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OBAMA SHIELDS FORT HOOD JIHADI, MAJOR MUSLIM HASAN
Why?
Obama Administration is Stalling on Giving Congress Intelligence About Fort Hood Shooter, Says Hoekstra CNS By Chris Neefus
(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, says the Obama administration is stalling in providing information to the leaders of the House and Senate and the congressional intelligence committees on the multiple murders allegedly committed by a radical Muslim Army officer at Fort Hood more than a month ago.
So far, the committee chairman and congressional leaders have received no detailed, substantive briefing on the event and what is known about its perpetrator.
“You know, they’re playing out the string,” Hoekstra said Thursday. “We’re going home next week, (and) they will have effectively made it through three months with giving no substantive briefings on Fort Hood.”
CNSNews.com asked Hoekstra whether it was “a constitutional affront not to have the Gang of 8 briefed on this?”
“Oh yeah, sure, absolutely,” said Hoekstra.
The Gang of 8 is a group of leaders from the House and Senate who by law are supposed to be briefed on U.S. intelligence activities when the matter is too sensitive to share with the full intelligence committees. The group includes the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees and the majority and minority leaders of each chamber.
Additionally, the law holds that the administration must “ensure that the congressional intelligence committees are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States.”
When a reporter said he thought the Gang of 8 had been briefed on the intelligence report regarding the attack, Hoekstra said the committees had been given a preliminary briefing a few weeks ago that lacked substantive information.
[..]
Hoekstra, who has been asking for more information on Hasan and the murders at Fort Hood since he wrote a November 9 letter to Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and the heads of each intelligence agency, said the Obama administration was not being transparent.
“It’s now three and a half, four weeks later,” said Hoekstra. “I would assume that in the last four weeks we’ve gathered lots of info that should be shared with the intelligence committees.” There is a “lack of transparency here,” Hoekstra said, and “it is unbelievable the material and the information that they’re withholding from us, from the American people.”
Hoekstra said that a report on the Fort Hood incident had been delivered to President Obama two weeks ago.
“I know that the (Fort Hood) report was delivered to the President on November 30, so I talked to Director Blair last week and said, ‘Hey, I’d just like an update,’ you know? There are a lot—potentially lots—of areas that have ties to foreign intelligence and foreign threats-- international threats. Give us an update,” said Hoekstra.
“I’d like to know who Hasan was in contact with, what happened to his money and these types of things. Who else he might have been talking to in the United States? All of this kind of information. Supposedly we got access to his computers, supposedly we got access to his email, his phone records, financial records, all of these kinds of things,” said Hoekstra.
Hoekstra said Blair has been putting off a meeting. “So I asked for a briefing last week,” said Hoekstra. “Mr. Blair thought he’d be able to give me one. He was told, ‘No,’ and then he said, ‘I’m not going to make a commitment, but I think that we’ll be able to give you one next week,’ which would be this week. Well, he’s out of the country until late tomorrow (Friday).”
“I talked to his (Blair’s) office yesterday (Wednesday), and you know the answer is now, ‘No briefing this week.’ It’s unbelievable,” said Hoekstra.
When Hoekstra was asked if he wanted to be briefed on the President’s report or on the Fort Hood incident in general, he said: “On anything--on any intelligence that they’ve gathered! They are not willing to share it with the intelligence committee. Wouldn’t it be nice to know what his—shouldn’t the intelligence committee know what his relationship was to Aulaqi, what other foreign people he would be talking to? No briefing.”
Hoekstra said the Obama administration was stalling on giving out the information. “You know, they’re playing out the string,” said Hoekstra. “We’re going home next week, (and) they will have effectively made it through three months with giving no substantive briefings on Fort Hood.”
Hoekstra said Democrats had their priorities out of order by focusing on salacious news instead of the incident. “And at the same time, we are subpoenaing the people who crashed the India state dinner,” he said, referring to Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the couple who attended President Obama’s first state dinner without an invitation. “I mean, it is like, there’s something wrong here.
