What happened to FBI's "internal inquiry" about why G-men ignored Fort Hood killer's contacts with a radical jihadist in Yemen?

While we're waiting for the President to tell us who failed to "connect the dots" to nab the Pantybomber before he boarded a Detroit-bound flight and nearly killed 288 innocent people, here's a related question: What ever happened to that FBI "internal inquiry" into how and why our domestic intelligence whizzes failed to act in time on the knowledge that the Fort Hood jihadist killer, Nidal Hasan, had been emailing a radical imam and al Qaeda recruiter in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki?

We now know that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab met with Awlaki when the Nigerian suicide bomber was in Yemen for talks with al Qaeda big wigs. We also know that U.S intelligence and the Yemeni government regard Awlaki as a dangerous guy and, in fact, tried (unsuccessfully it appears) on December 24th to kill him.

Unmistakably, Awlaki has been known to the U.S. intelligence community of which the FBI is a key part as a very bad guy. Yet, as I blogged shortly after the Fort Hood murders, National Security Agency intercepts of up to 20 emails between Hasan and Awlaki were sent to the FBI which "analyzed" them and decided that the chummy relationship between a serving Army officer and a jihadist mouthpiece did not warrant any further scrutiny of Hasan. Had anyone at the FBI bothered to look, they would have found a wealth of other "dots" to connect with this one, namely reports from Hasan's Army colleagues and bosses that the guy was, at the least, unhinged.

Remember, immediately after the Fort Hood massacre on November 5th, while the blood was still on the ground, unnamed FBI "sources" were telling the media that there was no "terrorism nexus." For many days, the agency did its damnedest to keep feeding confusion about the glaringly obvious fact that Hasan was a jihadist. As late as November 10th, after reports about Hasan's contacts with Awlaki were all over the media, the FBI had this to say to an incredulous CBS News:

"At this point, there is no information to indicate Major Malik Nidal Hasan had any co-conspirators or was part of a broader terrorist plot. The investigation to date has not identified a motive, and a number of possibilities remain under consideration."

A number of frigging possibilities?

It's 100% clear that the FBI was stalling and evading for weeks because it dearly wished to escape blame and accountability for its patent failure at dot connecting. The agency's leaders knew that if they shuffled long enough and eventually launched an "internal inquiry," the heat would die down and they'd be in the clear. They were right, weren't they? When was the last time you heard anything about the inquiry, which is being run -- get this -- by former FBI Director William Webster?

The most amazing political and bureaucratic success story of post-9/11 period has been the FBI's ability to fend off any encroachment on the domestic counter-intelligence role it has held since before World War II. In the old days, maybe it was because everyone in Washington feared (with good reason) that J. Edgar Hoover had some dirt on them. But what's the reason now?

Yesterday, President Obama appeared to be standing by his whole national security team, even while declaring that the "system failed." Let's hope he takes that a step further today and actually holds someone responsible -- for the failure at Fort Hood as well as the one on Christmas Day.

What's your opinion? Post a comment.

UPDATE -- I just watched President Obama's remarks on action following up the latest security review. Unfortunately, he's sticking to his no-blame approach, saying the problem was "systemic" so "reforms" are needed and in any case, the buck stops with him. Here's the thing, though: unless he really knocks heads and someone gets fired, a couple of months from now, the modified "system" will slip back onto auto pilot.

UPDATE 2 -- Hmmm. Today, someone leaked to CBS News a portion of the still-classified and unreleased Pentagon report on the dot-connection failure in the Fort Hood case. My take? The FBI did it on the classic PR theory that it would go largely unnoticed on the day Obama, Napolitano and Brennan dominated the media on the Pantybomber. Yet, it would be regarded in the future as a story already covered and, thus, "old news" by most of the media. Notice that the CBS story barely mentions "FBI."

Nidal Hasan's supervisor at Walter Reed warned in 2007 (!) that he was an incompetent kook

National Public Radio has gotten its hands on a memo written in May 2007 by Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan's supervisor at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that by any reasonable standards should have led to Hasan's getting the heave-ho. Here's the story:

Two years ago, a top psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was so concerned about what he saw as Nidal Hasan's incompetence and reckless behavior that he put those concerns in writing. NPR has obtained a copy of the memo, the first evaluation that has surfaced from Hasan's file.

Officials at Walter Reed sent that memo to Fort Hood this year when Hasan was transferred there.

Nevertheless, commanders still assigned Hasan — accused of killing 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5 — to work with some of the Army's most troubled and vulnerable soldiers.

On May 17, 2007, Hasan's supervisor at Walter Reed sent the memo to the Walter Reed credentials committee. It reads, "Memorandum for: Credentials Committee. Subject: CPT Nidal Hasan." More than a page long, the document warns that: "The Faculty has serious concerns about CPT Hasan's professionalism and work ethic. ... He demonstrates a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism." It is signed by the chief of psychiatric residents at Walter Reed, Maj. Scott Moran.

When shown the memo, two leading psychiatrists said it was so damning, it might have sunk Hasan's career if he had applied for a job outside the Army.

"Even if we were desperate for a psychiatrist, we would not even get him to the point where we would invite him for an interview," says Dr. Steven Sharfstein, who runs Sheppard Pratt's psychiatric medical center, based just outside Baltimore.

