Fort Hood Shooting

[incarcerated]

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/...ews/story/9170
87.html


Fort Hood-type threat probed at Fort Benning

Ben Wright - benw@ledger-enquirer.com
Saturday, Nov. 21, 2009
A suspicious package was found outside a motor pool Thursday morning at Fort Benning with an anonymous note threatening an attack similar to the one at Fort Hood, Texas, the Army Times is reporting.

Elsie Jackson, a public affairs spokeswoman, confirmed that military police found the package on Kelly Hill after officers received a call to its 911 center. Jackson refused to comment on specific details of the package but said it was seized and the area secured.

Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan is accused in the Nov. 5 shooting spree at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead and 29 wounded.

The Army Times said the package with 20 hollow-point bullets and a threatening note were found in the motor pool area under the 197th Training Brigade.

Discovery of the package came on the same day Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Central Command, was in Columbus for Fort Benning’s Officer Candidate School graduation of 152 new second lieutenants at the Columbus Convention Center.

Jackson said the discovery of the package was an ongoing investigation but soldiers and families on post are safe. “All appropriate security measures were in place for the safety of soldiers and the community,” she said.

[incarcerated]

This could backfire on them.
With video:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/de...ory?id=9148871

Defense Attorney: Hasan Won't Plead Guilty, May Use Insanity Defense

Retired Col. John Galligan Says Accused Fort Hood Shooter Is Paralyzed From Chest Down and in Severe Pain
By MARK SCHONE
Nov. 22, 2009
The defense attorney for accused his client will probably plead not guilty and that an insanity defense is possible.
"I anticipate that the plea will be not guilty," said defense attorney John Galligan.

Asked if he was considering an insanity plea for his client, who faces 13 counts of premeditated murder, Galligan said, "I'm fairly confident that that's going to have to at least be examined. And that's problematic. But we haven't reached that stage yet."

Galligan said he has also learned that his client, who will be tried in a military court, may face additional charges for the Nov. 5 shooting spree in Fort Hood, Texas. He said he was alerted to the new charges during a pre-trial confinement hearing before a military magistrate held in Hasan's San Antonio hospital room Saturday.

[PedOncoDoc]

I believe there are a few legal studs aronud here to bring up the legal stuff...

IIRC from my experiences in psych and the coronor's office, insanity pleas require the accused to 1)demonstrate delusional thinking that 2)prevents them from realizing that their actions are wrong. Depression, anxiety, etc. have nothing to do with it.

If he is found insane, can anyone who claims to be a practicing Muslim be institutionalized due to insanity?

This will get ugly...

[Warrior-Mentor]

I'm glad to see that SEN Levin is willing to admit that this was an act of terrorism...

Washington Times
November 23, 2009
Pg. 6

Inquiry Knew Of Hasan E-Mails
Levin to look into handling

By Pamela Hess and Anne Gearan, Associated Press

The government intercepted at least 18 e-mails between the Fort Hood shooting suspect and a radical Muslim cleric, and a key senator says there could be more communications that might have tipped off law enforcement or military officials.

Federal investigators say they intercepted the messages between the suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, and Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born cleric. They were passed along to two Joint Terrorism Task Force cells led by the FBI, but a senior defense official said no one at the Defense Department knew about the messages until after the shootings. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence procedures.

Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, said last week after a briefing from Pentagon and Army officials that the Senate Armed Services Committee, which he chairs, will investigate how those and other e-mails involving Maj. Hasan were handled and why the U.S. military was not made aware of them before the Nov. 5 shooting.

Mr. Levin said his committee is focused on determining whether the Defense Department's representative on the terrorism task force acted appropriately and effectively.

Mr. Levin also said he considers Maj. Hasan's shooting spree, which killed 13 and wounded many more, an act of terrorism.

"There are some who are reluctant to call it terrorism, but there is significant evidence that it is. I'm not at all uneasy saying it sure looks like that," he said.

He said his committee will also look into whether military members have the ability to report suspicious behavior evinced by colleagues.

FBI and military officials have provided differing versions of why Maj. Hasan's critical e-mails to Mr. al-Awlaki and others did not reach Army investigators before the shooting.

FBI officials have said a military investigator on the task force saw the e-mails and looked up Maj. Hasan's record, but finding nothing particularly worrisome, the investigator neither sought nor got permission to pass the e-mails on to other military officials.

But the senior defense official has countered that the rules of the task force prevented that military representative from passing the records on without approval from other members of the task force.

The Pentagon may reconsider rules governing participation in extremist organizations that some lawmakers say appear outdated and too narrow in light of the shooting rampage at the Army base in Texas.

The Pentagon wrote regulations on "dissident and protest activities" in response to soldier participation in skinhead and other racially motivated hate groups. The current rules were written in 1996 and last updated in 2003.

The rules prohibit membership or participation in "organizations that espouse supremacist causes," seek to discriminate based on race, religion or other factors or advocate force or violence. Commanders can investigate and can discipline or fire people who "actively participate in such groups."

