KILLEEN, Texas - The troubled Iraq war veteran who used a handgun to kill three people and wound 16 others Wednesday at Fort Hood would not have had to undergo a security screening or pass through metal detectors to enter the post, people familiar with entry procedures there said Thursday.
RELATED ARTICLES
http://www.arkansas…">Quarrel likely preceded gunfire, fort officer sayshttp://www.arkansas…">Reid urges new look at gun checks
It’s an indication that nearly five years after another deadly shooting rampage at that post, it remained easy for a soldier and even a visitor to carry in a firearm.
Fort Hood’s weapons rules for soldiers who are not police officers rely in large part on the honor system.
The post’s rules prohibit soldiers from storing weapons in their vehicles, require firearms to be kept in certain storage areas and mandate that all personnel who take a privately owned firearm onto the post in a vehicle declare that they are doing so and state the reason. The carrying of privately owned weapons on Army installations is prohibited unless authorized by the senior commander. Violators face judicial or administrative penalties.
“The idea of doing a 100 percent check on a military installation with 50,000 people is frankly untenable,” Col. Steve Warren, a Defense Department spokesman, told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday. “We do random checks. There is no requirement to declare a weapon.”
On Nov. 5, 2009, in a medical processing building at Fort Hood, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 12 soldiers and one civilian, and wounded or shot at 30 other soldiers and two police officers. He drove onto the post that day with a semi-automatic handgun and a .357-caliber revolver in his vehicle.
“I could travel on post with a weapon in my vehicle, and nobody would know - but heck, you can do that walking into Starbucks,” said Hasan’s civilian lawyer, John Galligan, a former military judge at Fort Hood. “If it’s in the trunk of my car or under the seat, it’s not going to be caught, unless people want to start searching every car that goes in.”
After the 2009 attack, according to The Associated Press, the military tightened base security nationwide. That included issuing security personnel long-barreled weapons, adding an insider-attack scenario to their training and strengthening ties to local law enforcement.The military also joined an FBI intelligence-sharing program aimed at identifying terrorism threats. Reuters reported that Fort Hood had overhauled its security to better deal with potential “insider threats” after the Hasan attack.
Those security procedures were among several avenues of inquiry that Army officials and federal investigators were looking into in Wednesday’s shooting by Spc. Ivan Lopez.
The post commander, Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, said at a news conference Wednesday night that the response of military personnel to the shooting was swift and appropriate.
The authorities said Lopez appeared to have walked into one building and opened fire. Then he got into a vehicle and fired shots from it with a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol that had recently been bought in the Killeen area. After that, he got out of the vehicle, walked into another building and opened fire again. When he was confronted by a military police officer, he shot himself.
He raised his hands, Milley said, then reached under his jacket. The police officer pulled out her weapon, and Lopez put his gun to his head and fired. Milley described the officer’s actions as “clearly heroic.”
Last month, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered new security procedures at the Pentagon and at U.S. military bases in response to a shooting in which 12 people were killed at the Washington Navy Yard in September.
The Defense Department review of the Navy Yard attack concluded that the deaths could have been prevented if the Navy had properly evaluated and reported alarming behavior by the gunman, Aaron Alexis, a former Navy reservist.
The independent review called the overall security process at Pentagon installations outdated, with too much focus on keeping a secure perimeter against outside threats and not enough on examining the potential threats from people granted clearance to enter the installations. The review recommended that the Pentagon examine the number of people with security clearances and consider revoking at least 10 percent of them.
Hagel said the reviews had found “troubling gaps” in the Defense Department’s “ability to detect, prevent and respond to instances where someone working for us - a government employee, member of our military, or a contractor - decides to inflict harm on this institution and its people.”
On Thursday, Hagel said it was too soon to draw any broad conclusions about safety at U.S. military bases after the Fort Hood shootings.
He said that as the investigation unfolds, the Pentagon will continue to take a close look at any new lessons that can be learned from Wednesday’s violence and implement any needed changes to security.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 04/04/2014