OPINION:
In the days following the Orlando mass shooting that left 49 dead and 58 injured, then FBI Director James Comey acknowledged that the FBI had investigated ISIS-inspired terrorist Omar Mateen on two different occasions:
Comey explained how and why Mateen had been investigated and said that the FBI assessment was that he posed no danger at that time. He then employed his trademark “Eliot Ness” furvor swearing that he would move heaven and earth to find out what went wrong:
“We will continue to look forward in this investigation and backward. We will leave no stone un-turned and we will work all day and all night to understand the path to that terrible night. We’re also going to look hard at our own work, to see whether there’s something we should have done differently. So far, the honest answer is I don’t think so.”
And yet, here we are almost two years later and we haven’t heard anything. In fact, it’s worse than that. We’re now learning that Comey and the FBI hid a key bit of information from the American people in the days after the attacks. He purposely did not disclose that Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, was an informant for the FBI for the ten years preceding the deadly attacks.
Comey claimed at the time he’d conduct a “transparent” investigation of the FBI’s failures. As of now, the FBI has not revealed anything about their internal investigation.
At the time of the terror attacks, Comey revealed precious little about the FBI’s past investigations into Mateen, but he did say something that now raises a series of serious questions.
“Our investigation involved introducing confidential sources to him,” Comey said when describing how the FBI first investigated Mateen. Was one of those confidential sources Mateen’s own father?
According to The Intercept:
An FBI intelligence report indicates that agents told an unidentified undercover informant that they were investigating Mateen. The informant then “became very upset” that Mateen was under scrutiny, according to the report.
Did the FBI drop their investigation of this terrorist because he was the son of a long-time informer? What are the results of Comey’s “no stone uin-turned” investigation into what went wrong with the FBI’s initial assessments of Mateen? Why did the FBI not disclose their relationship with Mateen’s father until they were compelled to do so this week?
In short: What did Comey know, and when did he know it?
Comey’s new book is titled “A Higher Loyalty.” If that implies that his loyalty is to the truth, perhaps he should apply that value to something important like a bloody terror attack that happened on his watch rather than chasing Russian bots.
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