FBI Treating Attack in San Bernardino as Terrorism

Washington: The woman who, with her husband, killed 14 people in San Bernardino pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post the day of the attack, officials said Friday, and the FBI announced 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 FBI director, James Comey, said at a news conference here. But, he said: "so far we have no indication that these killers are part of an organized larger group, or form part of a cell. There's no indication that they are part of a network."
 
Tashfeen Malik's declaration of allegiance to the Islamic State was posted on Facebook about 11 a.m. Wednesday, roughly the time of the shooting, according to people briefed on the investigation. At a news conference in San Bernardino, David Bowdich, the FBI assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles office, said he was aware of the post, but would not say how much it influenced the decision to investigate the massacre as an act of terrorism, or what other information played a role in that shift.

"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.
 
Even as its counterterrorism unit was overseeing the investigation, the FBI previously said that terrorism was just one possibility. With the decision to call this a terrorism case, the bureau took over the investigation into the deadliest terrorist assault on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. A 2009 rampage at the Fort Hood military base killed 13.

There is no evidence that the Islamic State directed Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, to stage the attacks, law enforcement officials said. But the Facebook post has led investigators to believe that the couple, who were killed in a shootout with the police after the attack, took inspiration from the group, they said.

"At this point we believe they were more self-radicalized and inspired by the group than actually told to do the shooting," one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

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.

Islamic terrorists have used the oath of allegiance, called a bayat, to declare their loyalty to specific groups and leaders. To become a member of al-Qaida, for instance, terrorists historically swore their devotion to Osama bin Laden.

Investigators are scouring the contents of computers, cellphones and other devices belonging to Malik and Farook, including items they attempted to destroy and files they tried to erase; investigators found two cellphones, which had been crushed, in a trash can near their home.

"We are going through a very large volume of electronic evidence," Comey said. "This is electronic evidence that these killers tried to destroy and tried to conceal from us."

That effort to erase the couple's electronic footprints, and other evidence, like the 12 pipe bombs they had made and stored in their townhouse and garage, have led authorities to believe that the assault was premeditated.

Asked if the couple had been planning more attacks, Bowdich said, "it's certainly a possibility we're looking at." He said the electronic devices might prove critical to revealing their motivations. "I truly believe that's going to be the potential golden nuggets," he said.

On Wednesday morning, law enforcement officials say, Farook and 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 Farook, who worked for the department as a health inspector.

The Facebook posting, which had been removed from the social media site, provides one of the first significant clues to the role that Malik, 27, played in the attacks.

She was born in Pakistan, and traveled on a Pakistani passport, but grew up in Saudi Arabia, according to Mustafa H. Kuko, director of the Islamic Center of Riverside, which Farook attended for a few years.

"They were living in Saudi Arabia, but they were Pakistanis," he said. "They had been in Saudi Arabia for a long time. She grew up in the city of Jiddah."

A person close to the Saudi government confirmed that Malik had spent time in Saudi Arabia over the years, staying with her father there, adding that Saudi intelligence agencies had no information that she had any ties to militant groups, and that she was not on any terrorism watch lists.

Malik returned to Pakistan for college, graduating in 2012 from Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan with a degree in pharmacy, according to local officials in the Layyah district of Punjab province. They said that her family was originally from a town there, Karor Lal East, and that her father, Malik Gulzar Aulakh, moved with his family to Saudi Arabia about 20 years ago, later moving to the United States, U.S. officials have not confirmed that. Officials in Layyah said intelligence officials had visited on Friday and were looking for relatives of Malik.

Pakistani officials consider the area a center of support for extremist jihadi groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba. Some of the most high-profile attacks against the Pakistani military in 2009 were led by a native of the same rural area: Umar Kundi, a medical doctor who became an operative for al-Qaida. In addition, Multan, an ancient city in Punjab, is considered a hotbed of radicalism.

A Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the continuing investigation, said security officials were looking into Malik's time in Pakistan, as well as possible travel there by Farook.

In recent months, the FBI has been particularly concerned that so-called homegrown extremists might be inspired by the Islamic State to stage attacks in the United States, law enforcement officials say. Even before the attacks in Paris last month, the agency had heavy surveillance on at least three dozen individuals who the authorities were concerned might commit violence in the group's name.

