Passing The Buck at Walter Reed
My initial five or six draft postings on this issue found their way to the cutting room floor because of the outrage I felt over the loss of life at Ft. Hood. My outrage has shifted from the shooter to the enablers of this tragedy: the people who passed the buck at Walter Reed.
According to the linked article by NPR, several members of the psychiatric staff at Walter Reed asked if MAJ Nidal Hasan was psychotic? If fellow military mental health professionals questioned the stability of this guy, why was he allowed to remain in the service? ore importantly, in the current state of heightened awareness of military suicides, why would the Army continue to employ an unstable mental health provider to counsel soldiers who may be considering taking their lives?
Nidal Hasan should have been forced out of the military but someone did not want to get sued. Instead Hasan was transferred to Ft. Hood. The decision makers at Walter Reed and the Pentagon wanted to get this guy away from D.C. This quote from the NPR article says as much - “so officials figured there would be plenty of co-workers who would support Hasan — and monitor him.” Translation: send Hasan away and let someone else deal with him.
This failure of making a difficult decision cost the lives of soldiers who were preparing to deploy. They transferred Hasan because they did not want to get their military careers tarnished by getting caught up in a discriminatory lawsuit. The officials at Walter Reed, and the people who approved the transfer, should be sued for being criminally negligent and tried as accessories in the deaths at Ft. Hood. Bottom line: Nidal Hasan should not be the only person spending time in a military prison.
9 Responses to “Passing The Buck at Walter Reed”
I was kind of expecting something like this, after all, it has been hinted at. Even though psychiatry in Doctor land seems to rate a low score, they are still Doctors, and are treated with somewhat elevated status as a result. AND don't forget they are the top dog of their place of employ.
It could mean that they feared lawsuit if they challenged Major Hassan's capacity to function in that role. It could also be that they had no hard evidence, but a lot of hearsay, rumors, and opinions that possibly would not float in a courtroom. Stuff like “you wouldn't want to share a foxhole with the guy” is a judgment, an opinion. On the other hand, poor evaluations, substandard work, and written reprimands should be available for review. And like at TMV, there will be those who think they have enough info to form an opinion, others would linger back, and try to be supportive. In this case, it would appear that those who would act sooner, might have saved some lives, though their are plenty of cases where acting too soon resulted in a court decided case of racism with a huge pay out.
I have worked in hospitals where Doctors are often treated with kid gloves. I worked in one hospital where the head of the psychiatric unit was a doctor who suffered from bipolar disorder. She was often absent or preoccupied with her illness to tend to the work at hand. A lot of people covered for her, and after years functioning like this, they manage to release her with a hefty severance and recommendations so she could and did secure work at another hospital.
Some of these decisions are left to the Personnel department, but with plenty of secret meetings, before a decision is reached to either take no action but make the employees life difficult enough (bad shifts/attitudes/working conditions) so they will leave of their own accord. Transferring them or assisting to transfer them is a way of passing the buck. I guess most times these ships pass in the middle of the night without so much consequence.
“My initial five or six draft postings on this issue found their way to the cutting room floor because of the outrage I felt over the loss of life at Ft. Hood.”
FWIW, Tony — this story is what propelled me back into writing again. Outrage indeed.
You see, this is starting to P— Me off!
Uh…He was not transferred to Ft.Hood….he was transiting Ft. Hood for service in Iraq!
What media EVIDENCE has been brought forth that Nidal Hasan was mentally ill? Six years as a psychiatrist?! PLEASE and nobody noticed??
Only suddenly when he starts yelling “Alla Akbar” does he get labeled mentally ill!
After six YEARS as a hospital psychiatrist!!!??
Nobody, not even the Army, can be THAT stupid!
The man is a self styled terrorist. A selfish, self centered Arsehole whom believes to the death that his religion is the truth and that he is now favored in his god’s eye!
KILL HIM!
