WIFE LOYAL TO ISIS
FBI: 'ACT OF TERROR'
WASHINGTON — The woman who, with her husband, killed 14 people in San Bernardino pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post the day of the attack, officials said Friday, and the F.B.I. announced it was treating the massacre as an act of terrorism.
“The investigation so far has developed indications of radicalization by the killers, and of potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations,” the F.B.I. director, James Comey, said at a news conference here. But, he said: “so far we have no indication that these killers are part of an organized larger group, or form part of a cell. There’s no indication that they are part of a network.”
Tashfeen Malik’s declaration of allegiance to the Islamic State was posted on Facebook about 11 a.m. Wednesday, roughly the time of the shooting, according to people briefed on the investigation. At a news conference in San Bernardino, David Bowdich, the F.B.I. assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles office, said he was aware of the post, but would not say how much it influenced the decision to investigate the massacre as an act of terrorism, or what other information played a role in that shift.
“There’s a number of pieces of evidence which has essentially pushed us off the cliff to say we are considering this an act of terrorism,” he said. Even as its counterterrorism unit was overseeing the investigation, the F.B.I. previously said that terrorism was just one possibility. With the decision to call this a terrorism case, the bureau took over the investigation into the deadliest terrorist assault on American soil since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. A 2009 rampage at the Fort Hood military base killed 13. There is no evidence that the Islamic State directed Ms. Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, to stage the attacks, law enforcement officials said. But the Facebook post has led investigators to believe that the couple, who were killed in a shootout with the police after the attack, took inspiration from the group, they said.
“At this point we believe they were more self-radicalized and inspire d by the group than actually told to do the shooting,” one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. The Islamic State has not released an official statement on the San Bernardino attack, but the Amaq News Agency, which intelligence officials believe is run by Islamic State supporters, released a statement claiming that the killings had been carried out by “supporters of the Islamic State,” according to a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group. Islamic terrorists have used the oath of allegiance, called a bayat, to declare their loyalty to specific groups and leaders. To become a member of Al Qaeda, for instance, terrorists historically swore their devotion to Osama bin Laden.
Investigators are scouring the contents of computers, cellphones and other devices belonging to Ms. Malik and Mr. Farook, including items they attempted to destroy and files they tried to erase; investigators found two cellphones, which had been crushed, in a trash can near their home.
“We are going through a very large volume of electronic evidence,” Mr. Comey said. “This is electronic evidence that these killers tried to destroy and tried to conceal from us.”
That effort to erase the couple’s electronic footprints, and other evidence, like the 12 pipe bombs they had made and stored in their townhouse and garage, have led authorities to believe that the assault was premeditated.
Asked if the couple had been planning more attacks, Mr. Bowdich said, “it’s certainly a possibility we’re looking at.” He said the electronic devices might prove critical to revealing their motivations. “I truly believe that’s going to be the potential golden nuggets,” he said.
On Wednesday morning, law enforcement officials say, Mr. Farook and Ms. Malik walked into a conference center at Inland Regional Center, a social services center, and gunned down people at a combination training session and holiday lunch held by the county health department. Most of the victims were co-workers of Mr. Farook, who worked for the department as a health inspector.
he Facebook posting, which had been removed from the social media site, provides one of the first significant clues to the role that Ms. Malik, 29, played in the attacks.
She was born in Pakistan, and traveled on a Pakistani passport, but grew up in Saudi Arabia, according to Mustafa H. Kuko, director of the Islamic Center of Riverside, which Mr. Farook attended for a few years.
“They were living in Saudi Arabia, but they were Pakistanis,” he said. “They had been in Saudi Arabia for a long time. She grew up in the city of Jeddah.”
A person close to the Saudi government confirmed that Ms. Malik had spent time in Saudi Arabia over the years, staying with her father there, adding that Saudi intelligence agencies had no information that she had any ties to militant groups, and that she was not on any terrorism watch lists.
Ms. Malik returned to Pakistan for college, graduating in 2012 from Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan with a degree in pharmacy, according to local officials in the Layyah District of Punjab Province. They said that her family was originally from a town there, Karor Lal East, and that her father, Malik Gulzar Aulakh, moved with his family to Saudi Arabia about 20 years ago, later moving to the United States; American officials have not confirmed that. Officials in Layyah said intelligence officials visited on Friday and were looking for relatives of Ms. Malik.
Pakistani officials consider the area a center of support for extremist jihadist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba. Some of the most high-profile attacks against the Pakistani military in 2009 were led by a native of the same rural area: Umar Kundi, a medical doctor who became an operative for Al Qaeda. In addition, Multan, an ancient city in Punjab, is considered a hotbed of radicalism.
A Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an continuing investigation, said security officials were looking into Ms. Malik’s time in Pakistan, as well as possible travel there by Mr. Farook.
