Of course it did, because the FBI is still institutionally committed to ignoring, downplaying, or denying the motivating ideology behind jihad terrorism. Failing to investigate suspected jihadis is all part of the same willful ignorance. The bureau doesn’t want to appear “Islamophobic” by scrutinizing these people too closely; such scrutiny would abet the impression that there is something about Islam that incites some believers to violence, and the feds have already ruled out that possibility.
The Horowitz report won’t lead to the fixing of the problem, either. It makes scant mention of Islam and jihad, and makes no attempt whatsoever either to identify or explain the importance of the motivating ideology behind jihad terror attacks. The failure of the intelligence community to study and understand that ideology is what led to a great many of the procedural errors upon which the report does focus: agents in all too many cases simply didn’t know what to look for, or how to understand the significance of the information they did have. Unless and until this is corrected, these failures of oversight and procedure will continue, no matter what safeguards are put into place.
“FBI missed chances to stop domestic terror attacks because of lack of follow-up: DOJ watchdog,” by Jeff Mordock, Washington Times, March 4, 2020:
The FBI missed opportunities to stop domestic terrorists from killing Americans because they failed to conduct follow-up investigations of people identified as violent extremists, the Justice Department watchdog said in a scathing report released Wednesday.
At least six terrorists who carried out separate attacks killing 70 people had been on the FBI’s radar, but agents quickly closed the cases after concluding they were not national security threats, Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said in the report.
The lapses in the bureau’s assessments allowed perpetrators of some of the most deadly attacks in recent history to fall through the cracks. Among them were:
⦁ Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in 2016.
⦁ Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who killed three people at the Boston Marathon in 2013.
⦁ Nidal Hasan, who massacred 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.
⦁ Esteban Santiago, who killed five people in a 2017 attack at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
“The FBI has acknowledged that various weaknesses related to its assessment process may have impacted its ability to fully investigate certain counterterrorism assessment subjects, who later committed terrorist acts in the United States,” Mr. Horowitz wrote.
The inspector general’s report is the latest black eye for the bureau, which has been besieged by allegations of political taint and questions of competence.
“Anytime there is criticism, of course, it undermines the public faith in the bureau, and that can never be good because the FBI depends on the public trust,” said Lewis Schiliro, a former head of the FBI’s New York field office….
No kidding, really?