Pete Hegseth vows to make first firing squad execution in decades ‘public’

By Haley Britzky, CNN

(CNN) — US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed in an interview this week that the execution of the man who killed 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood in 2009 would be “public.”

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth told far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday.

A Pentagon official said Thursday that the execution “will be livestreamed,” but did not offer more details. Earlier on Thursday, the Pentagon had referred questions about how the execution would be publicized to the Army, who did not respond to questions from CNN.

The Pentagon announced on Monday evening that Nidal Hasan would be executed by firing squad, which Hegseth recommended and President Donald Trump approved. Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle set the date for Hasan’s execution on December 3 at 2pm ET, 1pm CT, at Fort Hood.

Hegseth said the execution would occur on “a Thursday, we’re going to do it at one o’clock, which is when he did it, and it’s going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad.”

Hasan was convicted in July 2013 of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder. During his trial, he told the panel of 13 officers that he was targeting soldiers who would deploy to Afghanistan and “were going to engage in an illegal war.” On the day of the shooting, he started at the medical processing center at Fort Hood, firing on troops there to collect medical checks before they deployed. He then followed soldiers out the back door of the processing center as they fled and was confronted by police, with whom Hasan exchanged gunfire and was eventually struck.

The execution by firing squad would be the first of its kind carried out by the US Army since World War II. Hegseth said in the interview that he liked “the mentality we had in World War II, which was win. Which was understand when the enemy attacks you, you stand your ground.”

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