along the Afghan border to nullify a 10-month-old peace agreement with the Pakistani Government.
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MSN: Malik’s killing spree has horrified her Pakistani relatives. Her father cut off contact with his family after a feud over inheritance, they told Reuters, and moved to Saudi Arabia when his daughter was a toddler. There, it seems, he turned to a stricter form of Islam.
“From what we heard, they lived differently, their mindset is different. We are from a land of Sufi saints … this is very shocking for us,” said school teacher Hifza Bibi, the step-sister of Malik’s father, who lives in Karor Lal Esan town in central Punjab province.
Sufism, a strain of Islam popular in parts of Pakistan, emphasizes a mystical, personal religious connection. Devotees often play music and dance at shrines, and their practices are looked on with suspicion by orthodox Muslims.
“Our brother … went to Saudi and since then he doesn’t care about anyone here,” Bibi said. “A man who didn’t come to attend his own mother’s funeral, what can you expect from him?”
Tashfeen Malik returned to Pakistan and studied pharmacy at Bahauddin Zakaria university in Multan from 2007 to 2012. She lived in a university hostel. An identity card said she was 29 years old at the time of the shootings.
“She was known to be good student with no religious extremist tendencies,” an intelligence official based in the nearby town of Layyah told Reuters.
Malik’s uncle Javed Rabbani, a clerk in the town’s education department, said he has not seen his brother in 30 years.
“We feel a lot of sadness but we also feel ashamed that someone from our family has done this,” he said. “We can’t even imagine doing something like this. This is a mindset that is alien to us.”
Malik visited Pakistan in 2013 and 2014, security officials told Reuters, but it’s unclear who she met or where she visited.
Pakistani media reported she had links to the radical Red Mosque in the capital of Islamabad, but a cleric and a spokesman at the mosque said they had never heard of her before.
F.B.I. Treating San Bernardino Attack as Terrorism Case
NYT’s: WASHINGTON — On the day she and her husband killed 14 people and injured 21 others in San Bernardino, Calif., a woman pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post, officials said Friday, as the F.B.I. announced that it was treating the massacre as an act of terrorism.
“The investigation so far has developed indications of radicalization by the killers, and of potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations,” the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said at a news conference here. But he said that investigators had not found evidence that the killers were part of a larger group or terrorist cell. The couple died in a shootout with police on Wednesday.
“There’s no indication that they are part of a network,” he said.
The woman, Tashfeen Malik, declared allegiance to the Islamic State on Facebook at roughly the time of the shooting on Wednesday, according to a Facebook spokesman. At a news conference in San Bernardino, David Bowdich, the F.B.I. assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles office, said he was aware of the post, which was taken down by Facebook on Wednesday, but would not elaborate.
“There’s a number of pieces of evidence which has essentially pushed us off the cliff to say we are considering this an act of terrorism,” he said.
The attack could prove to be the most deadly Islamic State-inspired attack on America soil. Al Qaeda and other groups have carried out — or inspired — lethal assaults in the United States, but the Islamic State, which has a base of operations in Syria and Iraq, and carried out the attack on Paris that killed 130 people last month, has turned into a leading terrorism threat with spreading influence around the world.
What began as a local police response to gunfire in San Bernardino turned into the deadliest terrorist assault in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and led to a global investigation headed by the F.B.I., stretching from California to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It is also the worst mass shooting in almost three years, since the slaughter at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
Early this year, the Islamic State shifted tactics, and instead of just trying to persuade followers to travel to Syria to join the group, it began calling on sympathizers in the West to commit acts of violence at home. The F.B.I. has refocused its resources on that threat of so-called homegrown, self-radicalized extremists who might be inspired by Islamic State propaganda. Even before the Paris attacks, the bureau had heavy surveillance on at least three dozen people who the authorities feared might commit violence in the Islamic State’s name.
The exact motives of Ms. Malik, 29, and her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, remain unknown, and law enforcement officials say they had not been suspected of posing a danger. But after two days of insisting that terrorism was just one of multiple possibilities, the F.B.I.’s statements on that prospect grew much stronger on Friday, as officials pointed to evidence like the Facebook post, and what they described as a bomb-making workshop at the couple’s home where they found 12 completed pipe bombs and a stockpile of thousands of rounds of ammunition. Officials say that weaponry could indicate that they were planning more attacks.
Among the components investigators seized from the couple’s house were items common to the manufacture of pipe bombs but also “miniature Christmas tree lamps.” A recent issue of Inspire, an online magazine published by an arm of Al Qaeda, included an article, “Designing a Timed Hand Grenade,” with step-by-step instruction for making a delayed igniter with a Christmas tree lamp.
Investigators have also found evidence that in their final days, Mr. Farook and Ms. Malik tried to erase their electronic footprints, another sign of premeditation. They destroyed several electronic devices, including two smashed cellphones found in a trash can near their home and erased emails, officials said.
When they were killed, Ms. Malik had what investigators believe might have been a “burner phone,” meant to be used for a short time and discarded, with no social media apps or other identifying information on it. Despite their efforts, the couple’s computers, phones and other electronics provide the best hope for reconstructing their communications and motives.
“We are going through a very large volume of electronic evidence,” Mr. Comey said. “This is electronic evidence that these killers tried to destroy and tried to conceal from us.”
