Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the public will watch Nidal Hasan’s firing squad execution, a first in decades that critics call disgusting and medieval.
The Pentagon said it will livestream the U.S. Army’s first firing-squad execution in decades, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the point plain: Americans will be able to see Nidal Hasan face the sentence he earned for slaughtering soldiers at Fort Hood.
CNN reported that the execution is set for December 3 at 1 p.m. local time at the same Texas base where Hasan murdered 13 people in 2009, and that soldiers with rifles will carry it out.
Hegseth recommended the execution. President Donald Trump approved it. Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle set the date and time. A Pentagon official said the execution “will be livestreamed,” and Hegseth confirmed the public plan.
Hasan’s crime was not abstract. In 2009 he opened fire at a medical processing center where troops were getting checks before deployment. He followed fleeing soldiers, traded gunfire with police, and was struck. A panel of 13 officers later convicted him in July 2013 of 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder.
In an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, Hegseth said the shooting hour will match the attack hour.
Hegseth told interviewer Jack Posobiec:
"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."
He also framed the livestream as a lesson in accountability.
"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 said 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.” The Army has not carried out a firing-squad execution since that era, according to the same account.
At trial, Hasan told the panel he targeted soldiers headed to Afghanistan who “were going to engage in an illegal war.” He cast American troops as the problem. The court cast him as a mass murderer.
The transparency push drew sharp pushback from both parties and from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican, called the plan “beyond disgusting” and wrote on X that public executions belong to dictatorships, not the United States.
"Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America."
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat, told CNN’s Erin Burnett the plan was “medieval,” asked whether it mimicked ISIS executions, and said the moment was “pretty extraordinary.”
"I mean, that’s disgusting, what is he mimicking ISIS executions?"
Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, denounced the decision in a Friday statement and urged officials to reconsider.
"It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War’s decision to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hassan. Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hassan’s actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered,"
Coakley’s statement condemned Hasan’s murders while rejecting a public broadcast of the sentence. Hegseth’s argument runs the other way: the country should not hide the cost of murdering American soldiers.
Army Regulation 190-55 sets who may witness a military execution and bars minors from watching the punishment. The Army’s provost marshal general may waive provisions if the waiver does not break the law or a higher binding rule.
Earlier on the day the livestream plan became public, the Pentagon pointed publicity questions to the Army. The Army did not answer those questions in the reporting. Officials still stated the execution will be livestreamed and held on the Fort Hood base where the massacre happened.
That leaves open how access will be managed, who may view the feed, and how the service will handle the regulation’s limits on witnesses. What is not open is the core record: Hasan was convicted of mass murder after attacking troops preparing to deploy, and the president and defense secretary have approved carrying out the sentence by firing squad.
More than a decade passed between the July 2013 convictions and the December 3 execution date. Thirteen families lost sons, daughters, husbands, and wives at a stateside post that should have been safe ground. Thirty-two additional attempted-murder counts marked how many more Hasan tried to kill that day.
Critics focused on the camera and the method. Hegseth focused on the principle that serious crimes bring serious consequences, in public, without apology for lawful punishment. The soldiers who will form the firing squad are enforcing a sentence a military court already imposed after a full trial.
Hasan called the war illegal. He answered unarmed troops with a rifle. The Army’s answer, years later, is a rifle detail at 1 p.m. on the same base, with the public allowed to see it.
When a jihadist murders American soldiers on an American post, the country does not owe him a private exit. It owes the dead the truth that their killer paid in full, in the open, under the law.
