Major Nidal Hasan had contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Muslim cleric who was imam at the Virginia Islamic Center where two of the September 11th hijackers attended, in 2001, and who fled abroad. The cleric now runs a jihadist website. Major Hasan was a member of the same Islamic Center in 2001, though that, by itself, means nothing.
What does mean something is that Major Hasan tried to contact him in 2008:
U.S. officials in ’08 probed suspect’s contact with imam¹
By Josh Meyer and Greg Miller, Chicago TribuneWASHINGTON – The FBI and the Army last year investigated contacts between a Yemen-based militant Islamist prayer leader and the Army psychiatrist accused of last week’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, but they dropped the case after concluding he did not pose a threat, a senior federal law enforcement official said yesterday.
Other investigative officials said that Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan apparently acted alone and that he would be charged by the U.S. military rather than in a civilian court. Hasan, recovering from wounds, also acquired a lawyer.
Let’s skip down to the end:
Several U.S. officials said U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted communications between Hasan and Awlaki starting in late 2008 as a result of another investigation.
They said the information was given to one U.S.-based multiagency Joint Terrorism Task Force and then to another one based at the Washington Field Office because of Hasan’s assignment at the Walter Reed Medical Center.
The Washington task force, which included FBI agents and Army criminal investigative personnel, launched a probe and determined that Hasan was contacting the radical cleric “within the context of the doctor’s position and what he was doing at the time, conducting research . . . on the issues of Muslims in the military and the effects of war in Muslim countries.”
Hindsight is great, but it seems to me that there were puzzle pieces not put together here. Major Hasan’s contact with Mr al-Awlaki could have been the type of thing suggested above, but contact, by a member of the United States Army with such a man shuld have been notable, and investigated further to see if it was just that, or something more.
And there was plenty of other evidence. Major Hasan’s grammatically-terrifying screed comparing suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save their compatriots, and his presentation at Walter Reed the previous year suggesting that Muslims should not be assigned to military duty against other Muslims.
At that point, it’s easy to see — in hindsight — that there was a pattern developing: Major Hasan’s views were becoming incompatible with his duties in the United States Army. yet nobody put two-and-two together.
It occurs to me that there might be an inherent bias in the system, a bias which favors the innocent conclusion to such information. Innocent until proven guilty is a long-honored part of our legal system, but I have to ask if it has become part of our security system as well. If someone in the armed services has contact with someone like Mr al-Awlaki, should we assume that such a contact is an innocent one, until further evidence (which did exist in Major Hasan’s case) indicates problems, or should the fact of such a contact lead to a presumption of a security problem (not legal guilt) unless explained by mitigating evidence?
Some security people guessed wrong here, in concluding that the Major was not a threat, not a problem. Such wrong assessments are not criminal, as far as I can tell, but they do call into question the standards of judgement used in such cases.
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¹ – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tuesday, 10 November 2009, p. A-4
I think this is all Monday Morning Quarterbacking. I don’t blame the military or the intelligence services for not making a bigger deal of this at the time. It reminds me of the Virginia Tech Massacre where loads of armchair experts, after the fact, declared that we should have known, in advance, that Cho was a homicidal nut when, up to then, there had been no mass murders on any American college campus. Of course, in both cases, it will change how we try to screen out such people based on what is now obviously suspicious activity, but we shouldn’t judge people based solely on 20/20 hindsight.
So, we’ve suffered another terrorist attack, and it happened on Obama’s watch. Has he taken any specific steps to make sure other radical Islamic wannabe terrorists can’t follow in Hasan’s footsteps? Or is he busy attacking Tea Party participants, or FOX NEWS?
This Ft Hood massacre event is reminiscent in my mind of 9/11, in that there were dots that were not connected. I expect better of our intelligence!
The most basic error, considering this man’s attitude problems and poor performance at Walter Reed, well known to his military superiors, was to assign him to Iraq or Afghanistan in the first place. This is not hindsight on my part, it is a lack of good judgment and foresight on the part of his leadership.
It should also be noted that too easy access to weapons was a factor in both Hasan’s and Cho’s cases. This continues to be an situation crying out for more restrictive legislation.
Finally, I wonder, is this another symptom of dysfunction at Walter Reed along the lines of what occurred there during Bush-43?
In that case, they should have just kicked him out of the service. It certainly wouldn’t have been fair to let him stay home while some other Dr. had to go in his place.
At best, you’re closing the barn door after the horse has gone. Plus, neither man had any criminal backgrounds, nor were they certifiably insane, so there was no grounds for barring weapon sales to either. Lastly, why is it that the proposed “Solutions” by liberals to almost every problem is to further restrict our liberties?
Perry wrote:
Even if you take the strange notion that the Second Amendment applies only to the militia, Major Hasan was on active duty with the United States Army; it’s pretty difficult to see how it would have applied to him!