On Wednesday morning, law enforcement officials say, Mr. Farook and Ms. Malik walked into a conference center at Inland Regional Center, a social services center, and gunned down people at a combination training session and holiday lunch held by the county health department. Most of the victims were co-workers of Mr. Farook, who worked for the department as a health inspector. The couple wore masks and military-style vests, carried assault rifles and semiautomatic handguns, and left behind a bomb that failed to explode.
Law enforcement officials have noted that the case defies typical patterns for mass shootings or terrorist attacks. “A number of things in this case don’t make sense,” Mr. Comey said.
The Facebook posting, which had been removed from the social media site, provides one of the first significant clues to the role that Ms. Malik played in the attacks.
She was born in Pakistan, to a family from a town, Karor Lal East, in the Layyah District of Punjab Province, according to local officials there, who added that intelligence officials were in the area Friday, searching for her relatives. Those officials, and Mustafa H. Kuko, director of the Islamic Center of Riverside, which Mr. Farook attended for a few years, said the family moved when she was a child to Saudi Arabia, and she mostly grew up in that country.
“They were living in Saudi Arabia, but they were Pakistanis,” Mr. Kuko said. “They had been in Saudi Arabia for a long time. She grew up in the city of Jidda.”
American officials have not confirmed that, but a person close to the Saudi government confirmed that Ms. Malik had spent time in Saudi Arabia over the years, staying with her father there. That person said Saudi intelligence agencies had no information that she had any ties to militant groups, and that she was not on any terrorism watch lists.
Ms. Malik returned to Pakistan for college, graduating in 2012 with a degree in pharmacy from Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan, a major city in Punjab. Pakistani officials consider the area a center of support for extremist jihadist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba. A Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an continuing investigation, said security officials were looking into Ms. Malik’s time in Pakistan, as well as travel there by Mr. Farook.
The bureau has uncovered evidence that he had contact, a few years ago, with five individuals whom the F.B.I. had investigated, but not charged, on suspicion of links to terrorism. Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. is re-examining those contacts, but added, “I would urge you not to make too much of that.”
Mr. Farook had posted profiles on Muslim dating websites, and the family’s lawyers said the couple met online. American and Saudi officials have confirmed that he spent more than a week in Saudi Arabia in July 2014, and returned with Ms. Malik, flying from Jidda to Chicago, via London. She traveled on a Pakistani passport and an American K-1 visa, the type that allows people to come to the country to marry an American citizen.
Mr. Farook applied for a permanent resident green card for Ms. Malik on Sept. 20, 2014, and was granted a conditional green card in July 2015. As a routine matter, to obtain the green card the couple had to prove that their marriage was legitimate, and Ms. Malik had to pass criminal and national security background checks that used F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security databases.
What Investigators Know About the San Bernardino Shooting
Officials have discovered a potential link between the attackers and Islamic extremism.
In a news conference Friday afternoon, two lawyers for the Farook family said the couple’s family were shocked by the massacre. One of the lawyers, David Chesley, also questioned whether the Facebook post was actually by Ms. Malik.
“We all want an answer,” Mr. Chesley said. “We all are angry. We’re all frustrated. We’re all sad. We want justice. But unfortunately some things in life aren’t as clear cut as that.”
Mr. Chesley said Mr. Farook’s mother, who lived with the couple, “stayed to herself” upstairs and was “not aware of what was taking place in the rest of house.” Law enforcement officials said the couple turned part of the house into a bomb-making factory. He added that just before the massacre, Mr. Farook told her that he was taking Ms. Malik to the doctor and then left their 6-month-old daughter in her care. The mother has been interviewed by investigators for seven hours, the lawyer said. And the baby is with child protective services.
A second lawyer, Mohammad Abuershaid, described Ms. Malik as a “caring” and “soft-spoken” housewife who spoke Urdu and broken English. She prayed five times a day, he said, and did not drive. He added that male relatives of Mr. Farook had never seen her face because she always kept it covered in their presence.
“She was a very, very private person,” Mr. Abuershaid said. “She kept herself pretty isolated.”
The two assault rifles the attackers used, variants of the .223-caliber AR-15 rifle, both showed signs of being illegally modified in an effort to make them more lethal, said Meredith Davis, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Los Angeles. One had been altered to allow a larger magazine than the 10-round maximum allowed under California law, and someone had made an unsuccessful attempt to convert the other from semiautomatic to a fully automatic machine gun.
The bureau has stated that all of the couple’s guns were originally bought legally. Mr. Farook was the original purchaser of the two 9-mm handguns. The original buyer of the assault rifles was a person who has interviewed officials said, and is not considered a suspect; it is not clear how Mr. Farook and Ms. Malik obtained them, or whether that transaction was legal.
After searching the couple’s townhouse, the F.B.I. left behind a long list of items it has confiscated, which reporters were able to see when the landlord opened the home to them. It included a .22-caliber rifle purchased by Mr. Farook, boxes of ammunition, gun holsters, a cellphone SIM card, a laptop, a wireless router, and a variety of tools and hardware.
The Islamic State has not released an official statement on the San Bernardino attack, but the Amaq News Agency, which intelligence officials believe is run by Islamic State supporters, released a statement claiming that the killings had been carried out by “supporters of the Islamic State,” according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group.
