On page 12 of the report from GWU, a balding man in Army Combat Uniform (ACU) is shown photographed at a December 2008 round table titled “International Strategy: Re-Invigorating Our Role in the World”. While impossible to confirm from the photo whether this is actually him or not, the male pattern baldness at least makes it plausible.
What exactly was MAJ Hasan’s intent at the HSPI forum(s)? Gawker.com has a quote from HSPI’s Deputy Director, Daniel Kaniewski, stating the following: He says institute staffers recall Hasan attending at least one task force event, and that he RSVP'd for several. "We do recall him speaking at one of our events as an audience member," he says, "but none of us recall what he actually said.” Why have no other people in attendance confirmed seeing him at the event? As a general rule of thumb, the one guy dressed (much) differently in the room will likely stick out, especially in as confined of an environment as this appears to be. This, of course, is obviously assuming that MAJ Hasan did indeed wear ACUs to the event he attended.
The slowly emerging details on MAJ Nidal Hasan’s past continue to get more interesting. On a separate and mostly unrelated note, what is it about Virginia Tech and mass murderers?
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First off, thanks to User81 for the post about Hasan’s attendance at an event held by George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI). While this is definitely interesting, it appears to be largely a coincidence. Since Hasan was simply a panel attendee who was representing USUSM, I doubt he (or any other attendees) were vetted at any level. Unfortunately, I fear that some media outlets will jump on this piece of information and try to show some sort of tie between the current administration and Hasan. Not only is this wrong, but it would be disrespectful to the families of the deceased and wounded.
ReplyDeleteTo follow up...
ReplyDeleteI was absolutely not inferring Nidal Hasan had ties to the current administration. I do not, however, think Hasan's attendance was a coincidence. The GWU statement and Gawker.com quote the events as being open to the public and allude to Hasan wanting to be there, and probably not being under USUSM mandate or direction to attend. My gut reaction to all of this is that Nidal Hasan was already planning some kind of attack when he participated in the HSPI event. That of course strikes the question of why he didn't conduct an attack there. What was the security posture at the event? Had he not settled in on what kind of attack to conduct at that point? Was he seeking answers about the future administration's posture toward the Middle East that were or were not fulfilled? I could go on all day with this, but everyone gets the point.
Pat, you were correct by stating that this piece could be easily manipulated by the media or others. Also, event participants were most likely not vetted prior to the event.
On an unrelated note. I stumbled across another interesting participant in Waleed Alshahari representing the Embassy of Yemen. Mr. Alshahari is Yemen's special envoy to the US covering Gitmo affairs. Yemen has the dubious honor of having the largest percentage of Gitmo detainees at somewhere around 40%. The Washington Post has a link to an interesting article about Yemeni Gitmo detainees and Yemen's fight to get their detainees back without any kind of real rehabilitation program for them. The article is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/18/AR2008111803423.html
-User81