Hasan Possibly Paralyzed, Wired Money To Pakistan...Home Grown Terrorist

Hasan charged with 13 counts of murder. Military officials announce they will pursue 13 counts of Premeditated Murder against accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Lawyer believes Hasan is Paralyzed after attack


The Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people in a shooting spree at Fort Hood made or accepted wire transfers with Pakistan, a country wracked by Muslim extremist violence, a Republican congressman said Friday.

Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the ranking GOP member of the House Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee, said people outside the intelligence community with direct knowledge of the transfers also told him Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan also had communications with Pakistan.

“He may have friends or relatives or whatever and this could be totally (innocent),” McCaul said in a telephone interview. “But if he is wiring money to Pakistan, that could be terrorist financing. If he was receiving money from Pakistan, that is more significant.”

McCaul said he does not know the direction of the transfers and communications, only that they passed between Hasan and Pakistan. He said the lack of additional information is why Congress should launch an investigation.

Hasan, 39, was charged Thursday with 13 counts of premeditated murder in a military court, and Army investigators have said he could face additional charges. His attorney, John Galligan, has said prosecutors have not yet told him whether they plan to seek the death penalty.

Could be Paralyzed

A pair of civilian police officers responding to last week’s attack, in which 43 people were also injured, including 34 with gunshot wounds, shot Hasan four times. Recovering in the intensive care unit at San Antonio’s Brooke Army Medical Center, Hasan has told his attorney he has no feeling in his legs and extreme pain in his hands.

Galligan said doctors have told Hasan he may be permanently paralyzed from the waist down. He called his client’s medical condition “extremely serious” and said Hasan didn’t flinch when Galligan touched his leg during a meeting Thursday, when one of Hasan’s relatives was able to see him for the first time since he was hospitalized.

Hospital spokesman Dewey Mitchell said he could not confirm whether Hasan was paralyzed, since Hasan has directed hospital officials not to release any information about his condition or injuries.

The question of how Hasan spent his Army salary stems from the apparently frugal lifestyle he lived both in the small city of Killeen, Texas, outside of Fort Hood, and in the Washington, D.C., suburbs when stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In Texas, he lived in a rundown apartment that cost $350 a month and drove a 2006 Honda.

As an Army major with more than 12 years of service, Hasan earns just over $92,000 a year in basic pay and housing and food allowances, according to pay tables from the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Hasan’s gross monthly salary is $6,325.50 a month, or $75,906 annually. He also gets $1,128 a month for a housing allowance and $223 a month for meals, which adds up to another $16,212 a year.

Pres. Obama orders review of Hasan files

Military psychiatrists may also receive as much as $20,000 a year in incentive pay, according to the tables. But to get the bonus, they must meet certain requirements, such as agreeing to remain on active duty for at least one year after accepting the award. Hasan’s Army records are sealed due to the ongoing investigation, and it isn’t clear if he was eligible for the bonus or agreed to the conditions.

President Barack Obama has ordered a review of all intelligence related to Hasan and whether the information was properly shared and acted upon within government agencies. Several members of Congress, particularly Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, have also called for a full examination of what agencies knew about Hasan’s contacts with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen and others of concern to the U.S.

Hoekstra confirmed this week that government officials knew about 10 to 20 e-mails between Hasan and the radical imam, beginning in December 2008.

A joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI learned late last year of Hasan’s repeated contact with the cleric, who encouraged Muslims to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. The FBI said the task force did not refer early information about Hasan to superiors because it concluded he wasn’t linked to terrorism.






Fort Hood shootings suspect may have wired money to Pakistan


Authorities have been examining whether Fort Hood massacre suspect Nidal Malik Hasan wired money to Pakistan in recent months, an action that one senior lawmaker said would raise serious questions about Hasan's possible connections to militant Islamic groups.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said sources "outside of the [intelligence] community" learned about Hasan's possible connections to the Asian country, which faces a massive Islamist insurgency and is widely believed to be Osama bin Laden's hiding place.

Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, would not identify the sources. But he said "they are trying to follow up on it because they recognize that if there are communications – phone or money transfers with somebody in Pakistan – it just raises a whole other level of questions."

Much remains unknown about the 39-year-old Hasan, born in Virginia to Palestinian immigrants. He lived alone near the Army base in Killeen, Texas, and would sometimes use a neighbor's computer even though he had his own.

"With what I know about Hasan to date ... I would expect we will learn more about him that will make us concerned," Hoekstra said, "rather than information that says, 'Oh man, we got that all wrong and this had nothing to do with terrorism.' "

Mystery of Money

Hasan's finances have been a mystery since last week, when the Army major and psychiatrist allegedly shot and killed 13 colleagues at the sprawling Central Texas military base. Hasan earned more than $90,000 a year and had no dependents, yet lived in an aging one-bedroom apartment that rented for about $300 a month.

"You can bet there is an ongoing, extensive investigation into every single financial transaction he made," said Matt Orwig, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas who has no direct knowledge of the Hasan case. "Federal investigative agencies are very good at tracing the flow of money, both to him and from him."

Authorities know that Hasan sent repeated e-mails, starting some time in December 2008, to a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen. That cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, formerly served as imam of a large northern Virginia mosque where Hasan worshipped. The U.S.-born cleric praised Hasan after the massacre as "a hero."

In January, al-Awlaki told readers of his blog about "44 ways to support jihad" – a term often translated as "holy war." Many of his points dealt with ways to fund such efforts.

"Probably the most important contribution the Muslims of the West could do for Jihad is making Jihad with their wealth," al-Awlaki wrote. "In many cases the mujahideen are in need of money more than they are in need of men."

He also stressed the importance of "avoiding the life of luxury."

A spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department referred questions Wednesday to the FBI, which didn't return a message seeking comment. FBI officials have said they studied Hasan's communications with an unnamed radical Muslim and concluded they were a harmless part of his academic research.

Hoekstra said he wants to know whether authorities knew about Hasan's behavior when they decided his contacts with the Yemeni imam were essentially harmless.

"The conclusion based off just the e-mails might have been perfectly legitimate," Hoekstra said. "But if the [terrorism] analyst for some reason didn't have access to all this other information, that might be where the problem is."

Strange, lonely guy

Some of Hasan's former colleagues in the Washington area said his behavior raised red flags that should have been addressed. While pursuing a master's degree in public health, Hasan lectured a class about suicide bombers and the conflicts faced by Muslim U.S. soldiers fighting against other Muslims.

Doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, where Hasan trained and studied, questioned whether he was mentally unstable and a possible danger to fellow soldiers, according to National Public Radio. Discussions began in spring 2008 and continued over the next year.

"Put it this way," NPR quoted one unnamed source as saying, "everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole."

S. Ward Casscells, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, told The Dallas Morning News that Hasan had trouble connecting with patients and colleagues at Walter Reed.

"Doctors at Walter Reed I worked with say he was a strange and lonely guy who did not really earn the trust of his patients and fellow doctors," said Casscells, vice president for external affairs and public policy at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. "They attribute that to his personality, not to religious discrimination."

Despite concerns about Hasan, his views and his poor job performances, the consensus was to send him to Fort Hood after he finished his medical training, The Associated Press reported. Fort Hood was considered the best assignment for Hasan because other doctors could handle the workload if he continued to perform poorly, and his superiors could document any continued behavior problems, the AP quoted an unnamed military official familiar with the discussion as saying.

Family members said shortly after last week's rampage that Hasan opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, wanted out the Army and had sought legal advice. But Pentagon officials said they found nothing to indicate that Hasan formally sought to leave the Army, the AP said.

Even if Hasan had sought a discharge, the Army almost certainly would have denied it, senior Army officials told The Washington Post. Hasan had a continuing obligation to the Army because it provided his medical training and promoted him in May to the rank of major.

Colleagues and associates have described Hasan as a loner who voiced his opposition to the wars, including his assertion that Muslims were justified in fighting American troops. Hasan's family has said he became more distressed as he learned he was about to be deployed to Afghanistan.

