The FBI has ruled out a full release of Audrey Hale’s documents.
“What I was told is, her manifesto was a blueprint on total destruction, and it was so, so detailed at the level of what she had planned.” That was Nashville City Councilmember Courtney Johnston, in reference to Audrey Hale, a woman who thought she was a man.
On March 27, Hale walked into the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, and murdered Evelyn Dieckhaus, 9, Mike Hill, 61, William Kinney, 9, Katherine Koonce, 60, Cynthia Peak, 61, and Hallie Scruggs, also 9 and the daughter of Chad Scruggs, senior pastor at the Covenant Presbyterian Church. Police shot Hale dead, but she left behind a “manifesto” that could explain her motive, the primary question in any murder case. From the start, it was kept under wraps and subject to speculation.
According to Johnston, “It’s really not even a manifesto, it’s diaries of a mentally ill person.” The councilwoman, a real-estate agent, did not explain how she was qualified to diagnose Hale, who carefully planned the attack for months. “Her mental illness is not something that should be used for entertainment,” Johnston added, “and I don’t understand these claims that law enforcement is hiding something.”
A search of Hale’s residence turned up 20 journals, five laptops, two memoirs, five Covenant School yearbooks, seven cell phones and other materials. Johnston was on record that the FBI had ruled against releasing the manifesto in its entirety. So the FBI is indeed hiding what is most crucial to the case, evidence of motive.
According to Johnston, “that document in the wrong person’s hands would be astronomically dangerous.” So it was the “document” that was dangerous, and trans-friendly activists also sought to suppress its release. For example, Charles Moran, of the Log Cabin Republicans, advocates for equal rights for LGBTQ+ Americans, warned of “serious consequences” if the manifesto were to be made public.
Johnston’s colleague, Nashville City Councilman Robert Swope, told the New York Post that the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit is working “in tandem” with the Metro Nashville Police Department to complete “a very in-depth analysis of certain aspects of the shooter’s life.”
According to the councilman, “the manifesto is going to be released. It’s just a matter of when. There are some incredibly brilliant psychological minds and psychological analysts combing through her entire life.”
Hale’s manifesto has yet to be revealed, but a key reality is perfectly clear.
With all its money, resources, and those allegedly brilliant minds, the FBI did nothing to prevent domestic terrorist Audrey Hale from murdering six innocents, including three children. That failure is no surprise.
In 2009, Major Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, was communicating with al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al Awlaki about killing Americans. As the government report Lessons from Fort Hood explains, the FBI knew all about those communications, but someone in the FBI’s Washington, D.C., office judged that Hasan was not a threat and called off the surveillance.
On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas, Hasan murdered 13 unarmed American soldiers—14 counting the unborn child of Private Francheska Velez. In similar style, the FBI did nothing to prevent the terrorist attack in San Bernardino in 2015 that left 14 people dead, or Orlando in 2016, with 49 dead.
Consider also the case of Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson, who was carefully tracking Republican members of...
