Shooter believed mind was under electromagnetic attack, official says

Washington: The man who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last week left behind electronic documents saying that the government had been attacking his brain for the past three months using "extremely low frequency" electromagnetic waves created by the Navy, and that was the reason he needed to lash out, senior law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

The documents provide the most detailed explanation to date for what investigators believe motivated the rampage by Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old military contractor and former Navy reservist from Fort Worth, Texas, who was killed in a shootout with the police at the navy yard.

"Ultra low frequency attack is what I've been subject to for the last three months," Alexis wrote in one document found by investigators, Valerie Parlave, the assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington Field Office, said at a news conference Wednesday.

"And to be perfectly honest, that is what has driven me to this," Alexis wrote.

Alexis also said "he was prepared to die in the attack and accepted death as the inevitable consequence of his actions," Parlave said.

It is not clear whether he sent the documents to anyone.

Alexis's employer, a computer services company called The Experts, spoke to him Sept. 13, three days before the shootings, about a "routine performance issue," Parlave said. But law enforcement officials said they did not believe that discussion was a motivating factor for the shootings.

The officials also said they had found no evidence that Alexis targeted co-workers and that the shootings appeared to be random.

Alexis had a history of angry outbursts over the past decade, and he had been arrested three times in three states, although he was never prosecuted in any of those incidents. Shortly after the FBI's news conference, Hewlett-Packard Co., the principal contractor on the computer services work at the navy yard, announced that it had terminated its relationship with The Experts. Alexis worked at numerous military installations for The Experts over the past year, but had started working at the navy yard just a week before the shootings.

Hewlett-Packard "has lost all confidence in The Experts' ability to meet its contractual obligations and serve as an HP subcontractor," said Hewlett-Packard's director of global contingent labor, Henry Dreschler, in a letter to The Experts' chief executive, Thomas E. Hoshko.

A Hewlett-Packard spokesman, Michael Thacker, declined to comment on the letter. But in an email he said, "Based on what we now know about The Experts' conduct, including its failure to respond appropriately to Aaron Alexis' mental health issues and certain incidents recently reported in the press, HP has terminated its relationship with The Experts."

A month before the shootings, Alex told the police in Newport, R.I., that he had been hearing voices sent by a "microwave machine." Logs from the hotel where Alexis was staying show that officials at The Experts were aware of his "unstable" condition and brought him home. But it is unclear what the company did to address his problems after that.

The Experts said in a statement that a site manager for Hewlett-Packard in Rhode Island had "closely supervised" Alexis, "including during the events" there. The company said it was "disappointed in HP's decision" because it "had no greater insight into Alexis's mental health than HP."

The Navy has used low frequency electromagnetic waves, or ELF, for submarine communications. But some conspiracy theorists say the government has weaponised the frequencies to monitor and manipulate unsuspecting citizens, Parlave said. The phrases "my ELF weapon," "end to the torment," "not what ya'll say" and "better off this way," were etched into the side of the shotgun that Alexis used to kill many of the victims, she said.

The authorities also released surveillance videos Wednesday showing Alexis arriving alone in a car at the navy yard's parking garage, assembling his shotgun and walking down a hallway, ducking in and out of doorways, before opening fire.

The video, which appears to be edited to exclude images of people being shot, does not show him in the atrium area overlooking the cafeteria where several people were killed as they ate breakfast.

Documents released by the government Wednesday detail search warrants obtained as part of the investigation. In a backpack Alexis carried onto the Naval base, he had a flash drive, an external hard drive and several compact discs. At his hotel, the authorities found a laptop in his room.

At the Pentagon on Wednesday, Ashton B. Carter, the deputy defense secretary, told reporters that the military had started three reviews of its security procedures in response to the shooting. The reviews will examine potential flaws in base security, background investigations and other areas that could have allowed the navy yard shooting to occur. Alexis was granted a midlevel security clearance in 2007 while he was a reservist that allowed him to obtain a special card giving him access to military bases for The Experts.

"The bottom line is, we need to know how an employee was able to bring a weapon and ammunition onto a DOD installation and how warning flags were either missed, ignored or not addressed in a timely manner," Carter said.