Since Pete Hegseth became the US Secretary of Defense, controversies have been constant. Setting aside his difficult Senate approval, with allegations of alcohol problems, mistreatment, financial irregularities in other jobs, sexual harassment, and tattoos associated with Christian nationalists, his legacy over these two years includes the dismissal of dozens of generals and admirals, renaming his department to War, and a series of testosterone-driven measures. Literally, as among other things, he wants an annual testosterone analysis for military personnel and to offer replacement therapy to those with low levels, to ensure they are at the "forefront of lethality."
Hegseth dismissed the legal chiefs of the Army and the Air Force. He appointed his personal lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, as the Navy's JAG. He has insisted time and time again that there should be no limits to what his soldiers do on the battlefield. He does not want overweight or bearded troops, has advocated for giving religion a key role. And now, in an unexpected and even more controversial turn, he announced that in December, he will stream live the execution by firing squad of Nidal Malik Hasan, the soldier who in 2009 killed 13 comrades and wounded 32 more at Fort Hood base.
"We will make sure people can see it, that it is public," Hegseth said on Thursday to the conservative television outlet Real America's Voice. "He will face a firing squad of soldiers. As it should be. We will make sure people can see it. That it is public. Because people need to understand that there are serious consequences for these kinds of things," he stated.
Nidal Hasan, an Army officer and psychiatrist, entered the medical facilities at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009, and after shouting "Allahu akbar," opened fire with a pistol. He killed thirteen people and injured over thirty, claiming he did it in retaliation for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was sentenced to death by a military court and has been on death row since then. A few weeks ago, Trump approved his execution by firing squad, and the Army Secretary set the date for December 3, at the same base where the massacre took place. "We will bring definitive justice to an evil killer," President Donald Trump stated at a rally in Texas on Wednesday.
Hasan's, a US-born Muslim, would be the first soldier execution since 1961. The last public execution in the US dates back almost a century, although Timothy McVeigh's, the Oklahoma City bombing perpetrator in 1995, was broadcast on closed-circuit television for a few hundred family and friends of the victims to witness. A company requested to stream it online, but the court rejected it. The Department of Justice also decided it would not be broadcast beyond the affected circle.
The decision comes shortly after a botched execution in Tennessee once again reopened the public debate on the death penalty, as a woman convicted of murdering a friend 30 years ago survived two lethal injections. Christa Pike was taken to a hospital where she is recovering and, according to her lawyer, she is very upset about what happened.
The last public execution authorized by the State in the United States took place in 1936 in Kentucky, where around 20,000 people attended the hanging of Rainey Bethea, a young black man convicted of raping an elderly white woman. Execution by firing squad is very rare in the US. Formally, it is only allowed in Idaho, Oklahoma, Utah, South Carolina, and Mississippi. Three people were executed by this method last year in South Carolina, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center collected by The Washington Post. Before that, only three people had been executed this way since 1977, all in Utah.
"Of course, we will do it at Fort Hood," Hegseth celebrated yesterday. "And we will do it on a Thursday at one o'clock, which is when he did it, and it will be soldiers with rifles who will carry out the firing squad. We haven't done something like this since World War II. I like the mentality we had back then," continued the Secretary, who last year announced that he would allow soldiers to carry weapons within military facilities again.