[Unidentified Male:] Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 years old
[Cooper:] Reading of the names of the dead outside the Stonewall Inn in New York, live pictures.
[Unidentified Female:] Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25 years old
[Unidentified Male:] Simon Adrian Carillo Fernandez, 31 years old.
[Unidentified Female:] Oscar A. Aracena-Montero, 26 years old.
[Cooper:] As I mentioned at the top of this broadcast, we are not saying the name of the shooter or showing his picture, others will, others have and will continue to, but we won't. The focus is on those who are killed and injured, those who survived as well. We do want to update you on what we're learning about the shooter, the Orlando Sentinel, the "L.A. Times" are both reporting tonight that this was not the first time the shooter was at Pulse Nightclub. They say regulars had seen him there before. The "Times" also reports the shooter had used a gay chat and dating app or the several of them perhaps messaging a Pulse Nightclub regular on and off for a year. Drew Griffin has more on what we know about this killer.
[Drew Griffin, Cnn Senior Investigative Correspondent:] It was 2007, the shooter here in the back row in a baseball cap was attending the Indian River State College law enforcement training academy and about to attend a post practice barbecue. That's when he took one look at all the meat being grilled and walked away.
[Unidentified Male:] A lot of the guys, you know, said oh, it's because probably a religious thing. And so I said, "What are you, a Muslim?" And he says, you know, "Yeah." And I said, "OK." And I, you know, and we just left it at that, you know. He didn't seem mad. He turned around and, you know, walked away, didn't talk to anybody, kind of sat by himself.
[Griffin:] According to this fellow student who does not want us to use his name, it was the first time anyone new the shooter was even a Muslim. A day later he says, the shooter failed to show up for class, instead administrators came and he says chastised the academy cadets for teasing someone about religion. Several days later he says, the shooter did pull up to the academy parking lot and was met immediately by administrators before he could even leave his car, as if he says school officials were waiting for him.
[Unidentified Male:] His car comes in the parking lot and like they rush his car. We didn't see him or hear from him after that incident, so we have no idea of what happened.
[Griffin:] Details of what happen next have not been confirmed by the school, but a source tells CNN, the Orlando shooter for some reason was removed from the class and around the same time fired from his job at the Florida Department of Corrections. One thing we do know before he left or was kicked out of the school, the shooter had extensive training in firearms, spending nearly a month in the classroom and on the firing range. Instead of graduating in law enforcement, the would be Corrections Officer became a security guard. And in 2013 while guarding the St. Lucie County Courthouse, it was the FBI that became interested in his actions.
[James Comey, Fbi Director:] He said he hoped that law enforcement would raid his apartment and assault his wife and child so he could murder himself. After 10 months of investigation we closed the preliminary investigation.
[Griffin:] Two months later as CNN first reported, the FBI found another concern, another possible terror connection. An American suicide bomber killed in Syria had been attending the same tiny Florida mosque as the Orlando shooter. Again, the FBI investigated and again found nothing to make an arrest. According to the shooter's father, his son did become upset after witnessing two men kissing in Miami. And in his bizarre announcement of his son's death, the father apologized to the people of Afghanistan saying, homosexuality is something that those that do it are accountable to God, it is not up to human beings to punish them.
[Cooper:] Drew joins me now along with CNN Counterterrorism Analyst Philip Mudd, who is also a former Senior Official with the FBI and with the CIA. First of all Phil let's talk about what the FBI did. I mean what is the obvious question is was something missed? Was the ball dropped?
[Philip Mudd, Cnn Counterterrorism Analyst:] I don't think so, I mean, if you look at this, I think we have to frame this differently. We're looking at one case and trying to build out what should the FBI have done. I would go the opposite direction, what a day looks like at the Bureau. You're looking at kids who are going over to Syria, hundreds of them maybe. There's more than 100 who come back, so that's a batch of people to look at across United States. You look at people who are communicating with ISIS via Twitter or Al- Qaeda and Yemen. And then you add into that, cases like this where someone calls, a friend, a family member and says, "I think somebody might be radicalized." So before we jump to judgment about a gap, I think you need to look at this from a different perspective and say, how would you weigh it if you were the investigator against these other priorities.
[Cooper:] Drew. I mean there's obviously the question how effective the job the U.S. is doing even you know, when these kinds of individuals are on their radar?
[Griffin:] Yeah, I think Phil is correct, but I think we also have to look at what is being done to make this better. I mean we've seen this same scenario with the it with the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, now this guy here on the radar, investigated, we know there's some kind of problem. But the FBI, I mean they're kind of stuck. They can't just glue an agent onto these people for the rest of their lives. So what do you do? I think that is a big, big dilemma that law enforcement is facing.
[Cooper:] You know, Phil, in terms of motivation, I mean it's not by chance he picked the gay club. And now there's reporting he had been there many times, he's actually talked to people on gay hook up apps and stuff like that.
[Mudd:] Yeah.
[Cooper:] How much of that you think is inspired by his radical Islamist beliefs and how much by hatred of gays because if his dad said he saw two men kissing and that angered him and infuriated him.
[Mudd:] I think we're making a basic mistake here and that is we are living in the past. We're remembering for example the 911 attack where you have an organization ideologically, Al-Qaeda, who not only trains people, it selects a target for them. Transition 15 years ahead, you have people self radicalizing who are looking for an excuse. I am angry at gay people. I'm angry at tourists. I'm angry in Paris, at rock venues because that's western culture. So whatever I'm angry about, ISIS gives me validation. I don't think we should think about this as a target selected because someone was radicalized by ISIS. I think it's someone who thought he was angry about something and ISIS gave him the validation to act.
[Cooper:] Well it's also interesting, Drew, I mean you played that video of his dad saying, you know, gay people will be punished, it's heaven's job to punish people. I mean and yet his father is saying, well I don't know where he got these ideas. If his father is spouting those kind of ideas at home, it's not that big a stretch to imagine his son might go to a club and do something like this.
[Griffin:] Yeah and there might be a major mental internal struggle going on inside this guy's head. At one point, he is visiting these clubs supposedly, attending these clubs. And at the next point, he's shooting them up. You know, he might be struggling between his view of his faith and what his personal urges are. You never know what's going on in these people's heads. That's why these lone wolves are so hard to nail down.
[Cooper:] All right, Drew Griffin. Thanks Philip Mudd as well. Lot's more on scale, just ahead, what Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump said today about the massacre at the Pulse nightclub and how their words hold up to the facts. We'll be right back.