Joe Lieberman: Fort Hood Massacre Could Have Been Prevented; Government Officials Guilty of ‘Negligence’

(CNSNews.com) - Senate Homeland Security Chairman Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) said on Thursday that his committee's review of the Fort Hood massacre, which left 13 dead and 32 wounded, shows the killings could have been prevented if the Defense Department and FBI had acted in an appropriate and timely manner. Instead, government officials were guilty of "negligence," he said.

“Throughout our investigation the victims of this attack and their families have weighed heavily in our minds because our report’s painful conclusion is that the Ft. Hood massacre could have and should have been prevented,” Lieberman said as he and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the ranking member of the committee, unveiled a report on the Nov. 5, 2009 Ft. Hood killings.

“We have reached that conclusion,” said Lieberman, “because our investigation found that employees of the Department of Defense and the FBI had compelling evidence of Nidal Hasan’s growing embrace of violent Islamist extremism in the years before the attack should have caused them to discharge him from the U.S. military and make him the subject of an aggressive counter-terrorism investigation.”