Senators losing patience in Fort Hood probe, threaten subpoenas

The Pentagon said it was making the changes to help eliminate some of the “gaps and deficiencies” that contributed to the shooting at Fort Hood.

The program is designed to be accessed by multiple agencies to prevent some of the lack of information-sharing that apparently contributed to the shooting. The Pentagon will also increase a database that allows organizations across the department to see information about criminal investigations or other data in a single place.

The Department is also applying other “lessons learned” from the Fort Hood attack, including practices on workplace violence and “active shooter awareness training.”

The actions follow a Pentagon-led report by former Army Secretary Togo West and former Chief of Naval Operations Vern Clark that included 79 recommendations.

The actions the Pentagon announced Thursday represent some 26 of those recommendations; the remaining ones are still under review.

Pentagon and Justice push back

The position of the Pentagon and the Justice Department is that personnel records can’t be released to the Homeland Security Committee, and also that they would not make “front-line” FBI agents and other investigators available because they don’t think that level of employee should be accountable to congress.

In a letter to Lieberman and Collins this week, assistant secretary of defense Elizabeth King and assistant attorney general Ronald Weich wrote: “We believe that the additional records and access to employees requested in your letter would pose inevitable, unacceptable risks to our prosecution…. We understand that your staff may disagree with our assessments about these risks, but the responsibility for a fair and effective prosecution rests with us alone.”

But members of congress want to know why the shooting happened in the first place, saying that an independent investigation by Congress is still warranted.

For example, Hasan communicated by e-mail with a radical cleric in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, prior to the attacks. A joint terrorism task force was aware of this, but did not inform the Defense Department, said Lieberman. On the other hand, there were defense officials on that task force who in fact did know about the e-mails.

“That’s just one reason why there’s need for an independent congressional investigation,” Lieberman said.

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