"He is a kind of fundamentalist. He thinks a Muslim must defend themselves," said Golam Akhter, a civil engineer from Bethesda, Md., who said he spoke with Hasan on several occasions at the mosque where they worshipped.

He said he knew Hasan was a doctor but didn't know he was a member of the Army.

"He used to dress in long dresses just like Pakistanis, and that made me also concerned," Akhter said. "Usually only the imam uses those loose and long shirts and sleeves. That made me [wonder], being very educated, why he is using the imam's dress."

Hard trail to follow?

Matthew Levitt, director of counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said wire transfers to Pakistan would be "extremely significant in terms of a potential network for this particular case."

Tracing money to Pakistan could be easy if Hasan used a formal bank or wire service. It would be more difficult if he sent money under another name or used an informal channel known as hawala that is popular in Pakistan and doesn't involve paperwork.

"If it turns out the person was radicalized to the point he was sending money to other insurgents or other terrorists, that takes it to another level still," Levitt said.



View Larger Map

Sources: Dallas News, MSNBC, Fox News, McClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, Google Maps

Hasan Was A Home Grown Terrorist...TIME Mag. Reports

Was Hasan a Terrorist? Time Magazine’s Nancy Gibbs talks about whether the Fort Hood massacre is a sign of more trouble to come.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Interview with Fort Hood witnesses. TODAY’s Ann Curry talks with Sgt. Kimberly D. Munley and Sgt. Mark Todd about what happened that day.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Fort Hood Killer: Terrified ... or Terrorist?


What a surprise it must have been when Major Nidal Malik Hasan woke up from his coma to find himself not in paradise but in Brooke Army Medical Center, deep in the heart of Texas, under security so tight that there were armed guards patrolling both the intensive-care unit and checkpoints at the nearest freeway off-ramp. This was not the finalé he had scripted when he gave away all his earthly goods — his desk lamp and air mattress, his frozen broccoli and spinach, his copies of the Koran. He had told his imam he was planning to visit his parents before deploying to Afghanistan. He did not mention that his parents had been dead for nearly 10 years.

And who denied him his martyrdom?

That would be Kimberly Munley, the SWAT-team markswoman nicknamed Mighty Mouse, who with her partner ran toward the sound of gunshots at the Soldier Readiness Center, where men and women about to deploy gather for vaccinations and eye exams. It's practically been a motto stitched on their sleeves — "Better to fight the terrorists there than here" — except now they were at home, and there was one of their own, a U.S. officer, jumping up, shouting "God is great" in a language he could barely speak and then opening fire.

For eight years, Americans have waged a Global War on Terrorism even as they argued about what that meant. The massacre at Fort Hood was, depending on whom you believed, yet another horrific workplace shooting by a nutcase who suddenly snapped, or it was an intimate act of war, a plot that can't be foiled because it is hatched inside a fanatic's head and leaves no trail until it is left in blood. In their first response, officials betrayed an eagerness to assume it was the first; the more we learn, the more we have cause to fear it was the second, a new battlefield where our old weapons don't work very well and our values make us vulnerable: freedom, privacy, tolerance and the stubborn American certainty that people born and raised here will not reject the gifts we share.

Even as the President weighs how to fight the wars he inherited, he and the entire U.S. security apparatus will have to figure out how you fight a war against an enemy you can't recognize, much less understand. In that sense, the war on terrorism has left the battlefield and moved to the realm of the mind. The good news is that al-Qaeda's throw weight is much diminished; the bad news is that terrorism is now an entrepreneurial arena, with the Internet as its global recruiting station, attracting the lost, the loners, the guy with a coffee cart on Wall Street buying up hair dye and nail-polish remover to blend into bombs, or the polite army major in uniform who took his time, bought his gun and turned it on his comrades.

In his tribute to the fallen, President Barack Obama invoked a "world of threats that know no borders." Soldiers sacrifice to keep us safe; somehow we failed to keep them safe. It would be grim news for the intelligence community and the Army if they just missed all the warning signs. It would be worse news if they saw but chose to ignore them.

