Washington, November 21: A US Senate panel vowed to investigate the circumstances surrounding the Nov. 5 murders at Fort Hood, opening public hearings on Thursday and invoking a broader discussion on homegrown Islamic extremism.
“There were warning signs and red flags galore,” said Republican Senator from Maine Susan Collins, the ranking member on Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, referring to the Fort Hood tragedy. “When you start to put together all of the pieces of information, it reminds me very much of information that was available throughout the federal agencies prior to the attacks on our country on 9/11.”
The hearing, led my Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent, is the only congressional review of Fort Hood moving forward.
Other committee chairmen, all of them Democrats, have held off on launching inquiries, mindful of the Obama administration’s requests that lawmakers slow down as the White House conducts its review. Some Republicans, particularly in the House, have basically accused the White House of a cover-up.
The White House had hoped Congress would hold off on hearings until the official criminal investigation had time to run its course. As a result, it did not provide administration officials to testify Thursday, limiting the panel’s scope and the detail of the discussions.
Lieberman bemoaned the lack of full cooperation, but said committee members were given a classified briefing before Thursday’s proceedings.
Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, set the tone of his hearing Thursday on the Fort Hood attack that killed 13 people and wounded dozens at the Army post in Texas, by saying he believed the incident was a “terrorist attack.”
Members of the committee also wondered if suspect Major Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 fellow service members in the murderous rampage, acted as a “lone wolf,” and if so, what law enforcement tools are at their disposal to ensure “self-radicalized” Americans don’t pose a similar threat in the future.
“[Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder] said they respect our authority to conduct an investigation,” said Lieberman. “I assured them our committee understood and respected the difference between their criminal investigation and our congressional investigation. Their investigation looks backward and is punitive and ours looks forward and is preventative … we are off to a good cooperative start.”
The Pentagon, meanwhile, is launching its own urgent review of whether military procedures hinder the identification of service members who pose a threat to their fellow troops.
Gates announced an emergency 45-day investigation on Thursday that will be led by former Army Secretary Togo West and former Navy Chief Vernon Clark. The probe will focus on policies on discharging service members and related mental health issues, as well as security and emergency response at U.S. military facilities.
It will look for “deficiencies” in Pentagon procedures for “identifying service members who could potentially pose credible threats to others,” Gates said.
A longer six-month review will examine what Gates called “systemic institutional shortcomings.”
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined Gates at a Pentagon News conference Thursday and said that commanders are responsible for taking necessary action, and would at “whether the Army programs, policies and procedures reasonably would have prevented the shooting.” The goal, he said, is “to determine whether, in fact, there were lapses or problems.”
The secretary promised “full and open disclosure” of the findings, adding that avoiding “similar tragedies” is imperative.
So instead of administration officials, Lieberman tapped five experts in military, law enforcement and counterterrorism to inform the committee on Thursday. Not all of them were willing to readily claim the Fort Hood homicides were a domestic act of terrorism. For now, that official designation appears up for debate, as is who might have dropped the ball in the months and days leading up to the killings.
One of those testifying was Gen. Jack Keane, former Army Vice Chief of Staff, who was a commander at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina in 1996, when a pair of racially motivated murders rocked the base and prompted a full review of the Army’s anti-extremist policies.
An investigation found that skinheads and neo-Nazis had infiltrated the ranks. In the end, Keane recalled, 21 soldiers were kicked out of the service. New regulations now specifically address racially motivated behavior, he said. “We will find that our policies will need revision again, to account for specific behaviors and attitudes expressed by Islamic extremists,” he said.
“This is not about Muslims and their religion… nor is it about the 10,000 Muslims in the military who are, quite frankly, not seen as Muslims but as soldiers, sailors and airmen,” Keane said, but then added: “This is fundamentally about jihadist extremism, which is at odds with the values of America.”
Other witnesses included Mitchell Silber, director of intelligence services for the New York City Police Department; Juan Carlos Zarate, a former Bush counterterrorism official and Brian Michael Jenkins, a senior advisor with the RAND Corporation.
Lieberman, Collins and Sen. John McCain, (R-AZ.), also a member of the committee, repeatedly enjoined the witnesses to talk about political correctness, and whether authorities hesitated in pursuing Hasan prior to the shootings for fear they would be accused of discriminating against a Muslim minority.
“I have talked to military officers who have stated that, at least up to now, a reluctance to pursue these things because of political correctness,” said McCain.
Others were afraid to jump to that conclusion. “I think his status as a medical doctor, his rank … may have effected the judgment of the FBI more than his ethnicity,” said Zarate.
Lieberman said the investigation will now center on fact-finding, but promised it will conclude in a final report and recommendations.
Intelligence sources have told reporters in recent days that since last December, they were aware of Hasan’s email communications with fundamentalist Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, who now resides in Yemen and has reported ties to al Qaeda. They did not pursue an investigation because the communiqués were understood to be part of research Hasan was performing as part of his work at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital.
Hasan, who is still in critical condition and said to be paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by a police officer after the shootings, is a Muslim-American of Jordanian descent, according to reports. Lieberman said his investigation will focus on the threat of “self-radicalization,” pointing to Hasan’s seeming personal journey towards Islamic extremism. “We will look at the Fort Hood murders not as an isolated event, but as part of a larger pattern of homegrown terrorism that has emerged over the past several years,” he said in his opening statement.
——Agencies