As noted at a variety of sites, a Defense Department review has found that Army Maj Hasan’s superiors were routinely concerned about his performance and his views, but continued to promote him anyway.  This seems to already confirm what has previously been said about Hasan: people knew and were concerned about him.

Between 2003 and 2007, Hasan’s supervisors expressed their concerns with him in memos, meeting notes and counseling sessions. He needed steady monitoring, especially in the emergency room, had difficulty communicating and working with colleagues, his attendance was spotty and he saw few patients.

The question that isn’t (officially) answered is why they didn’t do anything, though speculation has already arisen that people were afraid to say anything out of fear of being considered prejudiced against Islam.

The discussion in the article about officers being promoted despite poor performance isn’t news:

Still, Hasan’s officer evaluation reports were consistently more positive, usually describing his performance as satisfactory and at least twice as outstanding. Known as “OERs,” the reports are used to determine promotions and assignments.

Performance reports typically describe a person as walking on water, because anything less than that is seen as below average and could hurt someone’s career–something only done with serious cause.  For the military services, promotion through the lower officer ranks is nearly automatic; in order not to get promoted, an officer often has to have a severe black mark on his record, leading to the joke that so long as an officer had a pulse and stayed out of jail (and perhaps even if he didn’t), a young officer would be promoted.

One supervisor, Maj. Scott Moran, reportedly did begin to crack down on Hasan’s performance, but a presentation Moran called “inappropriate” (on Islam, rather than medical practice) was still given and accepted.  Thus, it is unclear how great a role Moran had in Hasan’s oversight.