Fort Hood Report Highlights Defense Dept. Shortcomings

An Army review of November’s shooting spree at Fort Hood has found the military’s defenses against internal threats to be “outdated and ineffective.” It describes systemic institutional problems that go beyond the case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the man accused in the shootings. –JCL

The New York Times:

The military’s defenses against threats from inside its own ranks are outdated and ineffective, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Monday as he described the findings of an Army review of the Nov. 5 shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas.

Mr. Gates cited poor communications about internal threats to the security of personnel, as well as a weak supervision by commanders, as systemic problems with implications that go beyond the single case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the military psychiatrist accused of the shootings.

Major Hasan is said by officials monitoring the investigations of the shootings to have behaved erratically and had questionable communications with a radical cleric during the years and months before the shootings, which killed 13 and injured 28 more.

But officials took no actions based on his behavior, and he was transferred to a combat unit at Fort Hood last summer.

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