San Bernardino Shooters Recently Visited Saudi Arabia, Talked to ISIS Members on FBI Watch List

By Matt Agorist

A tragic mass shooting in San Bernardino, California unfolded Wednesday and ended when the two suspects were killed by police.

In total 14 innocent people were murdered at the hands of two shooters, with 21 more left injured.

New information has just been released tying these two shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, to the terrorist group ISIS.

According to law enforcement officials, Farook had been in contact with radicalized individuals who were under investigation by the FBI. On Thursday, officials said that it was apparent Farook had been radicalized.

CNN reports:

Farook’s apparent radicalization contributed to his role in the mass shooting, with his wife Tashfeen Malik, of 14 people Wednesday during a holiday party for the San Bernardino County health department, where Farook worked, sources said.

Still, it wasn’t necessarily the only driver behind the carnage, as workplace grievances may have also played a role. President Barack Obama hinted as much Thursday when he said that the attackers may have had “mixed motives.”

Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia for several weeks in 2013 on the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are required to take at least once in their lifetime, which didn’t raise red flags, said two government officials. It was during this trip that he met Malik, a native of Pakistan who came to the United States on a “fiancée visa” and later became a lawful permanent resident.

Farook had allegedly been communicating, via social media, with multiple suspects on the FBI’s terror watchlist; however, he managed to escape being added to any such list.

Farook’s visit to Saudi Arabia is also important to note. In spite of being the United State’s most supported ally in the region, a recent study published by the Brookings Institution found that Saudi Arabia actually has the most online pro-ISIS supporters, by a large margin.

In fact, multiple US allies in the Middle East have ties to ISIS. Bahrain, for example, where the US maintains a large Naval Base, is known for aiding the Islamic State, and members of their government have been documented as ISIS members.

Despite the recent revelations and visible ties to ISIS, officials continue to push the narrative that Farook was merely a disgruntled employee who was able to find guns too easily.

Judging from the thousands of rounds of ammunition, pipe bombs, and IED manufacturing material found at the couple’s home, it is clear that this man didn’t just ‘snap’ at work.

“Right now, it’s too easy,” said Barack Obama on Thursday. “We’re going to have to search ourselves as a society … to take basic steps that would make it harder — not impossible, but harder — to let individuals get access to weapons.”

If Obama is serious about keeping guns out of the hands of these individuals, perhaps his administration should stop arming them.

While multiple groups will all attempt to use this shooting to push their agenda, it is important to point out that the mainstream media, many in the alternative media, and the government alike, all initially refused to call this act what it is, terrorism. Even if these two psychopaths did not have ties to ISIS, what they did was terror.

It seems that America has a problem with calling psychopathic murderers who go on shooting sprees, ‘terrorists,’ as this definition is only beneficial to a certain narrative and the label has come in quite handy in the US propaganda campaign.

Regardless of the nationality, the religion, or the race of the shooters, their actions were indeed terrorism and that fact will not change.

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Matt Agorist writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com