Doctor accused in Fort Hood deaths didn’t seek discharge

It is unclear whether Major Nidal Hasan made informal efforts to leave through his immediate superiors, and if so how his chain of command at lower levels might have responded.

But any formal request by Hasan to separate early would have been submitted to the Department of the Army, according to the official, who saw Hasan’s file before it was recently sealed by Army investigators. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

In 2007, addressing other physicians at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Hasan said that to avoid “adverse events’’ the military should allow Muslim soldiers to be released as conscientious objectors instead of fighting in wars against other Muslims. At the time of the shooting, Hasan was about to be deployed to Afghanistan, officials said.

Even if Hasan had sought to quit the Army over his opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as his aunt has said he did, the Army almost certainly would have denied any such request, senior Army officials said. Hasan had a continuing obligation because the Army provided him with medical training.

Meanwhile yesterday, The New York Times reported that the account of how Kimberly D. Munley, a former Newton waitress, and Hasan went down in an exchange of gunfire does not agree with the account of an eyewitness. The witness, who asked not to be identified because it could damage his military career, has been interviewed by the Defense Criminal Investigative Division. He said Hasan wheeled on Munley as she rounded the corner of a building and shot her, putting her on the ground. Then Hasan turned his back on her and started putting another magazine into his semiautomatic pistol.

It was at that moment that Senior Sergeant Mark Todd, a veteran police officer, rounded another corner of the building, found Hasan fumbling with his weapon, and shot him. How the authorities came to issue the original version of the story, which made Munley a national hero for several days and obscured Todd’s role, is unclear.

Hasan joined the Army in 1997, attended Army medical training, and then worked as a psychiatry intern and resident at Walter Reed from 2003 until July, when he was transferred to the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood. Hasan’s last official performance evaluation took place in June, according to an Army summary of his career known as an “officer record brief.’’

Major General Gina Farrisee, the Army’s personnel chief, said in an interview Monday that because of the ongoing investigation, she and other Army officials cannot discuss Hasan’s specific situation.

However, Farrisee said it would take an extraordinary situation - such as debilitating illness or the death of a spouse - for an officer with Hasan’s rank and medical training to be allowed to resign before completing his or her service obligation.

It would be “very, very unusual’’ said Paul Aswell, an Army personnel official.

“I can’t think of any in recent years,’’ he said.

The Army has received about 50 conscientious objector applications each year since 2001 from soldiers seeking either not to bear arms or to leave the service entirely because of religious or deeply held moral or ethical beliefs. Of those applications, a little more than half have been approved.

In the past three years, the Army board that decides whether to approve or disapprove such applications has not received any from Army officers with a remaining service obligation, according to the Army official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

As a psychiatrist in training, Hasan was characterized in meetings as a mediocre student and lazy worker, a matter of concern among the doctors and staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences military medical school, the official told the AP.

The AP reported that a law enforcement official says a terrorism task force did not refer early information about the Fort Hood shooting suspect to superiors because they concluded he wasn’t linked to terrorism.

The official says a Defense Department worker and an FBI supervisor agreed to end the assessment of Hasan earlier this year. Authorities had taken a look at Hasan after intercepting messages between the psychiatrist and a radical imam overseas.

The official says the FBI supervisor did not authorize that the information about Hasan be shared with other military authorities - and the military investigator didn’t ask for authorization - because they didn’t find evidence Hasan posed a threat.