Trial Of Nidal Hasan Begins
TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. Now it's time for the national lead. Here's a direct quote: "The evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter" -- unquote. That's from the mouth of Major Nidal Hasan, giving his own opening statement as his trial for the Fort Hood shooting spree gets under way in Texas. Hasan is charged with killing 13 people and wounding 31 others on that horrible day. Since he's defending himself, Hasan could very well end up cross- examining the very people he's accused of trying to kill. Hasan is a psychiatrist, a man trained to get into people's heads. On November 5, 2009, prosecutors say he walked into a waiting room at the Army base with a semiautomatic pistol and just started firing. For many, it was already too late to react.</s>SPC. LOGAN BURNETTE, WOUNDED DURING SHOOTING: Very, very quick reloader on that weapon. He was very swift, very tactical with what he was doing.</s>PVT. GEORGE STRATTON, WOUNDED DURING SHOOTING: He'd squeeze off one round and it came through my shoulder and that it actually -- it hit one of my -- hit my bone right here.</s>KRISTOPHER CRAIG, BROTHER OF VICTIM: Attacking another soldier, it's just ridiculous. I don't understand it.</s>TAPPER: It did not stop until a civilian police officer, Sergeant Kimberly Munley, arrived on the scene and shot Hasan, suffering three gunshot herself. Major Hasan is now in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down. his trial was supposed to have begun 18 months ago, but a series of legal fights delayed it, over everything from Hasan's representation to whether he was allowed to keep his beard for religious reasons. Hasan freely admits carrying out the rampage, but he was not allowed to enter a guilty plea under military law, because prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. The FBI has released e-mails between Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric who was who a purported force behind al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Awlaki was taken out in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. The very first e-mail shows Hasan asking him whether Islamic law would permit the killing of American soldiers. And yet, even with that out there, the Pentagon is not officially calling this a terror attack, preferring the term workplace violence, which makes a serious difference in benefits for survivors and victims' families. I want to bring in former Army Sergeant Howard Ray. He was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for his actions that day at Fort Hood. He was credited for saving the lives of six soldiers and three civilians. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your service and thank you for your heroics that day, sir. First of all, can you walk us through what you went through that day when you first saw Major Hasan?</s>SGT. HOWARD RAY (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Well, at the point that I saw Major Hasan or the shooter at this point, I had gotten a woman out of the building that I was in and we were hiding down behind a car. Someone had yelled at me to look out because he was coming around the corner of the building. And I actually had civilian clothes on that day. And I instinctually swept my shirt back to grab my pistol, only to find that I had left my pistol at home, because it was against the rules to have a concealed weapon on post. And as a result of that, I had to make a quick decision to decide to run to the back side of the parking lot where there was cover. And we ran across the parking lot only to be engaged by the shooter, at a point about halfway between the middle of the parking lot and the rear of the parking lot. And just to be engaged, shot at on a military installation is obviously something you don't go to work to experience but it certainly was a shock. And the thing that was devastating the most for me is that, you know, I had a very clean shot on the individual but was unable to take it</s>TAPPER: And you think, sir -- you think the Army missed warning signs that could have possibly prevented this attack?</s>RAY: Well, absolutely. All the preliminary information, even up to two, three weeks out from the shooting itself nearly four years ago, we -- I mean, there were so many signs, OER is a report that officers are given for their evaluations were totally missed. I mean, he was subpar, calling out for such things as jihad and that he was a soldier of Allah and things of that nature, and yet what happened is the problem was transferred from the Northeastern United States down here to Texas and unfortunately on November 5th, 2009, that was the day that over 40 people encountered that mistake being sent down here to us instead of getting rid of the threat to begin with.</s>TAPPER: Let's talk about the shooting being classified as workplace violence because I know that's an issue that bothers a lot of survivors of the attack. It, of course, seems bizarre on its face that the pentagon would not label this an act of terrorism, but the way that it's been explained to me from the Pentagon is if they were to call it an act of terrorism and award Purple Hearts and so on, they would be handing Hasan a way to claim that there's no way he could get a fair trial because the Pentagon, in a different way, had already decided he was guilty of having committed a terrorist act. Doesn't that make some sense?</s>RAY: Well, it does make a little sense but at the end of the day, it doesn't remove the fact that the shooter at this point has said over and over and over again his intent was to destroy as many people as he could, civilians and U.S. Army personnel and at that point, and indeed, through contacts of terrorist organizations and individuals across the seas, that it was indeed a terrorist attack. We can play semantics and, you know, calling it one thing or not the other, the bottom line is it is terrorism. I don't think it would inhibit him from getting a fair trial. In fact, he's not asking -- I mean, he's already pled guilty or wanting to plead guilty to the charges that have been attached to him. And the fact is that he can't. So I think there's some oversight and things that need to be looked at because it's victims like myself and others, we deserve answers and we deserve closure to this event. We've had national stories where individuals have been killed and that's, you know, resolved within a year, year and a half. So, here we are struggling nearly almost four years coming on really, it will be but a year and it will be five years and we're just barely starting this process. So, the victims deserve answers and they deserve compensation and other things like that from the government.</s>TAPPER: Sir, I have to go now but before I do, you talked about closure. Just very quickly if you would, if he is found quickly, do you think he deserves the death penalty? Do you want him to face that ultimate punishment?</s>RAY: Absolutely. You know, a lot of people will say the death penalty doesn't do anything to deter crime and there's certainly statistics that support that. But the bottom line is that the death penalty is reserved for those who do the most heinous of crimes and they need to pay for their crimes if they do what this individual did by killing 13 men and women. And so, I think that punishment should be reserved for him.</s>TAPPER: All right. Retired U.S. Army Sergeant Howard Ray, thank you so much for your time and, again, thank you for your service, sir.</s>RAY: Thank you.</s>TAPPER: Coming up, the new battlefield of politics is social media and now, the CEO of Facebook is taking sides in the immigration debate. Will his billions sway Washington? Plus, who literally threw up over Clint Eastwood's duet with an empty chair at the Republican Convention? Stay with us.