SOURCE:
http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20091123718375.html

[T-Rock]

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CReZVNkPObk

[orion5]

The Lieberman/Collins Senate report is out today................Hasan's "radicalization to violent Islamist extremism"...the new term for "terrorism"?



“TICKING TIME BOMB” FORT HOOD MASSACRE COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED
Committee Report Finds Internal Disputes, Poor Coordination at FBI and Failure to Acknowledge Violent Islamist Extremism at DOD


WASHINGTON – The Fort Hood massacre, which left 13 dead and 32 wounded, could have been prevented, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., and Ranking Member Susan Collins, R-Me., said Thursday, as they unveiled their report on the November 5, 2009, terrorist attack.

Evidence of accused killer Nidal Hasan’s growing drift toward violent Islamist extremism was on full display during his military medical training, although his superiors took no punitive action, according to the report. Two of his associates said he was a “ticking time bomb.” He had defended Osama Bin Laden and suggested Muslim Americans in the U.S. military might be prone to commit fratricide.

But, a slipshod FBI investigation into Hasan, coupled with internal disagreements and structural flaws in the agency’s intelligence operations also contributed to the government’s failure to prevent the attack.

DOD and FBI “collectively had sufficient information necessary to have detected Hasan’s radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed both to understand and to act on it,” the report states. “Our investigation found specific and systemic failures in the government’s handling of the Hasan case and raises additional concerns about what may be broader systemic issues.”


DOD Failures

The report tracks Hasan’s growing radicalization in the years before the attack and the numerous failures of the military to intervene or take action against him. For example, two officers described Hasan, during his medical residency and fellowship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, as “a ticking time bomb.” At various times while he was at Walter Reed, Hasan suggested revenge might be a defense for the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and expressed sympathy with violent Islamist extremists and bin Laden. He also justified suicide bombers; said U.S. military operations represented a war against Islam; and stated that one of the risks of having Muslims in the U.S. military was the possibility of fratricide of fellow service members.

“The officers who kept Hasan in the military and moved him steadily along knew full well of his problematic behavior,” the report found. “As the officer who assigned Hassan to Fort Hood (and later decided to deploy Hasan to Afghanistan) admitted to an officer at Fort Hood, ‘you’re getting our worst.’”

Astonishingly, one of the reasons Hasan’s commanders claimed for not taking action against Hasan was a belief that the evidence of his growing radicalization actually provided an understanding of violent Islamist extremism and the culture of Islam. His Officer Evaluation Report for July 2007 to June 2008, for example, said Hasan’s work on the role of culture and Islamic faith in the context of terrorism “has extraordinary potential to inform national policy and military strategy.”


FBI Failures

The report also examines the all-too-cursory FBI investigation into Hasan’s activities when he came to the agency’s attention in early 2009; and the critical dispute, unresolved by FBI headquarters, between two Joint Terrorist Task Forces (JTTF) – the anti-terrorist intelligence units created in the aftermath of 9/11, comprised of federal, state, and local officials, and meant to facilitate intelligence information sharing and operational coordination.

On January 7, 2009, the San Diego JTTF sent a memo to the Washington JTTF about Hasan’s communications with a known terrorist already under investigation. Despite the red flags this should have raised, the Washington JTTF waited more than six weeks before assigning the investigation to an analyst from the Defense Department who was attached to the Washington JTTF. The analyst then waited until the last day of the customary 90-day deadline for completing inquiries and wrote his report in four hours, without considering the investigation from a counterintelligence perspective. Instead, he relied on Hasan’s sanitized Officer Evaluation Reports. The San Diego JTTF thought the inquiry was superficial but dropped the matter. FBI headquarters was never informed of, and played no role, in the Hasan investigation.

The FBI’s view of intelligence analysts from other agencies assigned to JTTFs compounded the problem. JTTF analysts from non-FBI agencies were not allowed full access to a key FBI database, which likely would have sparked a more in-depth inquiry.


Recommendations

The report found “compelling evidence that Hasan embraced views so extreme that he did not belong in the military.” It also found that FBI organizational problems have impeded the agency’s full use of intelligence analysts, concluding that the FBI’s “transformation into an intelligence driven, domestic counterterrorism organization needs to be accelerated.”

Among the report’s recommendations to strengthen our defenses against homegrown terrorism:

• DOD policies against extremism among service members must explicitly cover violent Islamist extremism. This is too important to be subsumed within policies aimed at “violent extremism” in general or “workplace violence.”
  
• Military equal employment rules and religious accommodations must clearly differentiate between violent Islamist extremism and protected religious observance. That way, the thousands of Muslim-Americans who serve our country honorably will be protected from suspicion for practicing their religion.
  
• Military employment evaluations and personnel records must accurately and candidly describe performance and behavior that could pose threats.
  
• The FBI needs to integrate its 56 field offices more effectively under headquarters leadership.
  
