Michael Grant Cahill, 62; Major L. Eduardo Caraveo, 52; /td>Staff Sergeant Justin Michael DeCrow, 32; Captain John P. Gaffaney, 56; /td>Specialist Frederick Greene, 29; Specialist Jason Dean Hunt, 22; /td>Sergeant Amy Sue Krueger, 29; Private First Class Aaron T. Nemelka, 19; Private First Class Michael S. Pearson, 22; Captain Russell Gilbert Seager, 51; Private First Class Francheska Velez, 21; Lieutenant Colonel Juanita L. Warman, 55; Private First Class Kham See Xiong, 23; U.S. Army personnel murdered in a domestic terror attack on Ft. Hood, Texas November 5, 2009; over thirty more individuals were wounded but survived
Nidal Malik Hasan – U.S. Army major, psychiatrist, and American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, was shot and incapacitated by civilian police officers
Ft. Hood, TX
A Pentagon review released Friday portrayed a systemic breakdown within the military that permitted an Army psychiatrist, now charged with killing 13 people, to advance through the ranks despite concerns from his superiors about his behavior.
The review, the first into the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., concluded that the Department of Defense was poorly prepared to defend itself from internal threats well beyond the single case of the military doctor accused of the killings, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.
The review’s findings, although they were focused only on the military and not on other agencies, are the latest signal that the government has not achieved the smooth communications and agility among intelligence agencies that has been sought since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in comments about the review at a Pentagon news conference on Friday, said the Defense Department was still focused on fighting external threats and previous conflicts and had not paid enough attention to workplace violence and any “self-radicalization” within its ranks.
“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,” Mr. Gates 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.”
A high-level Pentagon inquiry into the Fort Hood shootings that left 13 people dead has concluded that the military should focus more resources on identifying service members who might pose a threat to their colleagues and outlines a series of steps it should take to prevent such attacks, Pentagon officials said.
The study, which will be presented to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen on Wednesday, is expected to be publicly released Thursday. The report concludes that officer performance evaluations, which often obscure shortcomings to preserve officers’ careers, need to be more forthright and honest, officials familiar with the report said.
The inquiry, which was led by retired Adm. Vernon E. Clark and former Army secretary Togo D. West Jr., also calls on the Pentagon to ensure that it fully staffs FBI-run Joint Terrorism Task Forces so that information collected by other government agencies about potential contacts between troops and terrorist groups is shared promptly with the Defense Department. And it recommends that the department designate one place to coordinate with other government agencies and assess internal threats.
Read more: Pentagon inquiry into Fort Hood urges focus on service members who may pose risk
The attorney for the Fort Hood shootings suspect says his client will be evaluated next month to determine his mental status that day and whether he’s competent to stand trial. Attorney John Galligan says prosecutors notified him that a three-person board of medical professionals has been named and will start reviewing documents in the case.
He says that after the board finishes by Feb. 7, members will evaluate Maj. Nidal Hasan. Galligan declined to release the names of the board members, who will report their findings to military prosecutors. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the Nov. 5 shootings on the Texas Army post.
Nasser al-Wahayshi, the Yemeni leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and his Saudi deputy, Saeed al-Shehri, were believed to be among more than 30 militants killed in the dawn operation in the eastern province of Shabwa, said the official, who asked not to be identified.
U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki may also have died in the air strike which targeted a meeting of militants planning attacks on Yemeni and foreign oil and economic targets, he said. According to U.S. officials, the U.S. army psychiatrist who ran amok at the Fort Hood army base in Texas on November 5 had contacts with Awlaki.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 12 soldiers and a civilian at Fort Hood last month, won’t get the two additional military lawyers his defense team has requested.
John P. Galligan, the retired Army colonel who is representing Maj. Hasan, asked the Army earlier this month to add the veteran legal officers to the defense team. In addition to Mr. Galligan, Maj. Hasan has a military-appointed defense counsel, Maj. Christopher Martin.
But Mr. Galligan said Friday night that the Army had denied his request, although he may be able to ask for different officers to join the defense.
