From Military.com:
“Pentagon Announces Plans to
Monitor Foreign Trainees' Social Media Posts”
The Pentagon has completed
re-screening all Saudi students in U.S. military training programs following a
deadly Dec. 6 shooting rampage at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Defense
Department officials announced Thursday. No indications of additional threats
have surfaced, they said. Moving forward, DoD plans to increase vetting
practices for Saudi Arabian and other foreign nationals in training at military
bases in the U.S., including checks of their social media posts. The recent
screenings included about a dozen friends of 21-year-old Saudi Royal Air Force
2nd Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, who was shot to death by a sheriff's deputy
after killing three and injuring eight others in a classroom building at NAS
Pensacola. In a statement read in a conference call with reporters, Garry Reid,
the director for Defense Intelligence, said the department ran all of the
approximately 850 Saudi students currently in military training in the U.S.
through databases and found "no information indicating an immediate threat
scenario." However, a senior defense official, speaking on background,
cautioned that a threat may still exist that was not turned up in the check. Alshamrani
and all other Saudi students had already undergone rigorous background checks
by the Defense, State and Homeland Security Department before being admitted
into U.S. training, a senior defense official said last week. But Alshamrani's
troublesome social media activities may have gone unnoticed. A Twitter account
in Alshamrani's names included anti-American statements before the shootings,
and a Saudi intelligence report obtained by the Washington Post showed that he
may have been influenced by at least four radical clerics. In the Thursday call
with reporters, a senior defense official said that future screenings will
include social media checks before Saudi and other foreign national students
are permitted access to U.S. bases. More than one million foreign students have
gone through U.S. military training programs since 2000, and there had not been
a so-called "insider threat" attack until the Pensacola shootings, a
senior defense official said. The approximately 150 Saudi students at Pensacola
have been grounded for operational training since the shootings, but are continuing
classroom instruction, according to defense officials. In addition,
Alshamrani's acquaintances have been restricted to quarters and are being
monitored by the FBI. In addition to expanded database checks, the enhanced
vetting for all foreign nationals in military training in the U.S. could
include efforts by the service branches to conduct random searches, more
identity checks at entry gates and "continuous evaluations throughout the
training cycle," the senior defense official said. Similar checks were run
on all of the more than 5,000 foreign students of all nationalities currently
in training at military bases. Those checks also failed to turn up threat
indicators, defense officials said. The initial vettings ordered up last week
by Defense Secretary Mark Exper were part of "the most significant reform
of the background investigation process in decades, adopting new technologies
and improving our awareness of personnel security threats," Reid said.
^ This is a needed step and
hopefully not the only change that is being made in terms of monitoring foreign
military troops inside the US. ^
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