Fort Hood suspect was under FBI probe in 2008

By Josh Meyer and Greg Miller McClatchy Tribune

Nov. 9, 2009, 11:40PM

WASHINGTON — The FBI and the Army last year investigated contacts between a Yemen-based militant Islamist prayer leader and the Army psychiatrist accused of last week’s deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, but they dropped the case after concluding that he didn’t pose a terrorist threat, a senior federal law enforcement official said Monday.

The disclosure on Monday that Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan communicated with an imam who had ties to Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers was sure to raise the question of whether U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies had information that, if properly shared and investigated, might have helped to prevent the attack.

Even before that disclosure, lawmakers were calling for inquiries into whether the Army, the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community missed warning signs about Hasan’s increasing radicalization in the months before last Thursday’s killing spree.

“I think the very fact that you’ve got a major in the U.S. Army contacting this guy (a radical imam), or attempting to contact him, would raise some red flags,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Hoekstra said his office has been contacted by U.S. officials involved in the case who believe that “the system just broke down.”

The federal law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing, said that all the facts are not yet known because the FBI and Army are poring over numerous e-mails sent by Hasan to Awlaki and other Islamist figures.

But he said that the information known to authorities at the time did not in any way suggest that Hasan was growing violent or that he was involved in “any terrorist planning or plotting.”

“I don’t know if it will greatly affect our assessment of the case, what motivated him. It remains to be seen whether this means anything or not,” said the federal official, adding that authorities still believe Hasan acted alone when firing a minutes-long spray of bullets that killed 13 people and injured another 29.

The official said that Hasan did not appear to have known Awlaki in person, except perhaps in passing, even though the militant prayer leader was the imam at a Virginia mosque that Hasan attended in 2001.

The mosque drew the attention of the FBI at the time, and later the Sept. 11 commission, because of Awlaki’s connection to at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, who may have followed him from a mosque in San Diego to the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., in early 2001.

Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, left the United States in 2002 and is believed to be in Yemen and actively supporting the Islamist jihad, or holy war against the West, through his Web site.

Several U.S. officials said U.S. intelligence agencies first intercepted communications between Hasan and Awlaki starting in late 2008 as a result of another investigation, and that the information was given to one U.S.-based multi-agency Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTFF) and then to another one based at the Washington Field Office because of Hasan’s assignment at the Walter Reed medical center.

The Washington task force, which included FBI agents and Army criminal investigative personnel, launched a probe and determined that Hasan was contacting the radical cleric — who has ties to other al-Qaida-affiliated individuals — “within the context of the doctor’s position and what he was doing at the time, conducting research ... on the issues of Muslims in the military and the effects of war in Muslim countries.”

The federal official said Hasan had “reached out to Awlaki several times before he got a response,” and that there was little in the correspondence to raise serious red flags.

But Hoekstra expressed frustration with the handling of the intelligence on Hasan, saying that authorities underestimated the significance of the material they had obtained.

Awlaki’s responses to Hasan were regarded by U.S. authorities as “relatively innocuous,” Hoekstra said. Even so, the lawmaker said, the communications should have triggered a serious response “regardless of the content.”

Authorities appear to have been looking for evidence of direction from overseas or communication involving a developing plot, Hoekstra said. “They’re looking for somebody to say, ‘Go,’ “ Hoekstra said.

“But I don’t think that’s the kind of organization (al-Qaida) is trying to set up. They’re more in the world of: ‘If you see an opportunity, take advantage of it, and you don’t have to get it approved at headquarters.’ “

The federal official defended the bureau’s handling of the matter. “The process worked,” the official said. “It was evaluated by one JTTF and sent to another JTTF based on what information they had at the time. More investigation was done, and ultimately a judgment was made that” it did not merit further investigation.

Authorities continue to pore over Hasan’s e-mails and other information to see who else he contacted and whether authorities dropped the ball by not continuing to investigate Hasan.

“If we find in his e-mails that he reached out to all kinds of other people for input,” that assessment could change, said the official. “We just don’t have the full context yet.”

Hasan appears to have surfaced on U.S. surveillance inadvertently. The National Security Agency eavesdrops on electronic communications around the world, and routinely monitors the e-mails and calls of figures such as Awlaki.

The emerging details are likely to draw parallels with intelligence breakdowns that preceded the Sept. 11 attacks, when the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies failed to recognize or share information that may have helped uncover the plot.

Fixing those problems was the focus of a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. intelligence community.

Congressional investigators “are going to be taking a look at all of the information and making decisions on whether people should have been notified along the way,” said a congressional official who has been briefed on the Hasan probe. “I think that’s going to depend on the nature of the communications.”

The Senate’s Homeland Security oversight committee said it will investigate the shootings and what authorities knew about Hasan’s possible motives and his connections to radical Islamists, either online or in person.

The committee will hold its first hearing next week, an unusually quick turnaround for such a public second-guessing.

Hoekstra sent a letter to the heads of the FBI, the CIA, the Directorate of National Intelligence and the National Security Agency directing their agencies to preserve all documents and materials “relevant to the Fort Hood attack and any related investigations or intelligence collection activities.”

On his Web site, Awlaki frequently counsels his followers in what is acceptable under Islamic law. He has authorized acts of violence, including terrorist acts, under Islamic law by saying they were done to defend Muslims around the world from Western governments bent on destroying Islam.

Tribune Newspapers reported that soon after midnight Monday, after Awlaki’s name was publicly linked to Hasan’s, a posting on his Web site was titled “Nidal Hassan Did the Right Thing.”

A second official said, “There are indications that contacts were attempted, but that doesn’t mean that we’ve got a full-fledged al-Qaida network here trying to attack the military.”

Officials emphasized that there is no evidence that Hasan received direction or input on his plan in the days or months before the attacks, in which he fired off more than 100 rounds from a pair of semi-automatic handguns, killing 13 and injuring 29 others.