Maj. Hasan/Anwar al-Awlaki Update – Obama Administration Refused to Hand Over Documents

by Scott Creighton

  Oh what tangled webs we weave
  When first we practice to deceive. Sir Walter Scott 1808

Just yesterday, the chairman and ranking Republican of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee alleged that the Obama administration is covering up important details in the Fort Hood shooting case concerning communications relating to Maj. Nidal Hasan the accused shooter. Maj. Hasan is charged with killing 13 military personnel stationed at Fort Hood. The official White House story is that Maj. Hasan was inspired to commit the act after communicating with Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen living in Yemen.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has subpoenaed the Obama administration for the documents relating to the case after having been previously denied access to them.

The Defense and Justice departments say that release of the disputed data would compromise the prosecution of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the disgruntled Army doctor charged with killing 13 people.  AP

This is a remarkable position for the DoJ to take on this.  The Obama administration has recently added al-Awlaki’s name to the “to be killed” section of their TO DO list.  The ”Change” administration issued what amounts to a contract on Awlaki’s life, partly because of his alleged contribution in the Fort Hood shooting.

Forgotten in all of this are the early reports that came out right after the shooting occurred in which administration officials reported that they had been aware of Maj. Hasan’s communications with Awlaki and that he was making them on behalf of Fort Hood in accordance with the work he was doing at the base.

Military officials told CNN on Monday that intelligence agencies intercepted communications from Hasan to al-Awlaki and shared them with other U.S. government agencies. But federal authorities dropped the inquiry into Hasan’s communications after deciding that the messages warranted no further action, one of the officials said.

According to the FBI, investigators from one of its Joint Terrorism Task Forces determined “that the content of those communications was consistent with research being conducted by Maj. Hasan in his position as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center [in Washington].”  CNN

Also it seems the press has forgotten another little interesting detail in all of this;  long before the Obama adminstration publicly claimed they had the authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad without even having charged them with a crime,  Obama had already authorized an assassination attempt on al-Awlaki in Yemen involving two separate attacks… one even at his home.

The Yemeni government has confirmed that today’s US-backed air strike was aimed at assassinating US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, and officials speculated that he might have been slain in the attack.  Antiwar

Though President Obama and his Nobel Peace Prize missed in his attempt to kill a U.S. citizen who hadn’t even been charged with a crime, the attack he authorized did manage to kill numbers of Yemeni civilians, including at least 22 children. The Washington Post said it was “unclear” at the time if U.S. munitions and service personnel took place in the actual attack.. or if they just authorized it and provided the intel for the targeting.

Yemeni forces, backed by the United States, launched a major attack Thursday on a meeting of senior al-Qaeda operatives thought to include the Yemeni American cleric linked to the suspect in the Fort Hood shootings, U.S. and Yemeni officials said.

Still, the U.S. involvement in the strike in southeastern Yemen — along with a similar strike in the country last week — appears to reflect greater willingness by the Obama administration to use military force in confronting terrorists outside the traditional war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Last week’s strike was seen at the time as the most significant example of the new approach, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the planning and execution of the attack.

It was not clear whether U.S. firepower was employed in either attack. A U.S. official said the United States did provide intelligence and other support. Washington Post

Now remember, this all took place prior to Umar Fizzlepants and his Sparkler of Doom Show on Christmas Day 2009. 

Many of us believe that Umar’s little ”panty pyrotechnics” was just a ham-handed attempt to gin up a justification for attempting to kill a U.S. citizen in a foreign nation that we aren’t even at war with. I (and others) think it was a staged event to distract the media and the public from the fact that the Peace Prize President had just authorized the killing of 49 innocent people in order to illegally assassinate a U.S. citizen; a U.S. citizen who still hasn’t been charged with any crime what-so-ever… much less convicted.

Some might go so far as to conclude (based on the evidence that has developed since Umar’s smoking panties were extinguished) that after the horrific outcomes of the two Obama-authorized strikes in Yemen, people in the State Department or others close to Obama may have feared a possible impeachment inquiry.

After all, Obama attempted to kill a citizen of the United States who was not even charged with a crime, in a country we are not at war with and he ended up killing 49 innocent people instead, 22 of whom were children.

Now remember, this citizen whom President Obama was trying to kill, wasn’t suspected of blowing up the Cole or the Murrah building… he was targeted for what he says on a radio, and the excuse they gave at the time was that he had corresponded with Maj. Hasan and in so doing, it motivated Hasan to attack his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood.

But now the Obama administration is doing everything it can to make sure no one sees those communications.

You think a neoliberal Clintonista or two in the White House or State Department got a little worried when that story first broke?

But, I digress. Back to the current story.

You see, this is how far they have to go to keep propping up their lies upon lies upon lies and the last thing they want is the possibility of these documents getting logged into the congressional record. Because at that point, the contents of the communications are set in stone.

Like the “confession” of Umar Fizzlepants (that we will never see or read) where he supposedly gives all kinds of statements about other “terrorists”. You will never see that or read it,  because the moment you or anyone else does, they can’t add anymore names to the list.

Think about it… right now they can say they have probable cause to go after anyone they want to because “Umar Fizzlepants gave them the name” during interrogation. 

But the moment the release the documents to anyone outside the intelligence scam, even if they have a high security clearance, they can’t take the risk of adding a name later or adding an address later because there might be a copy floating around and then it comes back to bite them in the ass a year down the road and people start going to jail.

I don’t know what the hold-up is with these documents relating to Maj. Hasan but you can bet your bottom buck that someone somewhere doesn’t want to paint themselves into a corner by letting a copy of these documents float around the senate.

Aside from the fact that officials have already stated that there is nothing “threatening” on the tapes of the calls between Hasan and al-Awlaki, there’s too much value in them. Not just as cover for President Obama’s fiery reign of death and destruction leveled on 49 people in Yemen, but also as future leverage in the never-ending Global Free Market Wars (ie. War on Terror).