A Whole New War

No one thought the battle between the West and radical Islam was going to be fought like a traditional war, but to the extent that we could, we did. We tightened our borders, hardened the targets, took off our shoes and sent troops and tanks and drones to crush opponents in Afghanistan and take out top al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. We adapted our laws and intelligence services to make it easier to infiltrate terrorist cells, sniffing their emails, phone calls and Web traffic. The campaign has shown such success in crippling al-Qaeda's ability to deliver a massive blow that the U.K. has just reduced its national threat level.

But the terrorist techniques of even a decade ago are already outmoded. "I used to argue it was only terrorism if it were part of some identifiable, organized conspiracy," says Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. But Hoffman has changed his definition, he says, because "this new strategy of al-Qaeda is to empower and motivate individuals to commit acts of violence completely outside any terrorist chain of command." Every month this year, he notes, there has been a terrorist event — either an act committed or one broken up before it could be carried out. "The nature of terrorism is changing, and Major Hasan may be an example of that," Hoffman argues. "Even if he turns out to have had no political motive, this is a sea change."

If "leaderless resistance" is the wave of the future, it may be less lethal but harder to fight; there are fewer clues to collect and less chatter to hear, even as information about means and methods is so much more widely dispersed. It is more like spontaneous combustion than someone from the outside lighting a match. Senator Joe Lieberman's Homeland Security Committee warned of this threat in a report last year. "The emergence of these self-generated violent Islamist extremists who are radicalized online presents a challenge," the report concluded, "because lone wolves are less likely to come to the attention of law enforcement." At least until they start shooting.

It might help if there were at least agreement on what constitutes terrorism; one government study found 109 different definitions. As far as the FBI is concerned, it counts as terrorism if you commit a crime that endangers another person or is violent with a broader intent to intimidate, influence or change policy or opinion. If Hasan shot people because of indigestion, worker conflict or plain insanity without a larger goal of intimidation or coercion, it was probably just a crime. If, on the other hand, his crime was motivated by more than madness — say, a desire to protest U.S. foreign policy — it was effectively terrorism.

So what are we to make of the free agents who might have never sworn allegiance to a band of jihadist brothers or plotted a conspiracy of violence, just watched some YouTube videos or downloaded some sermons and came away with visions of carnage dancing in their heads? "We have to be careful not to let our definition of terrorism become too broad," said former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff last year. "Particularly when we get to the individual lone wolf, then it really does become hard to distinguish between the person who killed the students at Virginia Tech and the person who might do the same thing simply because they read something on the Internet about bin Laden and that happened to appeal to their psychology." Once everything is terrorism, he warned, then nothing is. But while the motivations of the Virginia Tech gunman seemed perversely personal, Hasan had spent years telling anyone who would listen that the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan was immoral.

The Making of a Radical

Hasan was a walking contradiction: the counselor who himself needed counseling; the proud soldier who did not want to fight, at least not against fellow Muslims; the man who could not find a sufficiently modest and pious wife through his mosque's matchmaking machinery but who frequented the local strip club. A man supposedly so afraid of deployment that he launched a war of his own from which he clearly did not expect to return alive. "Everyone is asking why this happened," said Hasan's family in a formal statement, "and the answer is that we simply do not know."

But if this is the new face of terrorism in America, we need better facial-recognition software. Hasan's motives were mixed enough that everyone with an agenda could find markers in the trail he left. For those inclined to see soldiers as victims, he was a symptom of an overstretched military, whose soldiers return from their third and fourth deployments pouring out such pain that it scars their therapists as well. "We've known for the last five years that [deployment to Afghanistan] was probably his worst nightmare," cousin Nader Hasan told Fox News. "He would tell us how he hears horrific things ... That was probably affecting him psychologically."

That diagnosis seemed like sentimental nonsense to people who noted how well Hasan matched the classic model of the lone, strange, crazy killer: the quiet and gentle man who formed few close human attachments but, reported the New York Times, used to chew up food and let his pet parakeet eat it from his mouth; when he rolled over during a nap and accidentally crushed it to death, he visited the bird's grave for months afterward.