Officials at Fort Hood couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Maj. Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of murder and 32 counts of attempted murder in the Nov. 5 shootings. Maj. Hasan has not entered a plea in the case. He was paralyzed in the shootout and, although no longer in intensive care, remains in a military hospital in San Antonio, Texas
Military sources have said prosecutors will seek the death penalty.
The Army psychiatrist charged in last month’s deadly shooting spree at Fort Hood has been moved from ICU to a private room. Attorney John Galligan said today that his client, Maj. Nidal Hasan, remains under guard at a San Antonio military hospital and is doing rehabilitation.
Galligan says doctors have said Hasan, whose wounds left him paralyzed, needs to be hospitalized a couple more months while he learns to care for himself. But Galligan says he’s filed a motion to have Hasan moved to a hospital closer to his office near Fort Hood, which is about 125 miles northeast of San Antonio.
Col. Michael Mulligan has been named the lead prosecutor in the court-martial of accused Fort Hood gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a senior military official in Washington told The Associated Press. Mulligan secured the death penalty in a similar case four years ago, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Center that left 12 soldiers and a civilian dead and 29 others injured.
Mulligan prosecuted a case in 2005 in which Sgt. Hasan Akbar was sentenced to death for a 2003 attack on comrades in Kuwait that left two dead and 14 wounded.
Authorities haven’t said if they’ll seek the death penalty Hasan’s court-martial.
Authorities have tightened the rules for accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan. The 39-year-old Army officer accused in the November 5th shooting rampage that killed 13 people has been told that he can no longer communicate with visitors in any language other than English.
In addition, Hasan — purportedly a devout Muslim — can no longer receive visits from members of the clergy.
He remains in intensive care at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. His family is not allowed to visit when his lawyer is present, and only two visitors are permitted at one time while accompanied by criminal investigators.
One of two civilian police officers who brought down the Army psychiatrist accused of going on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood said her wounds from the attack will cut short her career as street police officer.
Sgt. Kimberly Munley said doctors have told her she needs a total knee replacement, a surgery set for January, but that her new knee is likely to wear out sooner if she runs or carries the 15- to 25-pound gear pack required by her job.
“I do want to stay in law enforcement. I’m not going to be able to do what I did before, which is basically work the street,” she told Wilmington, N.C., television station WECT on Wednesday. “It’s going to give me another avenue to look in as far as possibly teaching and instructing.”
Fort Hood officials said Thursday that Munley, 34, who was shot in the leg and hand, has not started the process to determine whether she’s physically able to do her former job.
Munley and Sgt. Mark Todd, another civilian officer in Fort Hood’s police force, are credited with shooting Maj. Nidal Hasan to end the Nov. 5 shooting spree on the Texas Army post, about 150 miles southwest of Fort Worth. Todd, 42, was not injured and is already back at work.
An Army psychiatrist was charged Wednesday with 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the deadly mass shooting at Fort Hood that also injured more than two dozen soldiers and two civilian police officers, military officials said.
Maj. Nidal Hasan already is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder after the Nov. 5 shooting in a building at the Texas base where soldiers must go before being deployed. Witnesses said he jumped on a desk and shouted the words “Allahu Akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great!” Army officials say he was armed with two pistols, one a semiautomatic capable of firing up to 20 rounds without reloading.
The additional charges come less than 24 hours after Hasan’s civilian attorney was notified that the Army planned to evaluate Hasan to test his competency to stand trial as well as his mental state at the time of the shooting.
John Galligan, Hasan’s attorney, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Army officials had not returned his calls so he did not know when or where the “mental responsibility” exam would take place. But Galligan said he filed an objection to the evaluation, saying Hasan was still in intensive care at a San Antonio military hospital recovering from gunshot wounds that left him paralyzed.
The Army is ordering a mental evaluation on Major Nidal Hasan. He is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder in the November 5th shooting spree.
Hasan’s attorney, John Galligan says he got notice Tuesday night of the plan. The evaluation would determine whether the 39-year-old Hasan had mental responsibility at the time of the crime and whether he’s competent to stand trial.
