How The FBI Blew Fort Hood

Mother Jones has a very informative piece on the failure to stop the Fort Hood shooter, which, in retrospect, looks like it should have been easy.

A lot of the problem is that nobody every put all the pieces together.

'"Every year the amount of data is doubling," he said. "The sheer amount of information that might result from legitimate surveillance—or, in a criminal context, a legitimate wiretap—is mind boggling compared to what it was 10 years ago." He added that the FBI in particular has struggled to manage the surge in intelligence data, as its focus has shifted to counterterrorism, which wasn't central to its mission before 9/11.'

Another problem is that security analysts took his glowing job performance reviews seriously, when in fact they were the nadir of bureaucratic irresponsible game-playing.

And yet another problem was that analysts saw "comm officer" and thought it meant "communications officer" rather than "commissioned officer" which was the right answer.

Every year the data is doubling
but our failure to connect the dots remains
more than a little troubling,
verging toward insane.