Army reprimands 9 officers in Fort Hood shooting

Army reprimands 9 officers in Fort Hood shooting
(AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Nine Army officers are being reprimanded for leadership failures in connection with the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, and their failure to detect and report problems with the accused shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as he moved along in his medical career.

Saying that although no single event directly led to the tragedy, Army Secretary John McHugh found that certain officers failed to meet expected standards, an Army statement said Thursday. The officers — all lieutenant or above — will receive punishments ranging from an oral reprimand to the far more serious written letter of censure that is considered a career-ender.

Hasan is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the November 2009 shooting spree on the Texas military post.

A Pentagon review last year found that Hasan's supervisors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center where he worked expressed serious concerns about his questionable behavior and poor judgment but failed to heed their own warnings. It said the Army psychiatrist's supervisors continued to give him positive performance evaluations that kept him moving up through the ranks despite worries about his strident views on Islam and worries about his competence.

In one episode, Hasan reportedly gave a class presentation questioning whether the U.S.-led war on terror was actually a war on Islam. And fellow students said he suggested that Shariah, or Islamic law, trumped the Constitution, and that he also attempted to justify suicide bombings.

The review, however, found that no one in Hasan's chain of command blocked his ability to hold a secret security clearance or stop his continued assignments, including his move to Fort Hood.
Earlier this year a Senate review came to similar conclusions, saying the Defense Department and the FBI had sufficient information to detect that Hasan had been radicalized to violent extremism, but they failed to act on it.

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Army reprimands 9 officers in Fort Hood shooting