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12/13/2015 U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/sanbernardinoattacksusvisaprocesstashfeenmaliksremarksonsocialmediaaboutjihadweremissed.ht… 1/6
http://nyti.ms/1Z5d6tp
U.S.
U.S. Visa Process Missed SanBernardino Wife’s Zealotry on SocialMediaBy MATT APUZZO, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and JULIA PRESTON DEC. 12, 2015
WASHINGTON — Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out themassacre in San Bernardino, Calif., passed three background checks byAmerican immigration officials as she moved to the United States fromPakistan. None uncovered what Ms. Malik had made little effort to hide —that she talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad.
She said she supported it. And she said she wanted to be a part of it.
American law enforcement officials said they recently discovered thoseold — and previously unreported — postings as they pieced together thelives of Ms. Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, trying tounderstand how they pulled off the deadliest terrorist attack on Americansoil since Sept. 11, 2001.
Had the authorities found the posts years ago, they might have kepther out of the country. But immigration officials do not routinely reviewsocial media as part of their background checks, and there is a debate insidethe Department of Homeland Security over whether it is even appropriate
12/13/2015 U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/sanbernardinoattacksusvisaprocesstashfeenmaliksremarksonsocialmediaaboutjihadweremissed.ht… 2/6
to do so.
The discovery of the old social media posts has exposed a significant —and perhaps inevitable — shortcoming in how foreigners are screened whenthey enter the United States, particularly as people everywhere disclosemore about themselves online. Tens of millions of people are cleared eachyear to come to this country to work, visit or live. It is impossible to conductan exhaustive investigation and scour the social media accounts of each ofthem, law enforcement officials say.
In the aftermath of terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Paris, thisscreening process has been singled out as a major vulnerability in thenation’s defense against terrorism. Lawmakers from both parties haveendorsed making it harder for people to enter the United States if they haverecently been in Iraq or Syria. Donald J. Trump, the Republicanpresidential candidate, has said there should be a temporary ban onMuslims’ entering the country.
While President Obama has cautioned against “a betrayal of ourvalues” in the way the United States responds to threats, he has ordered areview of the K1 visa program, which allows foreigners like Ms. Malik tomove to the United States to marry Americans, putting them on a pathwayto permanent residence and, ultimately, citizenship.
The Obama administration is trying to determine whether thosebackground checks can be expanded without causing major delays in thepopular program. In an attempt to ensure they did not miss threats frommen and women who entered the country the same way Ms. Malik did,immigration officials are also reviewing all of about 90,000 K1 visas issuedin the past two years and are considering a moratorium on new ones whilethey determine whether changes should be made.
“Somebody entered the United States through the K1 visa programand proceeded to carry out an act of terrorism on American soil,” the WhiteHouse spokesman, Josh Earnest, said on Thursday. “That program is at aminimum worth a very close look.”
12/13/2015 U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/sanbernardinoattacksusvisaprocesstashfeenmaliksremarksonsocialmediaaboutjihadweremissed.ht… 3/6
In an era when technology has given intelligence agencies seeminglylimitless ability to collect information on people, it may seem surprisingthat a Facebook or Twitter post could go unnoticed in a backgroundscreening. But the screenings are an example of the tradeoffs that securityofficials make as they try to mitigate the threat of terrorism while keepingborders open for business and travel.
“We run people against watch lists and that’s how we decided if theyget extra screening,” said C. Stewart Verdery Jr., a senior HomelandSecurity official during George W. Bush’s administration. “In cases wherethose lists don’t hit, there’s nothing that distinguishes them from people wewould love to welcome to this country.”
Ms. Malik faced three extensive national security and criminalbackground screenings. First, Homeland Security officials checked hername against American law enforcement and national security databases.Then, her visa application went to the State Department, which checked herfingerprints against other databases. Finally, after coming to the UnitedStates and formally marrying Mr. Farook here, she applied for her greencard and received another round of criminal and security checks.
Ms. Malik also had two inperson interviews, federal officials said, thefirst by a consular officer in Pakistan, and the second by an immigrationofficer in the United States when she applied for her green card.
All those reviews came back clear, and the F.B.I. has said it had noincriminating information about Ms. Malik or Mr. Farook in its databases.The State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have saidthey followed all policies and procedures. The departments declined toprovide any documentation or specifics about the process, saying theycannot discuss the case because of the continuing investigation.
