The FBI was right not to arrest Omar Mateen before the shooting
Citizens should not forfeit their rights if they haven't committed a crime.
The complaint that the FBI, once it had Mateen under suspicion, should have acted more aggressively to stop him illustrates a kind of pathology. By all accounts, Mateen had committed no crime (though his ex-wife later said he had battered her). At the time the FBI decided to close its file on him, he had not joined any terrorist organization, nor attended a terror training camp, nor communicated with terror operatives about any plots. Although he boasted to office colleagues about ties to al Qaeda and Hezbollah, agents found those claims dubious. There is not, as far as we know, even evidence that he had expressed support for violence.
When the FBI has reason to suspect someone of extremist activity, they open an investigative file and gather whatever information they can. But once they conclude that there is no evidence of criminality, they close the file. That’s how it should be: none of us should want permanent inquiries into citizens without evidence of lawbreaking, and we should certainly not want punishments meted out based on unproven suspicions. The FBI followed these principles in closing its file on Mateen, and it deserves praise for that, not armchair criticism. “As I would hope the American people would want, we don’t keep people under investigation indefinitely,” FBI Director James Comey said. If agents “don’t see predication for continuing it, then we close it.”
Whole article here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/06/17/the-fbi-was-right-not-to-arrest-omar-mateen-before-the-shooting/
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