WASHINGTON – A California man killed in a shootout with Pentagon police drove cross-country and arrived outside the military headquarters armed with two semiautomatic weapons, authorities said Friday. The shooter apparently left behind angry, anti-government Internet postings airing suspicions about the 9/11 attacks.
John Patrick Bedell, 36, of Hollister, Calif., was named as the gunman in the Thursday evening attack. Authorities said he'd had previous run-ins with the law.
Investigators have found no immediate connection to terrorism. The attack that superficially wounded two officers guarding the massive Defense Department headquarters appears to be a case of "a single individual who had issues," Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police, said Friday.
Hints of those issues emerged in anti-government Internet postings linked to Bedell. One blog linked to Bedell's page on the social networking site LinkedIn contained a two-part treatise on big government, including its vulnerability to being controlled by a criminal organization.
"This organization, like so many murderous governments throughout history, would see the sacrifice of thousands of its citizens, in an event such as the September 11 attacks, as a small cost in order to perpetuate its barbaric control," the blog post read.
Keevill described Bedell as "very well-educated" and well-dressed, wearing a suit that blended with commuters when he showed up at the Pentagon's subway entrance about 6:40 p.m. But he was concealing two 9 millimeter semiautomatic weapons and "many magazines" of ammunition, Keevill said.
When Bedell seemed to reach into his pocket for worker identification, he was instead reaching for a gun, Keevill said.
"He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting" at point-blank range, Keevill said. "He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face."