But, Galligan says the exam is premature because Hasan remains in intensive care in San Antonio, and more charges may be pending.
In response to the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, the Army is ordering its commanders to review force protection measures in their communities to identify potential insider threats and prevent acts of violence directed against the Army.
The message — sent earlier this week from the office of the Army chief of staff — provides guidelines for leaders to ensure the physical safety of its soldiers and families. It also provides them with key indicators of terrorist behavior.
The guidelines include:
* knowing soldiers’ behavior on and off duty;
* identifying and reporting soldiers who exhibit indicators of potential violence;
* ensuring compliance with privately owned weapons policies;
* taking appropriate disciplinary action against soldiers who exhibit behavior that adversely affects good order and discipline of the unit.
The Army and several other government agencies have come under fire for failing to prevent the gunning down of 13 people at Fort Hood earlier this month. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, faces 13 murder counts in the case.
In the days following the shooting, congressional leaders questioned why Army officials and the FBI reportedly ignored warning signs, including that Hasan allegedly sent e-mails to a radical Muslim cleric and allegedly donated thousands of dollars to overseas Islamic “charities,” which have been identified by the U.S. as conduits for terror groups.
Among the 10 key indicators of potential terrorist behavior listed in the message are:
* advocating support for international terrorist organizations;
* providing financial support to terrorist organizations;
* repeated expressions of hatred and intolerance of American society;
* purchasing bomb-making materials or obtaining information about the construction of explosives.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who is charged in the mass shooting at Fort Hood over two weeks ago, had his first court hearing Saturday.
The purpose of the hearing was to determine if Major Hasan would be kept under pretrial confinement.
On Saturday a military magistrate did place Hasan in pretrial confinement, but also said the alleged shooter will remain in a military hospital.
“Right now the magistrate has concluded that there was probable cause, he has made a determination that there was a basis for a commander to order someone into pretrial confinement,” said Hasan’s attorney John Galligan.
Saturday’s proceeding were held in Hasan’s hospital room.
According to Galligan, Hasan is paralyzed and still in ICU.
“There was no immediate need for the government, the prosecution, or the army to take the step of changing him from a patient to a pretrial confinee,” Galligan added.
Hasan has been recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, after suffering four gun shot wounds in the attack that killed 13 people and injured 30 others.
The signs pointing to Nidal Malik Hasan’s suspected extremism might have been there for years before the fatal Fort Hood shootings, but most people around him in Killeen never suspected a thing.
When the Army major gave his belongings to neighbors days before the massacre, they assumed it was because he was going to be deployed overseas.
But Hasan left behind business cards with cryptic abbreviations of suspected links to radical Islam and exhibited a calm a day before the shootings that now gives people pause.
The green and white cards, one of which remained partly visible Friday with more of Hasan’s belongings that FBI agents left behind after searching his apartment, say “Behavioral Health — Mental Health — Life Skills” and appear to advertise a side venture as a therapist for other Muslims. The card did not list his rank or his Army affiliation.
The card listed a Maryland phone number (calls to the number were met with a message saying the voicemail is full), and an AOL e-mail address for Hasan, one of several that investigators now are poring over.
Under his name on the card, the abbreviation “SoA (SWT)” appears. SoA is used as an acronym for “Soldier of Allah,” and the phrase often appears on jihad Web sites.
Continue readingHasan kept his inner life well-concealed
Intelligence officials are examining whether the Fort Hood shooter wired money to Pakistan before the Nov. 5 shootings, U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland, told the Free Press today.
Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the suspect in the deadly shootings at a military base in Texas last week, is being examined for financial transactions to people in Pakistan.
“A pretty credible source said to me … you need to look at his connections to Pakistan, money transfers to Pakistan,” Hoekstra said today. “I believe there is substance to it.”
The links to Pakistan are of concern because the country has become a center for Islamic militant groups, he said.
Hoekstra said earlier this week that Hasan had exchanged 10 to 20 e-mails with Anwar Al-Awlaki, a cleric in the Middle East who once worked at mosques in the U.S., including one in Virginia that Hasan had attended.