• The FBI needs to ensure that its JTTFs more convincingly share information and coordinate operations with other federal, state, and local agencies.
  
• The FBI must systematically update how it conducts its investigative activities. In the Hasan case, the FBI failed to identify all of Hasan’s communications with the suspected terrorist and the extent of the threat contained within them.
  
• The FBI needs to use intelligence analysts more skillfully. In the Hasan case, analysts were not consulted by the Washington Joint Terrorism Task Force to analyze his communications and help determine the objectives for the FBI’s inquiry.
  
• The U.S. must develop a national strategy to counter domestic terrorist radicalization. The reality is that even had the military dismissed Hasan before the attacks, our government would not have been well-positioned to counter his growing radicalization.

This report and its recommendations are particularly important given the dramatic increase in homegrown terrorist plots over the past two years. Thirteen people died needlessly at Fort Hood. Their memory will be served if the recommendations of this report are adopted quickly so the next “ticking time bomb” can be spotted early and defused before another deadly detonation.


Press Release from Senate Committee

Full Report (pdf, 91 pages)

[The Reaper]

I guess that is the indirect way of saying that political correctness killed your husband/father/son/wife/mother/daughter.

Call an Muslim extremist what he is and get called a racist and sued by CAIR, or hope he doesn't snap till he has passed on to the next unit and start wearing your body armor to work.

Hmm.

TR

[tonyz]

PC still running amok.

Major Hasan, 'Star Officer'
Every branch of the military issued a final report on the Fort Hood massacre. Not a single one mentioned radical Islam.
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
WSJ
FEBRUARY 16, 2011


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...THY+RABINOWITZ

Excerpt:

"Some of those enthusiastic testaments strongly suggested that the writers were themselves at least partly persuaded of their reasoning. In magical thinking, safety and good come to those who obey taboos, and in the multiculturalist world, there is no taboo more powerful than the one that forbids acknowledgment of realities not in keeping with the progressive vision. In the world of the politically correct—which can apparently include places where psychiatrists are taught—magical thinking reigns.

A resident who didn't represent the diversity value that Hasan did as a Muslim would have faced serious consequences had he behaved half as disturbingly. Here was a world in which Hasan was untouchable, in which all that was grim and disturbing in him was transformed. He was a consistently mediocre performer, ranking in the lowest 25% of his class, but to his evaluators, he was an officer of unique talents.

He was a star not simply because he was a Muslim, but because he was a special kind—the sort who posed, in his flaunting of jihadist sympathies, the most extreme test of liberal toleration. Exactly the kind the progressive heart finds irresistible."

[Pete]

Report: Gunman Yelled “God Is Great” in Arabic Before Shooting in Germany

Not confirmed yet but

http://www.foxnewsinsider.com/2011/0...ng-in-germany/

Hmmm, I wonder what the Germany shooter and Hasan have in common? I know there's a link somewhere - I just can't put my finger on it

[Gypsy]

Originally Posted by Pete

Hmmm, I wonder what the Germany shooter and Hasan have in common? I know there's a link somewhere - I just can't put my finger on it

When you figure it out would you let me know?


RIP.

[incarcerated]

Originally Posted by Pete

Report: Gunman Yelled “God Is Great” in Arabic Before Shooting in Germany

CNN showed the anti-Gadaffi rebel forces shouting the same thing today.

[Pete]

Army to Punish Nine Officers in Connection With Fort Hood Shootings

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...#ixzz1GF8QhoWc


"........"The severity of each action varies depending on case-specific facts and circumstances. In certain cases, it may take several weeks to ensure that each officer is accorded appropriate due process and to take final action. In order to protect the due process rights of the officers involved, the Army will not identify them or provide details of the administrative actions at this time. Upon the completion of all cases, the Army will review whether the release of additional information would be appropriate."............."

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by Pete

Army to Punish Nine Officers in Connection With Fort Hood Shootings

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...#ixzz1GF8QhoWc


"........"The severity of each action varies depending on case-specific facts and circumstances. In certain cases, it may take several weeks to ensure that each officer is accorded appropriate due process and to take final action. In order to protect the due process rights of the officers involved, the Army will not identify them or provide details of the administrative actions at this time. Upon the completion of all cases, the Army will review whether the release of additional information would be appropriate."............."

What about Hassan? Where is his punishment?

Will he be tried as a murdering terrorist scum and be sentenced to death or incarceration for the rest of his miserable life?

TR

[echoes]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

What about Hassan? Where is his punishment?

Will he be tried as a murdering terrorist scum and be sentenced to death or incarceration for the rest of his miserable life?

TR

Very well said TR Sir!

Can only hope the media doesn't forget about this, pretend it didn't happen, sweep it under the...wait a second.....

Holly

[trvlr]

Originally Posted by The Reaper

What about Hassan? Where is his punishment?

Will he be tried as a murdering terrorist scum and be sentenced to death or incarceration for the rest of his miserable life?

TR

23 hour lockdown for life is my best guess.