Troubling portrait emerges of Nidal Malik Hasan
Published: November 5, 2009
Updated: November 8, 2009
WASHINGTON — His name appears on radical Internet postings. A fellow officer says he fought his deployment to Iraq and argued with soldiers who supported U.S. wars. He required counseling as a medical student because of problems with patients.
There are many unknowns about Nidal Malik Hasan, the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base. Most of all, his motive. But details of his life and mindset, emerging from official sources and personal acquaintances from officials, and are troubling.
For six years before reporting for duty at Fort Hood, Texas, in July, the 39-year-old Army major worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center pursuing his career in psychiatry, as an intern, a resident and, last year, a fellow in disaster and preventive psychiatry. He received his medical degree from the military’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001.
While an intern at Walter Reed, Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.
Grieger said privacy laws prevented him from going into details but noted that the problems had to do with Hasan’s interactions with patients. He recalled Hasan as a “mostly very quiet” person who never spoke ill of the military or his country.
“He swore an oath of loyalty to the military,“ Grieger said. “I didn’t hear anything contrary to those oaths.“
But, more recently, federal agents grew suspicious.
At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.
They had not determined for certain whether Hasan is the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, said law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the case.
One of the officials said late Thursday that federal search warrants were being drawn up to authorize the seizure of Hasan’s computer.
Retired Army Col. Terry Lee, who said he worked with Hasan, told Fox News that Hasan had hoped President Barack Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Lee said Hasan got into frequent arguments with others in the military who supported the wars, and had tried hard to prevent his pending deployment.
Hasan attended prayers regularly when he lived outside Washington, often in his Army uniform, said Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan attended in Silver Spring, Md. He said Hasan was a lifelong Muslim.
“I got the impression that he was a committed soldier,“ Khan said. He spoke often with Hasan about Hasan’s desire for a wife.
On a form filled out by those seeking spouses through a program at the mosque, Hasan listed his birthplace as Arlington, Va., but his nationality as Palestinian, Khan said.
“I don’t know why he listed Palestinian,“ Khan said, “He was not born in Palestine.“
Nothing stood out about Hasan as radical or extremist, Khan said.
“We hardly ever got to discussing politics,“ Khan said. “Mostly we were discussing religious matters, nothing too controversial, nothing like an extremist.“
Hasan earned his rank of major in April 2008, according to a July 2008 Army Times article.
He served eight years as an enlisted soldier. He also served in the ROTC as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech, where he received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry there in 1997.
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Associated Press writers Lara Jakes, Pam Hess and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran,
Fellow doctors have recounted how they were repeatedly harangued by Hasan about religion and that he openly claimed to be a “Muslim first and American second.“
One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints.
The same actions that allowed the massacre at Virginia Tech. Many knew but were afraid to come forward or even if they did nothing was done except in this case the Army shipped him off to Ft. Hood for deployment. The Army appears to have recognized the problem but did nothing else.
We have got to grow some backbone and do what is needed even if some think they are being discriminated against. Keeping innocent citizens safe outweighs some being offended or their feelings hurt.
No news suppression here:
• Alleged shooter tied to mosque of 9/11 hijackers
John Witt
Multimedia Editor
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Finally, I do not read anything into the US press not reporting what you cite from the UK. The US press is probably deferring to the Army’s wishes to not get ahead of the facts. That is consistent with what I heard on the morning news, and considering how the Army has recently put limits on the press photography in war zones in response to the press publishing pictures of a dying soldier without the soldier’s family’s permission, the US press is probably giving the Army the opportunity to announce these things officially, rather than running the risk of crossing wires and creating problems.
Any time the press and tv media allow the government and military to suppress, withhold, sanitize or any other way massage the news then we are in deep trouble. Right now the Obama administration is waging an all out assault of FOX news. The others are bowing down and not reporting or saying anything negative about Obama and his administration.
The citizens of the United States have a free press. They should be allowed to report without government intervention of any kind. The reference to the pictures is not relevant to this issue as it’s just common respect for the families and loved ones not to publish the pictures without their permission but the written account is perfectly acceptable.
I watched the General Casy so-called interview this morning. Every answer to questions were PC and evasive. From what I saw of his performance I don’t have a feeling he is qualified for anything in the Army but Latrine duty. We need strong forceful leadership in our military. Not a PC wimp under the thumb of someone.
A country whose citizens are denied a free press is a country full of ignorant citizens who can be misled by the government and military.
“Posted by Jack on November 08, 2009 at 2:33 pm “
Perhaps one of 2 possible reasons.
1. It is not true (it is the telegraph after all)
or
2. Obama told them not to print it.
Jack—I didn’t say “don’t do anything.“
I am saying “don’t do things that are not effective, just because you think it will work, regardless of all the evidence that shows it will not work.“
Accurately predicting deadly violence is nearly impossible. The links you just provided to that UK news outlet underscores this issue. In order to believe the evidence cited in that news source was sufficient to identify the violent person before the violent act, you have to assume that all these people who saw these things ahead of the event were either grossly incompetent, or complicit, or that the absence of a clear policy hindered common sense duty to report events that seem counter to army discipline and effectiveness of the chain of command.
It is more parsimonious to assume that diffusion of responsibility and the absence of effective training on how to deal with suspicious events are root causes.
Lots of people saw this, but is is very likely that most thought it was someone else’s responsibility to do something about it, and with so many others seeing this, surely someone else has taken action.
And even those who wanted to act were not sure of the best procedure for doing so.
Look at Dr. Finnell’s quote:
“The system is not doing what it’s supposed to do. He at least should have been confronted about these beliefs, told to cease and desist, and to shape up or ship out. I really questioned his loyalty.“
Dr. Finnell had a strong suspicion, but did he follow up on this and press the issue? No—it looks like he expected someone else to do that, or perhaps he did not know how to deal with what he saw.
