Army Wasn't Told of Hasan's Emails
Pentagon Says It Only Learned of Shooting Suspect's Contacts With Cleric After the Fort Hood Killings
By YOCHI J. DREAZEN and EVAN PEREZ
Reuters
President Barack Obama walks past the helmets and rifles of slain soldiers on his way to address a memorial service Tuesday at Fort Hood, Texas. The traditional military tribute included hymns and a roll call with the names of the 13 men and women who died in last week's shooting rampage at the sprawling Army base.
The Pentagon said it was never notified by U.S. intelligence agencies that they had intercepted emails between the alleged Fort Hood shooter and an extremist imam until after last week's bloody assaults, raising new questions about whether the government could have helped prevent the attack.
A top defense official said federal investigators didn't tell the Pentagon they were looking into months of contacts between Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki. The imam knew three of the Sept. 11 hijackers and hailed Maj. Hasan as a "hero" after the shooting last week at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead.
"Based on what we know now, neither the United States Army nor any other organization within the Department of Defense knew of Maj. Hasan's contacts with any Muslim extremists," the official said.
The Pentagon comments fueled a growing dispute among various branches of the government about whether Maj. Hasan should have been more deeply investigated before he allegedly walked into a crowded soldier-readiness center at Fort Hood and opened fire.
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama arrived to address the Fort Hood community at III Corps Headquarters during a memorial service for the soldiers and civilians killed on Nov. 5.
A person familiar with the matter said a Pentagon worker on a terrorism task force overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation was told about the intercepted emails several months ago. But members of terror task forces aren't allowed to share such information with their agencies, unless they get permission from the FBI, which leads the task forces.
In this case, the Pentagon worker, an employee from the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, helped make the assessment that Maj. Hasan wasn't a threat, and the FBI's "procedures for sharing the information were never used," said the person familiar with the matter.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama had ordered all agencies involved in national and homeland security to review Maj. Hasan's case to find out if warning signs were missed after the suspect first drew law-enforcement attention last year. "That's what we want to figure out," Mr. Gibbs said.
Federal investigators are scrutinizing Maj. Hasan's email exchanges with Mr. Awlaki for any signs of a broader relationship between the suspected Fort Hood shooter and overseas Islamic extremists, according to officials familiar with the matter. To date, investigators haven't found such a link, the officials said.
Federal law-enforcement officials said Maj. Hasan, who is recovering in a Texas hospital under an armed guard, communicated 10 to 20 times by email with Mr. Awlaki, the onetime spiritual leader of a mosque in Virginia that Maj. Hasan attended with several of his relatives. Mr. Awlaki now lives in Yemen.
Maj. Hasan's emails to Mr. Awlaki were intercepted as part of a continuing National Security Agency effort to monitor the electronic communications of suspected Islamic extremists world-wide.
A federal investigator said the FBI contacted Maj. Hasan's then-employers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington to find out more about his background and professional occupation, but acknowledged that such background checks were fairly routine and that the emails in question appeared benign.
Army officials declined to comment about whether officials at Walter Reed conducted a follow-up investigation into Maj. Hasan or alerted others within the Army hierarchy after they had received the FBI inquiry.
"That's all part of the investigation," said Col. Catherine Abbott, an Army spokeswoman.
The intensifying criminal investigation into Maj. Hasan is proceeding along two related tracks, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Army and FBI investigators are looking for signs that Maj. Hasan received encouragement or logistical support from Islamic radicals in the U.S. or abroad, the officials said. So far, they haven't found evidence of such a link, the officials said.
The investigators are also trying to get a clearer picture of Maj. Hasan's state of mind in the weeks before the attack. One official said the U.S. was trying to determine if the attack was motivated by the suspect's Islamic religious beliefs, which appear to have hardened markedly during the years he spent in the Army, or by other factors, like his anger over a pending deployment to Afghanistan.
—Peter Spiegel contributed to this article.
online.wsj.com
Connecting the Dots on Hasan’s Imam: Anwar al-Awlaki
John on November 10, 2009
[Note: Morgen contributed heavily to this post. Also, if anyone from the AP or other major news organization is thinking about swiping this, you must credit VS.]
