Thread: Officers May Be Punished for Ft. Hood Rampage

But if these officers had made formal complaints about his "strident views on Islam" and Hasan had been discharged, the ACLU and/or CAIR promptly would have filed a discrimination suit.

Officers May Be Punished for Ft. Hood Rampage

Friday, January 15, 2010

AP

As many as eight Army officers may be punished for failing to heed warning signs and take action against suspected Fort Hood gunman Maj. Nidal Hasan, a U.S. official said Thursday.

First reported in the Los Angeles Times, an official familiar with a Pentagon review of the case, which will be discussed at a briefing Friday, said the officers who face discipline hold ranks of colonel and below.

The review reportedly found that superiors allowed Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, to advance within the ranks despite his failings to meet physical and professional standards. Hasan avoided physical training, was overweight and frequently late, but was seen by superiors as a rare medical officer and thus avoided corrective action.

"Had those failings been properly adjudicated, he wouldn't have progressed," the official told the Times.

Additionally, the Pentagon review into the deadly rampage that killed 13 found that the Defense Department does not do an adequate job of sharing information about internal personnel, and it focuses more on hunting spies than ferreting out extremists.

The Defense Department made public its own review of the rampage earlier this week and found that doctors overseeing Hasan's medical training repeatedly voiced concerns over his strident views on Islam and his inappropriate behavior, yet continued to give him positive performance evaluations that kept him moving through the ranks.

Both reviews seem to point to the fact that supervisors failed to heed their own warnings about an officer ill-suited to be an Army psychiatrist.

Recent statistics show the Army rarely blocks junior officers from promotion, especially in the medical corps.

Hasan showed no signs of being violent or a threat. But parallels have been drawn between the missed signals in his case and those preceding the thwarted Christmas attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner. President Barack Obama and his top national security aides have acknowledged they had intelligence about the alleged bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, but failed to connect the dots.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583 ... ational%29

Gates: Military fails to spot danger within ranks

Jan 15, 10:30 AM (ET)

By ANNE GEARAN

WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday an investigation into the Fort Hood shootings found the military isn't sufficiently prepared to prevent similar attacks in the future.

Commanders must be encouraged to intervene if they think someone within the ranks is a threat, Gates said. He directed Army Secretary John McHugh to make changes and expects new policies to be in place by summer.

As many as eight Army officers could face discipline for failing to do anything when the alleged shooter in the Fort Hood rampage displayed erratic behavior early in his military career, two officials familiar with the case said, speaking on condition of anonymity before the report's release.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon Friday, Gates said he could not talk in detail about some elements of the review involving Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, the man charged in the mass shootings at the Texas military base in November.

Gates did say the review shows that "it is clear that as a department we have not done enough to adapt to the evolving internal security threat." The secretary also said it demonstrates that the Pentagon "is burdened by 20th century processes and attitudes mostly rooted in the Cold War."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100115/D9D88K600.html