An independent commission headed by Judge William Webster, the former director of both the CIA and the FBI, has released its long-awaited report into the November 9, 2009 Fort Hood shootings. A copy of the report can be viewed here.

The report’s most damning is the refusal in May 2009, FBI officials in the Washington Field Office’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF)  to interview the Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, who was communicating with terrorist Anwar al-Awlaqi. The DC JTTF officials also decided not to interview Maj. Hasan’s Army superiors because that “might harm Hasan’s military career.”

This infuriated the FBI agents in San Diego who were handling the Awlaqi-Hasan investigation. Even after San Diego complained, Washington still refused to get off its ass.

According to the report, the a Defense Criminal Investigative Service agent in San Diego  handling the investigation told his Washington Field Office (WFO) counterpart that “upon receiving a lead like this one, San Diego would have conducted, at the least, an interview of the subject.” (See p. 60)

According to the San Diego DCIS agent, the JTTF agent in Washington replied something along the lines of:  “This is not SD [San Diego], it’s DC and WFO doesn’t go out and interview every Muslim guy who visits extremist websites.”

The San Diego FBI agent also recalled that the Washington agent indicated that this subject is “politically sensitive for WFO.”

Not surprisingly, the JTTF agent in DC doesn’t recall this conversation. The report doesn’t reveal whether the FBI agent(s) in the Washington Field Office (WFO) who refused to interview Major Hasan ecause it would have been “politically sensitive” received any disciplinary actions.

There is nothing about this in today’s print edition of The San Diego Union-Tribune, although Fred Willard’s porn theatre bust is there on p. 2. Remind me again why I subscribe to this newspaper?