FBI deputy director: Why yes, we should have done more with those tips that Nikolas Cruz would shoot up his school

The really infuriating thing about this is not that he offers a lame explanation. It's that he offers none to speak of. If he'd said, gosh, we get so many tips and we whiffed on not picking this one out as a serious one, at least you'd have a sense of what went wrong. But instead, this:

The deputy director of the FBI says the agency could have and should have done more to investigate information it received prior to last month’s massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, David Bowdich said authorities will never know if any investigative work would have prevented the shooting, “but we clearly should have done more.” The FBI has acknowledged it receive separate tips related to the accused shooter, Nikolas Cruz. Bowdich says the tips occurred on September 25, 2017 and on Jan. 5. He says he doesn’t know why the “very explicit” tip from Jan. 5 was not forwarded to local law enforcement. Bowdich says the FBI “will not hide” from its mistakes.

Does he really not know why the tip wasn't forwarded it? The FBI investigates why stuff happens, after all. How hard would it be to find out? How hard would it be to find out who received the tip, who logged it, and what informed the decision to do nothing further with it?

They don't keep records of who handles such things? They can't get face-to-face with the person in question and ask for an explanation? You'll have to forgive me if I'm not too inclined to believe the FBI's under-oath explanations of inexplicable malfeasance offered during congressional testimony. It seems that lately the track record has not been real encouraging on this score. Besides, it's painfully easy to guess what happened: The person who took the January 5 tip found the tipster not to be credible, and possibly never even bothered to cross-check the information against previous tips to see if there was any type of pattern. It was the product of a simple dismissive attitude, and nothing more, possibly combined with the sense that there was nothing anyone could do anyway. It could even be that the history of more than 30 visits to Cruz's home worked against the tipster, since the FBI agent taking the tip - if he or she knew about all this - might have figured, oh great, another trip to this house . . . what will that change? I'm having a hard time believing the FBI doesn't know how, why and by whom the ball was dropped here. Of course they know. But they're in defensive mode when it comes to congressional oversight, and they don't want to confirm any further screwups if they don't have to. Between the FBI and the Broward County Sheriff's Office, law enforcement dropped so many balls here, they must be thanking their lucky stars the media are letting them off the hook by scapegoating guns and the NRA. If those class-cutters yesterday had been walking out to protest FBI and Sheriff's Office ineptitude, I might have had the tiniest bit of respect for them.

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