Saudi Air Force Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani, the gunman behind the Pensacola attack, has been the subject of a lot of review since the attack, in which he killed three and wounded eight others.
In response to the attack, the Pentagon has put active training of thousands of foreign troops in the US on hold. Though Pentagon officials have said they don’t envision ending that, they did say they want to review the vetting of those foreigners.
Pentagon officials now say that they’ve concluded Alshamrani had a perfectly rigorous vetting process, and that there was no problem detected. He set off no alarms at all in the vetting.
This doesn’t counsel any changes, and while the Pentagon hasn’t indicated how much change is likely to come, this report suggests that they are not clear they did anything wrong in the lead-up to the shooting.
Saudi Officer Who Killed Three at Pensacola Had Passed ‘Rigorous Vetting’
Gunman set off no alarms
Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.
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