On Friday’s broadcast CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller stated that “When I was at the Joint Terrorism Task Force on the NYPD side, when all of this was going on in 2021, we knew there were problems with the vetting, incomplete documentation from Afghanistan, documents that weren’t complete, dates of birth that were hard to track, information from multiple U.S. agencies that [was] across multiple different databases,” but a lack of vetting wasn’t the issue with the alleged shooter of two National Guard members.
Miller said, “When I was at the Joint Terrorism Task Force on the NYPD side, when all of this was going on in 2021, we knew there were problems with the vetting, incomplete documentation from Afghanistan, documents that weren’t complete, dates of birth that were hard to track, information from multiple U.S. agencies that [was] across multiple different databases, not a centralized one, where it was hard, with all the different names, to figure out who was who and what their exact background was.”
He continued, “But, in this case, you have an individual who had worked for the U.S. in a CIA-supported special military team and the Afghan military special forces. This was a team operating in Kandahar where [the alleged shooter] had been one of the soldiers that was used to target members, according to my sources, of the Taliban, of al Qaeda in Kandahar, the Haqqani network, a number of the places there. So, we had an awful lot of information about him. Vetting was not going to be the problem. This is the question that emerges, Boris, which is, right now, out of 80,000 immigrants, we have exactly two cases that seem to relate directly to terrorist plots. … So, what you’re seeing is two men who we had a special relationship with, who served the United States, who risked their lives and their families, both of whom passed the vetting process because we had a lot of information on them.”
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