[snip]

The memo ticks off numerous problems over the course of Hasan's training, including proselytizing to his patients. It says he mistreated a homicidal patient and allowed her to escape from the emergency room, and that he blew off an important exam.

According to the memo, Hasan hardly did any work: He saw only 30 patients in 38 weeks. Sources at Walter Reed say most psychiatrists see at least 10 times that many patients. When Hasan was supposed to be on call for emergencies, he didn't even answer the phone.

[snip]

"I would never, ever hire a physician with this kind of a record," says Judith Broder, who runs the Soldiers Project, an award-winning private therapy program for troops in Southern California.

Me neither. But it seems that the Army didn't pay any attention to this red-flashing warning signal any more than the FBI took seriously Hasan's contacts with the al Qaeda-boosting radical imam, Anwar al-Awlaki.

A full Congressional probe of all this can't happen too soon.

Congratulations to NPR for staying on top of this story and digging into it. Where are the rest of the media?

Any thoughts. Post a comment.

Fort Hood Killer, Nidal Hasan, was in contact with many Islamist extremists, not just one

Really, is there anyone left who is surprised by this latest piece of news?

Fort Hood shooting suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had been in contact with numerous Muslim extremists -- some of whom are under federal investigation -- before last week's rampage, two U.S. officials told The Washington Times on Wednesday.

Maj. Hasan made some of the contacts while visiting known jihadist chat rooms on the Internet, according to one of The Times' sources, a senior FBI official. He said that several people with whom Maj. Hasan was in contact had been the focus of investigations by the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The other source, a military intelligence official, said those in contact with Maj. Hasan are located both in the U.S. and overseas. The official said they are "broadly known and characterized as Islamic extremists if not necessarily al Qaeda."

No time to lose ramping up that Congressional investigation into why this guy wasn't nailed.

Any thoughts? Post a comment.

Congress must probe how the FBI and the Army failed to "connect the dots" to prevent Fort Hood massacre

Fort Hood killer sent emails to this radical jihadist cleric in Yemen

It's time to cut out all the bullshit and launch a thorough, detailed Congressional investigation into how and why the FBI, the Army brass, and anyone else involved failed miserably -- and fatally for 12 soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood -- to connect the many glaring warning signals about the Fort Hood mass killer -- Malik Nidal Hasan -- and take action that would have prevented his deadly jihadist rampage.

We now know that U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted 10-20 emails that Hasan sent to Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born radical jihadist cleric and al Qaeda sympathizer now living in Yemen who served preached at a Virginia mosque where Hasan (and three of the 9/11 hijackers) worshipped.

Reportedly, the FBI decided that these repeated efforts by a serving Army officer to reach out to a well-known radical didn't warrant an investigation -- and dropped it. Meanwhile, the Army knew about Hasan's deeply disturbing and offensive "lecture" and PowerPoint presentation to other military doctors at Walter Reed in which he clearly showed his jihadist sympathies. Some in the audience complained to their superiors but nothing was done. Hasan was promoted to major and sent to Fort Hood where, among other things, he argued about the war with soldiers he was supposed to be counseling.

Forget everything else we have learned or think we have learned about Hasan so far. Forget the sterile and pointless disputes that have emerged in the media and on the blogs about whether we should call his shooting up Fort Hood "terrorism" or "crime" or the actions of a "madman" or someone "stressed" by the nature of his job. If the FBI and the Army had connected these two dots -- Hasan's contact with al-Awlaki and his often bizarre and hostile conduct -- it would have been impossible to allow him to remain as a psychiatrist on a military post.

After 9/11 and after the 9/11 Commission's recommendations were adopted, we were assured that this sort of missing the crucial connections would not happen again. But it did, and 13 people are dead.

We need to know what happened. The FBI is now conducting an "internal review" to see whether its actions were appropriate. There is absolutely no reason to leave it to the FBI to make that judgment. The Army cannot be trusted to investigate itself either. Even without knowledge of Hasan's contacts with al-Awlaki (and we cannot yet be sure the Army was not told about this), the chain of command blundered unbelievably in ignoring the obvious problems with Hasan. If that happened because of any undue timidity in confronting Hasan because he was a Muslim of Arab descent, we need to know about it (or if not, that it was just incompetence). When the Army's Chief of Staff, General George Casey, says a couple of days after a dozen of his troops were murdered at home that he's concerned about a backlash against Muslims serving in the military -- a backlash that has never happened in America despite the 9/11 attacks and all the other acts of terrorism and terrorist plots by jihadists -- we have to wonder whether the Army's leadership has its priorities straight.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is already launching an inquiry to determine what happened. Other Congressional panels with jurisdiction have also indicated an interest in investigating. While there is always a danger of Congressional inquiries politicizing any subject they handle -- including national security -- it is essential in this case that Congress step up. We must know what happened, why, who did or did not do their jobs well, and what steps we need to take to ensure that nothing like the Fort Hood massacre happens again.

What's your take? Post a comment.

UPDATE: ABC News is reporting that Hasan had "more unexplained connections to people being tracked by the FBI" than just al-Awlaki and that the names and countries of these connections would emerge soon. Meanwhile, the finger pointing has started with the Pentagon claiming (via an unnamed "top defense official," of course) that the FBI never told the Army about the intercepted communications with al-Awlaki.