US officials search for missed red flags ahead of shootings

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong). Seccombe Lake is less than 3 miles from the Inland Regional Center, where the husband and wife entered a holiday party with assault rifles spraying bullets throughout the banquet room.

The man who purchased two assault rifles used in the San Bernardino massacre was more than just a friend to the gunman – he was also a relative.

The two men discussed some type of attack around 2012 but dropped the idea after four men were arrested in Riverside, Calif., in a separate plan to kill Americans in Afghanistan, according to a senior official.

There’s has been a lot of discussion over the FBI’s deployment of divers at Seccombe Lake, which is located in a park near the Inland Regional Center, where Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik shot and killed 14 people.

Authorities say Farook and Malik embraced radical Islam before they met online in 2013 and married past year.

Divers yesterday (Dec 10) searched a California lake near the site of the San Bernardino massacre looking for evidence that may have been left by the husband and wife behind the attack. In a news conference held around 3pm PST, David Bowdich, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said that they were following up on a lead that indicated the two shooters came into the area. The Wall Street Journal reported divers were scouring the body of water for the suspects’ missing computer hard drive.

“Everyone’s asking the identical questions on how it’s that regulation enforcement did not know, or intelligence officials did not know – that they might have flown beneath the radar and nothing gave a sign that they have been a menace”, stated Rep. Jim Langevin, a Rhode island Democrat and member of the House Homeland Security Committee.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said on CNN on Thursday that applicants for fiancée visas go through a screening process that includes fingerprinting, a series of background checks and a face-to-face interview while the other future spouse in the United States is checked by Homeland Security.

“I do not assume there was missed info”, he stated. Agents have searched his house, seized potential evidence and interviewed him repeatedly.

Federal Bureau of Investigation officials had previously said that the couple had been radicalized for “quite some time”, but the disclosure Wednesday was the most specific yet about the timeline of their relationship and progression toward extremism.

There were a lot of images of schools from the San Bernardino area found on Farook’s phone, but this isn’t a reason strong enough to believe that they were planning a bigger attack.

Marquez bought two AR-15s years ago that were among the weapons Farook and his wife used in the shooting.

In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa said Malik had listed a false address in Pakistan that screeners did not catch.

Marquez spoke with federal authorities after they raided his mom’s Riverside home over the weekend. Marquez was married previous year with Farook’s brother as a witness.

Marquez’s mother, Armida Charcon, told reportersoutside her home Thursday that her son is “a good person”.

She said he attacked her in front of their children, dropped a TV on her and pushed her toward a auto, according to divorce records.

“In terms of our foreign intelligence gathering, in terms of our electronic surveillance, I don’t know yet that there was something that was in one of our holdings that we should have been aware of and we weren’t”, Schiff said. She said a daughter intervened to save her.

His marriage ceremony took place at the Islamic Society of Corona-Norco, according to the license, though the mosque’s facility manager denied it occurred there. Davin Williams, a sophomore at Riverside Community College, described Marquez as silly and joyful, and said he returned to campus to visit people even after he left.