Imam’s e-mails to Fort Hood suspect tame compared with online rhetoric

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DALLAS — E-mails between a U.S. Army officer and a radical
Muslim cleric did not worry anti-terrorism investigators, they said, because
nothing in the correspondence presaged violence. But elsewhere on the Internet,
the imam was urging people to kill soldiers and others.

After accused Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan started
e-mailing in December, the cleric increased the pace of his fundamentalist
rhetoric on the Web, a Dallas Morning News investigation found.

“I pray that Allah destroys America and all its
allies,” Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric with suspected ties to
al-Qaeda, wrote in a February blog entry.

The cleric and the Army major are believed to have met at
least eight years ago, when al-Awlaki preached at a northern Virginia mosque
attended by Hasan’s family. Both were born in the United States to prosperous
Middle Eastern parents nearly 40 years ago; both earned advanced degrees at
American universities.

Then they went seemingly separate ways. Hasan focused on
becoming an Army psychiatrist, while al-Awlaki left the U.S. after the FBI
questioned him about ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers.

The bilingual imam ended up imprisoned in his parents’
native Yemen, accused of supporting terrorists there. He emerged nearly two
years ago, more radical than ever. He set up a Web site that gave him an even
broader reach and included an e-mail link so readers could contact him.

For those who didn’t speak Arabic, such as Hasan, al-Awlaki
made pronouncements in English: “We will implement the rule of Allah on
Earth by the tip of the sword whether the masses like it or not.”

In the months leading up to Nov. 5 Fort Hood massacre, the
two men’s paths began to intersect again.

FBI officials acknowledged that a terrorism task force began
intercepting Hasan’s e-mails with al-Awlaki starting in December. The
information was not flagged to the attention of the Army, which had its own
concerns about Hasan’s performance as a psychiatrist.

Instead, investigators determined there was no need to probe
further because Hasan’s questions to al-Awlaki were consistent with his
psychiatric research, there was no indication he was planning violence, and he
was not “directed to do anything,” officials said.

But the Muslim cleric didn’t need to give specific direction
by e-mail. His exhortations about killing — soldiers, innocent women and
children, blasphemers, even oneself — were readily available until his online
site went dead a few days after the Fort Hood shootings. The News found
al-Awlaki’s speeches and blogs by combing through Web archives and reviewing
online recordings and transcripts.

Al-Awlaki blogged on subjects that touched on the very core
of the major’s identity: military membership; U.S. wars in Muslim countries;
the legitimacy of suicide attacks; Israel’s war with Palestinians in Gaza, an
occupied territory near Hasan’s parents’ homeland.

In a Dec. 11 posting, for example, al-Awlaki condemned the
Muslim who seeks a religious decree “that would allow him to serve in the
armies of the disbelievers and fight against his brothers.” Shortly after,
according to the FBI timeline, Hasan sent his first e-mail to al-Awlaki.

In another blog posting, on July 14, al-Awlaki railed
against armies of Muslim countries that assist the U.S. military, saying,
“the blame should be placed on the soldier who is willing to follow orders
… who sells his religion for a few dollars.” On Aug. 1, Hasan purchased
a handgun and laser sight at a Killeen gun store.

The Department of Homeland Security’s chief intelligence
officer warned, two months before Hasan first contacted al-Awlaki, that the
imam was an “example of al-Qaeda reach” into the United States.

Now working outside government, Charles E. Allen sees no
legitimate reason for Hasan’s e-mails.

“I find it difficult to understand why an Army major
would be in repeated contact with an Islamic extremist like Anwar al-Awlaki,
who preaches a hateful ideology directed at inciting violence against the
United States and the West,” Allen told The News. “It is hard to see
how repeated contact would in any legitimate way further his research as a
psychiatrist.”

But Allen stopped short of criticizing the FBI, saying that
it is “extraordinarily stretched in working counterterrorism cases.”

Former CIA officer Bruce Riedel, who was a senior adviser to
three presidents on Middle East and South Asian issues, is less forgiving.

“E-mailing a known al-Qaida sympathizer should have set
off alarm bells,” said Riedel, who also left government recently.
“Even if he was exchanging recipes, the bureau should have put out an
alert.”

Via McClatchy-Tribune News Service.