DEBKAfile June 15, 2016
"The CIA has provided Poland's domestic security organization, the ABW, with intelligence information regarding the possibility of a terrorist attack in the Polish capital Warsaw. It also provided warnings, although less specific ones, to Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Germany on possible attacks in their capitals."Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A.......
The Orlando killer had long been overdue for close monitoring, or least a flag to prevent him from working as a security officer or carrying arms.
In 2013-14, the FBI interviewed him after he made "inflammatory remarks" to a colleague, before closing its investigation. In 2014, the FBI hauled him in again over a connection with Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, a 22-year old Palestinian American. They had grown up together at the small Florida coastal town of Fort Pierce. Abu Salha went off to Syria, joined the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and killed himself in a suicide attack by driving a massive truck bomb into a restaurant filled with Syrian government soldiers.Yet the FBI against closed the file on Mateen after determining that the links between the two young Muslims did not warrant a full-dress inquiry.
Compiling all the known data on the Orlando killer with the results of the FBI interviews with him would have placed him high on the list of suspects and called in for further questioning.
The oversights of US law enforcement, intelligence and security agencies recur each time Islamist terrorists strike. The Ramadan 2016 attack in Orlando showed that no lessons had been learned from the lapses that led to 9/11. The FBI erred gravely in closing the case over the Mateen connection with the Palestinian American suicide bomber. This explains why senior FBI officials are down-playing the importance of that connection.
When he was exculpated, the federal authorities also discontinued electronic surveillance of the terrorist’s movements.