The FBI’s repeated non-answers on US terrorism – Latest News
The official response to my column Monday in regards to the FBI’s failure to stop 4 latest Islamic terror assaults has been unsatisfactory, to say the least, and the personal assaults by FBI Director Kash Patel’s non-public PR operatives have been downright deranged.
None of which is reassuring with regards to the FBI’s preparedness to deal with a heightened terror risk on home soil.
It’s not Patel’s fault that our foremost home counterterrorism company has been degraded and politicized below his predecessors, however it’s his job to repair it fast and his defensiveness suggests a drawback.
The most alarming case includes Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a convicted ISIS terrorist who was on supervised federal release when he yelled “Allahu Akbar” and opened fire on an ROTC classroom at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., final Thursday, killing the teacher earlier than being killed himself.
Jalloh, a naturalized US citizen from Sierra Leone, had been launched from federal jail in Allenwood, Pa., on Dec. 23, 2024, having served eight years of an 11-year sentence for “providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization,” the Islamic State group.
Specifically, he deliberate an assault on US navy personnel during Ramadan.
He was positioned on federal supervised release for 5 years till 2029.
‘Not our job’
I requested the FBI if it had forewarning of Jalloh’s assault in Norfolk, seeing he was on supervised release.
But the FBI insists it’s not their job to monitor launched terrorists.
A spokesman replied: “The FBI does not oversee supervised release from prison; that would be up to the federal district courts . . . When the FBI has information or intelligence of a threat, the FBI works with our local and federal law enforcement to address those threats.”
I requested the query in a selection of methods and obtained the identical reply.
Jalloh’s probation officer final visited him in November 2025 in Sterling, Va., the place he lived together with his sister, in keeping with the federal affidavit supporting the prison criticism towards the person accused of promoting him the gun, Kenya Mcchell Chapman, which was filed within the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
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The visits had been scheduled as soon as each six months.
I requested the FBI if it was knowledgeable by Jalloh’s probation officer of his November go to. I obtained the identical reply: “Refer you to the federal district court.”
Jalloh lived simply 22 miles from the FBI’s Washington Field Office (WFO), the bureau’s second largest workplace, whose jurisdiction consists of Sterling, Va.
The WFO was the sphere workplace that dealt with Jalloh’s authentic 2016 arrest, so you’ll assume the FBI would wish to know that Jalloh had been launched from jail and would make an effort to monitor him.
I requested if the FBI had saved an eye on Jalloh within the 14 months since his release; for example had they covertly tailed him, monitored his contacts, his cellphone and pc use, tracked his funds or interacted with him?
The FBI replied: “As said, the FBI does not control supervised release from prison or post-release monitoring, which would include some actions you are referring to.”
That is extraordinary. Any proactive, thorough counterterrorism program ought to have had Jalloh in its sights as a potential risk and not less than made an effort to mitigate it.
At about 12:30 p.m. on March 11, the day earlier than the Norfolk assault, cellphone data show that Jalloh traveled to his alleged gun provider’s home in Smithfield, Va., the place he stayed for 1½ hours, “and then traveled to the vicinity of the Islamic Center of Hampton, Va.,” in keeping with the Chapman affidavit.
He stayed on the mosque for more than 9 hours earlier than returning to Smithfield and staying in a single day.
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No purple flag
That exercise may need raised purple flags if anybody had been tailing him.
In the previous, the FBI has carried out surveillance of convicted Islamic terrorists for years after their release from federal jail.
Did one thing change?
Did then-FBI Director Christopher Wray focus all of the FBI’s counterterrorism efforts on the Biden administration’s new designation of “domestic terrorist”?
Was the company too busy rounding up J6 grandmas for trespass, Catholics for attending Latin mass, and fogeys at school-board conferences complaining about gender idea to fret about monitoring precise Islamist terrorists hellbent on killing infidels?
And if it’s not the FBI’s job, then why is the bureau robotically notified by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) when an inmate with a terrorism conviction is scheduled for release?
“Since 2005 the BOP has provided to the FBI a list of terrorist inmates who are scheduled for release from BOP custody so the FBI could perform appropriate follow-up activities if necessary,” famous a 2020 DOJ Inspector General audit of BOP, confirming “the ongoing policy requirement for identified terrorist inmates to enable FBI/JTTF [multiagency Joint Terrorism Task Force led by the FBI] follow-up, monitoring decisions, and watchlist maintenance.”
Monitored for years
There are a number of well-documented examples of different launched Islamic terrorists being monitored by the FBI for years.
For instance, John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” was launched from jail in 2019 on three years of supervised release, during which the FBI tailed him and photographed him assembly one other launched jihadist, as documented in federal courtroom filings in 2021.
The Lackawanna Six, Yemeni-American males who had been convicted over an al Qaeda plot in 2003, had been launched within the mid-2010s and surveilled by the FBI for years.
High alert
Director Patel positioned the FBI on high alert on Feb. 28 in response to Operation Epic Fury in Iran and declared the bureau was “at the forefront of deterring attacks here at home.”
I requested the FBI if its subject places of work, together with the WFO, responded to the high alert by taking stock of potential terrorism topics like Jalloh?
What further steps, if any, had been taken to find and monitor Jalloh?
The FBI replied: “As Director Patel said on 2/28, the FBI’s counterterrorism and intelligence teams were instructed to be on high alert and mobilize all assisting security assets needed. The FBI’s JTTFs throughout the country are working 24/7, as always, to address and disrupt any potential threats to the homeland.”
Well, they failed to try this 4 occasions prior to now three weeks.
The solutions from the FBI odor like obfuscation.
What are they attempting to cover?
