Navy Yard Shooter Had Classifed Access Suspended Six Weeks Before Shootings
I’m sure all TAH regular readers remember the Washington Navy Yard shooting a couple of months ago. Well, as Alice in Wonderland might have said – the more we learn, the more this one gets “curioser and curioser”.
The shooter was a man named Aaron Alexis. He apparently had a long history of questionable behavior, including multiple indications that his “headspace and timing” (e.g., mental stability) was a bit . . . off.
Well, now it seems as if the shooter’s company had reason to doubt his suitability for access to classified information – and his sanity. The Army Times is reporting that the month prior to the shooting Alexis’ employer suspended his access to classified information because of concerns about his mental health and/or conduct.
Alexis’ employer – a firm called “The Experts”, based in Fort Lauderdale, FL – apparently suspended his access for two days in August 2013 after receiving word of an altercation between Alexis and police in Rhode Island. They reinstated his access to classified material two days later. The firm apparently never notified the Navy of the incident.
Less than six weeks later, Alexis went “off the rails” crazy and gunned down 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard. The shooting spree was ended when he was killed by police.
“Curioser and curioser” is right. IMO someone has some serious ‘splainin’ to do here.
Category: Crime, General Whackos, Military issues, Navy
In the world in which we currently find ourselves, what other result could we expect? Standards of behavior are impossible to define, much less enforce. Defining anything as right or wrong will get you at least laughed at, if not thrown in jail.
This is what you get when situational ethics is applied to everything – mass confusion and no standards against which anyone can measure appropriate, ethical or even legal behavior.
This is a classic example of nothing being done, this was the guy who had an anger fueled blackout that resulted in shooting tires out of a co-workers vehicle…he was able to avoid arrest for discharging a firearm into the ceiling of his apartment in Texas, he was arrested in Dekalb County Georgia, and was released from the military after a “pattern” of misconduct….
This was not a single incident that triggered a spontaneous eruption of violence…this was someone who has been not right for years and once again nothing putting all these disparate elements together to keep him from getting a security clearance..even had he not been able to get a security clearance this was a guy headed towards committing some nature of violent crime as indicated by past behavior.
We are very uncomfortable as a nation and a culture in listing someone as crazy, or someone as experiencing a degenerative mental condition that leads to crazy.
Our fear of labeling and our past experience with mishandling of the mentally ill (sometimes in epic proportions) have led us to a point where the Lanza’s, Alexis’s, and Holmes’s of the nation can’t be directed to serious mental health efforts. The stigma of such a diagnosis forever ruins a reputation and we are thus reluctant to pursue it even when multiple incidents indicate that is what is appropriate.
This is not a surprise that this man killed some people, he was on a path to kill for sometime…it was only a matter of time until his mania overtook his sanity and placed him on the path to murder.
We need to get this under control, or we need to understand the ramifications of doing nothing are a continuation of these incidents.
No wonder the Obumbles administration isn’t letting any of the investigation results come out.
VoV – you’re dead on. Add in the fact that people sue at the drop of a hat, and I can just see some poor HR bastard thinking “well, if I push this any further the next thing ya know we’re gonna get sued for costing him his job, his income, his children’s income…ah, the hell with it. What’s the worst that could happen? Can’t be worse than THAT!”
Anybody who knows how to handle a developing alcoholic, addict or nut in a positive fashion, please let me know. There are a whole lot of people who have watched in horror as adult human beings slow destroy themselves and then sometimes, others.
Right now in San Diego there is a petition drive to get a law that all physicians have to be alcohol tested “just like airline pilots.” At first, I thought this was a good idea, and then I had to wonder about how it would be implemented. Test every doctor? How often? At what expense? And why do this? Because somewhere, in some hospital, is a doctor who used to be a better person, and nobody has the nerve to raise the issue that he’s showing up impaired?
Valerie, that can happen with someone whose occupation is registered pharmacist. It doesn’t have to be a doctor. And alcohol testing won’t put a stop to it, either.