But Hasan may be the new terrorist template that fuses psychological damage with jihadist ideology. The most obvious and ominous evidence points to a now familiar pattern: alienated individuals who don't have to graduate from al-Qaeda training camps to embrace their mission and means. When an Army officer is reported to proudly call himself a Muslim first, an American second; when he appears at a public-health seminar with the PowerPoint presentation "Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam"; when he applauds the killing of a U.S. soldier by a Muslim convert at an Arkansas recruitment center; and when he is caught corresponding with a radical imam in Yemen who has called on all Muslims to kill American soldiers in Iraq, you wonder just how brightly the red lights had to flash before anyone was willing to stop and ask some questions.

Hasan's early life offers few clues to what came later. He was born in Virginia to Palestinian parents who had chased the American Dream from the West Bank to Roanoke. They opened a couple of restaurants and a convenience store and had great hopes for their three sons — which did not include their eldest joining the Army, even if just as a way to get a free education. Hasan graduated from Virginia Tech with honors in biochemistry, then went to medical school, where, an uncle told the Los Angeles Times, he decided to major in psychiatry after he fainted while watching a baby being born.

At that point, his fanaticism did not extend past cheering on his Washington Redskins. He did, however, regularly attend services at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md., helped at its homeless shelter and even applied to an annual matrimonial center that acts as a kind of matchmaking service. He described himself in his application as "quiet and reserved until more familiar with person. Funny, caring and personable."

"He wanted a woman who prayed five times a day and wears a hijab," the former imam Faizul Khan told the New York Times, "and maybe the women he met were not complying with those things." It was after his parents died that Hasan became more conspicuously devout. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he completed his psychiatric training, he was reportedly reprimanded for trying to convert patients to Islam, while castigating those with drug and alcohol issues for their "unholy" behavior. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan unfolded, he asserted the right of Muslim Americans to conscientiously object to fighting; his relatives claimed he offered to repay the cost of his medical education in exchange for release from his obligations.

The first alarms began to sound while he was still in training. "He was very vocal about being a Muslim first and holding Shari'a law above the Constitution," says an officer who attended the Pentagon's medical school with Hasan but would speak only off the record because his commanders ordered him not to discuss the case. "When fellow students asked, 'How can you be an officer and not hold to the Constitution?,' he'd get visibly upset — sweaty and nervous — and had no good answers." This officer was so disturbed when Hasan gave a talk asserting that the U.S. was waging a "war on Islam" that he challenged the lieutenant colonel running the course. "I raised my hand and asked, 'Why are you letting this go on? This has nothing to do with environmental health,' " which was the actual focus of the course. " 'I'm just going to let him go,' " replied the lieutenant colonel, who had even approved the topic in advance.

"It was a systemic problem," the officer says. "The same thing was happening at Walter Reed."

The vital question for the military and our own security is whether political correctness — or the desire to protect diversity — prevented the Army from recognizing and dealing with a problem in its midst, a problem in plain sight. According to a co-worker, Hasan would not even allow his photo to be taken with female colleagues. "People are afraid to come forward and challenge somebody's ideology," explains Hasan's classmate, "because they're afraid of getting an equal-opportunity complaint that can end careers." NPR reported that top officials at Walter Reed held meetings in the spring of 2008 in which they debated whether Hasan was "psychotic." "Put it this way," an official told NPR. "Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole."

Preacher and Provocateur
Hasan's path began to twist about the time he attended the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., one of the largest mosques on the East Coast and home to a charismatic Islamic cleric named Anwar al-Awlaki. Born in New Mexico in 1971 to Yemeni parents and educated at Colorado State University, al-Awlaki was often portrayed as a mainstream, moderate Muslim cleric who asserted that terrorists claiming to be good Muslims had "perverted their religion." But the perception of al-Awlaki shifted as intelligence officials began connecting the dots: they found that he had raised money for Hamas, had met with two of the 9/11 hijackers at his previous mosque in San Diego and had some association with other extremist groups. In April 2001, two 9/11 hijackers worshipped at al-Awlaki's Virginia mosque; the next month, Hasan held his mother's funeral there, though there is no evidence that the two men met.