Tareq Salahi is the Palestinian friend of Obama who "crashed" a state dinner at the White House. The Salahi incident kicked off a series of investigations by Democrats despite the fact that they knew Obama and had been photographed with him previously.
http://intelligence.house.gov
Reyes Comments on Postponement of Fort Hood Briefing
WASHINGTON, DC (Nov. 17) – The Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Silvestre Reyes of Texas today issued the following statement regarding the postponement of a full Committee briefing on the information related to the Fort Hood shooting:
"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.
"I have been told that the Director of National Intelligence is still committed to providing the full membership a briefing on the activities within the jurisdiction of this Committee. I believe that this will occur, and I will push to schedule a briefing before the end of this week."
James Corum is Dean of the Baltic Defence College in Estonia. He has taught at American and British staff colleges and is the author of seven books on military history and counter-insurgency. He is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve (rtd) and has 28 years' experience as an army officer.
Politically correct officials put in charge of official Fort Hood investigation By James Corum World
The US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates has appointed a special board to investigate the mass shooting of US soldiers at Fort Hood by a US Army Major two weeks ago. But look more closely at the details.
The investigation is to be led by two retired senior officials, both Bill Clinton appointees, who made pushing “affirmative action” and special status for minority groups in the US military a central part of their careers. With former Army Secretary Togo West and former Navy Chief of Operations Admiral Vernon Clark at the helm of this investigation, no one should expect any critical comment about the policies that allowed the career of an extremist Muslim to flourish in the US military.
Togo West served as an army lawyer from 1969 to 1973 and then entered the world of politically connected Washington lawyers who spend the rest of their careers in and out of Democratic Party administrations. He was appointed to as the Navy’s General Counsel under President Carter and then as Assistant to the Defence Secretary under Carter. When the Democrats came back into power in 1993 he was appointed as Secretary of the Army by Bill Clinton and served in that post until his appointment as Secretary for Veteran’s Affairs in 1997.
Togo West never saw an affirmative action policy or minority preference policy he didn’t like. For decades the US military has been subject to yearly political indoctrination in the form of special training to prevent the “harassment” of minorities. Mostly, this means that soldiers are subjected to training teams that present courses describing how deeply racist US white people. Any joke, look, friendly comment, or official action made by a white person to a protected minority group member can and should be treated as a racist action that merits official complaint.
OK, I am exaggerating — but only a bit. Under West’s tenure as Secretary of the Army the briefings and classes really were a lot like this, and West encouraged an atmosphere in the US Army in which even the silliest and most insignificant complaints by soldiers belonging to minority groups immediately got the attention of top officers. The attitude was “guilty until proven innocent” if a minority group soldier made a complaint about a superior. Naturally, a reluctance to criticise the performance of a minority group soldier became an entrenched part of the US military culture.
Admiral Clark was a staunch supporter of special minority group programmes as senior officer of the US Navy (chief of naval operations) from 2000 to 2005. Clark was eager to increase the representation of minority groups in the US Navy and in 2005 he directed that the Navy increase the number of minority candidates for officer commissions by 25 per cent.
This led to a double standard programme at places like the Naval Academy at Annapolis, where the entry standards for minorities are noticeably lower than for white applicants. Clark was such an enthusiast for “diversity” in the Navy that in 2005 he redefined the Navy’s concept of special minorities to include religious (read Muslim) and ethnic groups as well.
At the core of the mass murder at Fort Hood Texas is the question of how the decades-old policies of the US Defence Department that have lowered standards in the name of “affirmative action” and “diversity” may have contributed to the retention of a clearly unfit officer and put him in the position to kill 13 American soldiers and wound another 28. For Togo West or Vernon Clark to question such policies (which were largely of their own making) would indicate a degree of intellectual openness and apolitical judgment that they have never exhibited before. So my bet is a complete gloss over the real questions at stake.
Gates will certainly earn President Obama’s approval for appointing as senior investigators two retirees who can be assured not to question the Obama Party Line. But there are the families of a few dozen dead and wounded soldiers involved here, and many have congressmen and senators who will detect the slightest hint of a whitewash. I predict that the Defence Department’s investigation will be yet another major blunder by the Obama administration.
