This is a Cato Special Podcast. I'm Caleb Brown.

Somebody should have taken these signals more seriously.

It's a lament we always hear following a tragedy, but facts that seem like obvious

warning signs after a tragedy simply don't have the tragic

context before events unfold.

Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute says after a tragedy, precursors to violence

are much easier to find.

As the saying goes, hindsight is 2020 and right now people are looking at the facts as as they're

available of the Fort Hood incident and using 20-20 hindsight to argue in many cases that it was obvious or highly apparent that this shooting would occur.

And my study of how to find things, how to find things in data suggests that this was not predictable.

Some of the evidence suggests that investigators did a good and appropriate job looking for terrorists and because they didn't find this incident and somehow prevent it, they shouldn't be faulted.

Still though, looking back at a lot of the data that a lot of people did look at and took seriously,

you know, maybe they should have made different decisions I mean it's you look at some of the

contacts he had and you thought well this is this is very odd it's certainly possible

and there are a couple of data points that suggest more investigation should have been done.

For example, the contacts with the Jahati in Yemen.

In fact, again, according to current facts, the U.S. government was aware of these contacts,

examined them, and determined that the contacts had been for purposes of research on a paper that he was researching

made that determination that's only unfortunate in hindsight that this wasn't

terrorism planning this wasn't a terrorism precursor.

The same goes with the alleged Islamist ranting at the Walter Reed Medical Facility.

Here's why these types of things don't predict future behavior.

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