I think the point is “how can we keep this from happening again?” We do need to take a close look at how concerns and suspicions and intelligence are communicated and how decisions are made about whether or not it is actionable. In this sad case, it was not really “a difficult decision.” Hasan wanted to leave the military. He wasn't going to sue if he got his way. He was going to GO away. We still don't know all the facts, but the recurring theme around here is that the motivation for Hasan being “allowed” to stay in his position, was that someone was being nice, or politically correct, or afraid of lawsuits. The other side of that is that the brass might have said “hey, we paid for his education, made him a doctor and now he wants out? No way.”
We simply don't know either (a) how easy it would have been to rid ourselves of him, or (b) why we did not or (c) who made the decision to keep him on. And of course, we don't know (d) who told what to whom during the 8 years he is now described as having been a problem.
I disagree with your assessment, FT. The 9-11 bombers behaved the way a determined terrorist would. They were invisible. None of them EVER made anti-American or radical Islam kinds of statements. They were well liked by neighbors, were quiet and kept to themselves, etc. A sleeper cell.
Hasan has been shooting off his mouth for 8 years now, during the entire Bush presidency, even making a disturbing PowerPoint presentation. This is not the tactic of someone who wanted to be stealthy and get close enough to kill some Americans. I think he probably IS crazy.
Your post makes some sense but is contridicted by the facts that are in the public sector. If MAJ Hasan was wanted to get out, he would not have applied for a fellowship in disaster psychiatry. However, he was wanting to scam the Army for everything that he could get and if he want to keep living in Silver Spring, the application to a fellowship makes complete sense.
Also, officers in the Army cannot sue other officers or even civilians in the Army. If the officers were afraid of anything is was being seen as unable to managed a problem resident and seen as bigoted against Muslim. The officers were afraid of receiving a bad evaluation themselves or of having to generate a massive amount of paperwork themselves. MAJ Hasan's supervisors probably realized that he was a big time scammer and were determined to not let him carry through with the scam.
He made his traitor political choice when he screamed “Alla Akbar” and started shooting. He is a “self styled terrorist” just like Tim McViegh. I never said he was a professional terrorist/spy like a member of a saboteur “cell”.
He is not crazy, he is a traitor and a murderer and must die.
–[I think the point is "how can we keep this from happening again?"]–
Moot point, you cannot.
Anymore than you can prevent murder in general from happening again. Waste of time.
Here are a couple factors to consider in the overall Walter Reed/psychiatrist situation. These thoughts are based on my many years in the service, followed by years of counseling veterans who suffer from mental health issues:
1)Retention/Promotion Standards Decline-When the uniformed services lack bodies for a critical billet, almost everyone who is already in the billet get retained and then promoted with their usual year group. If WR had pushed this guy out of the service, he probably would have been happy to go; regardless, there was no chance of a lawsuit. But his superiors would have caught hell from their own superiors for “losing” a body for a critical billet. Why else do you think he got promoted? The Promotion Board was ordered to promote virtually everyone in critial billets, otherwise the embarrasment of being “passed-over” might lead them to resign if they could, or if not, provide even worse work-product. I.E. this situation results from a failure of leadership from the top of the Army.
2) Stressful Work Conditions. This is the norm for this billet and everyone in mental health knows it. In Hasan's case he obviously could not hack the stress, so they put him on an academic track, to minimize patient-related stress. He was allowed to see very few patients per week, despite the Army's desperate need for more psychiatrists. His superiors knew what they were doing: minimize the fallout from this obviously unsatisfactory doctor, so the staff at WR did not get the blame.
So the staff at Walter Reed kicked the can down the road to the Hasan's next superiors. This is part and parcel of an overall failure by the Army and the DOD to prepare for the predictable levels of PTSD and related mental illnesses caused by extended warfare.
The American people share much of the blame for this failure of leadership. About 0.7% of our people are engaged in military service. Most of the rest of this country are too busy shopping, apparently, to push their political leadership to amend the goals and resources to fight these wars in a way that does not damage a significant proportion of the good men and women serving in our armed forces.