FBI Pushing to Label Orlando Shooting 'Terrorism' for Funding, Whistleblower Says

By Ken Klippenstein, Reader Supported News

23 June 16

ays after the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, FBI Director James Comey said there �are strong indications of radicalization by this killer, and a potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations.� Former FBI agent Coleen Rowley disagrees; RSN got in touch with her to find out why.

Rowley made headlines in 2002 when she blew the whistle and exposed critical FBI lapses regarding 9/11. (TIME magazine would later name her �Person of the Year� for 2002.) Rowley also published an open letter to Robert Mueller, warning him that invading Iraq would lead to an increase in terrorist attacks. Her warning proved prophetic: as Rowley told me, �terrorism is increasing�by some accounts it�s increased by 6,000%�, even as �our own generals tell us we�re radicalizing more people and making more enemies.�

The terror attacks mostly occur in foreign countries. Here in the US, the violence takes a different form: mass shootings. As Rowley pointed out to me, �There�s been nearly 1,000 mass shootings since Sandy Hook�most of those are employee workplace things, hate crimes like Dylann Roof.�

How many of these shootings could be characterized as jihadi terrorism? �Very few,� Rowley says; most of these she calls �senseless shootings� that were carried out by mentally disturbed individuals lacking any coherent motive � much less a political one typical of jihadi terror attacks.

Asked why she disagrees with Comey�s rhetoric about the Orlando killer�s �radicalization�, Rowley doesn�t mince words: �When Comey came on and gave his speech today he said, �Oh, we�re trying to find the motive� � they didn�t say that about the Aurora theater [killing]�these are senseless shootings and they don�t make much sense to normal people with rational minds.�

After the shooting, the media were quick to publicize allegations that the shooter, Omar Mateen, professed allegiance to jihadi groups. Rowley dismisses this, explaining, �he said he was Hezbollah but then he says he�s pledging allegiance to ISIS. None of that makes any sense.� (Indeed, Hezbollah and ISIS are hated enemies, suggesting Mateen had no comprehension of the groups to which he claimed allegiance.) Therefore, Rowley considers it �simplistic� to classify the Orlando shooting as terrorism.

Yet Mateen�s incoherent pronouncements coupled with the overwhelming frequency of non-jihadi mass shootings in the US evidently did nothing to stop Comey from using the word �terrorist.� Why? As Rowley put it to me, �to the extent that they turn this into terrorism that�s political�for funding.�

�Many of the cases, many of these prosecutions are just tangentially related to terrorism. There�s visa frauds and things. They�re grasping to try to make this [about terror]. When they send in their statistics of prosecutions and they can claim it�s related to terrorism their office funding and their office manpower goes up. I think the Minnesota office [Minnesota has a large Muslim population] for instance has vastly increased�A lot of pressure on the office to categorize things as terrorism that normally could fall into other crimes�.

�Certainly [Comey] does have an incentive to call it terrorism.�

Setting aside what to label the attack, I asked Rowley what she made of the fact that the FBI had investigated Mateen but failed to stop him. What might have went wrong?

�This was the whole rational for vacuuming up trillions of pieces of data: that it would somehow tell us who the terrorists were so we could prevent terrorism. That�s a colossal failure; it�s always been a colossal failure.�

She has a point: researchers found the NSA�s entire dragnet surveillance program only led to one single case, in which a cab driver was convicted of sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia. Alternatively, a member of the White House review panel on NSA�s bulk collection program said that it stopped no terror attacks whatsoever.

Far from assisting law enforcement, according to Rowley, in response to NSA�s �collect-it-all� program, �some FBI agents actually muttered under their breath, �They�re going on wild goose chases� because this all amounted to nothing.�

�How do you make sense of the data when you have all of this coming in?�

Ken Klippenstein is an American journalist who can be reached on twitter @kenklippenstein or via email: kenneth.klippenstein@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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