President Donald Trump stepped before the cameras at a White House news conference less than a month after his inaugural and declared that he was already taking bold steps to keep "radical Islamic terrorists" out of the United States."Our citizens will be very happy when they see the result
President Donald Trump stepped before the cameras at a White House news conference less than a month after his inaugural and declared that he was already taking bold steps to keep “radical Islamic terrorists” out of the United States.
But a New York Times review reveals lapses far more extensive than previously known in how international military students are selected, screened and monitored once in the U.S. Even the sophisticated anti-terrorism systems developed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks failed to identify the future gunman.
Story continues— An insider threat program developed by the Pentagon after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009 and the Washington Navy Yard in 2013 did not monitor his movements and actions once the lieutenant arrived in the U.S. — because officials had not extended it to cover military trainees from foreign countries.
“A self-directed contractor could now become the most popular approach, because it allows tactical flexibility on the part of the attacker, which could result in a higher level of success,” said Colin P. Clarke, a senior fellow at the Soufan Center, a New York-based research organization.Born in a small farming town in southern Saudi Arabia, he grew up in Al Ahsa, not far from the sprawling Saudi Aramco compound in the eastern part of the country.
In 2015, the lieutenant had his initial contacts with operatives from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the same Yemen-based group that had trained, directed and deployed the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a decade earlier. It is unclear exactly how Alshamrani’s relationship with the al-Qaida branch came about, or who contacted whom.
In the Saudi military, candidates for foreign training programs are typically nominated by their squadron commanders, who send the nominations up the chain of command in the kingdom’s Defense Ministry. As a prospective trainee in the U.S. flight program, Alshamrani was supposed to have been thoroughly screened by Saudi security forces before his name was even put forward.
“All the vetting in the world isn’t going to work if the Saudi ministry responsible for internal security is asleep at the switch,” Riedel said. “Al-Qaida has infiltrated the Saudi military and the Ministry of Interior was unaware of that.”Vetting Fails Again and Again One problem was that he was applying for a diplomatic visa as part of the elite training programs that are often important components of multibillion-dollar arms sales. In the last five years alone, Saudi Arabia has bought more than $45 billion in U.S. weapons and training.
In August 2017, Alshamrani landed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where he began language training. His diplomatic visa was in the meantime allowing him to travel freely. He returned to Saudi Arabia during a school break and then traveled back to the U.S. in February 2019, ready to resume his studies in Pensacola.
“He continued to confer with his AQAP associates right up until the end, the very night before he started shooting,” Christopher Wray, the FBI director, said in January. Moving to a stairwell, he traded more fire with a pair of sheriff’s deputies, wounding both. A third deputy caught him as he came down another flight of stairs, getting off a shot that struck the lieutenant in the chest before his pistol jammed. The deputy fell back as three more deputies, armed with long guns and a pistol, confronted Alshamrani, shooting and killing him.
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