WASHINGTON – Aaron Alexis, the gunman who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday before being fatally shot by law enforcement officials, had a Navy record that included several unauthorized absences from duty, instances of insubordination and disorderly conduct, one instance of being absent without leave, and several failed inspections, according to a Navy official. 
 
 The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the current investigation, also said that in addition to his two previously known arrests in 2004 and 2010, Alexis had been arrested in DeKalb County, Ga., in 2008 on a disorderly conduct charge and held for two nights. 
 
 None of the disciplinary problems or his arrests, however, prevented Alexis from receiving a security clearance or from purchasing a shotgun recently in northern Virginia. 
 
 The Navy gave Alexis an administrative punishment after his 2008 arrest. Officials have not revealed what punishments Alexis received for his other offenses, but sanctions often range from loss of pay to reduction in rank. 
 
 WHO THEY WERE: Navy Yard shooting victims 
 
 Alexis applied in 2011 for an early discharge from the Navy, before his enlistment was up. Because of the spate of disciplinary problems, Navy officials looked at giving him a general discharge, which is given to sailors with conduct problems whose performance otherwise is satisfactory. But after examining his record closely, they opted to give him an honorable discharge in January 2011, the official said. 
 
 The additional evidence regarding Alexis’ disciplinary history came as officials also disclosed that he recently had sought treatment at a veterans healthcare facility for mental problems. 
 
 Alexis "went to the VA to talk to them about mental-health issues. He was trying to get help, we think," said a federal official, also speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation. 
 
 He had been hoping to get back into the Navy but was "experiencing problems" at the contracting firm that employed him, the official said. 
 
 Alexis "didn't take that very well," the official added. 
 
 Investigators have confirmed that Alexis bought the shotgun used in Monday’s shooting at a gun shop in Lorton, Va. Managers at the store, Sharp Shooter, referred questions to their lawyers. 
 
 Three weapons were found near Alexis' body Monday — the shotgun, a semiautomatic rifle and a pistol. Investigators are looking at the possibility that he may have seized one or more of the weapons from a security guard he shot at the base. 
 
 Investigators are also looking at the possibility that Alexis may have nursed a grievance with his employer regarding pay. 
 
 FULL COVERAGE: Navy Yard shooting 
 
 Thomas Hoshko, chief executive of the firm the Experts, said he wasn't aware of reports of a pay dispute or that Alexis may have sought treatment for mental illness. Alexis had held a security clearance since 2007, when he joined the Navy, Hoshko said. 
 
 Alexis had worked for the company on a contract in Asia last year and had recently been rehired and assigned to work at the Navy Yard. He had "no personal or professional issues," Hoshko said in an email. 
 
 Hoshko added that Alexis passed a background check in July and a drug test. He received an identification card from the Defense Department. 
 
 “No one who conducted his background investigations made us aware of any potential issues with mental health," Hoshko said. 
 
 Both the Defense Department and the Diplomatic Security Service had "reviewed a drug test and two background checks on Alexis," including one in July, before his assignment to the Navy Marine contract, he added. 
 
 Alexis returned to the firm in July after telling a colleague, he needed "to get back to work" because “school did not pay," Hoshko said. 
 
 Hoshko added that Alexis "successfully completed over six short-term assignments" at various military installations "prior to being assigned to the Washington Navy Yard last week." 
 
 "We were not aware of any problems regarding his personal or professional work prior to this most unfortunate incident," he said. 
 
 The company is a subcontractor for Hewlett-Packard. 
 
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 richard.serrano@latimes.com 
 
 david.cloud@latimes.com ||||| WASHINGTON — A month before a murderous rampage at the Washington Navy Yard, Aaron Alexis called the police in Rhode Island to complain that he had changed hotels three times because he was being pursued by people keeping him awake by sending vibrations through the walls. 
 
 When officers came to his hotel room early on Aug. 7, Mr. Alexis told them that a person he had argued with at an airport in Virginia “has sent three people to follow him” and that they were harassing him with a microwave machine, according to a Newport, R.I., police report. Mr. Alexis said he had heard “voices speaking to him through the wall, flooring and ceiling,” the report said. 
 
 Mr. Alexis told the police he was a Navy contractor, and then twice that month he sought treatment from the Veterans Affairs Department for psychiatric issues, according to a senior law enforcement official. But it did not raise a red flag that might have prevented him from entering the military base in Washington where, the authorities say, he killed 12 people on Monday. 
 
