Fort Hood Story Takes A Turn

The horrific shooting at the Army training base at Fort Hood, Texas took a dramatic turn on Thursday night when Army spokesperson Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone announced at a press conference that shooting suspect Major Nidal Malik Hasan was not dead as the Army had previously asserted.

It was Cone who told the media at a press conference less than an hour after the shooting that Hasan as well as the civilian officer who is believed to have shot Hasan were both dead. The shooting occurred around 1:30 p.m. Central time.

“He is currently in custody and in stable condition,” said Cone. “I say again the shooter is not dead but in stable condition.”

The news was a shocking twist in a tragic story that began several hours earlier when Major Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who had previously worked at Walter Reed but was awaiting deployment to Iraq, allegedly opened fire on Army personnel at Fort Hood, killing 12 and wounding 31.

But the misinformation prompted more questions.

“We reported what [Cone] said on camera to the world, and then somehow they didn’t tell us what they obviously knew for hours,” said Larry King on his CNN program. “CNN is pressing the military to explain why they waited until after 9 p.m. Eastern, to say that he was alive and in stable condition.”

Fox News military analyst Lt. Col. Bill Cowan speculated that the Army’s delay in correcting their mistake was related to the ongoing investigation.

“Maybe it had something to do with them determining if there were other people still out there,” Cowan told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “It doesn’t make any sense that they didn’t let us know early on that he was indeed alive.”