The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs issued its report on the Fort Hood massacre today.  I spent some time going through the 91 page report this afternoon, and I have to say that I’m surprised by its candor.

After reading the first report on the attack, which was a complete whitewash, devoid of any substance or useful recommendations, I expected to see more of the same this time.  Surprisingly, this report, titled “A Ticking Time Bomb,” pulls no punches, and plenty of oxen are gored.

For those more interested in the bottom line, the report’s Executive Summary, which begins on page 7, does a pretty good job of laying out the main findings, conclusions, and recommendations.

Here are the main findings:

1. Evidence of Hasan’s radicalization to violent Islamist extremism was on full display to his superiors and colleagues during his military medical training. An instructor and a colleague each referred to Hasan as a “ticking time bomb.” Not only was no action taken to discipline or discharge him, but al so his Officer Evaluation Reports sanitized his obsession with violent Islamist extremism into praiseworthy research on counterterrorism.

2. FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) are units in FBI field offices that conduct counterterrorism investigations and are staffed by FBI agents and employees from other federal, state, and local agencies. A JTTF learned that Hasan was communicating with the Suspected Terrorist, flagged Hasan’s initial [REDACTED] communications for further review, and passed them to a second JTTF for an inquiry. However, the ensuing inquiry failed to identify the totality of Hasan’s communications and to inform Hasan’s military chain of command and Army security officials of the fact that he was communicating with a suspected violent Islamist extremist – a shocking course of conduct for a U.S. military officer. Instead, the JTTF inquiry relied on Hasan’s erroneous Officer Evaluation Reports and ultimately dismissed his communications as legitimate research.

3. The JTTF that had reviewed the initial [REDACTED] communications dismissed the second JTTF’s work as “slim” but eventually dropped the matter rather than cause a bureaucratic confrontation. The JTTFs now even dispute the extent to which they were in contact with each other in this case. Nonetheless, the JTTFs never raised the dispute to FBI headquarters for resolution, and entities in FBI headquarters responsible for coordination among field offices never acted. As a result, the FBI’s inquiry into Hasan ended prematurely.

The short version, then, is that the Army not only didn’t do anything about Hasan, despite clear indications that he was a problem, but his superiors actually lied on his OERs in order to cover up for his issues.  Then, when the San Diego JTTF became aware of his correspondence with “the Suspected Terrorist” (code, I believe, for Anwar al Awlawki), analysts there passed the information on to the DC area JTTF for action, since he was working at Walter Reed at the time.  The DC JTTF spent a grand total of 4 hours looking into the report, without making so much as a phone call to anyone who knew Hasan.  They pulled his Official Military Personnel File, noted that all his OERs looked fine, and that one of them mentioned his “research into Islamic extremism,” and closed the case.

Basically, the bogus OERs written by his superiors in an effort to pass him on to someone else’s command with as little trouble as possible were later used by the FBI as evidence that he wasn’t a threat.

I suspect that there are a number of officers who are busy getting their resumes ready this evening.  Unfortunately, there is no offense under the UCMJ for being a gutless weasel, so none of them will be held responsible for the crimes Hasan committed.