Anwar al-Awlaki is the imam who, as we reported here first on Sunday, praised Nidal Hasan as a hero for killing 13 unarmed people at Fort Hood. Believed to be residing in Yemen possibly working as a recruiter for al qaeda, al-Awlaki is also known as the imam from the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, VA. The mosque is best known as the place where two of the 9-11 hijackers attended prior to carrying out the worst terror attack in American history. Authorities are now looking into the likelihood that Nidal Hasan also attended the mosque around this time. It’s known for certain that his mother’s funeral was held there.
There is more to the story of al-Awlaki and his connection to 9-11. It begins here in Southern California. Before becoming the imam at the now infamous Great Falls mosque, al-Awlaki attended San Diego State University (earning a master’s in education leadership). During this time he also served as an imam at Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami, a mosque located in San Diego.
As many as three of the hijackers, Alhazmi, al-Midhar and Hani Hanjour, appear to have attended al-Awlaki’s mosque in San Diego. Alhamzi and al-Midhar were probably attending in mid 2000 while taking flying lessons at a local flying club.
Unbelievably, al-Awlaki was under investigation by the FBI as early as June 1999:
Anwar Al-Awlaki is the former leader of the Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque on Saranac Street on the border of San Diego and La Mesa, which was attended regularly by the hijackers and their acquaintances. The FBI opened a counterterrorism inquiry into imam Anwar Al-Awlaki’s activities in June 1999.
Somehow they missed the connection, even when it became more obvious:
When the imam moved to one of the largest Muslim communities in the country at the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., Alhazmi and hijacker Hani Hanjour followed and began attending that mosque, the report said.
Eventually, all three of the hijackers al-Awlaki had contact with would end up on Flight 77 bound for the Pentagon.
But it wasn’t just the FBI that botched the investigation, the media was a step behind as well. Two weeks after 9-11 occurred, the Washington Post ran a special supplement for kids titled Muslim: Fact and Stereotype. In addition to the somewhat cloying content, the supplement contains a large photo of a praying imam, none other than…wait for it…Anwar al-Awlaki. The caption notes that his mosque was temporarily closed for fear of an anti-Muslim backlash. Here’s the image (click for full size):
But the inability to connect the dots doesn’t end there. Just yesterday a member of San Diego’s Council on American-Islamic Relations admitted that he was also a member of al-Awlaki’s mosque at the time the hijackers attended. Oops!
Edgar Hopida with San Diego’s Council on American-Islamic Relations can’t believe the man who taught him about the Islamic faith and led countless prayer sessions at a La Mesa-area mosque is the same man who called Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan a hero and a man of conscience.
“He was a respected imam here,” said Hopida. ABC learned that Hasan, suspected of killing 13 people in Fort Hood last week, had been in contact with Awlaki. “From his work here, it was nothing but positive in San Diego. This is a big surprise to the U.S. and San Diego Muslim community,” said Hopida.
Ten years on the FBI radar and contact with four Muslim mass murders later, at what point is this going to cease to be a “big surprise.”
The fact that those segments of society — our intelligence and news agencies — charged with finding the connections missed them so badly in Anwar al-Awlaki’s case should not be lost on us now.
The FBI knew about Hasan yet considered his interest in al qaeda part of a “research project.” They knew about his e-mails and apparently gave the information to the Army, but the Army ignored the warnings and promoted him. Other soldiers complained about Hasan but were afraid to report him lest they be labeled Islamaphobes.
The media front looks no better. The mainstream media — including Time, Newsweek, CNN and of course MSNBC — have insisted that Nidal Hasan’s crime has no significant religious component despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Yesterday CNN went so far as to twist the words of an eyewitness to suggest that maybe he didn’t actually hear Hasan yell “Allahu Ackbar” before his killing spree.
The point has already been made by others but it bears repeating. Political correctness of this sort is going to get people killed. I realize this probably sounds like an exaggeration at first blush, but if you look at the full history of al-Awlaki it looks a lot more like a fact.
Time to call this what it is, homegrown terror. Once we’ve faced up to it, we have to start rooting out others like Hasan and al-Awlaki before we get another big surprise like Fort Hood or 9-11.
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