DHS insider describes 'large hole' in how cops deal with terror

It's a script that's played out before, with slight variations. A law-enforcement agency encounters someone shady, and there are reasonable concerns about disturbing things the person has said or done.

But the agency can't find probable cause to either make an arrest or continue the investigation, so it lets the individual drift off its radar.

Then, months or years later, the person commits a horrific act of terror, and Americans learn that law enforcement had the perpetrator in its sights at one point but failed to prevent the tragedy.

Such was the case in Fort Hood, San Bernardino, Orlando and now Fort Lauderdale.

"However they want to explain it, it's beginning to become painfully obvious that there is a discrepancy, a large hole in the way law enforcement investigates or addresses these kinds of cases," said Philip Haney, a former Customs and Border Protection officer. "We've seen too many of them now."

The latest perpetrator, 26-year-old Esteban Santiago, seemed to serve himself up on a silver platter to the FBI. In November, he walked into an FBI office in Anchorage, Alaska, and told agents he was hearing voices and being forced by the CIA to watch ISIS videos.

Santiago had previously been arrested and charged with assault and criminal mischief for allegedly attacking his girlfriend and attempting to strangle her. He subsequently broke the terms of his release on that charge by entering the woman’s home again. He had also served in Iraq for the Army Reserves and the Alaska National Guard but was discharged after going AWOL several times.

However, the FBI agents in the Anchorage office handed Santiago off to local police, who arranged for a psychiatric evaluation. But the evaluation concluded with no recommendations for followup or medication, and Santiago was released. He was not placed on the federal no-fly list, and he was even allowed to keep the gun he was carrying when he walked into the FBI office.

Fast-forward to last Friday, when Santiago flew from Alaska to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, where he killed five people and wounded six others, using what is believed to be that very gun.

Haney, who chronicled his tribulations as a DHS whistleblower in his book "See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government's Submission to Jihad," noted the TSA is the only real line of defense for a domestic flight such as the one Santiago took.

Therefore, the TSA must communicate with the FBI to try and prevent a man like Santiago from checking a gun in his luggage in the future. In this case, it seems clear to Haney that either the FBI did not have any information that would have prevented Santiago from flying with a gun or there was a disconnect between two law-enforcement agencies.

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"Either the FBI didn't have anything and TSA didn't have anything and they came up blank, or one or the other did have something and the vetting process didn't work," Haney reasoned.

Haney pointed out Santiago adopted the name "Aashiq Hammad" several years ago, which means "lover of the praiseworthy one," meaning Allah. As WND previously reported, Santiago created a MySpace account under the name Aashiq Hammad and recorded Islamic religious music that he posted on his page. In 2007, he also posted on an explosives- and-weapons forum information about mass-downloading Islamic terrorist propaganda videos.

That fact should be more noteworthy than it has been, in Haney's view.

"No one initially acknowledged the connections between the shooter and his beliefs, in particular with Islam," he said. "I've heard very little reference on his background vis-à-vis Islam, nor is there any indication of his involvement or affiliations with any other individuals or organizations."

Haney said the Fort Lauderdale shooting highlights the deficiencies in the process law-enforcement agencies are using to evaluate and follow up on individuals with potential links to terrorism. Based on his own experience, Haney believes the Obama administration has something to do with the ineffectiveness of the FBI and other crucial law-enforcement agencies.

"Because of this administration's policies, it has gradually over time made it more and more difficult for law enforcement officers to simply follow through and do their job," Haney explained. "And the indicators were there, so that's really the question: Why were the indicators missed? And if we're ever going to learn anything from these events that are becoming distressingly familiar, then we're going to have to answer those questions: Why were the indicators missed or, more ominously, ignored?

"There has to be a remedy. Something needs to change, and it's becoming quite obvious that law enforcement officials need to be given the authority to do their job the way that we took our vow to do it. Otherwise, we're going to keep seeing these things happen over and over again, with more frequency, sadly."