Congressman:Why is Obama stifling Hasan investigation?

Memberof House intelligence committeee wants reports to prevent another attack

Posted: December 18, 2009
12:40 am Eastern

By Bob Unruh

© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan

A member of the House PermanentSelect Committee on Intelligence is wondering why President Obamaapparently is suppressing information assembled by an investigationinto the Nov. 5 attack at Fort Hood by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Armypsychiatrist who reportedly shouted "Allahu akbar," or "Allah isgreatest," while killing more than a dozen soldiers and civilians.

Rep.Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., expressedhis concern in a recent commentary, saying, "There has been a troublingrefusal by Obama officials to acknowledge that the shooting likely wasan act of homegrown terrorism."

"How can it be that the HouseCommittee on Homeland Security has launched an investigation and calledhearings within a week to look into the couple who crashed a recentWhite House state dinner, yet a month after Fort Hood there has yet tobe a single congressional hearing into the Fort Hood attack?" Hoekstrasaid. "I fear that our nation is returning to the naive securityoutlook of Sept. 10, 2001, when radical Islamic terrorist attacks wereconsidered law enforcement and criminal problems and not threats to ournational security."

Hasan, a Muslim of Palestiniandescent, allegedly entered the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hoodabout 1:30 p.m. Nov. 5 and, according to witnesses, took a seat at atable, bowed his head for a few seconds, then stood up and startedshooting.

He later was shot by a civilianpolice officer and remains hospitalized under guard, reportedlyparalyzed from his shooting injuries. Thirteen adults and an unbornchild were shot and killed, and nearly three dozen others wounded inthe attack for which Hasan has been charged.

Hoekstra said that in just the pastyear, there have been arrests of suspects in alleged "homegrownterrorist attacks" in New York, Chicago, North Carolina and Atlanta.

"Russia recently has seen severalalleged homegrown terrorism attacks, including a train bombing and anattack against a gas storage facility. There were horrific homegrownterrorist attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. In 2006, 18homegrown terrorists were arrested in Toronto. It has happened here andwill happen again if we don't act. We cannot wish it away," he warned.

"We need to understand how homegrownterrorism works if we are to identify and stop homegrown terroristsbefore they carry out acts of violence. How are al-Qaida leaders andother radical jihadists recruiting and radicalizing homegrownterrorists? A principle route seems to be the Internet. We know thatMaj. Hasan was in contact via the Internet with radical Islamic clericAnwar al-Awlaki and that Mr. al-Awlaki's sermons have influencedwould-be homegrown terrorists in the United States and the terroristswho launched the deadly 2005 London subway bombings," Hoekstra said.

Get "Muslim Mafia: Inside the SecretUnderworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America," autographed, fromWND's Superstore.

But Jamal Ware, a spokesman for theGOP members of the intelligence committee, told WND that the problem iswhile the investigation apparently has produced a report about Hasan,it's being suppressed by the White House.

Hoekstra "had issued a call for theintelligence community to preserve all records relevant to looking atwhat happened at Fort Hood," Ware said, so that the committee couldreview and determine what changes should be made to prevent arecurrence.

"Several days after [that], PresidentObama issued an order to all in the intelligence community, asking themto bring together all of their records and produce a report related toFort Hood," he said.

The report apparently was completedby Nov. 30, but as of today, committee members still have been given noinformation to review, he said.

Ware confirmed administrationofficials have referenced the report in conversations, "but it is theWhite House who is determining who will have access to that particularinformation."

"At the end of the day, Hoekstra [andother GOP members of the committee] have wanted access to this tounderstand what happened, and hopefully look at what tools, changes areneeded," Ware said. "It's of critical concern to Congress that we lookat that and understand what happened."

The committee, he noted, "hasresponsibility for conducting this type of oversight."

"They are baffled by the resistancefrom the administration and from Democrats to doing any type ofoversight," he said.

At the Collins Report, a commentary by KevinCollins offered an explanation of the situation.

"Hoekstra suspects Obama ispurposefully dragging out the release of any information on Maj. NidalMalik Hasan into next February, and he considers this stall anunconstitutional trampling of his committee's responsibility to thenation," he wrote. "Federal law requires the White House to brief Houseand Senate members on this investigation and 'ensure that thecongressional intelligence committees are kept fully and currentlyinformed of the intelligence activities of the United States.'"

