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By
MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT ---- Published: September 25, 2013
WASHINGTON — The man who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard 10 days ago left behind electronic documents saying that the government had been attacking his brain for the past three months using “extremely low frequency” electromagnetic waves created by the Navy, and that was the reason he needed to lash out, senior law enforcement officials said on Wednesday.
The documents provide the most detailed explanation to date for what
investigators believe motivated the rampage by Aaron Alexis, a
34-year-old military contractor and former Navy reservist from Fort
Worth who was killed in a shootout with the police at the navy yard.
“Ultra low frequency attack is what I’ve been subject to for the last
three months,” Mr. Alexis wrote in one document found by investigators,
Valerie Parlave, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.'s
Washington field office, said at a news conference Wednesday.
“And to be perfectly honest, that is what has driven me to this,” Mr. Alexis wrote.
Mr. Alexis also said “he was prepared to die in the attack and accepted
death as the inevitable consequence of his actions,” Ms. Parlave said.
It is not clear whether he sent the documents to anyone.
Mr. Alexis’s employer, a computer services company called The Experts,
spoke to him on Sept. 13, three days before the shootings, about a
“routine performance issue,” Ms. Parlave said. But law enforcement
officials said they did not believe that discussion was a motivating
factor for the shootings.
The officials also said that they had found no evidence that Mr. Alexis
targeted co-workers and that the shootings appeared to be random.
Mr. Alexis had a history of angry outbursts over the last decade, and he
had been arrested three times in three states, though he was never
prosecuted in any of those episodes. Shortly after the F.B.I.'s news
conference, Hewlett-Packard Company, the principal contractor on the
computer services work at the navy yard, announced that it had
terminated its relationship with The Experts. Mr. Alexis worked at
numerous military installations for The Experts over the past year, but
had started working at the navy yard just a week before the shootings.
Hewlett-Packard “has lost all confidence in The Experts’ ability to meet
its contractual obligations and serve as an H.P. subcontractor,” said
Hewlett-Packard’s director of global contingent labor, Henry Dreschler,
in a letter to The Experts’ chief executive, Thomas E. Hoshko.
A Hewlett-Packard spokesman, Michael Thacker, declined to comment on the
letter. But in an e-mail he said, “Based on what we now know about The
Experts’ conduct, including its failure to respond appropriately to
Aaron Alexis’ mental health issues and certain incidents recently
reported in the press, H.P. has terminated its relationship with The
Experts.”
A month before the shootings, Mr. Alexis told the police in Newport,
R.I., that he had been hearing voices sent by a “microwave machine.”
Logs from the hotel where Mr. Alexis was staying show that officials at
The Experts were aware of his “unstable” condition and brought him home.
But it is unclear what the company did to address his problems after
that.
The Experts said in a statement that a site manager for Hewlett-Packard
in Rhode Island had “closely supervised” Mr. Alexis, “including during
the events” there. The company said it was “disappointed in H.P.'s
decision” because it “had no greater insight into Alexis’s mental health
than H.P.”
The Navy has used low frequency electromagnetic waves, or ELF, for
submarine communications. But some conspiracy theorists say the
government has weaponized the frequencies to monitor and manipulate
unsuspecting citizens, Ms. Parlave said. The phrases “my elf weapon,”
“end to the torment,” “not what ya’ll say” and “better off this way”
were etched into the side of the shotgun that Mr. Alexis used to kill
many of the victims, she said.
The authorities also released surveillance videos Wednesday showing Mr.
Alexis arriving alone in a car at the navy yard’s parking garage,
assembling his shotgun and walking down a hallway, ducking in and out of
doorways, before opening fire.
The video, which appears to be edited to exclude images of people being
shot, does not show him in the atrium area overlooking the cafeteria
where several people were killed as they ate breakfast.
Documents released by the government on Wednesday detail search warrants
obtained as part of the investigation. In a backpack Mr. Alexis carried
into the navy yard, he had a flash drive, an external hard drive and
several compact discs. At his hotel, the authorities found a laptop in
his room.
At the Pentagon on Wednesday, Ashton B. Carter, the deputy defense
secretary, told reporters that the military had started three reviews of
its security procedures in response to the shooting. The reviews will
examine potential flaws in base security, background investigations and
other areas that could have allowed the navy yard shooting to occur. Mr.
Alexis was granted a midlevel security clearance in 2007 while he was a
reservist that allowed him to obtain a special card giving him access
to military bases for The Experts.
“The bottom line is, we need to know how an employee was able to bring a
weapon and ammunition onto a D.O.D. installation and how warning flags
were either missed, ignored or not addressed in a timely manner,” Mr.
Carter said.
