>>
back to you.
>>
could better communication have prevented this attack? how many
red flags
were there. we are joined by
jack rice
, and an coalman and jonathan capehart in town. nice to see you. and then tell us what we know.
>>
that's what is difficult to understand. the fbi is communicating the ideas that he was in contact with this individual, a radical cleric. he used to be from the
united states
, and now lives in yemen, and is now under
house arrest
and spending his time issuing statements, advocating jihad, and most recently advocating what nidal malik
hasan
did. and the question is, okay, before the act that
hasan
did, these communications seemed besign. now, looking back, what exactly were they talking about? maybe it seemed benign before the event that took place at ft. hood, but i think now in retrospect we need to look back and see what are the context of the communications, and what exactly was being said? what was mhasan asking about?
>>
okay. are we less observant inside our own military than in far-flung shores for the very reason it's our military?
>>
sometimes it is. the problem is you have
multiple intelligence
organizations wur working
side by side
. and part of the problem that we have here with this is that ultimately, the person responsible is
hasan
. nobody ultimately knows why he did what he did, at least not as of yet. there are so many angles to this i hesitate to say it's the
muslim extremist
angle that drove? was it mental illness? i don't know. we don't have the answers to that, but hopefully we will.
>>
at the same time, you have to wonder if there were flags or indications this man was giving whether it was an affiliation where people around this man were not taking it seriously, and it seems a major in the
u.s. army
would ever exhibit that kind of behavior, so there is no way it would lead to this type of behavior. and there are people that ultimately are audible agents. frequently what will happen is people will say how could somebody possibly do this, and things that would otherwise make you look secondly at you would dismiss because of the position they are in. and when you hit the rank of major, people say this guy couldn't do that, he was in virginia, and born in virginia, and he was at
walter reed
, and all of that adds to the credibility until something like this happens.
>>
at what point with all of the e-mail traffic back and forth does somebody say, wait a minute, we have a major here who is having conversations under normal circumstances would raise alarm, cover sanversations with somebody known to be expressing jihad and wanting to do harm to americans.
>>
yeah, never mind the
united states
, and yemen, it was difficult to get arrested for that type of thing. and set aside ft. hood, why is a major in the military in a highly secured
u.s. military
force base
being allowed to communicate with somebody like that? why is that being treated as benign? that is not benign!
>>
the bureau will have to go back and look at this and decide what was the litmus test. was there a line if you cross the line it's a problem, and if you don't cross the line it's not. clearly the line, it needs to be closer than they thought. and that really is the question. they did do an investigation to some degree. and we have to figure out just how far you go, and where all of a sudden we decide that there is an issue. they apparently decided there was not. and clearly in this case a massive mistake.
>>
the question is, how much was this man, whether it's by way of what he discussed. now, it's not to say that he was telling people that he was going to achieve this level of violence and terror, but to what extend was he indicating that he was going down
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