Washington Times, 1 June 2010: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, facing 13 counts of premeditated murder, made his first in-person court appearance Tuesday, before military judge Col. James Pohl and won a request to delay the trial for four months.
Authorities said the hearings could have been held as early as July 1 if Col. Pohl hadn’t granted the request of Hasan defense attorney Col. John Galligan to delay them until Oct. 4. Col. Galligan told The Washington Times that granting more time in potential death-penalty cases is not unusual.
The Army psychiatrist’s appearance at the small fortified military courthouse at Fort Hood marked the first time he has been on base since the Nov. 5 shootings that left 13 dead and 32 wounded. According to wire reports from Texas, the wheelchair-bound Maj. Hasan — who was paralyzed during the attack — said nothing during the short hearing except when answering questions, and then only with soft direct replies such as, “Yes, sir.” . . .
. . . . Maj. Hasan will be tried under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which outlines the protocols for investigating an officer. Col. Morgan Lamb of the 21st Calvary Brigade will preside over the Article 32 hearings. . . .
AP, 27 April 2010: The Obama administration said Tuesday it will provide some but not all the materials a Senate committee wants on last year’s Fort Hood shooting rampage, setting up a potential legal showdown with Congress.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had demanded that the Pentagon share documents and witnesses about the deadly incident by Tuesday morning. An unusual Senate subpoena sought material the Pentagon claims would jeopardize prosecution of the suspect, Major Nidal Hasan. The U.S. Army psychiatrist has been accused of killing 13 people in November at Fort Hood, Texas.
Senators have said they want to be sure the Pentagon is working to prevent similar tragedies. Committee spokeswoman Leslie Phillips said that “as far as we’re concerned they have not complied with the subpoena.” She said the panel is considering its next step. . . .
Fort Hood information snub irks Senate panel leaders (GovExec, 28 April 2010)
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, criticized the Obama administration Tuesday for refusing to provide information about last year’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas.
Lieberman and Collins had given the Justice and Defense departments until Monday to comply with subpoenas seeking information about the November attack in which 13 soldiers were killed and more than 30 others were wounded. . . .
American Forces Press Service, 15 April 2010: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has directed the Defense Department immediately to implement 26 interim recommendations of an independent panel he appointed to look into the Nov. 5 shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, Pentagon officials said today. Gates signed the memorandum April 12.
Army Maj. Nidal Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of murder and 32 counts of attempted murder. The psychiatrist allegedly opened fire at a facility where soldiers were processing for overseas deployments.
The defense secretary asked former Veterans Affairs Secretary Togo D. West Jr. and former chief of naval operations retired Adm. Vernon E. Clark to chair the investigative panel. They detailed 79 recommendations to improve force protection and tighten gaps in personnel policies, emergency response, mass casualty preparedness and support to Defense Department health care providers.
The secretary approved 26 recommendations in their entirety. The panel’s full report is expected to be released in June, and work on the other 53 recommendations continues, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said today. Some of those recommendations require changes in law, and the department is working closely with Congress on the recommendations, he added. . . . .
. . . . The interim recommendations allow the department to continue increasing force protection measures. Gates has ordered immediate expansion of the “eGuardian” pilot program throughout the department. The program is a force-protection threat reporting system designed to handle suspicious activities. The department will adopt the unclassified FBI-owned and maintained reporting system as soon as possible.
The secretary also ordered the complete deployment of the Law Enforcement Defense Data Exchange System to all Defense Department law enforcement entities. The system will allow agencies to share criminal investigation and other law enforcement data.
Gates tasked Paul Stockton, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and America’s security affairs, to serve as the department’s lead in the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force program. The independent report called the Defense Department’s commitment to the program “inadequate,” and Pentagon officials are working with the FBI to develop a memorandum of understanding between the agencies.
The secretary also directed significant strengthening of the Defense Department’s antiterrorism training program by incorporating best practices learned by the Department of Homeland Security. . . . .
Interim Fort Hood Recommendations Approved (DOD News Release, 15 April 2010)
The Department of Defense announced today near-term actions to address gaps and deficiencies in personnel policies, force protection measures, emergency response, mass casualty preparedness and support to DoD healthcare providers identified by the DoD Independent Review panel.
The actions follow-up on 26 of the 79 recommendations made by the panel chaired by former Army secretary Togo D. West, Jr., and retired Adm. Vern Clark, the former chief of naval operations, in the wake of the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas on Nov. 5, 2009. DoD’s follow-on review, which is headed by Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense & Americas’ Security Affairs Paul Stockton, will recommend to Secretary Robert M. Gates what actions should be taken on the remaining 53 recommendations in June.
Among the actions to be taken in the near-term are:
(1) Expand the pilot program to fully deploy eGuardian as the DoD-wide force protection threat reporting system to handle suspicious incident activities. The eGuardian system, which is FBI-owned and maintained, will safeguard civil liberties, while enabling information sharing among Federal, State, local, and tribal law enforcement partners, including interagency fusion centers.