 On Wednesday, Mr. Alexis’s mother apologized to the victims in a brief statement she read from her Brooklyn home. 
 
 “I don’t know why he did what he did, and I will never be able to ask him why,” Cathleen Alexis said. “Aaron is now in a place where he can no longer do harm to anyone, and for that I am glad. To the families of the victims: I am so so very sorry that this happened. My heart is broken.” 
 
 The episode in Rhode Island adds to a growing list of questions about how Mr. Alexis, who had a history of infractions as a Navy reservist, mental health problems and run-ins with the police over gun violence, gained and kept a security clearance from the Defense Department that gave him access to military bases, including the navy yard, where he was shot to death by the police. 
 
 Time and again, Mr. Alexis’s behavior fell below a level that would have brought a serious response, like a less-than-honorable discharge from the military or involuntary commitment to a mental institution, experts and officials said. 
 
 But the sheer number of episodes raises questions about the government’s system for vetting people for security clearances, including the thousands of contractors who help run the nation’s military and security system work. Though the cases are different, the access granted Mr. Alexis, a former Navy reservist who as an independent contractor serviced Navy computers, raises questions similar to those raised about another outside government contractor, Edward J. Snowden, who leaked national intelligence secrets. 
 
 “These two incidents combined suggest to me a very flawed system for granting security clearances,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who called for a Congressional investigation into the granting of security clearances to government contractors. “Who knows how many other Snowdens and Aaron Alexises are out there?” 
 
 On Tuesday, President Obama ordered the White House budget office to conduct a governmentwide review of policies for security clearances for contractors and employees in federal agencies. In an interview with Noticias Telemundo, the president said the nation did not have a “firm enough background check system.” He also called once again for Congress to enact legislation to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and those with mental illness. 
 
 “I do get concerned that this becomes a ritual that we go through every three, four months, where we have these horrific mass shootings,” he said. 
 
 Senior Pentagon officials also said that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel intended to review physical security and access at all Defense Department installations around the world. 
 
 Many planets aligned to place Mr. Alexis, 34, at the start of the workday in the navy yard with a Remington pump-action shotgun, firing down from a balcony, the police said, and killing the employees, all civilians. ||||| Aaron Alexis, 34, has been identified by officials as the gunman in Monday’s shooting at the Washington Navy Yard. In 2010, Alexis was arrested by Fort Worth police after a bullet was fired through the floor of his upstairs neighbor’s apartment. He told police that his gun accidentally discharged while he was cleaning it, and no charges were pursued. 
 
 Aaron Alexis, 34, has been identified by officials as the gunman in Monday’s shooting at the Washington Navy Yard. In 2010, Alexis was arrested by Fort Worth police after a bullet was fired through the floor of his upstairs neighbor’s apartment. He told police that his gun accidentally discharged while he was cleaning it, and no charges were pursued. Fort Worth Police Department/via AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Authorities say the former Navy reservist, who had been living in Fort Worth, was the dead gunman at the Washington Navy Yard. 
 
 Authorities say the former Navy reservist, who had been living in Fort Worth, was the dead gunman at the Washington Navy Yard. 
 
 Authorities say the former Navy reservist, who had been living in Fort Worth, was the dead gunman at the Washington Navy Yard. 
 
 The military’s beleaguered background-check system failed to block Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis from an all-access pass to a half-dozen military installations, despite a history of arrests for shooting episodes and disorderly conduct. 
 
 Alexis, a military contractor working on a computer project, used his secret-level clearance to gain entry to the Washington Navy Yard on Monday, where officials said he gunned down a dozen people before being killed by police. 
 
 The revelations about Alexis’s troubled past — and his ability to pass the government’s security-check system — prompted multiple examinations Tuesday into how background checks are conducted and how long a security clearance can last without review. The system was already under scrutiny after leaks of classified documents by fugitive National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. 
 
 President Obama directed his budget office to conduct a government-wide review of security standards for contractors and employees across federal agencies. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel also ordered a broad review into security and access to military installations worldwide. 
 
 More than 24 hours after the deadly rampage, there was still widespread confusion over how Alexis managed to escape scrutiny since being given access to classified materials and facilities five years ago. The private contractor that most recently employed him pointed the finger at the Defense Department, which defended its handling of the case. 
 
 Alexis was granted secret-level security clearance in March 2008, when he was working as a full-time Navy reservist, according to the Pentagon. He was discharged from the Navy in January 2011 after a series of run-ins with his military superiors and police. 
 
