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Editorial: Was Fort Hood tragedy avoidable?

The picture is blurry, but theories abound. Now we need facts.

Last update: November 13, 2009 - 5:23 PM

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In the confusing days after 9/11, this newspaper and other news media outlets were focused on the strange case of Zacarias Moussaoui, who would later be labeled the "20th'' hijacker.

"A man who trained briefly at an Eagan flight school this summer is believed to have been a high-ranking operative for Osama bin Laden,'' the Star Tribune reported Sept. 15, 2001. Moussaoui had been arrested a month earlier for carrying a false passport, and French intelligence officials had linked him to Bin Laden.

Moussaoui's odd behavior leading up to his arrest in the Twin Cities didn't make much sense before that terrible September morning in Manhattan. Why would someone with no previous flight experience seek commercial jetliner training? Why would he use the pseudonym "Zuluman TangoTango?'' Was he a crazy loner or a conspiring terrorist? In hindsight, of course, Moussaoui's meanderings clearly were dangerous, and in 2005 he was convicted on terrorism charges.

The Moussaoui case is worth pondering in the wake of last week's murders of 13 people at Fort Hood. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder, and military officials have maintained that he acted alone when he open fire at the Texas Army post. A raging talk show and Web debate has been fueled by a mix of reports and rumors that may or may not reveal Hasan as the jihadist perpetrator of the deadliest act of domestic terrorism since 9/11.

The actual criminal investigation, of course, is continuing amid the speculation. In the wake of any tragedy, there is an understandable and dangerous rush to judgment based on confirmed and unconfirmed pieces of a larger story. As in the initial stages of the Moussaoui case, a lot of what we've learned about Hasan is disturbing and conflicting and in no way complete.

The massacre at Fort Hood may, as columnist Daniel Henninger argues on the facing page, prove to be an indictment of a post-9/11 national security effort that's been eroded by the ongoing debate over surveillance, detention and interrogation policies and tactics. It may also have been a lone-gunman attack on a military base.

We'll learn more next week when the Senate Homeland Security Committee begins its inquiry. President Obama has ordered government agencies to search for records related to Hasan while the FBI, Defense Department and intelligence agencies investigate how the information was shared and acted upon -- or not acted upon.

It's time to slow this rush to judgment, but push full speed ahead in search of the truth. The families of the victims and the American people deserve a complete and honest account of what went so terribly wrong, and Obama and congressional leaders must guarantee that in the end we will know whether anything could have been done to prevent the horror of Nov. 5.

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