Major Hasan was an officer of some seniority, and he had no criminal record. My guess is that it won’t be too long before we find out that he held a security clearance as well.
Eric: Liberty is not an absolute! It it were, we would have total chaos. We honor the rule of law, which by definition restricts liberty. That is a mark of a civilized society. The limitations on liberty do come at a price, so we must be careful about the restrictions we place upon our citizens. I think our gun laws require some tightening.
Dana: You made the case yourself about the red flags that were apparent in Hasan. We must put the burden on the prospective gun buyer to provide character references at least before being permitted to purchase a gun. Geeze, all you have to do is show up at a gun show, and you have your pick with no questions asked. We should make it difficult to purchase a gun, that’s all I am saying. Hasan, especially, may have found difficulty in obtaining his character witnesses. I don’t know about Cho.
OK, I’m outta here, off to see President Clinton speak, at our annual Jefferson/Jackson dinner/fundraiser, this time in Wilmington. Bye-bye!
The Hasan debacle is just another case of political correctness run amok.
Sorry, but liberty is about as close to an absolute as we have in this country. We should be very careful how we restrict it, lest it lead to its opposite, tyranny.
That aside, no gun restriction would have stopped Hasan short of a total ban. He was an Army officer in good standing, a doctor and a psychiatrist, which meant that, as part of his training, he had to undergo psychotherapy himself, and apparently in this process, no red flags came up. He had no obvious history of mental illness and, as mentioned, no criminal record, either. So, how again do you propose to stop a guy like him from getting a gun, short of preventing ANY citizen from getting one?
That’s just lunacy, Perry. Character witnesses??? What’s next, full anal cavity probes?
PS. I bought a rifle a few months ago at a local Cabela’s, and I had to have a basic background check done to show I had no criminal record or had been institutionalized with mental problems. That’s not unreasonable. Anything beyond that, however, is.
Agreed w/Eric on the gun thing. There’s no way to design a dragnet that would snag Hasan and not a good portion of law-abiding citizens. Your choices are to put huge restrictions on gun ownership for everyone or to keep gun ownership laws as they are. The Constitution is pretty clear on which option we must take, whether we like it or not.
There is, I believe, a temptation within all of us that arises in the wake of such tragedies to simply “take action,” to just “make sure it doesn’t happen again” no matter what. I believe this temptation is to be resisted, for panicked preventive measures generally do more harm than good in the long run, and are almost always unnecessarily restrictive of our liberties.
Sorry, but liberty is about as close to an absolute as we have in this country.
*snork*
To take just one example, *I’m* not chained into my job by health insurance as are millions of Americans.
The Second Amendment reads:
Perry wrote:
I guess that I’m just not intelligent enough to see where putting the burden on prospective gun buyers and having to provide character references falls under the description of “shall not be infringed.”
He was an officer in the United States Army, a physician, and probably had a security clearance; how much higher of a burden would you place on him?
Of course, he probably could have found many character witnesses in his favor: members of the same Islamic Center where he worshipped would have done so. Or would you say that the character witness of Muslims in general wouldn’t be good enough?
Perry had two interesting sentences in one comment:
And:
I’m kind of wondering just what Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, both heroes of the Democratic Party, would have thought about the notion that you needed a character reference to buy a gun.
But, let’s assume that you do have to have character references to buy a gun. Wouldn’t that mean that the “right” to buy a gun would then depend upon some bureaucrat’s assessment of how good or reliable your character references were? Wouldn’t we see tremendous variation in who could and could not purchase a firearm, based on little more than the personal opinions and interpretations of individual bureaucrats?
In a prior comment, Perry told us that liberty is not an absolute. I want to take Perry’s suggestion that we ought to require something like character references before you can buy a gun, and apply it to some of our other freedoms. Considering that Major Hasan was a Muslim, and our current enemies are primarily Muslim, why wouldn’t it be reasonable for us to require character references before anyone would be allowed to practice Islam in this country, before being allowed to join a mosque?
Such an argument is a reductio ad absurdum, and I’d guess that Perry would find it absurd. To me, the logic is indistinguishable from what he used concerning the second amendment.
As soon as the “Global War On Terror” became the “Overseas Contingency Operations” I knew it was not IF terror would strike the USA again, but When. When was last Thursday.
As soon as GITMO was announced to be closed, I knew it was a matter of not IF, but When.
As soon as it was announced that terrorists caught on the battlefield would have to be Mirandized as if caught by the police, I knew it was a matter of not IF, but When.
When BO announced Afghanistan was priority No.1, but it was the first priority after a few dozen other things, and when Gen McChrystal’s request for more troops became an exercise in diversions, I knew it was a matter of not IF, but When.