 In September 2012, a Hewlett-Packard subcontractor called The Experts hired Alexis and said it confirmed his security clearance with the Defense Department. Thomas Hoshko, the company’s chief executive, said he confirmed the status again in late June of this year, when Alexis returned to work for the firm after a brief hiatus. 
 
 A background check done by a private contractor at the time turned up only a minor traffic violation, according to Hoshko. “It came back clean,” he said. 
 
 Alexis worked as a subcontractor helping to update and replace computers for Navy and Marine Corps installations. Since July, the 34-year-old had worked at six different naval locations, including facilities in Arlington, Va., Cherry Point, N.C., and Stafford, Va. He worked at the Navy Yard for several days before the shooting. 
 
 It is unclear why the Defense Department approved Alexis’s security clearance after his 2004 arrest in Seattle for shooting out the tires of a car. Thomas Richards, a spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management, said the office conducted only one security review of Alexis, in 2007, and that it turned up his 2004 arrest in Seattle. 
 
 He maintained his clearance despite more recent brushes with the law and a pattern of misconduct that preceded his discharge from the Navy. Alexis was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct in DeKalb County, Ga., in 2008, and after he fired a shot into his apartment ceiling in Texas in 2010. 
 
 A Defense Department official said that lower-level clearances such as the one granted to Alexis are typically good for 10 years. Former military employees who become private-sector contractors can also maintain their clearance during that time. 
 
 The official said a person can keep a clearance “in the absence of unadjudicated derogatory information.” 
 
 The agency did not conduct a new background check either last year, when Alexis was first hired as a military contractor, or this summer, when Alexis was seeking a second stint with the contracting firm, people familiar with his hiring said. Instead, the company hired an approved background screening firm that confirmed with the Defense Department that Alexis’s security clearance remained valid. 
 
 A secret-level clearance requires far less-intensive digging than one for top-secret clearance, and involves only a check of the FBI database, military records and data from law enforcement agencies where an applicant has lived, worked or attended school during the past five years. It does not require interviews with family members, co-workers or employers. 
 
 Hoshko told The Washington Post that he would not have hired Alexis if he had known about his arrests. 
 
 “Anything that suggests criminal problems or mental-health issues, that would be a flag,” he said. “We would not have hired him.” 
 
 No one in the company was made aware of the past incidents, he said. “If there’s not full disclosure on this, how do they expect us to make good decisions about who to trust and hire?” 
 
 Hoshko said his company and other contracting firms rely on the military to approve the security clearances of their employees, and he fears that budget crunches have led to faster and less thorough checks. His company hired a private firm — in September 2012, when Alexis first came to The Experts, and in June 2013, when he returned for another stint — to conduct a criminal background check of Alexis. As part of the company’s standard procedure for hiring new employees and rehiring old ones, the company also verified with the Defense Department both times that Alexis’s security clearance remained in force and conducted new drug tests. 
 
 Congressional leaders on Tuesday called for investigations and hearings into how the military screens contractors for classified work and entry to its bases. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) asked the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to hold a hearing into contractor hiring practices at military installations, while Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) wrote to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus seeking answers about oversight of contractor access and flaws in security clearances. 
 
 A report released Tuesday by the Defense Department’s inspector general also found serious deficiencies in a Navy screening program for people who didn’t have standard credentials. The program does not apply to contractors such as Alexis, but congressional staffers say it indicates another serious deficiency in the screening system. 
 
 Auditors found 52 convicted felons who received routine, 
 
 unescorted access to naval facilities through the program, known as the Navy Commercial Access Control System. The inspector general said the program, developed in 2010 to check the credentials of occasional contractors, created “a false sense of security” and should be abandoned immediately. 
 
 In one example, the report said an individual was given unescorted access to a base in 2011 for more than three months before it was discovered he had been convicted years earlier of “indecent liberties with a child,” a felony. Several other felonies also weren’t caught in the screening, including convictions for assault, theft and “throwing a missile at an occupied vehicle.” 
 
 Hoshko said he was disturbed to learn from The Post and other news outlets about police reports alleging that Alexis shot out a construction worker’s tires in Seattle in 2004 and fired a bullet into the ceiling of his Fort Worth apartment in 2010. 
 
