The mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub is the manifestation of law enforcement’s most dreaded nightmare scenario: a lone wolf hitting a soft target with no warning.
It is a type of attack that is nearly impossible to predict or prevent.
“This could have happened anywhere,” a grim-faced Orlando Police Chief John Mina said at a news conference Sunday morning.
While local police and the FBI have been cautious about officially linking the horrific assault to Islamic terrorism, law enforcement and congressional sources say the initial evidence points that way.
Islamic State radicals have been threatening attacks against the U.S. homeland for months, and U.S. officials were on higher alert during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is now underway.
The United States is currently on the highest state of alert since the attacks of September 11, 2001, but that did nothing to stop the carnage, the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
“This is the new face of the war on terror, and they have said openly that they intend to target us here,” Florida senator Marco Rubio told CNN. “One of the hardest parts of this war is the individual who carries out an attack by themselves in a soft target like this, basically in Orlando Florida, that the war on terror has evolved into something we’ve never had to deal with before.” The suspect was shot and killed several hours after the initial reports of the attack.
He has been identified by law enforcement sources Omar Saddiqui Mateen of Port St. Lucie, Florida, who worked as a security guard.
Investigators will be combing Mateen’s computer and talking to his friends and family to determine his motivation, as well as looking for links to any other potential terrorist nodes in the U.S.
A key question is whether the attack might have inspired by Islamic extremism, or perhaps even directed by Islamic terrorists overseas, or if the attack was a “hate crime,” motivated by the fact the nightclub catered to a gay clientele.
California congressman Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said the mass murder has all the earmarks of the November 2015 attack in Paris on the Bataclan theatre, where 89 people were killed and gunman took hostages before being killed by police.
Nunes told CNN that he had just returned from Paris where he was given a tour of the theater, and said in both attacks the venue seemed designed to maximize casualties.
“It’s dark, it loud … at first they didn’t know, they just thought it was part of the music. Nunes sais “And it’s hard once you in a nightclub or a concert, it’s hard, there are only so many exits, so it’s an easy place to take on a soft target in a short amount of time.”
At this early stage there is nothing to suggest that U.S. intelligence or law enforcement had any advance indication of the gunman’s plans.
“As good as our agencies are they are simply not able to stop a motivated self-radicalized person who keeps the details of the plotting to themselves,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence committee.
