San Bernardino shooter pledged allegiance to an Islamic State leader on Facebook, authorities say

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — Tashfeen Malik pledged allegiance to an Islamic State leader in a Facebook posting prior to carrying out a mass shooting at a San Bernardino holiday party, two federal law enforcement officials said Friday.

The officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, cautioned that the new evidence did not mean that the militant group directed Malik and her husband to carry out the Wednesday attack and that investigators think it instead suggests that the couple had become self-radicalized.

Malik, who was born in Pakistan, spent time in Saudi Arabia before becoming engaged to Syed Rizwan Farook. She gained legal permanent resident status last year after they were married.

One of the officials said the post was made under a different name and has since been removed, apparently by Malik herself, but FBI technicians were able to recover the post. Officials said the posting strongly suggested the attack was premeditated.

Malik, 27, and her husband, Farook, 28, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, made an unsuccessful attempt to destroy their electronic devices, a federal law enforcement source told The Times.

A senior federal official said agents believe Farook was in contact with a small number of suspected extremists, adding that they have picked up indications that he “communicated” with at least one individual whom U.S. law enforcement officials were monitoring.

Farook’s connection to the potential terror suspect may be only tangential, the source said, but the link suggests there may be a “deeper terror matrix” behind the shootings.

Still, authorities have cautioned against defining the shootings as terrorism.

The two had amassed an arsenal of weapons and explosives in their Redlands, Calif., home, including a dozen pipe bombs and thousands of rounds of ammunition, officials said Thursday.

The arsenal suggested a level of planning that added to investigators’ concern that Wednesday’s shootings, which left 14 dead and 21 injured, were far more than a spontaneous response to a workplace dispute.

“Certainly they were equipped and they could have continued to do another attack. … We intercepted them,” San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said at a news conference Thursday.

Farook and Malik fired at least 65 shots when they stormed the conference room at the Inland Regional Center, where 75 to 80 people had gathered for a holiday potluck. Twelve of the 14 dead and 18 of the 21 injured were county employees, police said.

Hours later, they exchanged fire with police on San Bernardino streets, launching bullets into homes and terrifying residents. When authorities searched Farook and Malik’s home, they recovered a dozen pipe bombs, 2,000 9-millimeter handgun rounds, 2,500 .223-caliber assault rifle rounds and “hundreds of tools” that could have been used to make additional explosive devices, Burguan said.

In the attack on the party, Farook and Malik used two assault rifles and two semiautomatic handguns, all of which were purchased legally, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

As authorities continued to look into the backgrounds of the husband and wife responsible for America’s deadliest mass shooting since 2012, investigators and legislators from California to Washington, D.C., tried to understand what motivated the shooters.

The couple met online a few years ago and married last year in Islam’s holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, according to Farook’s co-workers at the public health department and others who knew them. The Saudi Embassy in Washington confirmed that Farook spent nine days in the kingdom in summer 2014.

Authorities said that when he returned to the U.S. in July 2014, he brought Malik with him on a fiancee visa. After a background check by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, she was granted a conditional green card last summer.