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<div class="">September 17, 2013</div>
<h1>Suspect’s Past Fell Just Short of Raising Alarm</h1>
<h6 class="">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/trip_gabriel/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by TRIP GABRIEL"><span>TRIP GABRIEL</span></a></span>, <span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/joseph_goldstein/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN"><span>JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN</span></a></span> and <span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/michael_s_schmidt/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT"><span>MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT</span></a></span></h6>
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<p>
WASHINGTON — A month before a murderous rampage at the Washington Navy
Yard, Aaron Alexis called the police in Rhode Island to complain that he
had changed hotels three times because he was being pursued by people
keeping him awake by sending vibrations through the walls. </p>
<p>
When officers came to his hotel room early on Aug. 7, Mr. Alexis told
them that a person he had argued with at an airport in Virginia “has
sent three people to follow him” and that they were harassing him with a
microwave machine, according to a Newport, R.I., police report. Mr.
Alexis said he had heard “voices speaking to him through the wall,
flooring and ceiling,” the report said. </p>
<p>
Mr. Alexis told the police he was a Navy contractor, and then twice that
month he sought treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department for
psychiatric issues, according to a senior law enforcement official. But
it did not raise a red flag that might have prevented him from entering
the military base in Washington where, the authorities say, he killed 12
people on Monday. </p>
<p>
The episode in Rhode Island <span style="color:rgb(255,0,0)"><font size="4"><b>adds to a growing list of questions</b></font></span> about
how Mr. Alexis, who had a history of infractions as a Navy reservist,
mental health problems and run-ins with the police over gun violence,
gained and kept a security clearance from the Defense Department that
gave him access to military bases, including the navy yard, where he was
shot to death by the police. </p>
<p>
Time and again, Mr. Alexis’s behavior fell below a level that would have
brought a serious response, like a less-than-honorable discharge from
the military or involuntary commitment to a mental institution, experts
and officials said. </p>
<p>
But the sheer number of episodes raises questions about the government’s
system for vetting people for security clearances, including the
thousands of contractors who help run the nation’s military and security
system work. Though the cases are different, the access granted Mr.
Alexis, a former Navy reservist who as an independent contractor
serviced Navy computers, raises questions similar to those raised about
another outside government contractor, Edward J. Snowden, who leaked
national intelligence secrets. </p>
<p>
“These two incidents combined suggest to me a very flawed system for
granting security clearances,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of
Maine, who called for a Congressional investigation into the granting
of security clearances to government contractors. “Who knows how many
other Snowdens and Aaron Alexises are out there?” </p>
<p>
On Tuesday, President Obama ordered the White House budget office to
conduct a governmentwide review of policies for security clearances for
contractors and employees in federal agencies. In an interview with
Noticias Telemundo, the president said the nation did not have a “firm
enough background check system.” He also called once again for Congress
to enact legislation to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and
those with mental illness. </p>
<p>
“I do get concerned that this becomes a ritual that we go through every
three, four months, where we have these horrific mass shootings,” he
said. </p>
<p>
Senior Pentagon officials also said that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel
intended to review physical security and access at all Defense
Department installations around the world. </p>
<p>
Many planets aligned to place Mr. Alexis, 34, at the start of the
workday in the navy yard with a Remington pump-action shotgun, firing
down from a balcony, the police said, and killing the employees, all
civilians. </p>
<p>
As an honorably discharged veteran, he cleared a basic hurdle to receive
a Defense Department security pass. Despite his being investigated by
police departments in Seattle and Fort Worth, for firing a gun in anger,
no charges were filed that would have shown up in his F.B.I.
fingerprint file. Despite mental health issues — he twice went to
Veterans Affairs hospitals last month seeking treatment for insomnia —
he was never committed and so was legally able in Virginia to buy the
weapon the police said he used in the shootings. </p>
<p>
“The system didn’t pick up the red flags because the red flags in this
case had not been fed into the system,” one Pentagon official said.
“Perhaps we need to look at the ‘filters,’ and whether some sorts of
behaviors and incidents, even if they do not rise to the level of
punishment, should nonetheless be part of the files for review.” </p>
<p>
Law enforcement officials on Tuesday provided new details about the
shooting. They said that in addition to the shotgun Mr. Alexis was
carrying, he used a .45-caliber handgun that he may have picked up once
inside the Navy base. </p>
<p>
The Washington police chief, Cathy Lanier, said that officers armed with
AR-15s were at the scene within two minutes of the first 911 call. But
some reported to the wrong building because callers had misidentified
the building. Chief Lanier said the entire shooting episode lasted at
least 30 minutes. </p>
<p>
The gunman was identified by an F.B.I. agent holding a machine to the
fingers of the dead body. Within seconds, it identified Mr. Alexis from
fingerprints on file because of his military service. </p>
<p>
In the search for more information — and especially the unanswered
question of motive — federal and local authorities have interviewed
hundreds of people and are poring through the contents of Mr. Alexis’s
Yahoo e-mail account. </p>
<p>
Mr. Alexis had shown a “pattern of misbehavior” during his four years as
a reservist, according to Navy officials. That pattern caused some of
his commanders to consider giving him a general discharge — one level
below honorable, which could have derailed his security clearance.
