Ft. Hood Whitewash
by Print, nypost.comJuly 22nd 2012
After a more-than-two-year review, a report released last week accuses the FBI of having dropped the ball when it investigated the Fort Hood jihadist before the 2009 massacre.
So — how many people will be fired?
Exactly . . . none.
That's right: The agency might have been able to prevent the killing of 13 people by a home-grown Islamic fundamentalist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — but failed to do so.
And yet, not a single FBI official will lose his or her job.
"We do not find, and do not believe, that anyone is solely responsible for mistakes in handling the information," concluded former FBI Director William Webster, who conducted the probe.
"We do not believe it would be fair to hold these dedicated personnel . . . responsible for the tragedy that occurred months later at Fort Hood."
How convenient for the agency and its staff.
And what a blow to the victims' families — and the rest of America.
Webster's report determined that the agency's probe of Hasan in the run-up to his shooting spree was "belated, incomplete and rushed" — and influenced by an unhealthy dose of political correctness.
Indeed, the FBI had caught on to the fact that Hasan was in regular e-mail contact with (the now happily deceased) radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki nearly a year before the mass shooting.
That included messages in which Hasan expressed support for suicide bombers — and one in which he said: "I would assume that [a] suicide bomber whose aim is to kill enemy soldiers or their helpers, but also kills innocents in the process is acceptable."
Yet the FBI — like the Army — concluded that Hasan had contacted the cleric merely "to research Islam."
Agents in Washington, alerted to the e-mails by the FBI's San Diego office, expressed fears that questioning Hasan might jeopardize his military career.
And one in San Diego said he was told the matter was "politically sensitive" and that the FBI's Washington office "doesn't go out and interview every Muslim guy who visits extremist Web sites."
Yet Americans are supposed to accept that nothing in all this FBI bungling rises to a level that would require at least one person to be fired — not even one.
It's beyond outrageous.
Indeed, it's not even clear that the report itself fully understands the very problem that allowed the massacre to take place.
As Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) noted: "We are concerned that the report fails to address the specific cause for the Fort Hood attack, which is violent Islamist extremism."
Even more political correctness, it seems.
The lawmakers also expressed skepticism "that FBI analysts are now well-integrated into the FBI's operations, as the report states."
All of which means another Fort Hood-type massacre is probably no less likely today than it was three years ago.
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Original Page: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/ft_hood_whitewash_Nia0dLF7KaCQ90Hd7eMxOK
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Victor Cuvo, Attorney at Law
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