Hat tip Jennifer on the links
Why?
Obama Administration is Stalling on Giving Congress Intelligence About Fort Hood Shooter, Says Hoekstra CNS By Chris Neefus
(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, says the Obama administration is stalling in providing information to the leaders of the House and Senate and the congressional intelligence committees on the multiple murders allegedly committed by a radical Muslim Army officer at Fort Hood more than a month ago.
So far, the committee chairman and congressional leaders have received no detailed, substantive briefing on the event and what is known about its perpetrator.
“You know, they’re playing out the string,” Hoekstra said Thursday. “We’re going home next week, (and) they will have effectively made it through three months with giving no substantive briefings on Fort Hood.”
CNSNews.com asked Hoekstra whether it was “a constitutional affront not to have the Gang of 8 briefed on this?”
“Oh yeah, sure, absolutely,” said Hoekstra.
The Gang of 8 is a group of leaders from the House and Senate who by law are supposed to be briefed on U.S. intelligence activities when the matter is too sensitive to share with the full intelligence committees. The group includes the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees and the majority and minority leaders of each chamber.
Additionally, the law holds that the administration must “ensure that the congressional intelligence committees are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States.”
When a reporter said he thought the Gang of 8 had been briefed on the intelligence report regarding the attack, Hoekstra said the committees had been given a preliminary briefing a few weeks ago that lacked substantive information.
[..]
Hoekstra, who has been asking for more information on Hasan and the murders at Fort Hood since he wrote a November 9 letter to Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and the heads of each intelligence agency, said the Obama administration was not being transparent.
“It’s now three and a half, four weeks later,” said Hoekstra. “I would assume that in the last four weeks we’ve gathered lots of info that should be shared with the intelligence committees.” There is a “lack of transparency here,” Hoekstra said, and “it is unbelievable the material and the information that they’re withholding from us, from the American people.”
Hoekstra said that a report on the Fort Hood incident had been delivered to President Obama two weeks ago.
“I know that the (Fort Hood) report was delivered to the President on November 30, so I talked to Director Blair last week and said, ‘Hey, I’d just like an update,’ you know? There are a lot—potentially lots—of areas that have ties to foreign intelligence and foreign threats-- international threats. Give us an update,” said Hoekstra.
“I’d like to know who Hasan was in contact with, what happened to his money and these types of things. Who else he might have been talking to in the United States? All of this kind of information. Supposedly we got access to his computers, supposedly we got access to his email, his phone records, financial records, all of these kinds of things,” said Hoekstra.
Hoekstra said Blair has been putting off a meeting. “So I asked for a briefing last week,” said Hoekstra. “Mr. Blair thought he’d be able to give me one. He was told, ‘No,’ and then he said, ‘I’m not going to make a commitment, but I think that we’ll be able to give you one next week,’ which would be this week. Well, he’s out of the country until late tomorrow (Friday).”
“I talked to his (Blair’s) office yesterday (Wednesday), and you know the answer is now, ‘No briefing this week.’ It’s unbelievable,” said Hoekstra.
When Hoekstra was asked if he wanted to be briefed on the President’s report or on the Fort Hood incident in general, he said: “On anything--on any intelligence that they’ve gathered! They are not willing to share it with the intelligence committee. Wouldn’t it be nice to know what his—shouldn’t the intelligence committee know what his relationship was to Aulaqi, what other foreign people he would be talking to? No briefing.”
Hoekstra said the Obama administration was stalling on giving out the information. “You know, they’re playing out the string,” said Hoekstra. “We’re going home next week, (and) they will have effectively made it through three months with giving no substantive briefings on Fort Hood.”
Hoekstra said Democrats had their priorities out of order by focusing on salacious news instead of the incident. “And at the same time, we are subpoenaing the people who crashed the India state dinner,” he said, referring to Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the couple who attended President Obama’s first state dinner without an invitation. “I mean, it is like, there’s something wrong here.