 “If I can find this out just by doing a Google search, that is sad,” Hoshko said. “Anything that suggests criminal problems or mental-health issues, that would be a flag. We would not have hired him.” 
 
 Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) received staff briefings on the case Tuesday and has authored legislation that would provide more funding to ferret out screening flaws. 
 
 “Corners are obviously being cut,” Tester said. “We had Snowden earlier this year and now the Navy Yard tragedy. We have to fix this.” 
 
 Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said he plans to investigate “a number of things” in the coming weeks — especially how Alexis could have been employed by a federal contractor despite his arrest records and treatment for mental illness. 
 
 “What is the responsibility of our government and contractors to vet employees and from time to time reinvestigate those employees, if concerns arise about someone?” Carper asked. “What kind of clearance or clearances did this suspect possess? What kind of background check did he undergo in order to get his clearance? Were his clearances up to date? Is there some quality problem with the quality process of granting those clearances? And maybe a third one is what can we learn from this incident to help make this installation and other military installations and federal buildings safer, so that some good could come out of something that was awful.” 
 
 Hoshko, whose company is based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said he applauds Congress’s revived interest in the rigor of security clearances, the vast majority of which are handled by private firms. 
 
 “You have to more seriously look at the people’s backgrounds,” Hosh­ko said. “If he had a mental background, we would have wanted to know it. . . . The whole [security clearance process] needs to be reviewed top to bottom.” 
 
 Alexis began working for The Experts as an hourly computer technician in September 2012 at a U.S. military base in Japan and finished his work in Japan in January 2013. 
 
 “There were no incidents,” Hosh­ko said. “The guys liked him.” 
 
 He took a break, according to co-workers, because he wanted to go back to school. 
 
 He returned to work on The Experts’ subcontract in July. Alexis told one of his colleagues that he was returning to the contracting world “because school didn’t pay,” Hoshko said. 
 
 Marjorie Censer, Alice Crites, Ed O’Keefe and Craig Whitlock contributed to this report. ||||| Kristi Suthamtewakul via Reuters Aaron Alexis in an undated photograph provided by Kristi Suthamtewakul, wife of "Happy Bowl" Thai restaurant owner Nutpisit Suthamtewakul, 
 
 FORT WORTH, Texas — Aaron Alexis was so unhappy with his life in America — where he was beset by money woes and felt slighted as a veteran — that he was "ready to move out of the country" last year, a friend said Tuesday. 
 
 Aaron Alexis, the man police say shot and killed 12 people in a Washington Navy Yard, reportedly called police to complain about people following him and that he was hearing voices. He sought mental health treatment from a nearby VA hospital, officials said. NBC's Pete Williams reports. 
 
 "He was tired of dealing with the government," said Kristi Suthamtewkal, whose husband owns the Thai Bowl Restaurant in Fort Worth, where Alexis worked in exchange for room and board. 
 
 But instead of leaving the U.S., the former Navy reservist relocated from Texas to Virginia, where an IT company called The Experts put him on a government contract at the Washington Navy Yard. 
 
 A day after Alexis, 34, gunned down 12 people at the yard, new details emerged of his troubled past — from his preoccupation with 9/11 to recent mental problems that included hearing voices in his head. 
 
 Investigators said Tuesday that a preliminary probe has turned up no evidence that Alexis participated in rescue operations at Ground Zero, as his father once told police. 
 
 He was, however, employed as a clerical worker at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, in the shadow of the Twin Towers, when they were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001. 
 
 “He talked about 9/11 and where he was and how the buildings had collapsed and he couldn’t believe that...and how he was upset with the terrorists for taking innocent lives," Suthamtewkal said. 
 
 Kristi Suthamtewakul via Reuters Aaron Alexis in an undated photograph provided by Kristi Suthamtewakul, wife of "Happy Bowl" Thai restaurant owner Nutpisit Suthamtewakul. 
 
 Melinda Downs, who took in Alexis after he moved out of the Suthamtewkals' house last year, said he told her he suffered from post-traumatic stress after "surviving 9/11 in New York." 
 
 And when Alexis was arrested in Seattle in 2004, for shooting at a parked car in what he called an "anger-fueled blackout," he brought up 9/11 during his interrogation and "how those events had disturbed him," police said. 
 
 Three years after that arrest, Alexis enlisted in the Navy Reserves and served as an aviation electrician's mate — a third-class petty officer — before he was given an honorable discharge in January 2011. 
 
 Military officials acknowledged that Alexis had disciplinary issues including absence without permission, insubordination and disorderly conduct. 
 