</p>
<p>
Instead, Mr. Alexis received an honorable discharge from the military in
January 2011, after he had applied for an early discharge under the
Navy’s “early enlisted transition program.” A major reason, officials
said, was that his misbehavior in the Navy was not violent. It included
insubordination, traffic violations and being absent without leave — two
days he spent in jail after a fight in a bar in DeKalb County, Ga.
</p>
<p>
Mr. Alexis was also twice investigated by other police departments in
shooting episodes — once for firing through his ceiling in Fort Worth,
Tex., and another time for shooting out a car’s tires in Seattle, during
what he described as an anger-fueled blackout. </p>
<p>
Mr. Alexis, who worked for an independent contractor called the Experts,
worked on half a dozen military bases from North Carolina to Rhode
Island this year, said the company’s chief executive, Thomas E. Hoshko.
If he had known of the police reports about Mr. Alexis that have
surfaced in the news, “we would have never looked at him,” Mr. Hoshko
said. </p>
<p>
In any event, it was the responsibility of the Defense Department to
grant Mr. Alexis his security credential allowing him onto bases, known
as a Common Access Card. Pentagon officials said the Navy was
responsible for his clearance, using a check of F.B.I. records and
another database with the Office of Personnel Management. </p>
<p>
Mr. Alexis left the Experts to attend school in January 2013, Mr. Hoshko
said, but returned in July, when he again passed a drug test and a
background check and received a secret clearance from the Defense
Department. </p>
<p>
Mr. Alexis’s clearance was a midlevel designation required for many
military jobs, officials said. A secret clearance does not require as
extensive a background investigation as a top-secret clearance, can be
completed in one to three months and is good for 10 years. Among the
factors that can disqualify someone are conviction for a felony, illegal
drug use and financial problems. </p>
<p>
Mr. Alexis’s father told the police after the Seattle shooting in 2004
that his son suffered post-traumatic stress symptoms after volunteering
in the rescue after the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11,
2001. </p>
<p>
Colleagues who worked with Mr. Alexis at that time in a computer support
center at Manhattan Borough Community College, near ground zero, did
not recall him volunteering or mentioning Sept. 11. </p>
<p>
One co-worker, Barry R. Williams, said Mr. Alexis had held onto grudges.
“Some small thing would happen, something so small I couldn’t even
remember the details, but two, three weeks later he’d still be bringing
it up, be upset about it,” Mr. Williams said. </p>
<p>
In White Settlement, Tex., the Fort Worth suburb where Mr. Alexis lived
in recent years when he was not traveling for work, he told a friend,
Melinda Downs, that he had post-traumatic stress disorder, and that it
caused him to be withdrawn and suffer from insomnia. He once went three
days without sleep, said Ms. Downs, who owns a barber shop. </p>
<p>
After the police in Newport responded to Mr. Alexis’ call for help on
Aug. 7, a sergeant who reviewed the report, Frank C. Rosa Jr., contacted
the Newport naval base police and faxed a copy of Mr. Alexis’s wild
statements. It is unclear whether the account made it up the chain of
command. </p>
<p>
On Aug. 23, Mr. Alexis went to Veterans Affairs hospitals in Providence,
where he had been working as a contractor, complaining of insomnia but
did not say that he was hearing voices, according to a senior federal
official. Mr. Alexis said he could not sleep for more than a few hours.
Doctors there prescribed him an antidepressant pill commonly prescribed
for insomnia, Trazodone, the official said. </p>
<p>
Five days later, Mr. Alexis went to a Veterans Affairs hospital in
Washington, where he had traveled to work on a job at the navy yard. Mr.
Alexis, who had not been given many Trazodone pills in Providence, said
to the medical personnel in Washington that he was still having trouble
sleeping and the doctors prescribed him more Trazodone, said the
official. </p>
<p>
In that meeting, Mr. Alexis told the medical personnel that he was not
using drugs, did not have suicidal thoughts, was not depressed or
particularly anxious, and was not having nightmares, the official said.
</p>
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<p>Reporting was contributed by Manny Fernandez and Lauren D’Avolio from
Fort Worth, Carl Hulse, Sarah Maslin Nir and Thom Shanker from
Washington, Kirk Johnson from Seattle, and Erica Goode, Timothy
Williams, Ariel Kaminer and Nate Schweber from New York.</p> </div>
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