The Anti-Defamation League had been monitoring Sikh temple shooter Wade Michael Page since 2010, but never saw his violent shooting spree coming.
"He was actually someone who was pretty much quiet on the scene," Marilyn Mayo, associate director of the fact-finding department at the ADL, told Business Insider. "He was mostly involved on the music end."
The Anti-Defamation League monitors the extremist world. It was initially created in response to defamation of Jewish people.
Page came on the ADL's radar when he joined the Hammerskins Nation, which calls itself a "leaderless group of men and women who have adopted the White Power Skinhead lifestyle."
"The Hammerskins have a long history of violence and hate crimes," Mayo said.
However, Page showed "no propensity to violence," even though he belonged to a violent group. There are dozens of Hammerskins members who are not violent, Mayo said, so the fact that Page belonged to the group wasn't an immediate red flag.
The ADL began monitoring Page when he burst onto the White Power music scene. That monitoring included checking his band's tour dates and just generally keeping an eye on his online activity.
"Wade Michael Page was definitely a very big part of the white power music scene," Mayo said. "The white power music scene is a focal point for many racist skinheads."
The ADL never contacted law enforcement about Page because it "had no reason" to do so, Mayo said.
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