US agencies play blame game after army massacre
11/11/2009 - 10:37:39US federal agencies are blaming each other over security lapses involving the Fort Hood massacre gunman Nidal Hasan.
Even as President Barack Obama remembered those killed at the Texas Army post and condemned what he described as “the twisted logic that led to this tragedy,” there were conflicting claims about whether a Defence Department terrorism investigator looked into Hasan’s contacts months ago with Anwar al-Awlaki.
Awlaki, an imam who was released from a Yemeni jail last year, has used his personal website to encourage Muslims across the world to kill US troops in Iraq.
Government officials said the Washington-based joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI was notified of communications between Hasan and the imam , and the information was turned over to a Defence Criminal Investigative Service employee assigned to the task force.
The communications were gathered by investigators beginning in December 2008 and continuing into early this year.
That defence investigator wrote up an assessment of Hasan after reviewing the communications and the Army major’s personnel file, according to the officials. It concluded Hasan did not merit further investigation – in large part because his communications with the imam were centred on a research paper about the effects of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the investigator found that Hasan was in fact working on such a paper, the officials said.
The disclosure came as questions swirled about whether opportunities were missed to head off the massacre in which 13 died and 29 were wounded last Thursday .
The Senate already has launched its own inquiry into the Hasan case.
The disclosure of the defence investigator’s role indicated the US military was aware of odd behaviour by Hasan long before the attack.
Following the disclosure, a senior defence official, also demanding anonymity, directly contradicted that notion.
The official said neither the Army nor any other part of the Defence Department knew of Hasan’s contacts with any Muslim extremists.
The FBI has opened its own internal review of how it handled the early information about Hasan.
Military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies also are defending themselves against tough questions about what each of them knew about Hasan.
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