"What is being covered up?" Collinswondered. "Whatever's in the report must be even worse than thepublicly available facts."

In Hoekstra's commentary, he saidonly a thorough review will uncover "the intelligence failures thatprevented it from being detected."

"Americans underestimate the threatfrom homegrown terrorism," he said. "The president said it isinconceivable that this would happen in America. Wrong. It is notinconceivable and is a growing global problem that needs to beaddressed."

The investigation also might revealinformation beyond the Hasan case, he suggested.

"We also need to understand howradical jihadist groups are being financed. It has been reported thatMaj. Hasan sent money abroad to Islamic charities that reportedlysupport terrorism. How much funding are these so-called charitiesreceiving from the U.S.? How much U.S. government funding is indirectlygoing to these groups? I don't know whether suspect Islamic charitiesare supporting radical jihadists such as Mr. al-Awlaki, but this ispossibility that should be looked into," he said.

"The serious national securityimplications of the Fort Hood shooting concern both a possiblehomegrown terrorist attack and a likely failure of U.S. intelligenceagencies to cooperate, yet Congress has done nothing to investigate andthe Obama administration has stonewalled requests by individual membersof Congress for information," Hoekstra explained.

"The Obama administration seems toforget that it is a requirement, not an option, for the executivebranch to keep Congress fully and currently informed. Instead of ahealthy discussion with Congress on why this horrible event occurred,we have something akin to pulling teeth to get even basic information.This is wrong and it makes me wonder what Congress will find when thelayers are pulled back," he said.

The White House did not respond to aWND request for comment or explanation.

But others besides Hoekstra also arestarting to wonder.

The Associated Press reported Sen.Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate oversight committee, has chidedObama officials for failing to provide the information. The report saidLieberman's Homeland Security panel hasn't even yet received thepersonnel file for Hasan.

And the Dallas Morning News said someof the key evidence about Hasan's case may not have been forwarded toHasan's personnel files anyway. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said someinformation that investigators may want actually stayed in militaryeducation or training files and never was included in personnel files.

Reports are that coworkers of Hasan,as well as his superiors, several times had expressed concern about hisIslamic beliefs and religious proselytizing as well as his mentalstability.

"It doesn't appear that the militaryhas updated its personnel policies to reflect the threat of Islamicextremism," Collins told the paper. "There appears to be a real gap inthe protocols in the personnel procedures."

What is known is that an FBI taskforce was intercepting e-mails between Hasan and radical Muslim imamAnwar al-Awlaki as long ago as last December. Al-Awlaki has been thesubject of FBI concern since the 1990s

In a commentary on the terror attack, WND founder Joseph Farahcited a few of the questions that need to be addressed:

"How did Nidal Malik Hasan rise tothe rank of major in the U.S. Army with his background? I'm not talkingabout his Muslim faith. I'm talking about his troubled history – thedisciplinary record of inappropriate proselytizing, the extremistInternet postings, the statements to comrades about American foreignpolicy, the mandatory counseling he had to receive because of hisbehavior. How could he ever have been placed in such a position ofauthority?

"How is it possible that an officerwho had expressed such grave misgivings about a deployment toAfghanistan or Iraq had been assigned to such a mission without carefulscrutiny?

"What kind of screening goes on inthe military for security safety risks?

"Why was this man chosen toparticipate in transition plans for the new administration less than ayear ago by a major university – particularly on an issue involvinghomeland security?

"Why are soldiers on U.S. militarybases strictly forbidden to carry firearms – weapons that could haveprevented this travesty? If they are to be trusted with firearms tocarry out their foreign missions, why not at home to defend themselveslike other Americans? Why have military bases, of all places, beenturned into virtual gun-free zones?

"And how is it possible after so manyincidents like this in America are the U.S. media still so obsessedwith withholding information and denying terrorism as even a possiblemotivation?

Tags: OBAMA HASAN

Publicado por Corazon7 @ 10:33

Comentarios (0) | Enviar

Comentarios

Añadir comentario