President Barack Obama said Friday that information about the social media review portion of a visa screening process had “gotten garbled” in the days after the San Bernardino, California massacre, nodding to reporting on one of the attackers that had been challenged by the FBI.
“The issue of reviewing social media for those who are obtaining visas I think may have gotten garbled a little bit because it’s important to distinguish between posts that are public, social media on a Facebook page, versus private communications through various social media or apps,” he said in response to a question at a press conference.
A front-page New York Times story published Sunday had quoted anonymous law enforcement sources who said one of the attackers, Tashfeen Malik, made public social media posts declaring her radicalism. Because the woman had emigrated to the U.S. on a finacé visa, the apparent oversight quickly became a source of contention. But FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday that Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, had not made public declarations of radicalism on social media. They did discuss jihad in private messages, Comey said.
Obama said law enforcement and intelligence agencies are “constantly monitoring public posts,” but private communications are “harder to discern by definition.”
This post has been updated.
