The instant that I read the names of yesterday’s husband-and-wife San Bernardino shooters — Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27 — I said to myself, as did hundreds of thousands of others across the globe, “The fact that these guys are of Middle-Eastern ancestry and have Pakistan family ties means that somehow or some way the killings were probably prompted by Islamic wackzaoid theology and//or terrorist sympathies. I don’t want to think this way, but my gut tells me their ancestry is probably a factor.”
I couldn’t say this, of course, because p.c. culture would interpret this kneejerk opinion as the vile spewings of a racial profiler and bigot. So I kept my mouth shut, as did thousands of others. Better to hold your water & wait for hard info.
Today N.Y. Times reporters Ian Lovett, Richard Perez-Pena, Michael S. Schmidt and Laurie Goodstein reported that “the married couple suspected of killing 14 people at a social services center had built more than a dozen pipe bombs and stockpiled thousands of rounds of ammunition, officials said Thursday, and they fired as many as 150 bullets at victims and police officers in a rampage that shattered a quiet day and ended in their own deaths.
“The F.B.I. has begun treating its inquiry as a terrorism investigation, two law enforcement officials said Thursday. The suspects’ extensive arsenal, their recent Middle East travels and evidence that one had been in touch with people with Islamist extremist views, both in the United States and abroad, all contributed to the decision to refocus the investigation. But officials emphasized that they were unclear what set off the attack, and said they were not ready to call it terrorism.
“Law enforcement officials said the F.B.I. had uncovered evidence that Mr. Farook was in contact over several years with extremists domestically and abroad, including at least one person in the United States who was investigated for suspected terrorism by federal authorities in recent years. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
“The idea that this was a workplace argument that spiraled out of control seems far-fetched, the officials said, given the explosives and the preparation. ‘You don’t take your wife to a workplace shooting, and especially not as prepared as they were,’ said a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. ‘He could have been radicalized, ready to go with some type of attack, and then had a dispute at work and decided to do something.’
“The details about Mr. Farook that have emerged, including the arsenal he and his wife had indicating a preparedness to commit violence on a large scale, have prompted investigators to look deeper into whether he had connections to militants or extremist ideology.”
