The Fort Pierce Islamic Center, where Mateen worshiped several times a week, was under investigation by both the FBI and DHS as early as 2011 for ties to a worldwide Islamic movement known as Tablighi Jamaal which was linked to several terrorist organizations.
But the investigation was shut down and DHS’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Office out of fear of offending Muslims, according to recently retired DHS agent Philip Haney.
“The FBI had opened cases twice on him, and yet they found no evidence to charge him; it means they didn’t go through the same basic, analytical process that I went through over a three- or four-hour period in which I was able to link the mosque to my previous cases,” he told WND on Sunday.
In other words, the FBI had limited options at stopping Mateen because it was ordered to back off its investigation into his mosque.
As a member of one of the National Targeting Center’s advanced units, Haney helped develop a case in 2011 on a worldwide Islamic movement known as Tablighi Jamaat.
Within a few months, the case drew the “concern” of the State Department and the DHS’s Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Office because the Obama administration believed it unfairly singled out Muslims. The intelligence, however, had been used to connect members of the movement to several terrorist organizations and financing at the highest levels, including for Hamas and al-Qaida.
In the immediate aftermath of the Orlando massacre, Haney has found that the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, Florida, is part of a network in the United States that originated in the Indian subcontinent.