Army leaders last week took their most aggressive steps yet in response to the deaths, as pressure from lawmakers and relatives of victims continued to build. The base commander, Maj. Gen.
It said one of the Army’s most senior commanders, Gen. John M. Murray, would open an investigation into the Fort Hood leadership’s handling of Specialist Guillen’s case, building on the work of an independent review committee that was looking at the climate and culture at the base.
In Congress, members of the House of Representatives announced on Tuesday that they would launch their own investigation into the “alarming pattern of recent tragedies” at Fort Hood.
In a letter to the Secretary of the Army, Ryan D. McCarthy, the two representatives directing the inquiry said that he himself had acknowledged the problem during a briefing at Fort Hood last month. “The numbers are high here. They are the highest, the most cases for sexual assault and harassment and murders for our entire formation of the U.S. Army,” Mr. McCarthy said.
Some military mental health experts said the situation demands immediate attention.
“I just find this very worrisome,” said Dr. Stephen N. Xenakis, a psychiatrist and retired Army brigadier general who was a top medical officer at Fort Hood in the early 1980s. “I think if I were the commander, I’d be paying attention to this. Is this a sign to us that this military has been under such extreme stress after 18, 19 years of deployments?”
No clear single reason explains the rash of deaths and violence.
An Army base is a kind of city of its own — a self-contained ecosystem that spreads out for miles with tens of thousands of soldiers, their family members and private contractors. Fort Hood is physically larger than New York City. Violence and suicide are inevitable in such a vast world.