DHS Secretary defends Pentagon livestream plan for Hasan execution

First public US execution in nearly a century faces bipartisan criticism

US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Sunday defended the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the December execution of Nidal Hasan, a former US Army major convicted of killing 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation, Mullin said his department had weighed national security risks and concluded the broadcast would not elevate them.

Mullin told Face the Nation presenter Margaret Brennan that he saw no elevated risk from broadcasting the execution. “I think people need to understand that if you attack America, we will come after you, and we will make sure that the punishment fits the crime,” he said.

The plan, announced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week, has drawn bipartisan criticism and wider condemnation from academics and experts. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska called the decision “gruesome” and said livestreaming an execution was something she would expect “from terrorists and dictators, but not here in America.”

“It would give this individual, who deserves no further notoriety, the martyrdom he seeks,” Murkowski wrote on X. “How we carry out justice matters just as much as the justice itself.”

Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia raised national security concerns, writing that “beyond the profound moral concerns, a public execution could hand terrorist organizations a propaganda victory, fuel radicalization, and put American service members, diplomats, and citizens overseas at greater risk.”

Mullin rejected the objections. “[Hasan] killed 13 individuals on Fort Hood. I have no sympathy for him, and I give absolutely zero thought to the way that this man dies,” he said.

Hasan, a former US Army major and psychiatrist from Virginia, opened fire in a crowded medical building at Fort Hood, killing 13 unarmed soldiers and wounding 32 others. He was shot during the attack and now uses a wheelchair. In court, he apologised for “any mistakes” and said he believed he was protecting Muslims and the Taliban in Afghanistan from the US military.

President Donald Trump has said he signed off on the execution. Trump told reporters he approves of the livestream plan, but a final decision on whether to proceed with broadcasting is yet to be made. Hasan is scheduled to be executed by firing squad in December.

The execution would mark the first by the US military since 1961 and the military’s first execution by firing squad since World War Two. If broadcast as planned, it would also be the first public execution in the United States in nearly a century.