He said the search could last several days.
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SAN BERNARDINO FBI divers re-entered the waters of Seccombe Lake today as they continued their investigation into the deadly mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center that killed 14 people last week.
Investigators believe a terrorist recruiter who was convicted of plotting travel to the Middle East for multiple domestic militants three years ago was linked to one of the accused attackers in San Bernardino, law enforcement officials said Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Federal officials investigating the San Bernardino terror attack are trying to determine whether the US government missed any warning signs reflecting the couple’s apparent radicalization in recent years.
Tashfeen Malik and husband Syed Farook opened fire at a workplace event for Farook’s colleagues, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others.
Authorities say her son, Enrique Marquez, who was related through marriage to shooter Syed Farook, may have planned a previous attack with Farook.
FBI Los Angeles Assistant Director David Bowdich said during a press conference Thursday afternoon that a lead in the investigation led them to the lake, but did not say specifically what they were searching for. The Los Angeles Times reports that she cried throughout the 10 minutes she talked to reporters, saying, “I want this to stop”, before returning to the house.
Law enforcement sources tell CBS News that Enrique Marquez is cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Of particular interest to investigations in the location of a missing hard drive from a computer seized during a search of the townhouse the couple shared in Redlands.
He said one of the gunmen in last May’s shooting outside a Prophet Mohammed cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, had exchanged more than 100 messages with an overseas suspected terrorist prior to the attack that investigators still had been unable to access. Farook and Malik were killed hours later in a shootout with police, leaving behind a 6-month-old daughter. Farook also bought one handgun in 2011 and another in 2012, according to law enforcement officials.
The FBI said last week that Malik posted a pledge of allegiance to Islamic State on Facebook just before the shooting rampage. The FBI also has the benefits of data from US intelligence agencies that collect foreign communications and from service providers for the accounts they used to communicate.
“They were actually radicalized before they started courting or dating each other online, and online as early as the end of 2013, they were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and then married and lived together in the United States”, FBI Director James Comey said at a Senate oversight hearing Wednesday.
Agents are concerned that Marquez’s mental and emotional state may affect what he has been telling interrogators, the source said.
Schiff also said it’s too early to conclude if law enforcement should have caught the plan earlier through surveillance.
“The current impression is that these two people were acting alone”, U.S. senator Angus King of ME told CNN after the briefing.
“If you weren’t in touch with other people why would you go ahead and do that?”, he said.
All of the victims who made it to a hospital are in stable condition, Dr. Dev Gnanadev said.
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Saudi Arabia, which is dominated by a conservative branch of Islam that some say has contributed to the rise of violent fundamentalism in the Middle East, has struggled to contain terrorism in the past.