Meanwhile, a debate is underway at United States Citizenship andImmigration Services, the agency that approves visas and green cards, overwhether officers conducting interviews should be allowed to routinely usematerial gathered from social media for interviews where they assess
12/13/2015 U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/sanbernardinoattacksusvisaprocesstashfeenmaliksremarksonsocialmediaaboutjihadweremissed.ht… 4/6
whether foreigners are credible or pose any security risk. With that issue
unresolved, the agency has not regularly been using social mediareferences, federal officials said.
After the terrorist attacks in Paris last month, a furor arose overwhether the United States should accept Syrian refugees. Governors inmore than two dozen states balked at accepting any. But the vetting forrefugees is a separate, longer and more rigorous process than the checks forK1 and most other immigrant visas. And there is an extra layer of scrutinyfor Syrians, who are referred to a national security and fraud office at theDepartment of Homeland Security for a final look. In that last step, officerscan include a social media search, federal officials said.
As part of their investigation into the electronic trail of Ms. Malik andMr. Farook, investigators are searching for devices, including a computerhard drive that appeared to be missing from their home, and cellphonesthey might have abandoned.
On Saturday, a team of divers from the F.B.I. and the San BernardinoCounty Sheriff’s Department continued their search for those devices inSeccombe Lake in a park about two miles from the site of the Dec. 2 attack.The divers pulled items from the murky waters of the lake, which they havebeen scouring since Thursday. However, officials would not specify whatwas found or if it was relevant to the investigation. They cautioned thatsuch searches, particularly one in a bustling public park, tend to dredge updebris from many sources, and that investigators still have to determine thevalue of what was found.
Since its inception in 2002, the Department of Homeland Security hasbeen trying to find the right balance between security and ease ofmovement — a balance that equates to billions of dollars in trade andtourism each year.
“Compared to where we were 15 years ago, we’ve moved the needlevery far to the right on security,” Mr. Verdery said.
12/13/2015 U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/sanbernardinoattacksusvisaprocesstashfeenmaliksremarksonsocialmediaaboutjihadweremissed.ht… 5/6
Still, he said, officials have to decide who gets extra scrutiny. Today thegovernment focuses its attention on people in certain fields or from certaincountries — foreign scientists, for instance, or young men from the MiddleEast. As a woman, Ms. Malik likely raised less suspicion, Mr. Verdery said.
Investigators are particularly interested in Ms. Malik’s life in Pakistanin the years before she moved to the United States. They believe that waswhen she was radicalized.
From 2007 to 2012, she lived in a university hostel and then with hermother and sister Fehda at a family home in Multan, Pakistan. While there,Ms. Malik studied to be a pharmacist, and she took extra classes at the localbranch of a womenonly institute that teaches a strict literalistinterpretation of the Quran, although it does not advocate violent jihad.
In a brief telephone interview on Saturday, the sister, Fehda Malik,said Tashfeen Malik was not an extremist, and she rejected the allegationsagainst her sister.
“I am the one who spent most of the time with my sister,” she said. “Noone knows her more than me. She had no contact with any militantorganization or person, male or female.”
She said her sister was religious, studied the Quran and prayed fivetimes a day. “She knew what was right and what was wrong,” Fehda Maliksaid. She added that the family was “very worried and tense,” beforehanging up the phone.
On social media, Fehda Malik has made provocative comments of herown. In 2011, on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, she posted aremark on Facebook beside a photo of a plane crashing into the WorldTrade Center that could be interpreted as antiAmerican.
Social media comments, by themselves, however, are not alwaysdefinitive evidence. In Pakistan — as in the United States — there is noshortage of crass and inflammatory language. And it is often difficult todistinguish Islamist sentiments and those driven by political hostility
12/13/2015 U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/sanbernardinoattacksusvisaprocesstashfeenmaliksremarksonsocialmediaaboutjihadweremissed.ht… 6/6
toward the United States. At the time Fehda Malik’s comment was posted,antiAmerican sentiment in Pakistan was particularly high; four monthsearlier, American commandos had secretly entered Pakistan and killedOsama bin Laden.
Matt Apuzzo and Michael S. Schmidt reported from Washington, and JuliaPreston from New York. Declan Walsh contributed reporting from Cairo,Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Rick Rojas from SanBernardino, Calif.
A version of this article appears in print on December 13, 2015, on page A1 of the New Yorkedition with the headline: Visa Screening Missed an Attacker’s Zealotry on Social Media .
© 2015 The New York Times Company