FBI agents in Dallas routinely meet with leaders of the North Texas Muslim community to discuss a variety of issues, including anyone who might be worthy of additional scrutiny by law enforcement.
Muslim leaders and former local federal law enforcement officials confirmed the meetings Monday, a day after a 29-year-old man who pledged allegiance to ISIS killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando. Authorities have said that the American-born shooter, Omar Mateen, was interviewed twice by the FBI, but the agency closed its inquiry into him when it found no evidence that he was a terrorist.
FBI outreach to North Texas Muslims began well before the 9/11 attacks, said Danny Coulson, who was the special agent in charge of the Dallas FBI field office from 1995 to 1997.
“I was the commander during the Oklahoma City bombing,” Coulson said Monday. “So it’s been going on at least since then.”
While the Oklahoma City attack was not committed by a Muslim, Coulson said agents began reaching out to groups that they believed could be both perpetrators and victims of terrorism.
“If you think about it, al-Qaeda kills more Muslims than they do Christians or Jews,” Coulson said. “So if you’re Muslim, it’s really more likely that someone would attack you for your faith.”
Post-9/11 outreach
After 9/11, the FBI nationwide became even more diligent in its contact with Muslim communities, including in Dallas.
Danny Defenbaugh, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Dallas at the time of the 2001 attacks, said in the days following, his meetings with Muslim officials were often fraught with fear.
Four days after 9/11, a Dallas man, angry over the attacks, walked into a Pleasant Grove grocery store and fatally shot Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani immigrant. He went on to kill another man and badly injure another in separate shootings.
In addition, someone threw a firebomb into the Islamic Society of Denton mosque. Bullets shattered windows of mosques in Irving and Carrollton.
“I went and met with a lot of people who were afraid they were going to be attacked and hurt,” said Defenbaugh, now a private security consultant. “People were trying to find out if we were investigating them and they wanted to know how to make us know that they were just regular, good Americans.”
A spokesman for the Dallas FBI field office had no comment Monday about the current meetings.
Alia Salem, the executive director of the Dallas-Fort Worth chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, said that the meetings with the FBI now take place on a quarterly basis. She said the gatherings are the agency’s way of “keeping tabs on us.”
They also offer opportunities for Muslims to voice concerns for their safety — as they did following armed protests at the Islamic Center of Irving in February.
Imam Zia Shiekh of the Islamic Center of Irving said the meetings he has attended for the past 10 years take place in public and private locations throughout the region, including individual homes and restaurants — where the FBI usually picks up the tab.
The meetings are not advertised to the public, but Shiekh said they are not a secret, either, at least among North Texas Muslims.
Benefits, limitations
The FBI agents often use the meetings to remind Muslim leaders of how to report suspicious activity and people, but Shiekh said that’s he’s never turned anyone in.
“Time and time again, we see that people who do terrible things don’t come to the mosque,” he said. “They don’t associate with the imam. And if they did, they probably wouldn’t be doing those things.”
Neither Coulson nor Defenbaugh would discuss specific cases arising from their outreach. But Paul Coggins, the former U.S. attorney in Dallas from 1993 to March 2001, said the intelligence gleaned was very helpful.
“You would find people who were very comfortable telling police officers that, ‘This guy said something,’ or, ‘This guy is going to do something soon,’ ” Coggins said. “I remember making cases and even preventing violence with information we got under Danny Coulson.”
But Coulson said that making those cases or even tracking potential terror threats can be hamstrung by guidelines set by the attorney general.
For example, when local FBI agents get a complaint or tip about someone, they have just a few months to investigate. During this time, they can only conduct background checks or interviews with the subject of the complaint, family members, friends or co-workers. No searches or electronic surveillance are allowed, Coulson said.
When their time runs out, if the agents don’t have enough evidence to persuade Department of Justice officials in Washington to authorize a full investigation, they have to close the case, as Florida agents did twice with the Orlando shooter. They can’t continue to talk to the subject or tell local police what they might have learned, Coulson said.
“You’ve got FBI agents with one hand tied behind their backs,” said Coulson, who now runs his own security firm.
In spite of those limitations, Shiekh said, he believes that the meetings with the FBI are fruitful and will help keep people as safe as possible.
And while some people in the Muslim community are uneasy about the relationship with the FBI, “We feel like we really have nothing to hide,” Shiekh said.