Army Officers May be Punished for Ft. Hood

(AP)  Several officers failed to use "appropriate judgment and standards" in overseeing the career of U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan and their actions should be investigated immediately, according to the military's investigation into the November Fort Hood massacre.

A report released Friday says that commanders must be encouraged to look for cues that could prevent a similar attack.

"The report raises serious questions about the degree to which the entire Department of Defense is prepared for similar incidents in the future, especially multiple simultaneous incidents," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said.

Special Section: Tragedy at Fort Hood

According to two officials familiar with the case, as many as eight Army officers could face discipline for failing to do anything when Hasan displayed erratic behavior early in his military career. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because that information has not been publicly released.

Hasan, 39, is accused of murdering 13 people on Nov. 5 at Fort Hood, the worst killing spree on a U.S. military base.

Retired Adm. Vernon E. Clark and former Army secretary Togo D. West Jr., who led the investigation, told reporters that there were discrepancies between Hasan's performance and his personnel records.

Their investigation also found that his top-level security clearance hadn't been properly investigated. Had policies been properly followed, investigators say his clearance may have been revoked "and his continued service and pending deployment would have been subject to increased scrutiny."

A separate White House assessment concluded that the Defense and Justice departments should improve communications on "disaffected individuals." It also found that intelligence and law enforcement personnel should conduct a more thorough analysis of certain information, according to a summary released Friday.

Gates said the findings were unacceptable and directed Army Secretary John McHugh to put new procedures in place by summer.

"It is clear that as a department we have not done enough to adapt to the evolving internal security threat" and the military "is burdened by 20th century processes and attitudes mostly rooted in the Cold War," Gates said.

Officials say that several midlevel officers overlooked or failed to act on red flags in Hasan's lax work habits and his fixation on religion. Hasan was seen by the reviews as a loner who was passed along from office to office and job to job despite professional failings that included missed or failed exams and physical fitness requirements.

Findings about Hasan and those who supervised him are contained in a confidential addendum to a larger report about the Pentagon's handling of potential extremism in the ranks and readiness to handle the sort of mass casualties Hasan allegedly inflicted.

The officers supervised Hasan when he was a medical student and during his early work as an Army psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

The report, called "Protecting the Force," concludes that the Defense Department had outdated and ineffective means to identify threats from inside as opposed to outside the military. It also says the department's means of sharing and collating information about a potential troublemaker are inadequate, one official said.

[riptide213]

Scapegoats offered up to ease expedient closure of embarrassing DoD security calamity.

Exercising conventional military leadership of and enforcing traditional military rules on officer corps for health, law, and chaplaincy professions has historically been lax encouraged by so called system with more than just a wink and nod.

These are also only military officers that per regulatory written guidance can be hired and start work in DoD prior to any security clearances and shockingly BEFORE all normal security background investigations are complete. Who signed off on that security loophole that is begging to be exploited.

This initial weak Personnel Security attitude toward and management of officers from the professions obviously carries over into daily supervision of and promotion selection of these officers throughout their careers creating an elitist or arrogant demeanor in some.

A wide spread culture of swaying supervisors of hard to hire officers to be gradually more tolerant of military discipline infractions or standards of conduct has been aggravated by morphing menace of todays political correctness.

An outdated DoD policy failure haphazardly allowing a potential national security or force protection vulnerabilities to fester for sake of alleviating pressure on recruitment and retention.

Major Hasans US government Secret security clearance should have been suspended then permanently revoked long before his dissolute anti US policy terrorist rampage was unleashed on a secure US military installation.

This seditious field grade officer could have been relieved of sensitive duties and ultimately discharged from military under at least two adjudication factors for US security clearances before deliberately aiming his deadly extremism on innocent fellow soldiers and citizens.

This increasingly radicalized US citizen should have been put on a FBI watch list once he was administratively released from his military service obligation.

What is root cause of what went wrong, it is not only a few politically gun shy supervisors fearful of being branded xenophobic especially anti Muslim by an apathetic system.

Punishing weary supervisors surviving within a broken system does not fix an across the board way of thinking or acting on security failings not overhauled since contemporary shift away from symmetric warfare.

What are profound lessons learned beyond standard one each blame game ritual.

