San Bernardino shooting investigated as 'act of terrorism'

The San Bernardino, California, mass shooting is now being investigated as "an act of terrorism," FBI official David Bowdich said Friday.

Bowdich said the FBI "uncovered evidence ... of extreme planning."

He said some phone conversations between at least one of the shooters and other people are being investigated. The announcement means the FBI has become the lead investigative agency, taking over from San Bernardino police.

"As of today, based on the information and the facts as we know them, we are now investigating these horrific acts as an act of terrorism," said Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI office in Los Angeles.

The announcement came several hours after a revelation about Tashfeen Malik, the female shooter in the Wednesday massacre that left 14 dead and 21 wounded.

She posted a pledge of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook while the shooting was happening, three U.S. officials familiar with the investigation told CNN.

Malik's post was made on an account with a different name, one U.S. official said. The officials did not explain how they knew Malik made the post.

A Facebook official told CNN that a post that went up about 11 a.m. Wednesday that violated the company's community standards that prohibit the promotion of terrorism or the glorification of violence. It was taken down Thursday. 

The official said he couldn't go into details about the nature of the post. The official said Facebook is cooperating with law enforcement.

The mass shooting may have been inspired by ISIS, a law enforcement official said, but none of the officials said ISIS directed or ordered the attack. ISIS has called for people worldwide to launch attacks in its name but isn't known to have claimed credit for what happened in San Bernardino.

Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, burst into a holiday party for the environmental health department he worked for and opened fire. They were killed elsewhere in a shootout with police.

No one has been arrested in connection with the massacre, but authorities say arrests are possible.

"This is looking more and more like self-radicalization," a law enforcement official said.

Farook's relatives didn't know the couple held radical views and have no idea why the couple burst into the party for Farook's co-workers and viciously opened fire, family lawyers said. Nor did the family know the couple had a makeshift bomb lab in the apartment they shared with their 6-month-old daughter and Farook's mother.

"It just doesn't make sense for these two to be able to act like some kind of Bonnie and Clyde or something," Farook family attorney David S. Chesley told CNN's Chris Cuomo. "It's just ridiculous. It doesn't add up."

Another official said authorities haven't ruled out that others may have influenced this radical view. In addition, the law enforcement source said investigators think a workplace issue with religion may have sparked the killings.

Breaking news update 

Late Friday, a UPS driver noticed that a package being delivered was addressed to Farook's townhouse and turned around to return it to a distribution facility, San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said in a tweet. The package was held in isolation, and the sheriff's office deployed bomb technicians to inspect the package out of an abundance of caution.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/04/us/san-bernardino-shooting/index.html