The 29-year-old Afghan man suspected of shooting two National Guardsmen yesterday in Washington, D.C., was “clean on all checks,” a senior U.S. official told CNN. The official told CNN that “the US government had been doing continuous, annual vetting of individuals since the Afghans’ arrival in the US, especially in the wake of the failed terror plot disrupted before the election last year in Oklahoma, which involved an Afghan evacuee.”
But a senior intelligence official told Public, “There wasn’t adequate screening done,” of Afghan evacuees. “We don’t have good fidelity on who any of them are. We say ‘they’re vetted’ and he [the suspected shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal] was vetted. That meant we thought he wouldn’t turn his guns on us when we were paying him every month. And that worked for a decade with him. But the second we’re not doing that anymore, the deal on their end changes.”
Lakanwal came to the US as part of the Biden administration’s “Operation Allies Welcome.” Said the official, who asked to be anonymous, “Nation-building failed. We ended up importing massive amounts of people.”
Some online have asked why the US didn’t return the evacuees and why they were brought to the US in the first place. “The average Trump voter is asking, ‘Didn’t I vote to kick them out?’ I think that’s fair.” The person said they were told earlier this year, upon entering the Intelligence Community, “You don’t know how bad it is now,” regarding the government’s inadequate screening of evacuees.
