Orlando Massacre: Who Ordered FBI Agents to Stand Down?

America is not safe.  And the FBI is a big part of the problem.  The FBI’s intentional failure to follow standard law enforcement practices and the resulting horrific murders in Orlando, Florida are a case in point. 

In the early morning hours of June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen entered the Pulse nightclub in Orlando for the last time.  Mateen, who was previously under the FBI’s radar, arrived armed with a Sig Sauer MCX semi-automatic rifle and a Glock 17 9mm semi-automatic pistol.  Then, with the cold-blooded demeanor of an executioner, Mateen proceeded to systematically murder 49 people and injure 53 others.  Before the 29-year-old assailant died in a shootout with police, he posted a warning on Facebook that “in the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic state in the usa.”  He also called CNN affiliate News 13 in Orlando to announce “I did it for ISIS; I did it for the Islamic State.” 

Many have asked “Why did this have to happen?” and “What could have been done to prevent this from happening?”  The answer to these questions is surprisingly simple, yet disturbing. The Orlando murders didn’t have to happen and the FBI could have stopped Mateen before he fired a single shot—if the FBI had performed one of the most basic, low-tech investigative procedures used by detectives everywhere.

Instead of properly performing their jobs, the FBI’s agents acted as though they had received a stand-down order.  This startling conclusion isn’t hindsight, second-guessing, or supposition.  This conclusion is an inescapable fact when the chronology of key events leading up to the murders is carefully examined.

Let’s start with the FBI’s original investigation of Mateen that began in May 2013.  Mateen was then a security guard assigned to the St. Lucie County Courthouse since September 2007.  He was licensed to carry firearms as part of his job.  He was employed by G4S, the largest private security firm in the world.  G4S also happens to have contracts with the Department of Homeland Security.

The FBI launched its investigation after the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office requested that Mateen be removed from the Courthouse patrol when he made inflammatory comments to Courthouse staff.

According to St. Lucie Sheriff Ken Mascara, in a TV news interview, those comments included “berating women. . . berating Jews. . . [and] his allegiance to the Fort Hood shooter [Nidal Malik Hasan, who murdered 13 people and injured more than 30 others on November 5, 2009].”  Mascara said that “those comments brought immediate alarm to my staff and their supervisors at the Courthouse.”  After Mascara’s supervisor requested that Mateen be removed from the Courthouse, he immediately contacted the FBI to explain what happened.

According to FBI Director James Brien Comey, Jr., the FBI investigated Mateen’s travel history, transactional records, phone records, and acquaintances, and interviewed him twice.  The FBI also conducted limited surveillance and searches, and recorded conversations.  Comey noted that Mateen’s coworkers heard him say that he had connections to terrorist groups Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, and that he hoped to martyr himself in a confrontation with the law. 

The FBI also employed a confidential informant to test Mateen’s readiness to engage in terrorism.  Since 9/11, the FBI has relied extensively on informants to carry out sting operations in which agent provocateurs lure and assist would-be terrorists into attempting to perform terrorist acts.  Then, if they bite, the FBI arrests the dupes when the Agency has sufficient incriminating evidence against them.  Mateen, apparently, didn’t take the bait.

Mascara said that the FBI discussed the progress of its investigation with him “over the course of about ten months, and at the conclusion of their investigation, they [said] there was no substance to [Mateen] being a threat to our community or to anyone else.”

After the FBI closed its investigation in March 2014, Mateen’s name resurfaced in connection with an FBI investigation of Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha.  Abu-Salha, age 22, an American suicide bomber for the Al-Nusra Front, died in Syria on May 25, 2014 while fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad.  Mateen and Abu-Salha attended the same mosque, the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce.

The FBI reopened its investigation of Mateen in July 2014.  The Agency interviewed him a third time.  The FBI soon closed its investigation, though, claiming there were no significant ties between Mateen and Abu-Salha.  Mateen was officially off the FBI’s radar.