In recent months, the F.B.I. has been particularly concerned that so-called homegrown extremists might be inspired by the Islamic State to stage attacks in the United States, law enforcement officials say. Even before the attacks in Paris last month, the agency had heavy surveillance on at least three dozen individuals who the authorities were concerned might commit violence in the group’s name.
The F.B.I. refocused its efforts on these individuals earlier this year in response to a shift in tactics by the Islamic State, law enforcement officials said. Instead of trying to persuade Americans to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State, the group began calling on its sympathizers and followers in the United States to commit acts of violence at home.
“We’ve especially focused on the portfolio of people we’re investigating for the potential of being homegrown violent extremists,” the F.B.I. director, Mr. Comey, said last month at a news conference. “That is, people consuming the propaganda. So those investigations are designed to figure out where are they on the spectrum from consuming to acting.”
“Within that group we’re trying to focus on those we think might be at the highest risk of being a copycat,” Mr. Comey said, referring to those who may try to follow the attackers in Paris. “And so we are pressing additional resources, additional focus against those. That’s the dozens.”
On Friday morning, the landlord of the building where Mr. Farook and Ms. Malik lived in Redlands, Calif., allowed journalists into the cramped townhouse near San Bernardino, which investigators had spent nearly two days scouring, leading to the rare sight of dozens of reporters and photographers trampling through what, the day before, had been a crime scene they were not even allowed to approach. Plywood was nailed over the openings where the police and F.B.I. had knocked out the doors and windows of the duplex townhouse, but the sheet of wood across the front entrance had been pried off to allow entry.
In an upstairs bedroom documents including driver’s licenses, credit cards and a Social Security card, all in the name of Mr. Farook’s mother, were strewn across a bed, while tabletops and other surfaces held more papers and books, including copies of the Quran. In the small living room, furniture shared space with a treadmill, a baby bouncer, rolled-up blankets and suitcases, and in the kitchen there was a sink full of dirty dishes and a refrigerator full of food, as if the occupants were expected back at any moment.
Mr. Bowdich dismissed any concerns about the security of the scene and any evidence it might have contained, saying the F.B.I. had completed its search. “Once we turn that location back over to the occupants of that residence, or once we board it up, anyone that goes in, that has nothing to do with us,” he said.
As investigators search for signs of a political or religious motivation for the massacre, the discovery of Ms. Malik’s Facebook posting has forced them to consider whether any radical impetus came primarily from her, rather than her husband.
Mr. Farook, 28, was a United States citizen, born in Illinois, whose parents were from Pakistan. F.B.I. officials came up with no hits when they searched agency databases for his name, according to law enforcement officials. That is significant because it meant that not only was Mr. Farook never the focus of an investigation, he was also never mentioned by anyone else interviewed by the F.B.I., even in unrelated cases.
The bureau, however, has uncovered evidence that Mr. Farook had contact with five individuals on whom the F.B.I. had previously opened investigations for possible terrorist activities, law enforcement officials said. All five inquiries was closed, and the contacts were made a few years ago, not recently, the authorities said.
One individual contacted was associated with the Shabab, the Islamist militant group in Somalia. Another was associated with the Nusra Front, the Qaeda wing in Syria. None of the other three were tied to the Islamic State or core Al Qaeda.
Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. is re-examining those contacts, but added, “I would urge you not to make too much of that.” The agency is also investigating a person, whom it has not identified, who was the original buyer of the two assault rifles used in the attack. Mr. Farook has been identified as the buyer of the two pistols the couple carried.
A cellphone Ms. Malik had with her on Wednesday had almost nothing on it — no social media apps or encrypted apps — leading investigators to suspect that it might have been a “burner phone,” meant to be used and discarded, the officials said.
Mr. Farook had posted profiles on Muslim dating websites, and apparently the couple met online. He told co-workers last year that he was traveling to Saudi Arabia to meet his bride, and both American and Saudi officials have confirmed that he spent more than a week in that country in July 2014.
Mr. Farook, 28, was an American citizen, and he and Ms. Malik traveled to the United States together in July 2014, David Bowdich of the F.B.I. in Los Angeles said at a news conference. He said she had traveled with K-1 visa, a special visa that allows people to come to the country marry an American citizen. A couple has to marry within 90 days; after that the K-1 visa expires.
But people who knew them say they may actually have married in Saudi Arabia, before Ms. Malik ever set foot in the United States, possibly as early as 2013.
Mr. Farook applied for a permanent resident green card for Ms. Malik on Sept. 20, 2014, within the legal 90-day limit, a federal official said. She was granted a conditional green card in July 2015. As a routine matter, to obtain the green card the couple had to prove that their marriage was legitimate. Ms. Malik also had to pass criminal and national security background checks that used F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security databases.
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