The FBI refocused its efforts on these individuals earlier this year in response to a shift in tactics by the Islamic State, law enforcement officials said. Instead of trying to persuade Americans to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State, the group began calling on its sympathizers and followers in the United States to commit acts of violence at home.

"We've especially focused on the portfolio of people we're investigating for the potential of being homegrown violent extremists," the FBI director, James Comey, said last month at a news conference. "That is, people consuming the propaganda. So those investigations are designed to figure out where are they on the spectrum from consuming to acting."

"Within that group we're trying to focus on those we think might be at the highest risk of being a copycat," Comey said, referring to those who may try to follow the attackers in Paris. "And so we are pressing additional resources, additional focus against those. That's the dozens."

On Friday morning, the landlord of the building where Farook and Malik lived in Redlands, California, allowed journalists into the cramped town house near San Bernardino, which investigators had spent nearly two days scouring, leading to the rare sight of dozens of reporters and photographers trampling through what, the day before, had been a crime scene they were not even allowed to approach. Plywood was nailed over the openings where the police and FBI knocked out the doors and windows of the duplex town house, but the sheet of wood across the front entrance had been pried off to allow entry.

In an upstairs bedroom documents including driver's licenses, credit cards and a Social Security card, all in the name of Farook's mother, were strewn across a bed, while tabletops and other surfaces held more papers and books, including copies of the Quran. In the small living room, furniture shared space with a treadmill, a baby bouncer, rolled-up blankets and suitcases, and in the kitchen there was a sink full of dirty dishes and a refrigerator full of food, as if the occupants were expected back at any moment.

Bowdich dismissed any concerns about the security of the scene and any evidence it might have contained, explaining that the FBI had completed its search. "Once we turn that location back over to the occupants of that residence, or once we board it up, anyone that goes in, that has nothing to do with us," he said.

As investigators search for signs of a political or religious motivation for the massacre, the discovery of Malik's Facebook posting has forced them to consider whether any radical impetus came primarily from her more rather than her husband. The couple were killed in a shootout with the police after the attack.

Farook, 28, was a U.S. citizen, born in Illinois, whose parents were from Pakistan. FBI officials came up with no hits when they searched agency databases for his name, according to law enforcement officials. That is significant because it meant that not only was Farook never the focus of an investigation, he was also never mentioned by anyone else interviewed by the FBI, even in unrelated cases.

The bureau, however, has uncovered evidence that Farook had contact with five individuals on whom the FBI had previously opened investigations for possible terrorist activities, law enforcement officials said. All five inquiries were closed, and the contacts were made a few years ago, not recently, the authorities said.

One individual contacted was associated with al-Shabab, the Islamist militant group in Somalia. Another was associated with the Nusra Front, the al-Qaida wing in Syria. None of the other three were tied to the Islamic State or core al-Qaida.

Comey said the FBI is re-examining those contacts, but added, "I would urge you not to make too much of that." The agency is also investigating a person, whom it has not identified, who was the original buyer of the two assault rifles used in the attack. Farook has been identified as the buyer of the two pistols the couple carried.

A cellphone Malik had with her on Wednesday had almost nothing on it - no social media apps or encrypted apps - leading investigators to suspect that it might have been a "burner phone," meant to be used and discarded, the officials said.

Farook had posted profiles on Muslim dating websites, and apparently the couple met online. He told co-workers last year that he was traveling to Saudi Arabia to meet his bride, and both U.S. and Saudi officials have confirmed that he spent more than a week in that country in July 2014.

Farook and Malik traveled to the United States together in July 2014, David Bowdich of the FBI in Los Angeles said at a news conference. He said she had traveled with K-1 visa, a special visa that allows people to come to the country marry a U.S. citizen. A couple has to marry within 90 days; after that the K-1 visa expires.

But people who knew them say they may actually have married in Saudi Arabia, before Malik ever set foot in the United States, possibly as early as 2013.

Farook applied for a permanent resident green card for Malik on Sept. 20, 2014, within the legal 90-day limit, a federal official said. She 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. Malik also had to pass criminal and national security background checks that used FBI and Department of Homeland Security databases.