Personnel Security program is broken or at very least outdated thus not able to proactively deal with emerging threat of divergent religious zealots from within our very own citizen or military member population.

DoD must detach Personnel, Information, Industrial, and Counter Intelligence management and enforcement away from self policing local organizations with conflict of interest, self serving chains of command deciding for themselves how much or how little to report and enforce.

Encourage all to report concerns, but then let expert outsiders do dirty work of investigating security incidents.

Perhaps Hasan could have been identified sooner, tracked better, and all aspects of his threat profile highlighted better if one DoD agency was overall responsible.

Perhaps a bolstered Defense Security Service (DSS) detachment on each installation as non direct reporting disinterested and external tenet organization utilizing a cadre of professional civilian security specialists could modernize vital national security functions under one clear cut and responsible gatekeeper across all DoD territorial lines.

Shifting heavy burden of daily security administration program oversight away from various unit commanders and assorted agency chiefs, so they do not have to police themselves in vital areas which they have little expertise nor time to devote for critical management.

DSS detachment serving as installation level security offices and managers, but accountable to a higher DoD authority could bring to fruition one extraordinary prevailing, consolidated DoD standard enforcer and center of excellence for all daily national security administration oversight and program compliance inspection on every installation or within each DoD agency thus relieving a distracting burden from overworked, additional duty or mishmash of unit security managers who should be doing other military tasks.

Perhaps a newly defined pragmatic, assertive DSS role and mission could flag threats more effectively, prevent or minimize danger, and enhance overall DoD effectiveness to safeguard resources and personnel.

All freethinking concepts for a convincing 21st century security ethos transformation should be explored.

[from_the_north]

Did this Nidal Hasan take an oath when he was swore in? Did he let the US tax payers pay for his medical school?( geez I wish somebody would pay for my son's school) Did he kill innocent people? Yes, yes and yes. This creep is obviously the typical muslum lair, an exploiter and a murderer. So why keep him alive? So he can't rape those 72 virgins he is hoping for. Don't let him die a martyrs death, only give him pork to eat.

[kimmie404]

I'd say let him meet his 72 Virgins...they're Virgins...Now if he were going to meet 72 concubines...that might be a different story.

[chamaatlast]

it says 72 virgins, it could cows, orangasangs or other animals.

[brianbwb-2009]

Funny that no one is able to even entertain the idea that perfectly rational people might be driven to actively oppose a US foreign policy that includes invading other countries and killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of innocent people for no reason other than shared religion, or ethnicity.

Today's right-leaning zeitgeist would consider George Washington a traitor to England, and post the same statements as many have here.

[cgirltruck]

But that doesn't give them the right to kill. And that doesn't give his supervisors the right to look the other way when there were clear warning signs. Instead of having the back bone to do what was right and kick this guy out of the army, they were afraid of hurting his poor feelings and in the end we lost good Americans.

I truley hope the Army has the guts to go after the officers that didn't do their job and in the end allowed him to murder and in doing that set and example to others that they have to do their job even if it is difficult.

[jwesel1]

Worries about his competence also grew, yet his superiors continued to give him positive performance evaluations that kept him moving through the ranks. That led to his eventual assignment at Fort Hood.
======================================================================
Why don't I get this kind of bosses? Every boss I have ever worked for gave me hard time.

[jsf14]

This guy was such an incompetent doc that he would have been harmful to patients no matter what his beliefs. Makes you wonder how bad the other doctors are. Article says they'r promoting almost all docs automatically no matter how bad they are. It's not just that they promoted Hassan out of political correctness, which'd be bad enough. Incompetent docs who aren't jihadist terrorists don't shoot people but they don't help them get better either, and they can make their patients worse.

[guest173]

one senator was saying on PBS that it seemed political correctness was really preventing anyone from really stopping this guy, that seems about right, but then some others start complaining about being scrutinized if they trigger some suspicion, you can't please all the people all the time

[CBSisCommunist2]

Thats great. Force the Army to accept the JIHADIST and now punish them for not dealing with them.

Destroy the country 1 element at a time

Change Change Change

[brianbwb-2009]

People like yourself drove him to it, and now you want to whine about it.

[brianbwb-2009]

People like yourself drove him to it, and now you want to whine about it.

[luvheat]

Fallguys....this needs to burn all the way to the top!!!