The content of these leaks as reported in those two articles make it pretty clear that this is an officially-approved rollout of information on the case. The AP report says, "The official described the confidential report on condition of anonymity because it has not been made public." Not that he wasn't authorized to speak about it. Which makes me wonder if it's anything more than stenography if "the official" was citing a written report, if he was obviously speaking to the press with his management's authorization and if they didn't actually see the report. You have to wonder why the Pentagon went this leak-by-anonymous-official route rather than just putting out a formal press release or releasing the report itself, maybe with redaction of some names if appropriate under privacy regulations. An official briefing is scheduled for today (Friday), so this was an obvious pitch to shape the spin of the information.
Essentially the story is that some lower-level officers (below colonel level) are going to be reprimanded for promoting accused shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan despite problems with his being overweight, tardiness, and physical appearance not conforming to Army standards. Yes, there is one big thing missing from the list: any indication he had violent inclinations. In fact, this paragraph appears in the AP story:
Hasan showed no signs of being violent or a threat. But parallels have been drawn between the missed signals in his case and those preceding the failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner. President Barack Obama and his top national security aides have acknowledged they had intelligence about the alleged bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, but failed to connect the dots. [my emphasis]These two articles taken together tell me that the Pentagon is holding out its reprimands to lower level officers to try to show that's it's doing a serious re-evaluation of its procedures that will somehow prevent a similar thing from ever happening.
There's something peculiar about this. The key security failure was at Ft. Hood, so far as we know from the public record. At least so far, none of the information about Hasan that looks suspicious in retrospect was anything like a warning along the lines of someone reporting to the law saying he was planning to shoot a bunch of soldiers at Ft. Hood. Is anyone responsible for actual security procedures at Ft. Hood going to be discplined in any way?
It's harde for anyone learning about this case through the press, which is most of us, to tell what all this information means without knowing the prosecutors' theory of the crime. Did he make his shooting attack based on some religious-political ideology? Have they uncovered evidence that he was working with anyone else to plan the attack? Had he just met some cute librarian who refused to go out with him and he just snapped?
But we supposed to be impressed that the Army is disciplining his supervisors for not being harsher on him for coming to meetings late and not always wearning his tie straight? That's just goofy.
The Pentagon actually faces a real dilemma in systematically screening for political and religious extremists. One part of it is that they are stretched so thin by the current wars that they need every warm body they can get and can't afford to worry about minor infractions of the dress code every time one shows up. More seriously, the Christian Right has established a major presence in the military and a lot of Christian officers would be opposed to the Pentagon looking with a critical eye at their own religious and political affiliations and proselytizing practices.
The LA Times report does say that the review "found that the department's policies toward internal threats are outdated, focusing more on hunting spies than ferreting out extremists, according to officials familiar with the review."
Tags: domestic terrorism, nidal hasan, terrorism
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