[Tapper:] Obviously, law enforcement officials tasked with protecting this nation from terrorism have an extremely, impossibly difficult job and it only takes one slipping through the cracks to cost lives. But that said, a review of the Orlando terrorist attack and several others in recent years raising some uncomfortable questions about whether current methods for screening are effective because numerous red flags have been missed. Is this incompetence? Is it common human error or is it a reluctance to be seen as overly judgmental, as bigoted, as Islamophobic? Omar Mateen who murdered 49 at Pulse Nightclub Sunday morning had been interviewed three times by the FBI between 2013 and 2014 over possible terrorist views and ties. He had been put on a watch list for ten months, but was removed due to lack of evidence. In November of 2009, almost immediately after Army Major Nidal Hasan murdered 13 people and injured more than 30 in a shooting rampage in Fort Hood, an FBI agent said to a law enforcement colleague, "you know who that is? That's our boy." That's because the FBI knew Hasan and knew he had been communicating with al Qaeda cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki. Boston marathon bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was also known to the intelligence officials. In March 2011 two years before the attack, Russian security services told their American counterparts that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a follower of radical Islam and planning to travel to Russia to fight alongside Islamic extremists in Chechnya. The FBI investigated Tsarnaev and his family and found no, quote, "link or nexus to terrorism." In 2014, Ali Muhammad Brown was charged with murdering four people in a nationwide killing spree including two men who were gay outside a gay nightclub in Seattle. Brown said he did this to protest U.S. foreign policy. He wrote in his journal that he planned to, quote, "learn the way of Jihadis." According to federal prosecutors, he had been on a terrorist watch list. In 2009, Abdul Hakim Muhammad, a Muslim convert, killed a soldier and wounded another at an army recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas. He, too, was known to the FBI after being arrested in Yemen with a Somali passport and investigated for extremist leanings. But upon his return to the U.S., Muhammad was not placed under surveillance. What's going on? Joining me now is a man with plenty of experience trying to piece together intelligence information, former director of the CIA and National Security Agency retired four-star general, Michael Hayden. We should point out we invited the FBI to come and answer these questions, they declined. What do you make of these instances where individuals were known to have terrorist views or ties or possible leanings and yet the FBI looked at them and concluded they were not threats and, you know, flash forward, fast forward, people are dead? GENERAL MICHAEL HAYDEN
[Principal, The Chertoff Group:] The natural instinct, Jake, quite understandable is one of disappointment. Before people make a final judgment on that, let me as an intelligent professional offer a few other facts. All right, number one, you mentioned half a dozen cases. All of them ended up very sadly. That's the numerator. What's the denominator? How many cases did the bureau have to investigate over that period of similar people?
[Tapper:] Thousands, I would guess.
[Hayden:] Actually, tens of thousands. So that's one. Second, Jake, we have to understand the reality that when they investigated these people, these people may not have been in the place that they finally ended up in when they committed these acts. And then, finally, and we knew this when I was in government as we turn to the bureau to be a domestic intelligent services, says it must be. That's a change in culture for the bureau. You're taking what is largely a law enforcement agency, Jake. And now making it, the phrase we used, they needed to investigate the spaces between cases. They had to investigate and gather information without a criminal predicate. Number one, that's a culture for a law enforcement agency and number two, out of the gate, it begins to bump up a whole lot of political cultural questions in the United States with regard to the authority of any police force.
[Tapper:] And civil liberties.
[Hayden:] Absolutely.
[Tapper:] Your second point was about interviewing people before they had maybe become radicalized. Take a listen to FBI Director James Comey earlier this week.
[James Comey, Fbi Director:] Our work is very challenging. We're working for needles in a nationwide haystack, but we are also called upon to figure out which pieces of hay may become needles. That is hard work. If we can find a way to do that better, we will.
[Tapper:] Look, I agree with everything you're saying. It's an impossible job. I wouldn't want to be given that task. Let me also ask, is it possible that people are being politically incorrect? You look at the Fort Hood case, when the Army knew that Nidal Hassan had become extremist and whitewashed his reports to make is sound as though it's a good thing he had all this knowledge. The FBI knew he had been talking to and e-mailing with Anwar Al-Awlaki, is there a hesitance to be branded a bigot?
[Hayden:] Well, knowing what I know in the public record about the Major Hassan case, I tend you to agree with you. I think the Army backed away from this for want of a better term I'll use yours, political correctness. They didn't want to bite off the issue that they might have gotten into had they gone after Hassan given his religious leanings. Look, we are all sensitive about religious liberty. In that case, Jake, I'm with you. I think we clearly did not do some things that we should have done.
[Tapper:] Obviously, we don't want to paint with a broad brush, the millions of peaceful American-Muslims or the 1.5 billion throughout the world. Obviously if they are extremist leanings indicated, that's a whole different thing. Here's another question. Does law enforcement have the tools it needs? Does the taxpayers give enough money? Are there enough men a women on the ground?
[Hayden:] So right now, the bureau is under resourced to handle that number of cases that you and I discussed, thousands to tens of thousands and then what do you do after you've let someone go, saying he's not a danger at this time. If you had more resources, you might be able to check in every now and again. So number one, the bureau probably needs more resources if we want them to do this and that's a separate question. Beyond that, the bureau probably needs more tools if we want them to do this. They made more authorities to use the whole rack of things that they are allowed to do in a criminal case, in a case that I described before to you, Jake, is not a criminal case. It's an American about whom they have suspicions. So how far do you want the bureau to go in terms of invading that individual's privacy? Do you want them to go into the Facebook account and e-mails and so forth? I mean, these are very serious questions. Let's me give a real world example, recall Christmas day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
[Tapper:] Sure, the failed underwear bomber.
[Hayden:] The plane went over Detroit. Jake, up to Christmas Eve, there was a national outcry that the National Counterterrorism Center had far too many people on the no fly list. By Christmas night, the national complaint was there was not enough people on the no fly list. So when this dies down, you're going to have someone else in this chair complaining about what the Federal Bureau of Investigation is doing.
[Tapper:] Fair point. Former NSA, CIA Director, General Michael Hayden, thank you so much for your analysis. I'm sure the FBI appreciates your standing up for what they tried to do and they work hard to do.
[Hayden:] They do.
[Tapper:] That's it for THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. Turning you over to Wolf Blitzer in "THE SITUATION ROOM."