Today it was revealed that the FBI is censoring parts of Omar Mateen’s 911 call proclaiming “allegiance” to the Islamic State which are sure to feed conspiracy theories. This is on top of an Alternet expose by Max Blumlenthal and Sarah Lazare about FBI efforts to lure Mateen into a terrorist plot and questions of whether or not it backfired by contributing to Mateen’s “lethal mindset.”
Before Omar Mateen gunned down 49 patrons of the LGBTQ Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, the FBI attempted to induce him to participate in a terror plot. Sheriff Ken Mascara of Florida’s St. Lucie County told the Vero Beach Press Journal that after Mateen threatened a courthouse deputy in 2013 by claiming he could order Al Qaeda operatives to kill his family, the FBI dispatched an informant to “lure Omar into some kind of act and Omar did not bite.”
While self-styled terror experts and former counter-terror officials have criticized the FBI for failing to stop Mateen before he committed a massacre, the new revelation raises the question of whether the FBI played a role in pushing Mateen towards an act of lethal violence.