My World Earth: Pentagon Report on Fort Hood Details Failures-Several US officers failed to supervise Fort Hood gunman-Rampage at Fort Hood was 'act of terrorism': US official

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Pentagon Report on Fort Hood Details Failures-Several US officers failed to supervise Fort Hood gunman-Rampage at Fort Hood was 'act of terrorism': US official

Lt. Nidal Malik Hasan in a gun rampage killed 13 people and injured scores in Fort Hood.

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US Army soldiers stand together as they leave the memorial service in honor of the 13 victims of the Fort Hood shooting.

The shooting rampage at a U.S. Army base in November was "an act of terrorism," an Obama administration official said on Friday, as the Pentagon ordered an overhaul of protocols to spot threats within the military.

Reviews ordered on Friday by the Pentagon and White House exposed shortcomings in both intelligence and oversight before the November 5 shooting, which authorities blame on a military psychiatrist.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said his department was still "burdened by 20th century processes and attitudes mostly rooted in the Cold War," and needed to do more to combat self-radicalization.

"Our counterintelligence procedures are mostly designed to combat an external threat such as a foreign intelligence service," Gates told reporters at the Pentagon, adding there was not enough focus "on internal threats."

Major Nidal Malik Hasan faces 13 counts of murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder for the rampage at Fort Hood Army base in Texas.

The case has drawn criticism after it became known Hasan had been in contact with a Muslim figure sympathetic to al Qaeda.

A senior official in President Barack Obama's administration declined to say whether Hasan might have been taking orders from abroad but did call the shooting "an act of terrorism."

It was a rare use of the phrase by an administration official to describe the Fort Hood killing spree.

"It certainly in my mind was an act of terrorism as far as the tactic that was used," the official, who declined to be named, told reporters.

"But we are still acquiring knowledge about different people involved, and whether or not there was any type of direction, control, inspiration that led to the events on that day," the official said.

The Pentagon review did not delve into the accusations against Hasan, issues being raised in a separate criminal investigation. Gates declined to comment on whether he thought it was a terrorist act on Friday, citing the criminal case.

SPYING ON MOSQUES?

How exactly the military aim to spot self-radicalization among U.S. forces -- the kind U.S. officials believe preceded the shooting -- remains an open question.

Authors of the Pentagon-ordered review who recommended greater attention to any internal threat within the military ruled out sending spies into mosques, for example.

"Do we want commanders (eavesdropping) in the mosque? No. Do we want anybody there? No," said Togo West, a former Army secretary who helped lead the review for the Pentagon.

"What we want is commanders' awareness of what's happening in their units and what's happening with their people."

A White House review called for greater information-sharing between U.S. government agencies.

Gates said he forwarded to the Army recommendations that some Army personnel responsible for supervising Hasan be held accountable.

Hasan was paralyzed by gunshots used to subdue him. He is being held at a military hospital in Texas and could face the death penalty.

The Hasan case is one of two major lapses acknowledged by U.S. authorities in recent months.

Earlier this month, U.S. President Barack Obama outlined new steps aimed at plugging security gaps exposed by a December 25 bomb plot, in which a Nigerian man allegedly came close to blowing up a Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam.

The U.S. intelligence community came under fierce criticism for failing to piece together information it had, which could have uncovered the plot.

Several US officers who failed to properly supervise the suspected gunman who shot dead 13 people at the Fort Hood military base should be held accountable, an inquiry said Friday.

"As a result of our review, it appeared that there were several officers who did not apply the army's policies to the perpetrator," said Togo West, a former army secretary, who led the review with a former chief of naval operations, Vernon Clark.

The report released Friday recommended the US Army secretary carry out "an accountability review" for those officers, which could include disciplinary measures.

Military and intelligence officials have come under criticism for possibly missing warning signs about US Army Major Nidal Hasan, a psychiatrist charged with the 13 murders in the November 5 attack at the military base in Texas.

Hasan is being investigated for links to Islamic extremism, including his contacts with a radical cleric now in Yemen who blessed the killing spree.

West declined to offer more details about the conduct of the officers overseeing Hasan and that the probe had not identified them by name.

But he said US Army leaders would not have difficulty concluding which officers needed to come under scrutiny based on the report, which included sections that were not released publicly.

The report also said "some medical officers failed to apply appropriate judgment and standards" in assessing Hasan.

In personnel evaluations, medical officers failed to take into account Hasan's overall conduct and instead focused only on his academic work, the report said.

The probe did not look at the role of intelligence agencies in tracking Hasan's contacts with the radical cleric, Anwar al-Aulaqi, which is the subject of another review.

But the report did say joint terrorism task forces needed to be improved and that more military officers should be assigned to them.

Contacts between Hasan and the cleric were picked up by government agencies before the shooting but the US Army was not informed about the link.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates praised the report and said he had ordered immediate steps to be taken based on the findings.

The review portrayed the Pentagon as badly prepared for internal threats and that it failed to share information with commanders about personnel.

The report shows "shortcomings in the way the department is prepared to defend against threats posed by external influences operating on members of our military community," Gates told reporters.

He said he did not believe possible radicals within the military's ranks posed a major threat.

But he said "clearly one is too many."

The Pentagon's policies and methods were outdated and the department needed to adapt to new threats that appeared after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Gates said.

"It is clear that as a department, we have not done enough to adapt to the evolving domestic internal security threat to American troops and military facilities that has emerged over the past decade," he said.

"In this area, as in so many others, this department is burdened by 20th century processes and attitudes, mostly rooted in the Cold War."

The government's counter-intelligence procedures were "mostly designed to combat an external threat such as a foreign intelligence service," he said.

But the report praised the rapid response to the shooting at Fort Hood, saying that within four minutes and 10 seconds of the first emergency call, the attack was stopped and the suspected gunman disarmed.
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