At first, I didn’t make too much over this report that Nidal Hasan may have gone on a killing spree because his requests that his patients be investigated for war crimes was denied.
Fort Hood massacre suspect Nidal Malik Hasan sought to have some of his patients prosecuted for war crimes based on statements they made during psychiatric sessions with him, a captain who served on the base said Monday. Other psychiatrists complained to superiors that Hasan’s actions violated doctor-patient confidentiality, Capt. Shannon Meehan told The Dallas Morning News…But I am interested that the same article reported that the Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the killing was postponed yesterday. That’s because the House Intelligence Committee has just given Chair Silvestre Reyes’ explanation for the postponement.
Due to the high visibility of the issues surrounding the tragic event at Fort Hood, the President has instructed the National Security Council to assume control of all informational briefings. The NSC has directed that the leadership, as well as the chairmen and ranking minority members of the relevant congressional committees receive briefings first…As Spencer reported last week, John Brennan got put in charge of what the IC knew of Hasan last week.
On November 6, 2009, I directed that an immediate inventory be conducted of all intelligence in U.S. Government files that existed prior to November 6, 2009, relevant to the tragic shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, especially anything having to do with the alleged shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, U.S. Army. In addition, I directed an immediate review be initiated to determine how any such intelligence was handled, shared, and acted upon within individual departments and agencies and what intelligence was shared with others. This inventory and review shall be conducted in a manner that does not interfere with the ongoing criminal investigations of the Fort Hood shooting.
The results of this inventory and review, as well as any recommendations for improvements to procedures and practices, shall be provided to John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, who will serve as the principal point of contact on this matter for the White House. Preliminary results of this review shall be provided by November 30, 2009.But now it’s NSC–presumably Brennan–dictating what briefings the various committees will get. The NSC has just basically made this a Gang of Eight briefing [though they seem to be including other Chairs besides Intelligence]–if only for the moment. It may be they’re hiding more extensive known ties to al Qaeda than has been reported … Or it may be they’re trying to keep something else quiet.
Ever since I read yesterday that Hasan had wanted to prosecute his patients for war crimes based on what they told him in their sessions with him, I’ve been uncomfortable. In my career as a psychiatrist, I saw lots of traumatized people. In my later years, they were mostly adults who had been traumatized as children. But early on, I saw lots of soldiers from the Viet Nam War. They talked about three kinds of experiences: things they saw, things that happened to them; and things they did. It was the latter category that gave them the most trouble. Frankly, it gave me a lot of trouble too. I’ve never been in combat myself, but I could understand that the insanity of war could easily drive the soldiers to do some pretty awful things. But understanding that didn’t make the stories easy to hear. I don’t think it helped much that I wasn’t in sympathy with that war myself.The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are even worse than Viet Nam. The veterans back then were never sure which side any Vietnamese person was on. That’s true in our current wars, but there’s the added fact that anyone on the street might well be a walking bomb that can go off any second. I’m sure that Major Hasan heard a lot more of those hard-to-listen-to stories than I did. The stories are hard for the soldiers who lived them to ever shake off, but they’re not easy for those of us who who hear them either. They take their toll.
The day Hasan proposed prosecuting his own patients for war crimes was the day he should have been relieved of duty – irrespective of his obligation, his cost to the Army, or any other mitigating circumstances. All the other things that were overlooked are understandable, but not that. Whoever made the decision to not grant his request, and then didn’t follow through to make sure he saw no other soldiers from that day forward was not thinking clearly – and needs to be removed from duty as well. That was not just a red flag. That was a desperate cry for immediate action…
The Army has had a fretful and complex relationship with psychiatry for as long as there has been psychiatry as a professional discipline. The Army just doesn’t know what to do about psychiatry, partly, I think because the outputs don’t fit neatly into boxes, data flows, decision trees, quick solutions, ready answers and the quick fix. The idea that a uniformed corps of volunteer psychiatrists is a good one is, I think, arguable on many levels. As disruptive as it was, the Berry plan, (the draft for that matter), ensured a level of quality in the system. The idea that the uniformed services are competent to grow their own psychiatrists is laughable on the face of it…at the very least it is a very bad idea. I don’t know what the chain of command particulars were in this story but I won’t be surprised to learn that ditzy protocol or the artificialities of military social organization will underlie the “reasons” that this case was so tragically botched.
Stumbled on your blog while searching for images, and have been impressed by your general sanity.
But almost cried when I read this cogent entry on this current subject. So many of the people I see each day had their minds made up on Hasan–even before he did it!–that I appreciate any sense spoken about it.
Keep ’em flyin’.