Gates Unveils Pentagon Probe of Fort Hood

Updated at 2:55 p.m. EST

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is putting former Army Secretary Togo West and former Navy chief Vernon Clark in charge of a broad Pentagon review of the circumstances surrounding the Fort Hood shootings.

"The most important thing for us now is to find out what actually happened, put all the facts together and figure out a way where we can do everything possible so that nothing like this ever happens again," Gates told reporters during press conference Thursday with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs.

Gates said the 45-day review will look into gaps in how the military identifies service members who might be a threat to others.

"The shootings at Fort Hood raise a number of troubling questions that demand complete but prompt answers," Gates said. He said the review would seek to ensure the health and safety of military members and their families.

The review also will look at personnel and medical programs, and at how well U.S. bases are able to respond to mass casualty incidents.

"All of the services potentially have some of the same problems that the Army's trying to deal with," Gates said. "I have every confidence in the army's ability to do this. But I think it's important that we look at it from a departmental-wide perspective."

Mullen told reporters that members of the country's armed services wouldn't have to be told to look for possible potential threats within their units.

"It doesn't take this kind of direction to have leaders recognize the challenges that are associated with this," Mullen said. "Every base, every unit literally, leaders have, I think, immediately grabbed this to look within, to kind of see where they are and to look at whether there's potential or not."

Both officials were asked what military families in Fort Hood or at other bases across the country should be watching for.

"No one should draw any rapid conclusions," Mullen said. "We need to ensure that we treat everybody fairly."

Mullen specifically was asked what he would do if was in charge of a sailor making radical statements.

"My expectation is for any commander to certainly to be aware of those kinds of things and then to take appropriate action, to certainly not sit idly by but to address it and there are a lot of simple ways to address it and a single proclamation isn't determinate," Mullen said.

Gates told reporters that the review will benefit the way the military handles service personnel overcome with stress.

"You go to the hospitals and you talk to the nurses and the doctors and those who care for these grievously wounded young men and women, and I can't imagine the burden on them of doing that all day, every day," Gates said. "One of the things, for their own benefit, if nothing else, is for us to take a look at how are we helping them deal with stress, given the circumstances that they face."

West was Army secretary in the mid-1990s and later became secretary of veterans affairs. Clark was the chief of naval operations from 2000 to 2005.

The review will go well beyond the specific case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 in the shootings at the Texas military post on Nov. 5.

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President Obama already has ordered a review of all intelligence related to Hasan, including his contacts with a radical Islamic cleric overseas and concerns about the major voiced by some medical colleagues, and whether the information was properly shared and acted upon within government agencies.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said he was disturbed to learn that the Hasan had communicated the radical Islamic cleric.

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Gates told reporters he agreed with the attorney general's assessment.

"Yes, it's disturbing," Gates said. "But before I draw any conclusions about it, I want to find out all the facts."

Investigators have said e-mails between Hasan and the imam, Anwar al-Awlaki, did not advocate or threaten violence. After the shootings, al-Awlaki's Web site praised Hasan as a hero. Holder said investigators still were gathering evidence in the case.

At the hearing, Holder was asked what he would do to prevent such an occurrence in the future.

"I think what we have to do is understand exactly what happened that led to that tragedy," Holder said. "Were their flags that were missed? Were there miscommunications or was there a lack of communication? And once we have a handle on that, I think that we can propose and work with this committee on ways in which we can prevent such a tragedy from occurring again."

"I will say that on the basis of what I know so far, it is disturbing to know that there was this interaction between Hasan and - and other people that is, I find, disturbing," Holder said.

As Congress prepared to open oversight hearings into the massacre, Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., said Wednesday there was no suggestion that Hasan was working with others. "All the information we have is that this is a lone wolf," Langevin, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said after a closed-door briefing on the Fort Hood investigation.

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, are investigating whether a breakdown in communications or poor judgment calls contributed to the shootings, considered the deadliest attack on a military base in the U.S. The Senate Homeland Security Committee that Collins and Lieberman sit on was expected to open hearings in the case Thursday.

A joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI learned late last year of Hasan's repeated contact with the cleric, who encouraged Muslims to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. The FBI said the task force did not refer early information about Hasan to superiors because it concluded he wasn't linked to terrorism.

"The Fort Hood massacre also raises questions about whether there are unnecessary restrictions on information sharing and whether those restrictions resulted in a failure to trigger a further inquiry," Collins said.

Hasan's psychiatry supervisors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center had expressed concerns in May 2007 about what they described as Hasan's "pattern of poor judgment and lack of professionalism." The Associated Press had previously reported that doctors there discussed concerns about Hasan's overly zealous religious views and strange behavior months before the attack, but National Public Radio on Wednesday published an evaluation letter signed by the department's psychiatry residency program director, Maj. Scott Moran.

Moran concluded that Hasan still could graduate and did not deserve even probation because Hasan was able to improve his behavior once confronted by supervisors. About a year after Moran's memo was written, Hasan was selected for promotion from captain to major, a position that would give him increased pay and responsibilities. He would formally become a major in May 2009 and by July he was on his way to Fort Hood.

Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla., said any "telltale signs that he was a disgruntled major were not as apparent as the rumors you've heard." Rooney spoke to reporters after he left Wednesday's classified briefing.

Rooney, a member of the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee and a former Army lawyer, also said Hasan was qualified to be promoted but was in "more toward the bottom third of his class."