Pentagon Moving Forward With Fort Hood Recommendations

The Department of Defense announced Thursday that they will be implementing 26 of the 79 recommendations that followed a review of November’s shooting at the Fort Hood military installation in Texas.

These recommendations include the expansion of eGuardian, an FBI run threat detection and tracking system, increased information sharing between law enforcement agencies within the military and new policies for weapons privately owned by those who live on-base.

The independent review, which was spearheaded by former Secretary of the Army Togo West and retired Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Vernon Clark, issued the 79 recommendations in a report this January. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has taken issue with the report for not specifically addressing Islamist extremism.

The November 5th shooting was carried out by Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army Major and psychologist reported to have ties with a controversial former Imam in Yemen. Hasan killed 13 and wounded 30 others.

Actions on the remaining recommendations will be announced by June.

Obama Acknowledges Mistakes Surrounding Flight 253, Pledges Action

Following a day of meetings with national and homeland security officials, President Barack Obama acknowledged Tuesday that while the intelligence community received significant information regarding the attempted terrorist attack aboard flight 253 Christmas eve, they failed to “connect those dots.”

“This was not a failure to collect intelligence. This was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence we already had,” said Obama.

“The system has failed in a potentially disastrous way,” the president added. “It is my responsibility to find out why and to correct that failure.”

The president promised a wide-range of improvements in U.S. security, including an overhaul of the terrorist watch and no-fly lists.

Obama added that the Christmas eve incident will not deter his administration’s plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, but explained that Yemeni prisoners will not be transfered back to their country.