“Those workshops were attended by a wide variety of personalities, including foreign diplomats, think tank analysts and academics. It would have been difficult to imagine why Hasan should be chosen to front for an institution if his views were controversial.”

I think I can explain this. This guys sounds like he was a real pain in his chain of command’s derriere. As much as I hate to admit it, in the military we often send subordinates on boondoggle TDY’s in order to get them out of our hair. Was he the right guy to send? Probably not, but if he was as terrible with patients as it appears, sending him to these workshops may have appeared at the time to be the lesser of two evils.