The man who opened fire on a Milwaukee-area Sikh temple and killed six before being shot to death by police had been on federal investigators' radar before the shooting but federal law prohibited the unnamed agency from conducting an extensive investigation.
Law enforcement began looking at Wade Michael Page because of his ties to right-wing extremists as well as the possibility he was funding a domestic terrorist group, The Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
However, federal law prohibits agencies such as the FBI from collecting information on U.S. citizens if they aren't suspected of committing a crime.
Page would have had to threaten violence or broken a federal law while trying to advance an agenda before the FBI could legally open a case against him.
“This happens a lot where somebody will come to your attention and you do a preliminary investigation of the guy’s activities and nothing pans out,” retired FBI agent Bob Blitzer told the Times. “Some private groups collect a lot of information, but they can. Law enforcement can’t.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking Page since 2000. In 2010, Page gave an interview to alleged white supremacist website Label56, where he talked about his skinhead band End Apathy.
There is also speculation Page belonged to white supremacist group the Hammerskins, the Times reported.
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