Major Hasan update

The Killeen Daily Herald reports that LTG Cone recently gave a briefing about “behavioral health care.”

The Army is behind Fort Hood’s effort to address behavioral health care issues and plans to institute it across the board, the post’s commander said Friday. In response to incidents like the Nov. 5 shooting and an Army-wide increase in suicides, Fort Hood officials implemented the Behavioral Health Care Plan, a two-year process which is set to undergo periodic reviews and leverage the “whole of community” to accomplish tasks in several phases, Cone said. The goal is to make sure everyone who needs behavioral health care is reached and that its capabilities and capacities are right for Fort Hood’s soldiers, families and the civilian workforce. Cone also talked about a Recovery and Resiliency Task Force, part of which includes a comprehensive approach to identify, diagnose and holistically treat those impacted by events like the Nov. 5 shooting at the post’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center where 13 were killed and more than 30 were wounded when a gunman opened fire.

During the briefing apparently the following was said about Major Hasan and his pending court-martial issues.

Cone also talked about the case status for the man arrested and charged with the Nov. 5 shooting, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. He explained that a case is examined in multiple levels of the military justice system and it would be inappropriate for him to comment until it reaches his level at the General Court-Martial Convening Authority. That likely won’t happen until after he deploys to Iraq with III Corps, and will then rest upon newly promoted Maj. Gen. William Grimsley, who will lead the corps in Cone’s stead. The case is at the Special Court-Martial Convening Authority level, Cone said, and Col. Morgan Lamb has directed that a sanity board be conducted on Hasan to determine whether he is mentally competent to stand trial.

Not sure if this is a misquote. Normally the R.C.M. 706 sanity board deals with both sanity at the time of the alleged offenses as well as competence for trial.

Fort Sam Houston officials Wednesday named the three medical professionals who will conduct the evaluation, according to a Thursday Herald report. Hasan’s attorney, the Belton-based John P. Galligan, said the board intends to review documents until Feb. 7 and then evaluate his client by the end of February. Cone did say that all but one injured in the shooting were released from hospitals. That man sustained a wound to the head, Cone said, and has lost the use of one arm. He is hospitalized in Austin.