Hoekstra’s comments about Hasan’s possible ties to Pakistan were first reported Thursday by the Dallas Morning News.
Hoekstra has been calling this week for officials to fully investigate the shootings and whether they are tied to Islamic extremism.
“The horrific shootings at Fort Hood are a tragic reminder of the potential deadly consequences of the threat posed by homegrown jihadism and the failure of the government to adequately respond to it,” Hoekstra said in a separate statement earlier this week.
The military psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood was part of a medical psychiatrist corps stretched to its limits, raising questions about whether the Army kept him on to meet personnel goals.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was promoted from the rank of captain to major in May, military records show. Because of a shortage of majors in the medical corps, the promotion board was given the authority to promote captains who otherwise would not have been considered for a promotion to major, according to a U.S. military official who asked not to be identified in connection with discussing personnel matters possibly related to the Hasan investigation.
Army officials were not at liberty to discuss Hasan’s promotion rating or to say if the service was keeping him to fill needed staffing quotas.
Currently, the rank of major in the Army is in the 85 percent fulfilled mark or, put another way, there are 1,191 people currently in the rank for which there are 1,402 total positions.
Hasan was promoted after six years as serving at the rank of captain, the standard time spent in that rank in the medical corps, according to Army officials.
The Army is also short in the number of psychiatrists it needs, according to Army statistics. The service has about 85 percent of the number needed to fill the ranks, 123 of the 143 required, according to Army documents.
Finger-pointing erupted between federal agencies Tuesday over Fort Hood shooting suspect Nidal Hasan. Government officials said a Defense Department terrorism investigator looked into Hasan’s contacts with a radical imam months ago, but a military official denied prior knowledge of the Army psychiatrist’s contacts with any Muslim extremists.
The two government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case on the record, said the Washington-based joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI was notified of communications between Hasan and a radical imam overseas, and the information was turned over to a Defense Criminal Investigative Service employee assigned to the task force. The communications were gathered by investigators beginning in December 2008 and continuing into early this year.
That Defense investigator wrote up an assessment of Hasan after reviewing the communications and the Army major’s personnel file, according to these officials. The assessment concluded Hasan did not merit further investigation — in large part because his communications with the imam were centered on a research paper about the effects of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the investigator determined that Hasan was in fact working on such a paper, the officials said.
U.S. Army officials say they intend to charge the alleged gunman in last week’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood — Major Nidal Malik Hasan — with 13 counts of premeditated murder.
Officials are expected to officially announce the murder charges Thursday.
Hasan allegedly opened fire on unarmed soldiers at the Fort Hood military base as the troops were preparing for deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Authorities are investigating motives for the attack amid concerns that U.S. authorities missed warning signs that could have prevented the rampage that left 13 dead and 30 wounded.
A group of U.S. military doctors overseeing Hasan’s training as an army psychiatrist expressed concerns a year ago about his bizarre behavior.
Hasan, who was shot multiple times by civilian police during the attack, is recovering at an Army hospital near San Antonio (Texas).
Earlier this week, doctors said Hasan is in serious condition but is awake and talking.
U.S. media reports Wednesday, citing unnamed military officials, said the doctors that reviewed Hasan a year ago held a series of meetings where they discussed problems with his performance and mental state.
Colleagues described Hasan as aloof, belligerent and frequently argumentative when discussing his Muslim faith, and some wondered if he was “psychotic.”
The officials decided against seeking his removal because they did not believe him to be violent and they thought his transfer to Fort Hood in July would help lessen his workload.
A U.S. Army spokesman says the man authorities say went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood has been taken off a ventilator but still remains in intensive care at a military hospital.
A MONTH after his arrival in Texas in July, Major Nidal Malik Hasan walked into Guns Galore, a weapons shop near the sprawling Fort Hood military base, and spent $1,000 on a high-powered, Belgian-made semi-automatic pistol that is said by its manufacturer to be “lightweight and easily concealable … It will defeat the enemy in all close combat situations”.
It was an unusual purchase for an army psychiatrist who had never shown any interest in guns and who had spent almost all his military career learning how to deal with the consequences of gun violence at the US Army’s Walter Reed medical centre in Washington.
