Senators Pushing Back Against Obama's Effort To Stall Congressional Investigations Into Fort Hood Massacre

The Washington Post reports that a "bipartisan group of senators began a concerted push Wednesday to get more cooperation from the Obama administration in its reviews of the Fort Hood shootings, which left 13 dead and a raft of questions about information-sharing among intelligence agencies. In addition to the public hearings that Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) is set to begin Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) demanded Wednesday that his panel receive the results of a White House review of agency investigations of suspect Nidal M. Hasan's communications with a radical Muslim cleric who has ties to al-Qaeda... Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is leading the investigation with Lieberman, said information-sharing is the most troubling issue that must be addressed... Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. continued the administration's push to slow the pace of congressional investigations, telling Leahy's panel Wednesday that the first order of business is gathering facts about the case and then working on legislative fixes. 'Once we have a handle on that, I think that we can propose and work with this committee on ways in which we can prevent such a tragedy from occurring again,' Holder said. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, was unmollified, telling the attorney general: 'The FBI did not pursue an investigation of [Hasan] because they concluded that the e-mails were consistent with his research at Walter Reed, and no contact was made with the Department of Defense. I understand that a thorough investigation will take time to complete, but we need to protect our troops now.'" Tweet