Washington: There may be additional e-mails that could have tipped off law enforcement or military officials to the Fort Hood shooter before he went on his deadly rampage, the Chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee said on Friday.
The US government intercepted at least 18 e-mails between Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born cleric. They were passed along to two Joint Terrorism Task Force cells led by the FBI, but a senior defence official said no one at the Defence Department knew about the messages until after the shootings. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence procedures.
Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich, said after a briefing from Pentagon and Army officials that his committee will investigate how those and other e-mails involving the alleged shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, were handled and why the US military was not made aware of them before the November 5 shooting.
Levin said his committee is focused on determining whether the Defence Department's representative on the terrorism task force acted appropriately and effectively.
Levin also said he considers Hasan's shooting spree, which killed 13 and wounded more than 30, an act of terrorism.
"There are some who are reluctant to call it terrorism but there is significant evidence that is. I'm not at all uneasy saying it sure looks like that," he said.
He said his committee will also look into whether military members have the ability to report suspicious behaviour evinced by colleagues.
FBI and military officials have provided differing versions of why Hasan's critical e-mails to al-Awlaki and others did not reach Army investigators before the shooting.
FBI officials have said a military investigator on the task force saw the e-mails and looked up Hasan's record, but finding nothing particularly worrisome, the investigator neither sought nor got permission to pass the e-mails on to other military officials.
But the senior defence official has countered that the rules of the task force prevented that military representative from passing the records on without approval from other members of the task force.
Senator Joe Lieberman, Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said it appears there was enough information available to law enforcement, the military and intelligence agencies to raise alarm bells about Hasan but no one connected the dots.
"Had it been gathered on one desk, someone might have said 'Nidal Malik Hasan is dangerous,'" Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, told reporters after the briefing.
Bureau Report
First Published: Saturday, November 21, 2009, 10:31