Several security-risk experts said there was a key moment when the system should have flagged Alexis: on Aug. 7, when police in Newport, R.I., alerted the Newport Naval Air Station that he was found hallucinating and in distress in a hotel room. The police said that Navy officials told them they would follow up, but that nothing indicates they did. Experts said the report should have led the Navy to enter Alexis’s name into the military’s shared database of contractors and employees with security clearances. “You have to applaud the Newport police for following up and alerting the Navy base,” Sowell said. “They could have just put it into the file in their records, but they went the extra mile. That is certainly information that should have made its way into the right hands in the Navy.” On Wednesday, Hagel said the military will look at how that report should have been handled.