Omar Mateen was placed on a terrorist watch list maintained by the FBI when its agents questioned him in 2013 and 2014 about potential ties to terrorism, according to U.S. law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the case.
He was subsequently removed from that database after the FBI closed its two investigations, one official said.
In the first investigation, Mateen was questioned by FBI agents after they were told he had made inflammatory comments that co-workers worried were sympathetic to terrorists.
The FBI agents determined that Mateen had not broken any laws and closed the investigation, a second official said.
They questioned Mateen again the following year because agents had learned he had contact with an American who later died in a suicide bombing in Syria.
Agents closed that investigation because they concluded the contacts with the suicide bomber had been minimal, an FBI official said.
Even if Mateen were still on the terrorist watch list — known as the Terrorist Screening Database — the designation would not have precluded him from buying the semiautomatic pistol and assault-style rifle that he used in Sunday's massacre.
So yeah, in this case the FBI's watch list proved utterly useless. They closed their investigations, he went on to buy guns, and he slaughtered 49 people with them.
You know what? I have a whole hell of a lot less trust in the FBI and our surveillance regime than I did last week, and I'm thinking it's more than past time to ask some very pointed questions about whether or not Patriot Act powers are still necessary for law enforcment.
Between this and police abuses over the last decade, I've finally gotten around to the idea that we need to roll back this stuff in a major way.
Correct me if I'm wrong, guys, but this has to be yet another department where Obama has utterly failed, and Jesus it's hard to defend the guy sometimes.
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