Around mid-May 2016, however, the FBI received a hot tip that should have immediately raised red flags and set off loud alarms at the Agency.  Robert Abell, co-owner of Lotus Gunworks in Jensen Beach, Florida and his son reported to the FBI that a young man entered their store and spoke to one of the store’s salesmen. The young man requested level III body armor and 1,000 rounds of ammunition, asked atypical questions about the body armor and spoke to someone on his mobile phone in Arabic or another foreign language.  Level III body armor provides protection against nearly all military bullet calibers.  

The young man seemed to fit the profile of a potential terrorist and he properly raised the suspicions of the salesman waiting on him.  Who besides someone preparing for armed combat would want to make these purchases?  When the salesman wouldn’t sell the young man what he wanted, he left the store.

The FBI spoke with Lotus Gunworks’ staff twice and wanted to know several things.  Did the store’s video security system record the young man?  Did the staff know the young man’s name?  Date of birth?  Charge card information?  Telephonic information?  Email address?  The answer to all of these questions, unfortunately, was “no.”

Yet, shockingly, the FBI performed no follow up with anyone at Lotus Gunworks.  The FBI acted as though it had come to a dead end.  But the real investigation would have just begun if the FBI were truly a “threat-focused national security organization” with a mission “to protect the American people,” as it purports to be on its fbi.gov website.  This mass murder case demonstrates that neither claim is true.

While the FBI chose to do nothing with Lotus Gunworks’ lead, any dedicated detective at even the most cash-strapped police department would know exactly what to do next, let alone the agents at an $8.5 billion a year organization like the FBI.

A genuine detective’s next step in these circumstances would be to present a photo lineup to Lotus Gunworks’ staff to discover the identity of the subject young man.    The photos would include, of course, pictures of young men that look similar to the description of the subject.  The photo lineup procedures are described in “Eyewitness Evidence: A Trainer’s Manual for Law Enforcement,” a September 2003 publication issued by the U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI.

Had the FBI followed this time-tested procedure practiced by law enforcement professionals everywhere, the FBI’s agents would have easily connected the dots leading to Omar Mateen.  In fact, as agents began to assemble the photo lineup, they would have realized that Mateen was most likely the subject that tried to buy the body armor and bulk ammunition.  After all, he not only fit the subject’s description, but the FBI already had an extensive file on him making terrorist threats.  And finally, Mateen resided in Fort Pierce, only 15 miles away from Lotus Gunworks in Jensen Beach.  Mateen was a perfect match for the subject, and the photo lineup procedure would have only confirmed the subject’s identity.

If the FBI had followed standard procedures, it would have opened the Mateen investigation a third time.  The FBI would have easily met all necessary legal requirements to surveil his activities and movements; to search his property, records, and documents; and to monitor all of his means of communication.  The Agency could have initiated all of these things well before the end of May 2016.

The FBI would have discovered that Mateen had already made some significant changes in his life.  For example, on April 5, 2015, he transferred his Port St. Lucie house to his brother-in-law Mustafa Abasin and his sister Sabrina Abasin for $100 consideration.  Agents would have learned that Mateen’s wife, Noor Salman, signed as a witness to the transaction.  They would have also learned that he named his wife to his life insurance policy and that he made sure that she had access to his bank account.

FBI agents would have observed Mateen’s next major move.  On June 4, 2016, he purchased the Sig Sauer rifle from the St. Lucie Shooting Center in Fort St. Lucie, about 11 miles from his Fort Pierce residence.  He returned to this store on June 5 to purchase the Glock pistol.

Finally, the FBI would have learned of Mateen’s plan to commit murders at the Pulse nightclub.  Agents surveilling Mateen, tracking his every move, and monitoring every phone call he made or received, would have recognized that he was scouting the nightclub for exactly that purpose.

On the evening of June 11, the FBI would have known that Mateen had taken his weapons and was making the two-hour drive to Orlando.  And in the early morning hours of June 12, other armed undercover agents would have been ready and waiting for him at the nightclub.  The FBI could have prevented Mateen from killing or injuring anyone.  But the FBI did none of these things, starting with the Agency’s decision not to perform the photo lineup.

