DHS Whistleblower: we had information that might have prevented San Bernardino Massacre

Phil Haney former DHS Intelligence Analyst

Phillip Haney, former DHS counterterrorism intelligence expert was interviewed on Fox News, The Kelly File, Thursday night, December 10, 2015. He claimed his Intelligence Review Unit (IRU) had compiled information that identified a group of 300 potential jihadis involved with the Pakistani Deobandi Salafist movement including the Al Huda women’s Islamic Institute with schools in Pakistan, Canada and the US. We have written about Tashfeen Malik’s attendance at the Al- Huda madrassa in Multan, Pakistan. She had also allegedly been a supporter of the Imam of the extremist Red Mosque in Islamabad.  According to reports from CBC News, three girls and a woman who were students at the Al-Huda Islamic Institute in Mississauga, Ontario had left Canada endeavoring to join Isis in Syria.

Haney also tracked Deobandi Mosques here in the US including the Dar al Uloom Al Islamlyah-Amer in San Bernardino, California where Sayed Razwin Farook, Malik’s late husband and co-perpetrator of the massacre on December 2nd, had been a member. Haney alleges that his DHS IRU after receiving a commendation for its findings was asked by the State Department to cease its profiling of Islamic organizations. Haney claims that based on the information his IRU had compiled Farook would have been put on a no fly list and Ms. Malik would have been denied a K 1 fiancée Visa. We note that Haney says that because of State and civil rights group complaints the data was destroyed after funding of the surveillance program ended in 2012. Doubtless more will be forthcoming about Haney’s accusations.

A Fox News Insider Report on the Haney interview reported:

A former Homeland Security employee says he likely could have helped prevent the San Bernardino terror attack if the government had not pulled the plug on a surveillance program he was developing three years ago.

Philip Haney told Megyn Kelly that as part of his investigation, he was looking into a collection of global networks that were infiltrating radical Islamists into the U.S.

But a year into the investigation, Haney said they got a visit from the State Department and the Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, who said that tracking these groups, was problematic because they were Islamic.

His investigation was shut down and 67 of his records were deleted, including one into an organization with ties to the mosque in Riverside, Calif., that San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook attended.

Haney explained that if his work was allowed to continue, it could possibly have thwarted last week’s attack.

“Either Syed would have been put on the no-fly list because association with that mosque, and/or the K-1 visa that his wife was given may have been denied because of his association with a known organization,” Haney explained.

Watch this Fox News Kelly File segment with DHS Whistleblower Haney:

A Daily Mail report provided further information on the scope of Haney’s IRU surveillance:

Speaking with Fox News on Thursday night, Haney explained that in the early 2000s he had been working in a passenger analysis unit at the Department of Homeland Security in Atlanta.

As part of his job, he was expected to investigate individuals and organizations with potential links to terrorism, so security services could monitor their movements into and out of the U.S.

Haney explained that he began investigating dozens of individuals with links to a fundamentalist Pakistani group called the Deobandi Movement, and its sub-groups al-Huda and Tablighi Jamaat.

He claims the groups were using the visa waiver program to move suspected radicalized individuals in and out of the U.S. and so he began tracking them, entering their details into a DHS database.

Eventually, his efforts were picked up by the National Targeting Center, an umbrella organization within the US Customs and Border Protection, and he was asked to work for them instead – focusing specifically on Deobandi, al-Huda and Tablighi Jamaat.

Haney says that, during the course of his investigation, he was given an award for identifying more than 300 potential terrorists with links to the groups.