Radio Times’ Hasan Hour
Last night I was able to listen to a repeat broadcast of yesterday’s Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane (mp3). She spent an hour interviewing three guests about Nidal Hasan, the Ft. Hood killer. Unfortunately, I only got to hear the first half, but it was riveting. The first half hour was a discussion with Daniel Zwerdling, who has been interviewing Hasan’s co-workers to find out what the missed signs were.
It was clear to me that Hasan was a guy with a personality disorder. The look that Zwerdling gives us into the military medical system is very insightful. It’s similarity to almost every place I have ever worked is striking. The picture that is painted is that Hasan was a slacker with a bad attitude, quick to anger, incompetent and an overall pain in the ass to work with. I have worked with a dozen people that have been just like Hasan. Just like those places, there are all sorts of ways that Hasan avoided firing. He would improve “just enough” after a reprimand, he was protected by a bureaucracy that also protected his peers.
One of the most amazing parts is about 19 minutes in when they discussed why he was sent to Ft. Hood (from Walter Reed). He was sent there because it was a place where he would do the least amount of damage. If he was a slacker, there was enough of a team at Ft. Hood that he wouldn’t be jammed up and there was a hope that he would be exposed to a good team that would improve his behavior.
Listen to the interview, it is truly eye-opening.
Tags: Ft. Hood, Interviews
I heard some of this report and some discussion on Talk of the Nation.
Several sad points were driven home:
It’s difficult to boot a physician — even a bad one — out of military.
No one even considered forced counseling, enforced mentorship, or any intervention. It’s not in the manual.
The thought that the Army, in particular, does not have sufficient medical personnel was foremost in everyone’s mind when dealing with Hasan.
Everyone knew. Everyone, including his supervisors, and on up the chain.
This is not a case of “gee, he was such a nice guy…who knew he could do this?” Everyone knew.
The interview sort of challenges this assertion:
The thought that the Army, in particular, does not have sufficient medical personnel was foremost in everyone’s mind when dealing with Hasan.
Rather, Zwerdling said that there was no one who said that outwardly, but that it may have been in the back of their minds.
I didn’t hear the Radio Times program, but was talking to one of my green-suited friends Sunday night about this. He thinks that the focus on Hasan as Muslim will let the Army get away with an old, old management technique — which is to transfer your personnel problems to someone else. The DOD always struggles to keep certain types of medical personnel but really the thing (according to my buddy) is that it is too hard to fire or discipline somebody and there is a culture where you don’t want to bring to your management certain types of personnel problems. It makes you look like you can’t do your job AND it gives your boss another headache to deal with. In other words, that the nature of the organization itself is biased towards keeping its problems and just passing them on to other people.
It has to be said, Cassandra: that sounds like the Catholic church.
And in this instance, the comparison is painful — Hasan was supposed to have the job of helping soldiers at their most vulnerable and no one (apparently) thought about his patients — just in making the guy someone else’s problem. It is really pretty despicable and as long as everyone is having on about Muslims and jihadis they’ll never fix the core problem here.
I think I heard part of this story. One thing I heard was that Hasan was mostly kept away from patients. Psychiatrists in the military are almost completely overwhelmed with people needing help. Hasan wasn’t. In fact, the other psychiatrists were saying Hasan’s breakdown shouldn’t be attributed to what he was hearing about other soldier’s experiences – he was hardly exposed to them.
I hope if one good thing comes out of this horrible tragedy, it’s that the army will make it easier to get rid of a troubled soldier – even if he/she is a physician.