Army investigators now believe that Hasan’s 5.7-calibre FN Herstal tactical pistol was the only gun he fired in the horrific seven-minute rampage that killed 13 people and injured at least 30 others at the Fort Hood base last Thursday.
In army offices crowded with hundreds of soldiers, Hasan, a 39-year-old American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, was somehow able to fire at least 100 times, pausing repeatedly to reload 20-round magazines, before he was shot by military police.
He was carrying another pistol, a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, but does not appear to have used it.
At one point, said Specialist Eliot Valdez, who witnessed the aftermath of the assault, Hasan was shooting the occupants of a crowded room like “fish in a barrel … It was too easy, you can close your eyes and hit eight people”.
As Hasan lay paralysed in a coma at a military hospital in San Antonio, Texas, yesterday, investigators were struggling to establish a motive for an unprecedented mass murder that has stunned the US military establishment, shaken President Barack Obama’s White House and raised alarming questions about whether Hasan’s superiors should have seen a disaster coming.
He was by turns caring and contentious, a man quick to say “I am blessed” in casual greeting yet one who seemed to stew in discontent that he could not always keep to himself.
Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, suspect in the assault that killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, and hurt 30, salved the emotional wounds of troops returning from war even as he objected to his own looming deployment to Afghanistan, where he was to counsel soldiers suffering from stress.
But Hasan argued with fellow soldiers who supported U.S. war policy, say those who know him professionally and personally. He was a counselor who once required counseling for himself because of trouble he had dealing with some patients, said a former boss.
Authorities on Friday seized Hasan’s home computer, searched his apartment and took away a Dumpster as the 39-year-old Army major lay in a coma in the hospital, attached to a ventilator.
There are many unknowns about the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base.
Most of all, his motive.
For six years before reporting for duty at Fort Hood, in July, Hasan worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center pursuing his career in psychiatry, as an intern, a resident and, last year, a fellow in disaster and preventive psychiatry. He received his medical degree from the military’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001.
While an intern at Walter Reed, Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.
Grieger said privacy laws prevented him from going into details but noted that the problems had to do with Hasan’s interactions with patients. He recalled Hasan as a “mostly very quiet” person who never spoke ill of the military or his country.
Continue reading Details emerge about background of Army psychiatrist suspected in rampage at Fort Hood, Texas
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army officer who went on a murderous shooting spree here Thursday, confessed to his local mosque elder months before that he was conflicted between his devotion to Islam and his allegiance to the U.S. military.
“If soldiers come to me and have problems fighting other Muslims, what do I tell them?” Hasan asked Osman Danquah, co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, in August.
Hasan also asked about soldiers changing their minds after joining the military and inquired about other members of the congregation. His line of questioning sounded so disjointed, however, that Danquah said Saturday he suspected Hasan might be a federal agent trying to infiltrate the mosque.
“I told him, ‘There’s something wrong with you, and if you’re here to gather information, we’re not here to do anything against the government. We’re here to worship,’” Danquah said.
In his radio address Saturday President Obama asked for patience while officials piece together what happened.
“We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing,” Obama said. “But what we do know is that our thoughts are with every one of the men and women who were injured at Fort Hood. Our thoughts are with all the families who’ve lost a loved one in this national tragedy.”
Obama’s aides were working to make way for him to attend a still unscheduled memorial service.
On Thursday, Hasan jumped on a desk and hollered “Allahu Akbar!” — God is great! — inside Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Center before firing at soldiers and civilians gathered there, military and hospital officials said. Twelve soldiers and one civilian were killed and 30 others were wounded, some seriously, Fort Hood spokesman Col. John Rossi said. Authorities are calling it the deadliest shooting spree ever inside an American military base.
Some said he was an outspoken Muslim, prone to emotional outbursts, angry about the U.S. war in Iraq and dreading an impending deployment to Afghanistan.
Others who knew him recalled Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a dedicated Army psychiatrist trained to help fellow soldiers cope with the psychological wounds of combat.