In 2002, al-Awlaki left the U.S. and eventually returned to Yemen, where his humor, charisma and technological savvy helped him develop a global reputation as an intellectual blood bank for aspiring martyrs. The Fort Dix Six are said to have listened to his sermons, as are some of the Minneapolis youths who traveled to Somalia to join the al-Shabab terrorist group. And last December and January, surveillance of al-Awlaki revealed that he had received as many as 20 e-mails from Hasan.

The FBI-led Washington-area Joint Terrorism Task Force reviewed the transcripts along with the task force's representative at the Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS); they reviewed Hasan's personnel file and concluded there was no need to open an investigation. The exchange was just one of hundreds, maybe thousands, that al-Awlaki was having with people in the U.S. The contents of the e-mails seemed relatively innocuous, inquiries about his legitimate area of research — trying to figure out how Muslims in the military are affected when sent to fight against fellow Muslims. Says a counterterrorism official who spoke on condition of anonymity: "This wasn't Hasan saying, 'Preacher, bless me because I'm about to martyr myself.' "

The Pentagon said it never heard about the e-mails; thus began the finger-pointing. "Once they're assigned," a senior Pentagon official says of DCIS officers, "they work for the task force, not us." FBI Director Robert Mueller has ordered a review of the bureau's knowledge of Hasan to determine whether "any policies or practices should change based on what we learn." Among other challenges will be figuring out how to distinguish real threats from provocative behavior and how to train agents to be confident enough to make that judgment. At this moment, there are hundreds of thousands of people on terrorist watch lists. "When you have that many people," says a senior Democratic Hill source, "unless you're East Germany, you can't keep track of everyone."

A senior counterterrorism official from the Bush Administration says the FBI was very aware of al-Awlaki's profile; Hasan's emails, even if they sounded like academic inquiries, should have "rung bells," he says. "You don't typically think of John Gotti as a guy you'd write a letter to saying, 'I'm very interested in organized crime and how it works.' " After the shootings, al-Awlaki cheered Hasan on his website for doing his jihadist duty — killing soldiers about to be deployed to kill Muslims: "He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people."

And al-Awlaki was not the only red flag. About six months ago, authorities discovered a Web posting in which the writer, "NidalHasan," compared suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to save their colleagues. A senior Administration official tells TIME that Hasan had other foreign connections as well: "It is clear that he had contacts with individuals overseas who have espoused the use of violence like al-Awlaki. It is unclear whether or not it was anything more than just contacts, or if there was any type of operational engagement. It appears as though Major Hasan was inspired by some of this extremist rhetoric and propaganda. But what we are trying to do is make sure that we don't reach conclusions based on just a preliminary review of information that is available to date. That's why we have to go back in, make sure we scour those files."

Congress is bound to ask, How was it possible that even as his performance was poor, his personnel file was being reviewed and his communications with a radical cleric were being analyzed, Hasan was promoted from captain to major last May and dispatched in July to Fort Hood, the largest active Army base in the U.S.? One explanation is a desperate need for mental-health professionals. With its 50,000 soldiers and 150,000 family members and civilian personnel, Fort Hood has the highest toll of military suicides; posttraumatic-stress-disorder cases quadrupled from 2005 to 2007.

But others are convinced that his religion protected him from stronger action by the Army. "He'd have to murder the general's wife and daughter on the parade ground at high noon in order to get a serious reprimand," says Ralph Peters, an outspoken retired Army lieutenant colonel who now writes military books and a newspaper column. While stressing "there shouldn't be witch hunts" against Muslims in uniform, Peters insists that "this guy got a pass because he was a Muslim, despite the Army's claim that everybody's green and we're all the same." A top Pentagon official admits there may be some truth to the charge. "We're wondering why some of these strange encounters didn't trigger something more formal," he says. "I think people were overly sensitive about Muslims in the military, and that led to a reluctance to say, 'This guy is nuts.' The Army is going to have to review their procedures to make sure someone can raise issues like this."

