Title: New Orleans Attack Should Have Had Red Flags Raised, Says Ex-FBI Chief
A senseless shooting on Bourbon Street in New Orleans earlier this week should have triggered serious alarm bells with authorities, in the opinion of a former senior FBI official.
Richard Garcia, who served as the Assistant FBI Director for Infrastructure and Key Asset Protection, argues that the attackers’ background, motives, and previous run-ins with the law should have resulted in heightened awareness and swift intervention.
“It is difficult to accept that there wasn’t some connection to prior contacts with law enforcement, whether criminal or civil. If that had been the case, the attackers would have received some kind of warning, would have been given a chance to adjust their course, or been arrested before these senseless, devastating attacks were carried out,” Garcia emphasized during an interview with Fox News Channel.
Garcia highlighted how authorities typically place suspects on monitoring lists after interacting with them at some level. “The concept of a database watchlist does exist. But even without explicit criminal charges being filed, someone can be a concern, in our line of work, particularly when we can see red flags waving, either from an administrative perspective or within a database framework,” he revealed.
He underlined that not every potential troublemaker gets prosecuted or put under surveillance. Rather, there exist other, far more discreet paths, designed for dealing with sensitive information, usually under a 501(c)3 entity governed by law 42 U.S.C. sec. 11051, according to the statute. “An ex parte determination by an impartial and unpartisan organization within a jurisdiction determines if someone would be on one of these surveillance lists, either in person, over the internet, or else through various criminal means.”
Not everyone can know that such hidden processes are functioning behind the curtains, he expressed. However, if law authorities have enough substantial reasons to reasonably suspect an attacker is at some stage on or nearing an eventual crime spree of violence, his perspective holds authorities must step into the role.