In short, the war on terror is over for BO. It is a non-priority by his actions. And when he could draw an instant conclusion about a white cop arresting a black professor when he said he had no details, but obviously the white cop was wrong anyway, but could not draw a conclusion here with more time and facts, I know we will be hit again. He has sent out a vote of noconfidence.
It was never a matter of if, Yorkie. It’s always been a matter of when. And if we’re calling this a “terror attack,” then we’ve had terror attacks between 9/11 and Ft. Hood… they just weren’t carried out by Muslim extremists.
And just throwing this out to the boodle – why not treat so-called “terrorist attacks” like we would treat any other sort of heinous crime? Why do these yahoos deserve to be thought of as anything more than just common organized-crime thugs?
Jeff:
It was never a matter of if, Yorkie. It’s always been a matter of when. And if we’re calling this a “terror attack,” then we’ve had terror attacks between 9/11 and Ft. Hood… they just weren’t carried out by Muslim extremists.
Jeff, Lemme thunk on that instead of a snap answer. I’m a little bummed out over some news our group got tonight and don’t want to mix the reaction.
Jeff:
And just throwing this out to the boodle – why not treat so-called “terrorist attacks” like we would treat any other sort of heinous crime? Why do these yahoos deserve to be thought of as anything more than just common organized-crime thugs?
I think the big difference is that the ordinary street thugs organized or not, are used to keep clients, or neighborhoods in line. I’ll Baltimore as an example. there are areas highly affected by the drug trade. The violence and murders are known to be in pockets of the city. You can, for the most part, avoid it. NW Baltimore is like this in pockets, whereas SE Baltimore has much, much less drug trade and violence. It’s a local police issue, but gets help from the state and Feds.
Whereas Islamic terrorism is used to paralyze a country, to place fear, and up to now, an external thing. Back when the Gorelick wall was erected, it was treated as a local crime. The FBI could join in, but the CIA was barred from talking to the FBI and the other way too. Even if we look at Hasan, there are elements of overseas conversations with a known radical imam. To me, it would be hard for this to be investigated as a local crime without reaching back and using all resources.
At least Hasan will be tried under the UCMJ instead of Texas. At least the military has some for reaching sources Texas doesn’t have, but would have to ask.
Just a little note about Forts and Military Reservations. These areas are deeded from States to the DoD. They are owned, operated and policed by DoD. The base commander is basically the Mayor and all DoD activities are tenants. Whereas the violence that occurred at recruiting stations that are outside of forts, are just rentals on a block that is no different from say a 7-11 and the local police have some jurisdiction, but not complete.
As you note, the point of terrorism is to employ relatively indiscriminate episodes of mass violence wrought by invisible factions, in order to create chaos, destabilize social relations, weaken the public morale, corrode social bonds, and finally to delegitimize the government.
Common street thugs have no such political purposes.
And traditionally, as just mentioned, this is all theoretically done in aid of delegitimizing the political authorities by ratcheting them into a Catch 22 situation. To either force them into responding to the terrorist actions with a draconian political overreaction that alienates the general populace; or, if the authorities remain rigidly rule-bound, to prove them impotent to defend the system and the very people they are pledged to preserve.
Prior to the advent of Jamie Gorelick, Janet Napolitano, and their kind in government, it would have been a strategy of little use to Islamists being as visible and as morally alien to the general culture as they are.
And, given their own statements on the matter, Islamist violence in the U.S. seems to be more about rendering the U.S. indecisive internationally by killing and demoralizing the enemy – meaning the civilian population of the U.S. – whenever and wherever it can be reached, than it is about gaining near term political control here for some socially invisible political faction.
But, in their more modest task of killing Americans, setting them at odds with their government, and inhibiting U.S. actions here and abroad, the Obama administration will probably prove to be their greatest ally.
catch28 wrote, on Patterico:
You’ll note that nowhere in the Constitution (or the Declaration of Independence, for that matter) is health insurance established as a fundamental right.
Try again.
Here is Maj. Hasan discussion of Muslims in the military as it relates to the Koran:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/15732238/Nidal-Malik-Hasan-The-Koranic-World-View-As-It-Relates-to-Muslims-in-the-US-Military
Eric:“You’ll note that nowhere in the Constitution (or the Declaration of Independence, for that matter) is health insurance established as a fundamental right.”
Neither is car insurance, Eric.
You need to review the purpose of the Constitution, because your claim is bogus!
Perry:
Eric:“You’ll note that nowhere in the Constitution (or the Declaration of Independence, for that matter) is health insurance established as a fundamental right.”
Neither is car insurance, Eric.
You need to review the purpose of the Constitution, because your claim is bogus!
Owning a car is optional, driving is optional, and states, according to the Constitution, mandate insurance, not the Feds. The states have elected to use their powers as those granted to the states by the Constitution.