And a few noted that while Hasan never exhibited a violent side, they weren’t particularly surprised to learn he allegedly was at the center of the worst mass murder ever committed on an American military base.
Now the 39-year-old Muslim-American, who authorities say killed 13 people and wounded 38 others in Thursday’s rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, is at the center of a riddle investigators have only begun to probe: How could a military psychiatrist, surrounded by other mental health experts sensitized to signs of combat stress, suddenly snap without any apparent warning?
As Hasan lay in a coma in a Texas hospital after being shot by base police responding to Thursday’s attack, investigators fanned out across the country Friday in search of a motive or explanation for the killings.
Hasan grew up in Virginia and spent years in the Washington, D.C., area on military assignments, before being transferred to Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood in August, officials said.
Dr. Val Finnell, a classmate of Hasan’s last year at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Maryland, called Hasan “a vociferous opponent to U.S. policy in Iraq” and said he frequently spoke about his faith, sometimes in inappropriate venues.
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Military officials were starting Friday to piece together what may have pushed an Army psychiatrist trained to help soldiers in distress to turn on his comrades in a shooting rampage that killed 13 people and wounded 30 in Texas.
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The suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was on a ventilator and unconscious in a hospital after being shot four times during the shootings at the Army’s sprawling Fort Hood, post officials said. In the early chaos after the shootings, authorities believed they had killed him, only to discover later that he had survived.
In Washington, a senior U.S. official said authorities at Fort Hood initially thought one of the victims who had been shot and killed was the shooter. The mistake resulted in a delay of several hours in identifying Hasan as the alleged assailant.
Authorities have not ruled out that Hasan was acting on behalf of some unidentified radical group, the official said. He would not say whether any evidence had come to light to support that theory.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that were under investigation.
An Army psychiatrist suspected of opening fire on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood cleaned out his apartment in the days before the rampage that left 13 people dead, a neighbor said Friday.
The neighbor, Patricia Villa, said Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan came over to her apartment Wednesday and Thursday and offered her some items, including a new Quran, saying he was going to be deployed on Friday. She wasn’t sure if he was going to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Authorities said Hasan went on a shooting spree later Thursday at the sprawling Texas post. He was among 30 people wounded in the spree and remained hospitalized on a ventilator Friday. All but two of the injured were still hospitalized, and all were in stable condition.
Investigators were still trying to piecing together how and why an Army psychiatrist facing deployment allegedly gunned down his comrades in one of the worst mass shootings ever on an American military base.
“This was an individual who took it upon himself to attack and murder his colleagues, people who were on the base with him,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Sky News from Brussels, Belgium. “That investigation is under way by law enforcement authorities, and let’s let that be the No. 1 priority in terms of ascertaining what motivations he had.”
Katie Couric speaks with CBS News’ David Martin at the Pentagon and correspondent Don Teague, reporting from the Ft. Hood army base in Texas.
Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.
But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., started having second thoughts about his military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.
He had also more recently expressed deep concerns about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan.
“He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,” Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.”
A civilian who was present at the Ft. Hood army base during the shooting spree recounts her experiences to Katie Couric as army officials placed the base on lock down security.
Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan arrived at Fort Hood, Texas, in July, right after finishing his residency in psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Hasan, 39, was about to deploy overseas, according to U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who represents Texas. It is unclear whether he was headed to Iraq or Afghanistan, or when he was scheduled to leave.
Federal law enforcement officials say the suspected Fort Hood, Texas, shooter had come to their attention at least six months ago because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats.
The officials say the postings appeared to have been made by Hasan. The officials say they are still trying to confirm that he was the author. They say an official investigation was not opened.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
One of the Web postings that authorities reviewed is a blog that equates suicide bombers with a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades.
Military officials in Washington say Hasan was a graduate of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.
Hasan became a captain in May 2003 and a major in May 2009.
Military officials with access to Hasan’s military record said he received a poor performance evaluation while at Walter Reed. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because military records are confidential.
Officials say the suspected Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was a psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for six years before transferring to Fort Hood. They said he received a poor performance evaluation while at Walter Reed
