Who’s hindering the Ft. Hood probe?
In the immediate aftermath of the Ft. Hood shooting spree, the first question on everyone’s mind was ‘how could this happen?’ Which, after the identity and known background of the shooter came to light, turned into ‘how could this happen, given all the warning signals they had about this man?’ Now, a year later, the question is….why aren’t members of the Obama administration cooperating with the congressional investigation into the shooting?
Lawmakers want to know, and they’ve subpoenaed administration members for information they’ve requested for months.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, an independent, and Susan Collins, the panel’s top Republican, took the action after the departments of Justice and Defense failed to provide the materials by Monday’s deadline…
In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, who heads the Justice Department, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Lieberman and Collins wrote: “It is impossible for us to avoid reaching the conclusion that the departments simply do not want to cooperate with our investigation.”
Which begs the obvious question….why not? It gets curiouser…
“Although both DOD and FBI have provided hundreds of pages of documents, much of that has been publicly available and, more important, the departments have withheld the key witnesses and documents that will shed light on the FBI’s and DoD’s aborted investigation of Major Hasan before the attack and his conduct while at Walter Reed Army Medical Center,†the senators said in a letter to Gates that accompanied the subpoena.
It has always appeared that this was a preventable tragedy. An investigation before the attack was halted by FBI and DoD for some reason. Congress is asking why. It’s interesting that the officials holding back are at Justice and Defense.