 Among the problems: an arrest in September 2010 by Fort Worth police after he accidentally fired a bullet into the apartment above him while he was cleaning a gun with slippery hands. Prosecutors determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to bring a recklessness case. 
 
 After his discharge, Alexis began an online course in aeronautics with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He worshiped at a Buddhist Temple and was befriended by Suthamtewkal's husband, Oui, who " took him under his wing and took care of him." 
 
 He was given a room at their house in exchange for help at the restaurant, where he was one of the more popular waiters. 
 
 "Everybody loved him," Kristi Suthamtewkal said. 
 
 He spent a lot of time in his room, burning incense, she said. Michael Ritrobato, a handyman at the restaurant, said Alexis played violent online video games but was good-natured, not angry. 
 
 After he returned from a contract job in Japan in Nov. 2012, he didn't seem as easy-going, though. 
 
 He felt like he had been cheated out of money from the contract and complained that he was mistreated because he was black, Kristi Suthamtewkal said. 
 
 "He felt a lot of discrimination and and racism with white people especially," she said. 
 
 There was also a growing sense of entitlement and disrespect, she said. "He did have the tendency to feel like people owed him something all the time." 
 
 He got annoyed when she couldn't give him rides, and he started eating the couple's food without permission, and ignoring her when she complained, she said. When her cats developed fleas, he was angry. 
 
 Mostly, though, she felt like he was fed up with the United States. 
 
 Fort Worth Police via Reuters Aaron Alexis in a Fort Worth Police Department handout photo. 
 
 “I knew he was not happy with America and he felt slighted as a veteran and he was ready to move out of the country," she said. 
 
 When he abruptly left their house in July, he went to live with Melinda and Marvin Downs. 
 
 "He would get really quiet sometimes, put his head down," Melinda said. "You would see him in thought but not in rage, not angry at the world." 
 
 After he left Fort Worth for a series of jobs on the East Coast, Alexis kept in touch with the Downses. The last they heard from him, on Sept. 9, he said everything was going well in Washington. 
 
 Even before Monday morning, though, there were signs that wasn't true. 
 
 He sought treatment with the Veterans Administration for paranoia and hearing voices in two states. 
 
 In August, Newport, R.I., police were called to a Marriott Hotel room where Alexis said he was being followed by three people and heard voices coming from his closet. He couldn't sleep because he thought they were using a microwave machine to send vibrations through the ceiling, the police report says. 
 
 His small circle of friends in Fort Worth say they saw no evidence of mental illness or aggression and struggled to reconcile the accusations against their friend with the man they knew. 
 
 "I don't know him as a monster. I choose to rather remember him as being the jokester. An honorable young man — not the one that flipped out and just went off on everybody," Melinda Downs said. 
 
 Kristi Suthamtewkal recalled his devotion to the Wat Busayadhammavanaram temple. 
 
 "Buddhism is a religion of peace," she said. "It does not make sense." 
 
 Pete Williams, Jim Miklaszewski, Richard Esposito, Jonathan Dienst and Shimon Prokupecz also contributed to this report. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Authorities say the Washington Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis had a history of psychiatric problems and his father told police previously that his son had anger management problems ever since helping people in New York during 9/11. NBC's Pete Williams reports. 
 
 This story was originally published on ||||| The Navy was told by authorities in Rhode Island last month of an incident in which Aaron Alexis complained that he was hearing voices, according to a police report on the incident. It is unclear whether the Navy followed up. 
 
 Alexis was agitated when police paid him a visit at the Marriott Hotel he had checked into in Newport, R.I. 
 
 Local law enforcement had received a harassment complaint from someone in the hotel, and when they tracked down the source of the complaint -- Alexis, the gunman in the Washington Navy Yard massacre on Monday that killed 12 and wounded 8 more -- the police wrote in their report of the incident that he complained about an "unknown party" of people he had never seen. Alexis said these people had been keeping him awake by "sending vibrations into his body" by "using some sort of microwave machine." 
 
 FBI looking for those who know more about alleged shooter 
 
 Shooting at Washington Navy Yard 
 
 Alleged Navy Yard gunman involved in previous minor shootings 
 
 While the motive in the Navy Yard massacre is still unclear, a pattern of agitated and unsteady behavior has emerged in the recent history of the suspected shooter. Officials say they're fairly certain the 34-year-old former Navy reservist had no connections to terrorism, but instead had a long history of mental health issues. 
 