I’m not criticizing any of these people—in fact, I hate to armchair quarterback on this event because there is no way of knowing all the important facts, which is not fair to anyone. I will speculate, for the sake of finishing the thought, that there are policies and procedures in place on how to deal with these types of suspicious situations. But policy only goes so far if there is not rigorous training so that people can respond to a situation quickly, know that higher authorities are following up on the matter, and then return attention to daily duties.
And even then, there is risk of over-reporting and a high false positive rate. The army could be detaining 1000 innocent people for the sake of stopping 1 violent act, and at the same time not have any way to know if the 1000:1 hit rate is actually occurring—it could be 1,000,000:1 because there’s no way to really get at the effectiveness of preventing something that didn’t occur. It’s the same issue as “did stimulus spending save jobs that would otherwise have been lost?“ You can do a reasonable analysis and debate the merits of the analysis, but you cannot prove the impact.
Now, as for the notion of duty to warn and the priesthood, my position on what a priest should do is not relevant. What is relevant is that the confidentiality of the confession is absolute. A priest can withhold absolution and require a public confession in the form of the perpetrator turning himself in to the police, but the priest cannot name the suspect even if there is imminent danger. That separates the duty to warn of a psychiatrist from that of a priest, and the federal courts have upheld this distinction.
Finally, I do not read anything into the US press not reporting what you cite from the UK. The US press is probably deferring to the Army’s wishes to not get ahead of the facts. That is consistent with what I heard on the morning news, and considering how the Army has recently put limits on the press photography in war zones in response to the press publishing pictures of a dying soldier without the soldier’s family’s permission, the US press is probably giving the Army the opportunity to announce these things officially, rather than running the risk of crossing wires and creating problems.
Source:
Fort Hood shooting: Texas army killer linked to September 11 terrorists
Again, nothing in U.S. media on this. Why?
Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a “spiritual adviser” to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.
The poster on USA Today had to get this from the British media. None of the U.S. papers would print it. Why?
Source:
Fort Hood gunman had told US military colleagues that infidels should have their throats cut
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America’s Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.
Posted by wpanak on November 08, 2009 at 12:49 pm
civicminded—your points are well-taken with regard to military personnel. The Supreme Court has long held that in most cases military personnel do not have the same constitutional rights as civilians.
Randy’s argument was not limited to military personnel—he stated that mosques needed to be closely observed, and to my knowledge there are no mosques run by the US military—there are Muslim clergy in the Army, and Muslim services on base, but the Mosques are off base.
Even if a Mosque were on base, increasing scrutiny there raises questions regardless of the civil rights of soldiers. Should there not be some places that are sacred? If a violent soldier were Catholic, would we expect the priest to violate his oath of secrecy with regard to confession and penance?
So in short you think we should do nothing? I would expect anyone who has knowledge of a potentially violent person to do everything in his/her power to prevent a tragedy even if it means revealing information gained in trust. Religion has nothing to do with it. It’s a persons duty as a human being and American Citizen to make any information they may have available to the proper authorities.
Surly you don’t think a priest or any other cleric that was told about a violent act plan should keep quiet?
civicminded—your points are well-taken with regard to military personnel. The Supreme Court has long held that in most cases military personnel do not have the same constitutional rights as civilians.
Soldiers know this when they enlist—they exchange civil rights for salary, training, and post-enlistment benefits like the GI Bill.
Randy’s argument was not limited to military personnel—he stated that mosques needed to be closely observed, and to my knowledge there are no mosques run by the US military—there are Muslim clergy in the Army, and Muslim services on base, but the Mosques are off base.
Even if a Mosque were on base, increasing scrutiny there raises questions regardless of the civil rights of soldiers. Should there not be some places that are sacred? If a violent soldier were Catholic, would we expect the priest to violate his oath of secrecy with regard to confession and penance?
I don’t have the answers for that—I’m just stating that this is a very complex situation with no easy answers.
I don’t disagree that the military can look for lessons learned and perhaps improve in identifying at-risk soldiers. I do think that is very difficult to do—in this case there were likly high-ranking supervising officers, a personnel folder, and frequent performance reviews, as well as military discipline which, I am assuming, puts emphasis on soldiers, and especially officers, doing the right thing when they have concerns—report it up the chain of command so the ranking officers have the information and can make decisions.
Even with all that, this case was not avoided. I think it is just too difficult to spot violence before it occurs, and even in the military the false positive rate would mean that intervention would do more harm (detain otherwise loyal and competent soldiers, damaging their reputations, diverting time and resources to this effort, reducing overall unit effectiveness,etc) than harm that would be avoided.
wpanak, let me point out something that is often overlooked with political issues in the military. I was in the military for a few years. When you’re in the military, your commanding officer has the discretion of putting your life in jeopardy, in hopes of achieving a greater cause than securing your life (and liberty). That cause is: success of the mission. Now if success of the mission is more important than an individual soldier’s life and liberty, isn’t success of the mission more important than his free speech or even freedom of religion? Now how will 13 dead soldiers support success of the military’s mission? If there is any organization that has justification for raising an eyebrow or two over mission-threatening speech, it is the military. I encourage the Army to be more pro-active in diagnosing these infections before they have a chance to spread and threaten the military’s purpose of protecting this country from jihadis and other murderers, which is the mission that soldiers voluntarily subordinate their lives and liberty to, when they sign up. My goodness, he wanted out and had put in for discharge. He had made his feelings known about the war against jihadis being a war against Muslims because in HIS mind they are one and the same. Mentally, he was in the Bin-Laden death cult. They should have let him go and alerted the FBI to watch him like a hawk. He may have been able to lead us to others, and supported the mission in that way.
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