Tareq Salahi is the Palestinian friend of Obama who "crashed" a state dinner at the White House. The Salahi incident kicked off a series of investigations by Democrats despite the fact that they knew Obama and had been photographed with him previously.
http://intelligence.house.gov
Reyes Comments on Postponement of Fort Hood Briefing
WASHINGTON, DC (Nov. 17) – The Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Silvestre Reyes of Texas today issued the following statement regarding the postponement of a full Committee briefing on the information related to the Fort Hood shooting:
"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.
"I have been told that the Director of National Intelligence is still committed to providing the full membership a briefing on the activities within the jurisdiction of this Committee. I believe that this will occur, and I will push to schedule a briefing before the end of this week."
James Corum is Dean of the Baltic Defence College in Estonia. He has taught at American and British staff colleges and is the author of seven books on military history and counter-insurgency. He is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve (rtd) and has 28 years' experience as an army officer.
Politically correct officials put in charge of official Fort Hood investigation By James Corum World
The US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates has appointed a special board to investigate the mass shooting of US soldiers at Fort Hood by a US Army Major two weeks ago. But look more closely at the details.
The investigation is to be led by two retired senior officials, both Bill Clinton appointees, who made pushing “affirmative action” and special status for minority groups in the US military a central part of their careers. With former Army Secretary Togo West and former Navy Chief of Operations Admiral Vernon Clark at the helm of this investigation, no one should expect any critical comment about the policies that allowed the career of an extremist Muslim to flourish in the US military.
Togo West served as an army lawyer from 1969 to 1973 and then entered the world of politically connected Washington lawyers who spend the rest of their careers in and out of Democratic Party administrations. He was appointed to as the Navy’s General Counsel under President Carter and then as Assistant to the Defence Secretary under Carter. When the Democrats came back into power in 1993 he was appointed as Secretary of the Army by Bill Clinton and served in that post until his appointment as Secretary for Veteran’s Affairs in 1997.
Togo West never saw an affirmative action policy or minority preference policy he didn’t like. For decades the US military has been subject to yearly political indoctrination in the form of special training to prevent the “harassment” of minorities. Mostly, this means that soldiers are subjected to training teams that present courses describing how deeply racist US white people. Any joke, look, friendly comment, or official action made by a white person to a protected minority group member can and should be treated as a racist action that merits official complaint.
OK, I am exaggerating — but only a bit. Under West’s tenure as Secretary of the Army the briefings and classes really were a lot like this, and West encouraged an atmosphere in the US Army in which even the silliest and most insignificant complaints by soldiers belonging to minority groups immediately got the attention of top officers. The attitude was “guilty until proven innocent” if a minority group soldier made a complaint about a superior. Naturally, a reluctance to criticise the performance of a minority group soldier became an entrenched part of the US military culture.
Admiral Clark was a staunch supporter of special minority group programmes as senior officer of the US Navy (chief of naval operations) from 2000 to 2005. Clark was eager to increase the representation of minority groups in the US Navy and in 2005 he directed that the Navy increase the number of minority candidates for officer commissions by 25 per cent.
This led to a double standard programme at places like the Naval Academy at Annapolis, where the entry standards for minorities are noticeably lower than for white applicants. Clark was such an enthusiast for “diversity” in the Navy that in 2005 he redefined the Navy’s concept of special minorities to include religious (read Muslim) and ethnic groups as well.
At the core of the mass murder at Fort Hood Texas is the question of how the decades-old policies of the US Defence Department that have lowered standards in the name of “affirmative action” and “diversity” may have contributed to the retention of a clearly unfit officer and put him in the position to kill 13 American soldiers and wound another 28. For Togo West or Vernon Clark to question such policies (which were largely of their own making) would indicate a degree of intellectual openness and apolitical judgment that they have never exhibited before. So my bet is a complete gloss over the real questions at stake.
Gates will certainly earn President Obama’s approval for appointing as senior investigators two retirees who can be assured not to question the Obama Party Line. But there are the families of a few dozen dead and wounded soldiers involved here, and many have congressmen and senators who will detect the slightest hint of a whitewash. I predict that the Defence Department’s investigation will be yet another major blunder by the Obama administration.
Hat tip Jennifer on the links