Orlando Massacre ‘Not an Intel Failure’ says Dianne Feinstein to CNN

The top Senate Democrat on the Select Committee on Intelligence told CNN’s Jake Tapper that despite two opened and closed FBI investigations into Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen, the massacre was not a result of an intelligence failure.

“I don’t believe there has been any intelligence failure associated with this,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Calif.), who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.

Mateen’s journey proves that events are unpredictable, she said.

There is no way the FBI could have known what Mateen was going to do, she said.

“Here is a young man, who had a good job and held it for nine years, who I gather was able to keep that job,” she said. “Yet, he went off the track with a hostility that [was] really beyond anything I’ve seen in terms of the number of people killed.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein: “I don’t believe there’s been any kind of intelligence failure” https://t.co/B7QTyRev6l https://t.co/PvRL3LbtvC

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 13, 2016

Although the senator said there was no intel failure, Feinstein told Tapper that if her legislation that empowered the attorney general to suspend gun rights had been the law, Mateen would have been disarmed.

Feinstein said Mateen was put on the Terrorist Watch List, while he was investigated by the FBI, but afterwards, he was taken off the list.

If Attorney General Loretta Lynch had the authority to review Mateen’s file, there is a good chance she would have revoked his gun rights.

Tapper did not follow up with this question: If there was enough information in Mateen’s file to keep him on the Terror Watch List—why did the FBI stop watching him?