Big questions loom after latest US shooting rampage
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Troubling questions loomed for investigators Tuesday as America digested another mass shooting, this time at a tightly guarded Naval Yard not far from Washington's corridors of power.
How and why could a Navy veteran with a history of disciplinary and anger management issues and firearms incidents stage a shooting rampage at a command facility down the road from Congress and the White House?
The death toll was 13 -- 12 people shot inside one of many buildings at the sprawling Washington Navy Yard and the gunman, shot by police. He was identified as Aaron Alexis of Fort Worth, Texas, aged 34.
He served in the Navy from 2007 to 2011 before becoming a defense subcontractor for computer giant Hewlett-Packard.
His record in the Navy was marked by multiple cases of misconduct. They ranged from minor offenses such as being late for work to more serious incidents involving disorderly conduct and insubordination, Navy officials said Tuesday on condition of anonymity.
Alexis received non-judicial punishment by the Navy in some cases and he was arrested by civilian police twice -- once in Georgia for disorderly conduct and once in Texas when he fired a bullet through the ceiling of his apartment, they said.
The Navy sought to discharge Alexis for his behavior but had insufficient evidence of misconduct so had him accept an honorable discharge, a Navy official said.
It is not clear if Alexis was working at the yard at the time of the shooting, although officials have said he got in legally rather than forced his way in.
According to a US defense official, a recent report to the Pentagon's inspector general said that to save money the Navy may have eased restrictions when granting access to outside contractors at the Navy Yard.
But a Pentagon official said security clearances designed to weed out someone posing an espionage risk, and misdemeanors or minor run-ins with the law years earlier would not necessarily disqualify an applicant.
"It's about someone's propensity to be a spy. It has nothing to do with whether a guy had a misdemeanor 10 years earlier. It's about whether he can protect classified information," he told reporters.
But the official cautioned against assuming that security clearance procedures were somehow flawed or to blame for the shooting.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation appealed to the public for anything on Alexis, saying "no piece of information is too small."
Washington mayor Vincent Gray said he was stunned the shooter got the job he had.
"It's hard to believe that someone with a record as checkered as this man could get clearance, credentials, to get on the base," he told CNN.
US authorities said Alexis appears to have acted alone.
A lone bugler played outside the navy building Tuesday as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel left a wreath in memory of the victims.
The FBI released a picture of Alexis, who held the rank of an Aviation Electrician's Mate Third Class, and had served full-time in a logistics support squadron in Fort Worth.
He was employed as an IT subcontractor for a company called "The Experts," which was working on a Hewlett-Packard contract to upgrade equipment for an intranet network used by the US Marine Corps and Navy, HP said.
It was unclear whether the military or HP had been aware of Alexis' brushes with the law, including two shooting incidents, before he was hired for the IT job.
The shooting sparked a massive show of force as police and federal agents descended on the Navy Yard, which is located on the Anacostia River, less than two miles (three kilometers) from the Capitol and a bit further from the White House.
President Barack Obama ordered that flags be flown at half mast in the US capital until Friday out of respect for the dead.
