the man at the center of last week’s
massacre in San Bernardino, Calif.,
might have plotted an attack as far back
as 2012 with one of his longtime friends,
senior law enforcement officials said
Wednesday.
In addition, the F.B.I. revealed
Wednesday that Mr. Farook and his wife,
Tashfeen Malik, were discussing jihad
and martyrdom online in 2013 before
they were married and she came to the
United States.
The new timeline suggests that the couple
were considering violent action before
the Islamic State rose to prominence in
2014 and began trying to inspire
sympathizers to carry out attacks in the
West.
And the disclosures raise questions about
how thoroughly American law
enforcement and immigration officials
vetted the wife before giving her a visa
to enter the United States from Pakistan
a year before the shooting, which left 14
dead and 21 wounded.
“ISIL inspiration may well have been
part of this, but these two killers were
starting to radicalize towards
martyrdom and jihad as early as 2013,”
the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said
during testimony before the Senate
Judiciary Committee, using an acronym
for the Islamic State.
“And so that’s really before ISIL became
the global jihad leader that it is.”
Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. still believed
that the couple had been inspired by
foreign extremist groups but that it had
not found evidence the husband and
wife team was ordered to attack by the
Islamic State or any other group.
“We are working very hard to see if
anyone else was involved in assisting,
equipping or helping them,” he said.
“And did they have other plans?”
The account of a possible attack in 2012
came from Enrique Marquez, a longtime
friend and former neighbor of Mr.
Farook’s, according to law enforcement
officials who would only speak
anonymously about a continuing
investigation.
Mr. Marquez has been cooperating
extensively in recent days with federal
authorities, discussing at length his
relationship with Mr. Farook.
Mr. Marquez, a Walmart clerk who
converted to Islam several years ago and
sold or gave Mr. Farook the two assault
rifles used in last week’s attack on
county public health workers in San
Bernardino, has told the authorities that
in 2012, he and Mr. Farook had plans for
an attack at that time. It is not clear why
they decided not to go forward with it.
Mr. Marquez, whose wife is a sister-in-
law of Mr. Farook’s brother, has also told
investigators that Mr. Farook had radical
beliefs but that he did not know Mr.
Farook and his wife were plotting the
recent shootings or what may have
motivated them.
The authorities are still seeking to
corroborate what Mr. Marquez is telling
them. Because he provided two of the
four weapons used by the attackers,
some investigators have questioned his
credibility, thinking that he might
exaggerate what he knows about the
couple to win favor with the authorities.
Mr. Marquez is also said to have mental
health issues. Shortly after the attacks, he
checked himself into a mental health
facility in California. He has not been
charged or detained.
Clues also surfaced on Wednesday about
what else the couple might have been
planning. According to law enforcement
officials, they had not finished building
at least some of the dozen pipe bombs
that were found in their home, leading
investigators to believe they had a much
larger attack planned for the future.
And although Mr. Farook had smashed
his cellphones and taken steps to delete
files from his computer, the F.B.I. has
been able to retrieve photographs from
them. One of the images is of a local high
school, suggesting to investigators that it
may have been a target.
Law enforcement officials have also
found that Mr. Farook had contacts with
six people in Orange County, Calif.,
whom federal authorities had scrutinized
at some point in recent years for their
apparent ties to terrorism. While
officials do not believe these people were
involved in the massacre, the
connections have suggested to
investigators that Mr. Farook was
associating with like-minded people.
In Mr. Comey’s appearance on Capitol
Hill, he said that the couple, who some
relatives say met on an online dating
site, had radicalized at least as far back
as two years ago.
They were “talking to each other about
jihad and martyrdom before they
became engaged and married and were
living in the U.S.,” Mr. Comey said.
He said that the “investigation to date
shows that they were radicalized before
they started courting or dating each
other online.”
Mr. Comey said the conclusion came
from “data” and intelligence that
American authorities had obtained.
Ms. Malik declared allegiance to the
Islamic State in a Facebook post around
the time of last week’s shooting, which
led the authorities to conclude that the
shooting was a terrorist attack.
But the authorities say that the couple
may have decided to commit terrorism
in the name of the Islamic State late in
the planning process, after their views
had hardened and they had already
committed to violence.
With some members of Congress asking
how Ms. Malik had been cleared for a
K-1 visa to come to the United States, a
spokesman for the State Department,
John Kirby, said Wednesday that “it’s too
soon to know what, if anything, might
have been missed in the screening
process” that allowed Ms. Malik to enter
the country on the special 90-day visa
for people planning to marry Americans.
President Obama has asked for the
department to review the program.
Mr. Kirby added that “if in the context or
in the process of the review we find
things that we can do, we’re not going to
wait for the review to be complete
before we make the changes.”
“But clearly,” he added, “we’re going to
keep an open mind about the program
going forward and make whatever
changes we need to make.”
More details about Mr. Farook and Ms.
Malik and their relationship emerged
Wednesday in interviews with family
members, neighbors and classmates in
California and in Saudi Arabia —
including a fateful meeting at Islam’s
holiest site that pushed the couple toward
marriage.
Speaking by telephone from Saudi
Arabia, Ms. Malik’s father, Gulzar
Ahmed Malik, recounted a meeting
between him and his wife and Mr.
Farook’s mother during the annual hajj
pilgrimage in the Saudi city of Mecca in
July 2013.
In an encounter just outside the Kaaba,
the cuboid building at the center of
Islam’s holiest mosque, Mr. Farook’s
mother, Rafia, told the Pakistani couple
that her family sought a “pious, religious
girl” to marry their son, he said.
Mr. Malik replied that he was looking for
a similar match for his daughter, and
that he liked the young American man
because, like his daughter, he had
memorized the Quran. The couple
married months later by telephone, as
allowed under Islamic custom, Mr. Malik
said, and they held a celebration in the
Saudi city of Jidda in July 2014, shortly
after Ms. Malik had obtained her visa
from the American Embassy in
Islamabad, Pakistan.
Ms. Malik’s state of mind at that time is
a point of intense focus for American
investigators. She had spent the previous
three or so years living with her mother
at the family home in the southern
Pakistani city of Multan, where she
obtained a degree in pharmacology from
the city’s largest university, and studied
part-time at an Islamic center for
women that teaches a literalist version of
the Quran.
At home, her father said, she spent much
of her time alone in her room, studying
for university or reading the Quran. “She
was always busy in her studies,” he said.
The Multan police chief, Tariq Masood
Khan, said in an interview that his
investigators had found no links
between Ms. Malik and local militants —
a sensitive suggestion in a country
whose citizens have taken part in several
attacks in India, Europe and the United
States.
“So far, the feedback I have received
hasn’t raised any red flags,” he said.
Correction: December 9, 2015
Because of an editing error, an earlier
version of this article and an earlier
version of a picture caption with this
article misidentified the panel where
James B. Comey testified on Wednesday. It
was the Senate Judiciary Committee, not
the House Judiciary Committee.
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