“What it indicates is he was financing this operation, or his life or his afterlife for his child and mother, using what is now wire fraud and bank fraud, so it’s just two more additional charges that the FBI will be looking at,” former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente said.
Both Farook and Malik were radicalized at least two years ago, and perhaps prior to that, according to coverage on every media outlet. They were prepared enough, and educated enough to try and smash every cell phone, computer device and anything else they thought might have provided information to law enforcement officials.
There are many serious pressures being brought to bear on people very high up on the food chain in the United States and in related offices elsewhere in the world as well. News organizations are not invulnerable to radical Islamic intimidation, nor are they immune from political pressure, be it exerted domestically or abroad. Safety is often paramount when a CEO makes an executive news decision, even though that does not always become known even at the newsroom level, let alone on the website or TV.
But someone has to keep those facts front and center, and also ask this question: Why weren’t these people on a terror watch list, and where was the FBI when Farook and his first partner were planning that initial attack? More to the point, where was the FBI — which has field offices in nearly every Muslim majority country in the world — when Farook and Malik got together and began planning the San Bernardino massacre?