Criminal investigation

Why Didn’t the FBI Stop Omar Mateen?

The task is far harder than it used to be. It’s unreasonable—and perhaps undesirable—to expect that the FBI and counterterrorism officials should be tracking intent rather than action, in effect predicting possible future crimes like the psychics in the movie Minority Report. But their problem is that the main sign of radicalization is something that no longer happens in a training camp or a mosque or even “through the Internet”—as Comey claimed of Mateen. Instead it occurs “between the ears of the individual,” as another longtime critic of the agency, former FBI undercover agent Michael German, puts it. Often these individuals search out causes to legitimize what they already intend or want to do; in that respect, some law enforcement experts say, Mateen was little different from Dylann Roof, who began associating with white supremacists only shortly before he attacked an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, exactly a year ago Friday, killing nine.