The F.B.I. received a tip last month from someone close to Nikolas Cruz that he owned a gun and had talked of committing a school shooting, the bureau revealed Friday, but it acknowledged that it had failed to investigate.
The
tipster, who called an F.B.I. hotline on Jan. 5, told the bureau that
Mr. Cruz had a “desire to kill people, erratic behavior and disturbing
social media posts,” the F.B.I. said.
The
information should have been assessed and forwarded to the Miami F.B.I.
field office, the bureau said. But that never happened. On Wednesday,
Mr. Cruz, 19, killed 17 students and teachers at his former high school
in Parkland, Fla., law enforcement officials said.
The
tip about Mr. Cruz appeared to be the second in four months, after
another person told the bureau about online comments from Mr. Cruz that
he wanted to become “a professional school shooter.”
The
news comes as the F.B.I. is under considerable pressure over its
investigation into President Trump, with frequent attacks focused on the
work of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel’s office overseeing
the inquiry into Russian election interference.
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In
an unusually sharp public rebuke of his own agents, Attorney General
Jeff Sessions said Friday that the missed warnings had “tragic
consequences” and that “the F.B.I. in conjunction with our state and
local partners must act flawlessly to prevent all attacks. This is
imperative, and we must do better.”
Rick
Scott, the Republican governor of Florida, said the bureau’s failure to
act on the tip was “unacceptable” and called for the bureau’s director,
Christopher A. Wray, to resign. “Seventeen innocent people are dead and
acknowledging a mistake isn’t going to cut it,” Mr. Scott said in a
statement. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, also asked for
Congress to investigate.
Mr.
Wray said in a statement that he was “committed to getting to the
bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing
our processes for responding to information that we receive from the
public.”
The
F.B.I.’s admission opened up a new avenue of attack by conservatives
who have questioned the impartiality of the bureau in its investigation
into Russian intervention in the 2016 election.
“Last
September, FBI was sent a screenshot of a comment by nikolas cruz,” Ann
Coulter, the conservative commentator, said in a post on Twitter.
“Unfortunately, the FBI was busy running down Clinton campaign leads
about a nonexistent Russian conspiracy with Trump.”
It is not the first time that the F.B.I. has come under fire for being aware of a threat and failing to stop an attack.
Congress
criticized the bureau for not preventing the 2009 mass shooting at Fort
Hood in Texas, in which the gunman was known to the F.B.I. The bureau
also knew of one of the two brothers who carried out the Boston Marathon
bombing in 2013. And Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people in an Orlando,
Fla., nightclub in 2016, had been investigated by the F.B.I. for months
before the attack. That case was closed before the shooting occurred.
After
those incidents, F.B.I. investigators compared themselves to hockey
goalies, fielding a relentless barrage of pucks. Sometimes, they said,
they could not keep things from making the net.
“The
public expects the F.B.I. to keep them safe, and in the overwhelming
majority of the instances, the F.B.I. does just that,” said Lauren C.
Anderson, a former top F.B.I. official in New York.
The
F.B.I. was not the only law enforcement agency to be warned about Mr.
Cruz. Sheriff Scott Israel of Broward County said Friday that his office
had received about 20 calls regarding the suspected school gunman over
the past few years.
Sheriff Israel said on Friday that his office was still reviewing what it knew about Mr. Cruz before the shooting.
The earliest known tip to the bureau came from a bail bondsman in Mississippi
who told the F.B.I. last September about a worrying comment left on his
YouTube channel from a “nikolas cruz” saying, “Im going to be a
professional school shooter.”
Agents
from the F.B.I. field office in Jackson, Miss., looked into the comment
but could not identify who had posted it from database and open-source
searches, the F.B.I. said. The bureau was also reviewing what happened
after the agents received the information.
Law
enforcement agencies have long asked people to call in, making the
slogan “if you see something, say something” part of the public
consciousness.
Several
politicians echoed those words again on Friday, noting that failures to
act on tips about Mr. Cruz undermined years of effort to make the
public part of the crime-fighting process.
“We
constantly promote ‘see something, say something,’ ” Mr. Scott said in a
statement. “A courageous person did just that to the F.B.I. And the
F.B.I. failed to act.”
The
president and congressional leaders have accused the bureau of
political bias in its handling of investigations of both Mr. Trump and
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate.
In December, Mr. Trump said the F.B.I.’s reputation was “in tatters” and the “worst in history.” This month, Mr. Trump said the F.B.I. and the Justice Department had been “a disgrace”
and “should be ashamed” of their behavior. The deputy F.B.I. director,
Andrew G. McCabe, was pushed out under pressure from the White House and
Mr. Sessions. Some inside the building have feared that Mr. Wray would
quit.
The
criticism of the F.B.I. has only increased after Mr. Mueller began to
ensnare associates of Mr. Trump, including Paul Manafort, his former
campaign manager, and Michael Flynn, his former national security
adviser.
Mr.
Mueller released another indictment Friday accusing Russian nationals
and companies of committing federal crimes while seeking to interfere in
the United States political system.
While
Ms. Anderson, the former F.B.I. official, described the response to the
tip on Mr. Cruz as a “tragic failure,” she also said that the past 18
months had been extremely difficult for the F.B.I.
“At
the end of day,” Sheriff Israel said, “make no mistake about it,
America, the only one to blame for this killing is the killer himself.”
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