 Alexis told Newport police in August the unknown party following him around had been sending voices through the walls and ceiling. In their report, police said they tried to find out what the voices were saying, but Alexis wouldn't elaborate. Before parting, police claim Alexis said "he does not have a history of mental illness in his family and that he has never had any sort of mental episode." 
 
 Police also said in the report that Alexis told them he had checked out of two other hotels to try to escape the voices before checking into the Marriott. 
 
 Newport Police Sgt. Frank Rosa says in the report that he informed the Navy of the Marriott incident. "Based on the Naval base implications," Rosa wrote, "and the claim that the involved subject ... was 'hearing voices,' I made contact with on duty Naval Station Police. I advised of the report and the claims." Rose added that Navy authorities said they would follow up to determine if Alexis was indeed a Navy base contractor. 
 
 A look at Alexis' prior arrest record indicates that he has a history of mental health issues. 
 
 On June 3, 2004, Alexis was arrested in Seattle for shooting out the tires of another man's car on May 6 in what Alexis told police was an anger-fueled "blackout." It appeared Alexis may have been angry with construction workers who were using parking spaces in his neighborhood. 
 
 On Sept. 4, 2010, Alexis was arrested for allegedly firing a gun inside his Texas apartment because he had been angry about his downstairs neighbor making too much noise. At the time he was a Navy reservist stationed in Fort Worth. 
 
 Officials say Alexis also had bouts of insubordination, disorderly conduct and being absent from work without authorization during his four years as a full-time reservist. He frequently complained about discrimination, and officials say his behavior led to an early but honorable discharge in 2011. 
 
 When he left the Navy reserves, he managed to keep his security clearance upon becoming a military contractor because his incidents with police never rose to the level of raising an alarm about him being mentally unfit. Additionally, his arrests never gave cause to bar him from buying a firearm, including the shotgun officials say he bought recently in Virginia to carry out the Navy Yard massacre. 
 
 At the time of the rampage, Alexis was an employee with a Defense Department subcontractor on a Navy-Marine Corps computer project, authorities told the Associated Press. Alexis had access to the Navy Yard via a valid pass. 
 
 The roots of Alexis' issues are still being examined, but after his 2004 arrest in Seattle, both Alexis' father and Alexis himself told police he had been present during "the tragic events of September 11, 2001" and that they had disturbed him. His father told police he suffered from PTSD and that his mental issues stretch back at least a decade. 
 
 After the Newport, R.I., run-in with police August, Alexis sought treatment for mental health issues from the Department of Veterans Affairs, officials say. 
 
 Until recently, Alexis lived in Fort Worth at the home of Melinda Downs, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr. She said Alexis suffered from PTSD and insomnia. She told reporters he loved the military and showed no signs of violence. 
 
 "It's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, who was this guy?" Downs said. "The guy that I knew was so honorable. It breaks my heart."
– How did a guy who heard voices, felt microwaves, and had multiple gun arrests get security clearance? That's a question lawmakers, and Aaron Alexis' former employer, are asking today. "We would not have hired him" if we'd known, the CEO of The Experts tells the Washington Post. "If I can find this out just by doing a Google search, that is sad." The Defense Department checked Alexis once, in 2007. That check turned up his 2004 arrest for shooting out a car's tires, but Alexis passed the low bar for "Secret" clearance anyway. Secret clearance is generally good for 10 years, even if someone leaves the military. Alexis' Navy record included several unauthorized absences from duty, insubordination complaints, and failed inspections, an official tells the LA Times, but the Navy discharged him honorably—albeit barely—anyway. His arrests never resulted in charges being filed that would show up on a background check, and he was never committed for his mental health problems, the New York Times points out—though Rhode Island authorities did alert the Navy about the "microwave machine" incident, CBS notes. For more on the gnashing of teeth over security procedures, click here and here. In other Alexis revelations: Alexis was so frustrated with America that he was "ready to move out of the country" last year, friend and former co-landlord Kristi Suthamtewkal tells NBC News. "He was tired of dealing with the government." Instead, he moved to Virginia and joined The Experts. Alexis was working in the shadow of the Twin Towers when the 9/11 attacks hit. Investigators can't verify his father's claim that he helped in the recovery effort, but Suthamtewkal says he talked often about "where he was and how the buildings had collapsed and … how he was upset with the terrorists for taking innocent lives."