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Restricting privacy rights won’t make us safer

In the wake of the Fort Hood shootings in November, an independent review requested by the Pentagon has called for sweeping personnel policy changes aimed at giving commanders more tools to identify troops who may be prone to “potentially violent behavior.”

For example, the review panel says:

• Pentagon leaders should consider requiring minor law enforcement or disciplinary infractions and drug use to be made part of a service member’s permanent personnel file.

This would take away the discretion commanders now have on whether to record minor law enforcement or disciplinary infractions in a service member’s permanent personnel file. It would also overturn current law that requires drug use must be removed from such files once a member completes substance abuse counseling.

• Off-base health care providers should be required to notify military officials if a service member in treatment shows “violent risk indicators.”

• Policies on religious accommodation should be clarified to help commanders distinguish appropriate religious practices from those that might lead followers toward violence or self-radicalization.

Regularly reviewing the effectiveness of existing policies and procedures is always worthwhile. But the fact is that in this case, these policy changes would not have made a difference. Red flags abounded in the case of Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, the accused Fort Hood, Texas, gunman, and those flags were all over his personnel file under existing policies.

One issue on which the review is right on the money is its call for more thorough background security checks for new military recruits and Defense Department civilians, and particularly foreign nationals hired to work for the Defense Department abroad.

The current process for background checks, the review said, is haphazard and lax, allowing infiltration opportunities for radical or insurgent groups. But too many of the review’s recommendations represent a disproportionate infringement on troops’ already-curtailed privacy rights and will damage or kill careers that don’t necessarily deserve that fate.

In particular, requiring civilian health care providers to toss out doctor-patient confidentiality would dissuade some service members from seeking help for mental health problems — undermining emerging policies that aim to destigmatize mental health treatment.

Even more problematic is the panel’s call for a uniform policy on “appropriate” religious practices — a minefield that inevitably would lead to cries of discrimination from those whose religious practices are deemed “inappropriate.”

The primary failures in the Hasan case were not those of intelligence, but rather failures of leadership. Hasan’s colleagues questioned his competence and his sanity. But in the end, his supervisors promoted him and transferred him anyway.

So before drastic changes are put in place, senior leaders need to focus on basic leadership. Commanders and supervisors must understand that it is their duty to pay close attention to what’s going on in the lives of the people serving under them.

As Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said Jan. 15, commanders “have more than adequate room and authority right now to really understand what their people are doing.”

They just have to exercise that authority effectively.

DISCUSS: The editorial