(2) Complete the deployment of the Law Enforcement Defense Data Exchange system (D-DEx) allowing all DoD law enforcement agencies to share criminal investigation as well as other law enforcement data as appropriate. D-DEx will be a consolidated database to enable organizations across the Department to query, retrieve, and post criminal investigation and law enforcement data in a single repository.
(3) Establish the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs as the DoD lead for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force program.
(4) Strengthen DoD’s antiterrorism training program by incorporating lessons learned from the Fort Hood incident, Department of Homeland Security best practices on workplace violence, and civilian law enforcement active shooter awareness training.
Gates’ implementation memo, as well as a detailed description of the actions to be taken on each of the 26 recommendations, can be found at http://www.defense.gov/news/d20100415fthood1.pdf .
MSNBC, 15 April 2010: NBC News has obtained a scathing report from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who says that most of the Defense Department’s safeguards were “unclear” or “inadequate” to identify the threat and prevent the mass shooting that killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in December. Army Psychiatrist Major Nidal Hassan is charged in the shootings that also wounded 31.
The Secretary’s report found that:
- DOD’s commitment to the Joint Terrorism Task Force is “inadequate,” which results in “inconsistent” coordination with the FBI. The Joint Task force knew well before the shooting that Hassan was in communications with an al Qaeda sympathizer and recruiter, but that was not reported to DOD or the military.
- Commanders and supervisors do not always receive information about individuals who may commit violent acts.
- Counterintelligence training does not address “emerging threats including self-radicalization,” which may contribute to potential violence. Hasan was known to have gone off on Islamic-related religious rants, and expressed strong opposition to Muslims in the U.S. military serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- DOD policy prohibiting certain supremacist or extremist behavior is “unclear” and “limited” when it comes to individual behavior.
- DOD does not have a comprehensive cyberspace counterintelligence program to alert authorities to “non-foreign intelligence” on potential threats.
There are a series of recommendations to improve or establish programs to deal with each of these shortfalls that may have prevent early detection of the potential threat. . . . .
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CI Centre’s counterintelligence training DOES address “”emerging threats including self-radicalization,” which may contribute to potential violence”:
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 361–The Global Jihadist Threat Doctrine
STRATFOR, 18 March 2010: . . . In the message, which was titled “A Call to Arms,” American-born Al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn starts by telling jihadists to strike targets that are close to them. He repeats the al Qaeda doctrinal position that jihad is a personal, religiously mandated duty for every able-bodied Muslim. He then tells his audience that “it is for you, like your heroic Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan, to decide how, when and where you discharge this duty. But whatever you do, don’t wait for tomorrow to do what can be done today, and don’t wait for others to do what you can do yourself.”
As the message progresses, Gadahn’s praise of Fort Hood shooter Hasan continues. Gadahn lifts up Hasan as an example for other Muslims to emulate: “the Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role-model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers and yearns to discharge his duty to Allah.” He adds that Hasan was the “ideal role model” for Muslims serving in the armed forces of Western countries and of their Muslim allies. Gadahn’s message is clearly intended to encourage more jihadists to emulate Hasan and conduct lone wolf terrorist attacks.
Regarding the planning of such attacks, Gadahn praises Hasan for being a careful planner and for not engaging in a hasty, reckless or poorly planned operation. He states that Hasan clearly learned from the mistakes of others and did not repeat them. Although Gadahn does not specify particular plots in which he believes mistakes were made by grassroots jihadists, he is undoubtedly referring to cases such as the May 2009 arrest of a group of grassroots jihadists in White Plains, N.Y., who came to the attention of authorities when they sought help from a man who turned out to be an FBI informant.
Gadahn praises Hasan for practicing careful operational security by keeping his plans to himself and for not discussing them over the phone or Internet. He also notes that Hasan did not make the mistake of confiding in a person who might have been an FBI informant, as several other plotters have done. Gadahn also says Hasan “didn’t unnecessarily raise his security profile or waste money better spent on the operation itself by traveling abroad to acquire skills and instructions which could easily be acquired at home, or indeed, deduced by using one’s own powers of logic and reasoning.”
When discussing methods lone wolf jihadists can use to conduct their attacks, Gadahn notes that while Hasan used firearms in his assault at Fort Hood, jihadists are “no longer limited to bullets and bombs” when it comes to weapons. “As the blessed operations of September 11th showed, a little imagination and planning and a minimal budget can turn almost anything into a deadly, effective and convenient weapon which can take the enemy by surprise and deprive him of sleep for years on end.”
Gadahn then turns his attention to targeting. He counsels lone wolf jihadists to follow a three-pronged target selection process. They should choose a target with which they are well acquainted, a target that is feasible to hit and a target that, when struck, will have a major impact. He notes that Hasan’s choice of Fort Hood fit all three criteria, but that jihadists should not think that military bases are the only high-value targets in the United States or other Western countries. “On the contrary,” Gadahn insists, “there are countless other strategic places, institutions and installations which, by striking, the Muslim can do major damage.” . . . .
