Was the Ft. Hood Shooter an Obama Advisor?

No. An internet rumor circulating to that effect, and it landed in my email. There is an interesting footnote here, but so far as I can tell there is no evidence at all that Nidal Malik Hasan had any connection to the Obama campaign or to the Administration.

Here is the meat of the email I received:

Now we have a little insight into why Obama said to not jump to conclusions about Nidal Hasan. This man who killed and wounded the people at Fort Hood, Texas was an advisor to Obama's Homeland Security team.

Well, that would be a pretty sexy story if it were true. It would not of course mean that the Obama organization had any idea what kind of man Hasan was, but it would be a reason for the Administration to be particularly embarrassed by this episode.

But it isn't true, at least according to the evidence at hand. The rumor is based on this document published online by the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute. The HSPI looks to be a typical think tank. They spend a lot of money getting a lot of people with credentials together to talk things over and publish reports.

No doubt the folks at HSPI hoped to have influence in the Obama Administration. The document is a report of the HSPI Presidential Transition Task Force. I do not know what connections HSPI or their PTTF had with the Obama organization. I note that Ed Meese, Reagan Administration Attorney General, was on the Task Force. The document presents a lot of boilerplate about homeland security issues. I confess that I didn't study it closely.

But on page 29 of the list of "Task Force Even Participants" was one Nidal Hasan, of the "Uniformed Services University School of Medicine." That is indeed our man, as the GW Hatchet reports.

Frank Cilluffo, director of the HSPI, said Hasan was not affiliated with the HSPI.

"There have been a lot of erroneous stories," Cilluffo said, adding that Hasan has "no affiliation [with HSPI], was not a member of the task force, but participated in some of the meetings as an audience member."

Cilluffo said Hasan RSVP'd to these HSPI events "in his capacity as a disaster and preventative psychiatry fellow with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences" – a federal health sciences university which trains its students for "military medicine, disaster medicine and military medical readiness."

It looks like Nidal Hasan used his credentials to get a place on the HSPI proceedings. That will no doubt be of interest to the investigators in this case, and to those Congressional Committees doing their own investigations. It surely tells us something about Hasan.

But there is no scandal here. I can understand that this is a little embarrassing to HSPI, but the Institute had no reason to be suspicious of Hasan. More importantly, there is no link between Hasan and the Obama organization. The claim that Hasan was "was an advisor to Obama's Homeland Security team" appears to be a canard.

Comments

[southdakotagov]

Anything to distort the truth or ignore it all together.

http://southdakotagov.wordpress.com/

[Erik]

KB: Thanks for posting this. Reason 1, Irrational Fear Mongering 0.

[KB]

You're welcome,Erik. But I don't see this as an contest between reason and irrational fear. It is altogether reasonable to be alarmed about the fact that Nidal Hasan's name shows up on a "Presidential Transition Task Force Event" list. It is also reasonable to want to know what connection this event and organization had to the Obama team. It is reasonable as well, if not ethical, to want to use this as a weapon against the Obama Administration. But in this case, the Administration looks clean.