The shooter apparently left behind Internet postings resentful of the US government and airing suspicions about the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
John Patrick Bedell, 36, of Hollister, California, was named as the gunman in the Thursday evening attack.
Authorities said he'd had previous run-ins with the law.
Investigators have found no immediate connection to terrorism, and the attack that superficially wounded two police officers at the massive Defense Department headquarters appears to be a case of “a single individual who had issues,” Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police, told a news conference Friday.
Keevill described Bedell as “very well-educated” and well-dressed, saying Bedell was wearing a suit when he showed up at the secure Pentagon entrance about 6:40 p.m. (2340 GMT) and blended in with workers.
He was concealing two 9 millimeter semiautomatic weapons and “many magazines” of ammunition.
“He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting” at point-blank range, Keevill said. “He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face.” Bedell died Thursday night from head wounds received when the two injured officers and another officer returned fire, Keevill said.
The exchange of fire at the subway entrance in Arlington, Virginia, lasted less than a minute but numerous shots were fired, Keevill said, adding that investigators were “still counting.” Bedell was not wearing body armor, he added.
The two officers injured have been released from the hospital. One suffered a thigh wound and the other was hit in the shoulder. Keevill said both were superficial injuries.
Keevill said he did not know what motivated the shooting: “I have no idea what his intentions were.” Signs emerged that Bedell harbored ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces, and had questioned the circumstances behind the 2001 terrorist attacks.
In an Internet posting, a user by the name J Patrick Bedell wrote that he was “determined to see that justice is served” in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his California home in 1991.
The death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up.
Sabow's family has maintained that he was murdered because he was about to expose covert military operations in Central America involving drug smuggling.
Keevill said Friday that authorities had not made “a final determination” that the shooter was the same Bedell.
The user named J Patrick Bedell wrote the Sabow case was “a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions.” That same posting railed against the government's enforcement of marijuana laws and included links to the author's 2006 court case in Orange County, California, involving allegations of cultivating marijuana and resisting a police officer.
Court records available online show the date of birth on the case mentioned by the user J Patrick Bedell matches that of the John Patrick Bedell suspected in the shooting.
The subway station is immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, a five-sided northern Virginia colossus across the Potomac River from Washington. Since a redesign following the 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, riders can no longer disembark directly into the building. Riders take a long escalator ride to the surface from the underground station, then pass through a security check outside the doors of the building, where further security awaits.
