Richard Serrano reports in the L.A. Times:

San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik sent at least two private messages on Facebook to a small group of Pakistani friends in 2012 and 2014, pledging her support for Islamic jihad and saying she hoped to join the fight one day, two top federal law enforcement officials said Monday.

The new details indicate U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies missed warnings on social media that Malik was a potential threat before she entered the United States on a K-1 fiancee visa in July 2014.

The phrase “missed warnings on social media” suggests that federal officials were empowered to search social media to screen visa applicants for suboptimal characteristics — such as, for example, expressing a desire to kill a lot of people in service of the cause of jihad.

But, as the blog you are reading noted this morning, according to ABC News, a former senior official from Homeland Security has made a rather serious allegation — namely, that Obama’s Homeland Security guy, Jeh Johnson, prohibited immigration officials from looking at visa applicants’ social media, for fear of bad P.R.

Fearing a civil liberties backlash and “bad public relations” for the Obama administration, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson refused in early 2014 to end a secret U.S. policy that prohibited immigration officials from reviewing the social media messages of all foreign citizens applying for U.S. visas, a former senior department official said.

“During that time period immigration officials were not allowed to use or review social media as part of the screening process,” John Cohen, a former acting under-secretary at DHS for intelligence and analysis. Cohen is now a national security consultant for ABC News.

The Hill reported just after 6 a.m. Pacific time this morning that Cohen’s allegation has been confirmed by other officials:

One current and one former senior counterterrorism official confirmed Cohen’s account to ABC.

A DHS spokesman told ABC News that in the fall of 2014 after Cohen left, the department began three pilot programs to include social media in vetting, but officials say it’s still not a widespread policy and a review is underway.

Fall of 2014? Too late to catch Tashfeen Malik, who entered the country in July 2014.

Not only is there no hint of these revelations in Serrano’s story, but Serrano dutifully repeats the Administration’s line to the contrary:

John Kirby, a State Department spokesman, said officials are reviewing the K-1 visa screening process in light of the gap exposed in San Bernardino. Applicants must provide fingerprints and pass multiple checks of U.S. criminal, immigration and terrorism databases, as well as a consular interview, to get the visa approved.

The investigations don’t necessarily include every applicant’s social media history, however.

“If a consular officer … feels like it would be valuable or necessary to look at the social media presence of an individual, they can and do conduct those reviews,” Kirby told reporters Monday. “But it’s not absolute in every case. Each one is taken individually.”

That’s not what John Cohen says. Yet nowhere in Serrano’s mindless stenography is there even a hint that there was a deliberate policy, created by Obama’s hand-picked DHS guy for reasons of public relations, to prevent officials from reviewing social media.

Serrano’s article was first published at 3:47 p.m. today.

I published my post regarding Cohen’s allegation at 7:39 a.m. today.

Is it really possible that I was aware of this allegation more than eight hours before a Los Angeles Times reporter whose job it was to report on this issue?

Or did Serrano know, and just decide not to report it?

I don’t know the answer to that question for sure, but here’s a clue: the briefing cited by Serrano in which Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said that consular officers were allowed to look at social media. I found a transcript here — and guess what? In that briefing, someone asked about the very report I mentioned!

QUESTION: Okay. My last one here: There – obviously we know now that the DHS and the State Department has a policy which gives – affords them the right to do these background searches on social media. Was there a time in recent history, as has been reported, that they were prohibited from these types of searches for whatever reason?

MR KIRBY: I’m not aware of any prohibition in the past, as – I know you’re looking at press reports with respect to that.

So. The question remains: did Richard Serrano not know about this, even though it was reported by reputable news organizations early this morning, and brought up at the very briefing that he cites in his article? Or did he know about it, and decide not to tell his readers? (Or, did he try to tell readers, and have an editor chop the information out?)

I’m very curious to know the answer. Aren’t you?

If you want to ask him, he’s reachable by email at richard.serrano@latimes.com, or on Twitter at @rickserranoLAT