Pres. Obama's Response

Less than an hour after the shooting began, the Situation Room notified the White House that there had been an event at Fort Hood; Obama was briefed in the Oval Office a half hour later. Reports were all over the place — how many shooters, how many dead. As the day went on, the principals from the White House and Pentagon pushed for clarity as to whether this was part of a broader plot. Obama knew about the al-Awlaki e-mails long before he went to bed that night. "We were looking to see if there might have been any code or anything embedded in that," an official says.

The next morning, Obama ordered all the agencies to do an inventory of their files, collect every scrap they had on Hasan and review how that information had been handled. "We needed to understand what we knew and when we knew it," the official says, "and not to make any preliminary or premature judgments about anything."

Investigators continued to comb Hasan's computer, search his garbage, scrub his phone records. By Saturday, Hasan was awake and talking, though only to his doctors and lawyers. He will face a trial, most likely in a military court, and if convicted, he could become the 16th person sentenced to death under the current military death-penalty system. Ten of the previous 15 had their sentences commuted, and five sit on death row in Fort Leavenworth, Kans.

Meanwhile, the Fort Hood community does what it has had to do all too often: mourn the dead, minister to the living. At least 545 soldiers from Fort Hood have died in Iraq and Afghanistan; now 13 more are gone, ranging in age from 19 to 62. One victim was a newlywed; one was three months pregnant; 19 children were left without a parent. Support groups kicked in, delivering food to the families. Local blood banks were swarmed with donors. The Facebook group Sgt. Kimberly Munley: A Real Hero has close to 24,000 fans and counting.

A President can't go to every memorial service. But this one he had to attend, if only to make sure that the stories got told, the names got spoken — Aaron and Amy, Jason and John, Frederick, Francheska, Juanita, Kham, Libardo, Justin, Russell, Michael. A young President baptized a new Greatest Generation: "We need not look to the past for greatness," he said, "because it is before our very eyes." Our security is their life's work, he said, and peace is their legacy, and freedom their gift. To the great gray sea of soldiers that stood before him, the deaths were a hard reminder of the challenge of protecting all three at the same time.



View Larger Map

Sources: TIME, MSNBC, Google Maps

Hasan Charged With 13 Counts Of First Degree Murder...Yes It Was Terrorism!

Hasan charged with 13 counts of Murder. Military officials announce they will pursue 13 counts of premeditated murder against accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Fort Hood gunman faces Murder Charges.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Fort Hood suspect charged with Murder


The Army psychiatrist accused in the Fort Hood shootings was charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder in the military's legal system, making him eligible for the death penalty if convicted, officials said Thursday.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama ordered a review of all intelligence related to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, and whether the information was properly shared and acted upon within government agencies.

Additional charges may also be filed against Hasan, said Chris Grey, spokesman for the Army's Criminal Investigation Command. "We have a duty and obligation to protect the constitutional rights of everyone involved," Grey said during a press conference at Fort Hood.

Officials told NBC News that it had not been decided whether to charge Hasan with a 14th count of murder related to the death of the unborn child of a pregnant shooting victim.

Hasan is accused of opening fire at Fort Hood's crowded Soldiers Readiness Processing Center, where troops get medical checkups before deploying abroad. The rampage is described as one of the worst mass shootings on an American military base.

John Galligan, Hasan's civilian attorney, said his military co-counsel told him that charges were being read to Hasan in the hospital without his lawyers present.

"I don't like it. I feel like I'm being left out of the loop," Galligan said. "I guess it's 13 charges, but I don't like to have to guess in this situation."

Hasan's records

Months before last week's rampage, doctors and staff overseeing Hasan's training reported viewing him at times as belligerent, defensive and argumentative in his frequent discussions of his Muslim faith, according to a military official familiar with several group discussions about Hasan. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the meetings and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Hasan was characterized in meetings as a mediocre student and lazy worker, a matter of concern among the doctors and staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, a military medical school in Bethesda, Md., the official said.

