this is the second shooting at a u.s. military base this week. joining me now from pensacola, florida, blain alexander, also with me, pete williams, tom winter and jim kavanaugh. what do we know so far? we have now on the record the governor saying what we ve been reporting is the person who fired these shots was a member of the saudi air force in the u.s. to receive aviation training. we ve reported his name. al shamroni. one point to make here is that when people come to the united states for this kind of training, they are vetted by not only their host country for us but by the u.s. military as well. so it s it takes a lot to get
i covered an incident where three afghan solders who were here for training, they left the air force base, they were found trying to enter canada through the border point. at that time, i talked to the then head of the massachusetts state police and we went through the vetting that occurs for these people to, you know, not only in the weathhether theye from the middle east or afghanistan, but i think to pete s point, the vetting that occurs by the u.s. military here. this is an important reason why we don t want to jump to terrorism. of course it could certainly be a concern. but we don t want to jump to terrorism at this point because of the background vetting that s under way. we re trying to go through local pilot records. we heard at that press conference that this person was involved in training in aviation. that s something that we re going to look in both faa records there to see if this
symbolically, it would be a big deal too. that s a huge if and we re not there yet. nobody that we ve talked to is there yet. they don t know why this person did this. you re right to point out that it would be the first time since 9/11 and our relationship with saudi arabia is a complicated one. the president has tried to strengthen it. militarily, it s always been an important one ever since the gulf war when it was strengthened and there s been lots of training between the u.s. and saudi arabia and other countries in the middle east and you heard the captain say why that s so important, that cross training. he said a number of foreign nationals from a num allied nations come to this training camp and they ve been coming for decades. he mentioned the royal air force, the british royal air force coming as far back as world war ii, if i heard him correctly. politically speaking, they ve been a complicated ally. tom winter, what do you have?
life, including their medications and their appointments to the hospital as well as cross training, come back into play. we have social services that address some of the issues that are prevalent among veterans. shannon: do you think that the average american has any idea this is going around them in their cities and their towns all over the country? i would like to think that people are conscious. the american people are very generous and very, very consider rat in thanking individuals when they see them in uniform. but oftentimes i think they overlook the fact that the person whos walking next to them on the street, looking a little dedraggled and perhaps asking for a direct handout, is actually a veteran. so i think the opportunity to raise awareness is most helpful here. shannon: tell me about the organization if people want to help. you said americans are generous, we find it to be true of our viewers as well. it s called operation renewed hope foundation.org. you can give
life, including their medications and their appointments to the hospital as well as cross training, come back into play. we have social services that address some of the issues that are prevalent among veterans. shannon: do you think that the average american has any idea this is going around them in their cities and their towns all over the country? i would like to think that people are conscious. the american people are very generous and very, very consider rat in thanking individuals when they see them in uniform. but oftentimes i think they overlook the fact that the person whos walking next to them on the street, looking a little dedraggled and perhaps asking for a direct handout, is actually a veteran. so i think the opportunity to raise awareness is most helpful here. shannon: tell me about the organization if people want to help. you said americans are generous, we find it to be true of our viewers as well. it s called operation renewed hope foundation.org.