
Lawmakers to hold hearing on major failings that lead to deaths at Fort Hood
CNN
Three months after the Army punished several senior officers following an independent investigation into the climate and culture at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas prompted by the killing of 20-year-old soldier Vanessa Guillen and deaths of several other service members, the investigators who carried out the review will appear before Congress on Tuesday.
Guillen's remains were found in a shallow grave in July after her disappearance in April of last year. It was later determined she had been bludgeoned to death with a hammer in the armory where she worked, and her body had been moved by her killer who then killed himself before he could be apprehended. The chairman of the Fort Hood Independent Review Committee Christopher Swecker, two FBI officials who were consultants for the independent review committee, a member of the Army Criminal Investigation Command and Air Force Office of Special Investigations Commander Brig Gen. Terry Bullard will testify in front of the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.
More than two decades ago, on January 24, 2004, I landed in Baghdad as a legal adviser, assigned an office in what was then known as the Green Zone. It was raining and cold, and my duffle bag was thrown into a puddle off the C-130 aircraft that had just done a corkscrew dive to reach the runway without risk of ground fire. Young American soldiers greeted me as we piled into a vehicle, sped out of the airport complex and then along a road called the “Highway of Death” due to car bombs and snipers.












