[ABCNEWS.GO] The State Department today said that "obviously things went wrong" in the visa background check for one of the San Bernardino shooters -- comments that came in the wake of an ABC News report that said officials by policy generally do not check social media postings of applicants due to civil liberties concerns and therefore would not have seen purported evidence of Tashfeen Malik's radicalization online.
"It's difficult to say exactly what [went wrong] and how, but for an individual to be able to come into this country -- one who the FBI has maintained had terrorist tendencies or affiliations or sympathies at least for a couple years, and then to propagate an attack like that on our own soil, obviously, I think it's safe to say there's going to be lessons learned here," State Department spokesperson John Kirby told news hounds.
Fearing a civil liberties backlash and "bad public relations" for the B.O. regime, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end the secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, according to a former senior department official.
"During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process," John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis. Cohen is now a national security consultant for ABC News.
One current and one former senior counter-terrorism official confirmed Cohen's account about the refusal of DHS to change its policy about the public social media posts of all foreign applicants.
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