April 8, 2014 | Quote

The Mysterious “Second Shooter” at Fort Hood

Last Wednesday, at about 4 p.m. EST, as first word of the shootings at Fort Hood quickly spread, a number of reports, official and unofficial, seized on the idea that more than one gunman was on the loose on the base. From Twitter to Reddit, from the local news to the halls of U.S. Congress, the “second shooter” meme took hold.

A short time after the shooting was confirmed, former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt appeared on MSNBC‘s Hardball with Chris Matthews and told guest host Chuck Todd that a second shooter “conspiracy” was being investigated.

“And…every agency that’s bringing in law enforcement people to help in the search and the hunt, whether they be SWAT teams or search dogs or whatever, are going to probably report to that command post, be given an assignment as they to try to put a ring, a circle around the area where they think the second shooter might be, and then close that ring in to, number one, make sure that he or she doesn’t get a chance to shoot anyone else, and number two, of course, to get that person in custody,” he said.

“There is a huge distinction between maybe and is,” says Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy and expert on terrorism.

Read the full article here.