The Pentagon failed to properly vet the Saudi military recruit who carried out the 2019 attack on a U.S. military installation in Pensacola, Florida, Director for Defense Intelligence Garry Reid admitted on Wednesday, according to the The Washington Free Beacon.
Reid told the Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities that the Pentagon failed to adequately screen the assailant behind the attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola in December, in which a second lieutenant in the Royal Saudi Air Force who was participating in aviation training at the station killed three and injured eight before taking his own life.
Reid said the Department of Defense relied too much on the State Department's vetting procedures and that loopholes in federal law enabled the shooter to legally purchase a firearm prior to the shooting.
"There is insufficient information sharing in place between DOD and the Department of State in that process," Reid continued. "We also found that DOD programs meant to detect and mitigate events such as the Pensacola attack did not cover international military students — for instance, our insider threat programs."
He added that since the attack, all military students from Saudi Arabia in the U.S. for training have been screened "using new procedures we had recently put in place as part of our personnel vetting transformation initiative," which "produced only a small number of returns that required additional analysis within the Department of Defense."
Reid also said that none of the new returns "triggered any remedial action or further investigation by federal authorities relative to the current population."
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