Senate report: Army, FBI should have prevented Fort Hood jihad
Posted on February 4, 2011 by creeping
A Senate investigation of the Fort Hood shootings faults the Army and FBI with missing warning signs and not exchanging information that could have prevented the massacre.
The report, released Thursday, concludes that systemic and cultural problems caused military officials to miss signs that the suspect, Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, was becoming increasingly radical before the 2009 attack.
It also concludes that the FBI did not share information with the Army – notably, e-mails that Hasan, an Army psychiatrist and practicing Muslim, exchanged with a “suspected terrorist,” a likely reference to Anwar al-Aulaqi, an ic cleric known for his extremist views. The report says the agency may have dismissed such clues to avoid causing “a bureaucratic confrontation.”
At a news conference Thursday, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) said the investigation’s “painful conclusion is that the Fort Hood massacre could have and should have been prevented.”
In particular, Lieberman said the report, issued by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, indicates that the FBI had compelling evidence of extremism that should have led to Hasan’s military discharge and made him the subject of a counterterrorism investigation.
From the report:
A JTTF learn ed that Hasan was communicating with the Suspected Terrori st, flagged Hasan’s initial [REDACTED] communicat ions for further review, and passed them to a second JTTF for an inquiry. However, the ensuing inqu iry fai led to identi fy the totality of Hasan’s communications and to inform Hasan’s mi li tary chain of comman d and Army sec urity officials of the fac t th at he was communicating with a suspected violent Islamist extremi st – a shocking course of conduct for a U.S. mi li tary officer. Instead, the JTTF inquiry relied on Hasan’s erroneous Offi cer Evaluation Reports and ult imately dismissed his comm uni cat ions as legitimate research. Th e JTTF that had reviewed the initial [REDACTED] co mmunicati ons di smi ssed the second JTTF ‘s work as “slim” but eventually dropped the matter rather than cause a bureaucratic confron tation. The JTTFs now even dispute the extent to which they were in con tact with each other in this case. Nonetheless, th e JTTFs never raised the dispute to FBI headquarters for resolution, and en tities in FB I headquarters responsibl e for coordination among fie ld offices never acted. As a result, th e FB I’s inquiry into Hasan ended premature! y.
Who was the second JTTF that thought emailing al Awlaki was legitimate research? This is the Joint Terrorism Task Force -”the principal domestic federal operational arm for counterterrorism investigations and intelligence collection” – is it not?
Joe Lieberman and the Senate committee are all over it:
The threat of homegrown radicalization goes beyond the capabilities of the law enforcement, intelligence, and homeland security agencies and requires a response from a broad range of our government which will produce plans to translate and implement this comprehensive national approach into specific, coordinated, and measurable actions across th e government andin cooperation with the Muslim-American community.
The government – one that won’t even say jihad or Islamic terrorism, in cooperation with the Muslim-American community – i.e., CAIR, ISNA, Keith Ellison, more Nidal Hassan’s – are going to resolve the issue of Islamic terrorism in the U.S.? That sounds eerily similar to Obama’s new counter terrorism adviser.
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