WASHINGTON – The US military will investigate the circumstances surrounding the shootings at Fort Hood, including possible “gaps and deficiencies” in identifying those in all service branches who may pose a threat to their colleagues, defence secretary Robert Gates said.
The November 5th attack, in which 13 people were killed and 43 injured, raised “troubling questions that demand complete but prompt answers”, Mr Gates told a Pentagon news conference yesterday. “All that is left for us to do is everything in our power to prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future,” he said.
Former army secretary Togo West and retired admiral Vernon Clark, a former chief of the US navy, will lead the 45-day review, Mr Gates said.
Mr Clark was navy chief from 2000 to 2005. Mr West was army secretary from 1993 to 1998 and secretary of veterans affairs until 2000.
Maj Nidal Malik Hasan, an army psychiatrist, has been charged by military authorities with 13 counts of premeditated murder in connection with the shootings at the base in Fort Hood, Texas.
Before the shootings, US intelligence agencies had intercepted communications between Maj Hasan and a Muslim religious leader in Yemen known for his anti-American views. No action was taken against Maj Hasan because it was determined he didn’t pose a threat.
Mr Gates said the review would look at how the military could help its healthcare professionals deal with their own stress. It would also examine security at facilities.
He said officials would study what improvements could be made in all branches of service, not just the army. “All the services potentially have some of the same problems,” he said.
Care would be taken to keep the review from interfering with the criminal investigation, Mr Gates said. “The information we’re seeking in this shorter review really can, I think, be almost entirely isolated from the criminal investigation,” he said.
Congress has begun its own Fort Hood investigations, including a move by the Senate Armed Services Committee that will look at the military’s actions.
The House Armed Services Committee’s ranking Republican, Buck McKeon of California, said in an interview yesterday that he wanted his panel to examine the shootings. “What I want to have is a hearing to know how the army promotes, and if there is any possibility we have other guys in the same situation that could be powder kegs waiting to go off,” he said.
Ike Skelton, the Missouri Democrat who heads the panel, declined to say yesterday whether the committee would open its own investigation.
In the first congressional hearing on Fort Hood today, former military and government officials said they thought the failure to detect Maj Hasan as a threat was due to a reluctance to violate his right to religious freedom. “There’s no doubt in my mind that was operating here,” retired Gen John Keane, the armys former chief of staff, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine said it’s likely “there was a hesitancy to investigate Maj Hasan” because of the shortage of psychiatrists in the military. The Obama administration will issue preliminary results by November 30th on how information about Maj Hasan was shared byauthorities before the incident.