The concerns about Hasan's performance and religious views were shared with other military officials considering his assignment after he finished his medical training, and the consensus was to send the psychiatrist to Fort Hood in Texas, the official said.

One of the largest military installations, it was considered the best assignment for Hasan because other doctors could handle the workload if he continued to perform poorly and his superiors could document any continued behavior problems, the official said.

Intense and Combative

Hasan repeatedly referred to his strong religious views in discussions with classmates, his superiors and even in his research work, the official said. His behavior, while at times perceived as intense and combative, was not unlike the zeal of others with strong religious views. But some doctors and staff were concerned that their unfamiliarity with the Muslim faith would lead them to unfairly single out Hasan's behavior, the official said.

Some in the group questioned Hasan's sympathies as an Army psychiatrist, whether he would be more aligned with Muslims fighting U.S. troops. There also was some concern about whether he should continue to serve in the military, the official said.

At one point, Hasan's supervisors ordered him to attend a university lecture series on Islam, the Middle East and terrorism, hoping to steer him toward productive work addressing potential concerns of Muslims in the military, according to The Washington Post. Hasan attended the lectures late last year or early this year, The Post reported Thursday, quoting a Walter Reed staff member who spoke anonymously because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.

A joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI learned late last year of Hasan's repeated contact with a radical Muslim cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who encouraged Muslims to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. The FBI said in a statement late Wednesday that the task force did not refer early information about Hasan to superiors because it concluded he wasn't linked to terrorism.

The doctors and staff who discussed concerns about Hasan had several group conversations about him that started in early 2008 during regular monthly meetings and ended as he was finishing a fellowship in disaster and preventive psychology this summer, the official familiar with the discussions said.

They saw no signs of mental problems, no risk factors that would predict violent behavior. And the group discussed other factors that suggested Hasan would continue to thrive in the military, factors that mitigated their concerns, the official said.

According to the official, records reviewed by Hasan's superiors described nearly 20 years of military service, including nearly eight years as an enlisted soldier; completion of three rigorous medical school programs, albeit as a student the group characterized in their discussions as mediocre; his resilience after the deaths of his parents early in his medical education, and an otherwise polite and gentle nature when not discussing religion.

Citing the investigation and the Privacy Act, the Army and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences have released only minimal details of Hasan's career. He entered the Army in 1997 as a 2nd lieutenant and started the medical school program, according to a service spokesman in Washington.

But school records from Barstow Community College in Barstow, Calif., where Hasan was a student from 1989 to 1990, show his military service began much earlier. Maureen Stokes, a spokeswoman for the college, said the records indicate he was a private first class with an infantry unit at Fort Irwin, Calif. Hasan received 10 credits for his military experience, she said.

John Wagstaffe, a Fort Irwin spokesman, said that based upon the school records it would appear that Hasan was stationed at Fort Irwin. But he said base officials have not been able to locate the military records to verify that.

The Pentagon has found no evidence that Hasan formally sought release from the Army as a conscientious objector or for any other reason, two senior military officials told The Associated Press. Family members have said he wanted to get out of the Army and had sought legal advice, suggesting that Hasan's anxiety as a Muslim over his pending deployment overseas might have been a factor in the deadly rampage.

Hasan had complained privately to colleagues that he was harassed for his religion and that he wanted to get out of the Army. But there is no record of Hasan filing a complaint with his chain of command regarding any harassment he may have suffered for being Muslim or any record of him formally seeking release from the military, the officials told the AP.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is under investigation.



View Larger Map

Sources: MSNBC, Google Maps

Hasan Is Not Dead! Alive & In Custody! 12 Killed, 31 Injured...Snafu

Suspect in Ft. Hood shootings alive. NBC's Charles Hadlock updates Brian Williams about the evolving story, reporting that both the suspected shooter Maj. Hasan, and the female police officer credited with neutralizing the situation are alive and in stable condition.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Lt. General Cone: The shooter is not dead. He was not killed as previously reported.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Earlier false reports of the shooter's status. Error or Strategy?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

View Larger Map

Sources: MSNBC, Google Maps