Also troubling is the fact that the Agency is shameless about its inaction.  Here is how the FBI described its nonintervention in its Tampa Office press release dated June 17:

In May 2016, while following up on an unrelated investigative matter, FBI agents made contact with the Lotus Gunworks. During this visit, Lotus personnel advised that there had been an individual who had been in the store days earlier asking about a specific type of body armor. Because the store did not carry that particular style of body armor, it referred this unknown individual elsewhere but was unable to collect any information about him, to include name, date of birth, charge card, telephonic information, or e-mail address. After the June 12, 2016 shooting at Pulse, Lotus personnel notified the FBI that the unknown individual who had visited their store in May resembled the Pulse shooter. Unfortunately, given the lack of information about this individual, FBI agents were unable to conduct any meaningful investigative follow up . [Emphasis added.]

The FBI artfully attempts to shift the blame for its own inertia to Lotus Gunworks’ staff and suggests that they should have collected information to identify the “unknown individual.”  But the store’s staff should not be expected to have that information since they never made the sale.  Everyone at Lotus Gunworks performed professionally and admirably at all times throughout this case.  Connecting the simple dots here was the FBI’s job. 

As a further insult to the American public, Comey made the following statement on June 13, 2016 about the case:

[W]e will work all day and all night to understand the path [of Mateen] to that terrible night.  We’re also going to look hard at our own work to see whether there is something we should have done differently.  So far, the honest answer is: I don’t think so.  I don’t see anything in reviewing our work that our agents should have done differently, but we’ll look at it in an open and honest way, and be transparent about it.    

But Comey has been far from honest and transparent with the American public.  Of course, Comey knows that there were many things that the FBI “should have done differently” in this case, starting with the Agency’s decision not to do the photo lineup.  Moreover, the FBI’s failure to perform the photo lineup could not have been an oversight, a mistake, or the result of poor training or incompetence.

Comey’s disingenuous statement indicates that the FBI’s unwillingness to protect American lives is a problem pointing to the very top of the Agency and the individuals in the U.S. Government that oversee its operations.  The Orlando case underscores the FBI’s systemic corruption that prevents genuine professionals within the Agency from properly performing their jobs. 

Meanwhile, the politicians and the media have totally ignored the FBI’s blatant law enforcement failure that led to one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.  Instead, U.S. Government officials have exploited the murders to further expand the Government’s powers over the lives of law-abiding Americans at the expense of their civil liberties. 

In the wake of the Orlando massacre, Republicans and Democrats sought to pass McCain Amendment 4787 that would further erode the Fourth Amendment by permitting the FBI to search and track—without a warrant—an individual’s web browser history, IP address, email metadata, the number of times an individual signs in and out of accounts, and other personal information.  Comey indicated that making this change in the law was one of the FBI’s top priorities.  The McCain Amendment, for now, was narrowly defeated in the Senate. 

Others have used the Orlando murders as an opportunity to push for laws that would erode the Second Amendment.  For example, Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, a Homeland Security advisor to President Obama, and a former FBI counter-terrorism agent, said in response to the Orlando mass murders that “What we need to do is keep the ownership of guns known to the Government, so we know who has what.”  And, of course, many politicians continue to urge enactment of stricter gun control laws.

The real problem in this case, however, remains unaddressed.  Congress clearly needs to take action to begin the process of cleaning house in the FBI.  A thorough, competent, and independent investigation of the FBI’s inaction in the tragic Orlando massacre is the place to start to determine the people responsible for it and to help prevent future failures, no matter how high up in the chain of command the problem lies.  Until the public and the politicians face the facts presented here for the first time, there will inevitably be more such massacres in the future.   

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James Feldman has performed scores of investigations involving fraud, procurement and contract schemes, and fictitious documents.  One investigation led to convictions in the largest municipal fraud case in Pennsylvania history. He has testified before Congress on government corruption.  He has investigated some of the world’s largest corporate frauds, including AOL-Time Warner, Enron, and HealthSouth, helping to recover billions of dollars for investors. And he has successfully collaborated with many investigative agencies, including the FBI; the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office; the IRS Criminal Investigation Division; and the Office of the Inspector General (U.S. Department of Labor), Division of Labor Racketeering.