Senate panel kicks off probe of Ft. Hood shootings
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A Senate panel this morning kicked off the first congressional probe into the Ft. Hood shooting rampage that left 13 people dead and 43 wounded.
At a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, witnesses said the Ft. Hood shooting appeared similar to other recent attacks against military personnel within the United States and abroad.
There have been attacks at a other facilities, including a military recruitment center in Little Rock, Ark., in June; at Camp Liberty in Iraq in May and at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait in 2003.
“The threat is now increasingly from within, from homegrown terrorists who are inspired by violent Islamist ideology to plan and execute attacks where they live,” Mitchell Silber, director of intelligence analysis for the New York City Police Department, told senators at the televised hearing.
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, has been charged by military authorities with 13 counts of premeditated murder in connection with the Nov. 5 shootings at Ft. Hood in Texas. More than 30 were injured.
Although civilian and military criminal experts have been investigating and the Army has been examining its procedures about whether the shootings could have been prevented, Congress has weighed in because of Republican pressure on the issue.
Connecticut Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, who heads the panel, said today’s hearings will concentrate on overall security issues and whether red flags were missed by officials.
President Obama has warned against the hearings becoming “political theater.”
“We are not interested in political theater,” Lieberman said this week. “We’re interested in getting the facts.”
--Michael Muskal
