Levin: Could be more e-mails from Fort Hood suspect

[November 21, 2009]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government intercepted at least 18 e-mails between the alleged Fort Hood gunman and a radical Muslim cleric, and a key senator says there could be more communications that might have tipped off law enforcement or military officials.

Federal investigators say they intercepted the messages between the suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik 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 defense official said no one at the Defense Department knew about the messages until after the shootings. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence procedures.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said Friday after a briefing from Pentagon and Army officials that his committee will investigate how those and other e-mails involving Hasan were handled and why the U.S. military was not made aware of them before the Nov. 5 shooting.

Levin said his committee is focused on determining whether the Defense 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 it 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 behavior evinced by colleagues.

The Washington Post, citing two anonymous sources, reported Saturday that in the months leading up to the attacks Hasan stepped up his contacts with al-Awlaki to discuss transferring money. One of the sources told the Post the two men considered how to transfer funds abroad without coming to the attention of law enforcers.

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 defense 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.

The Pentagon may reconsider rules governing participation in extremist organizations that some lawmakers say appear outdated and too narrow in light of the shooting rampage at the Army base in Texas.

The Pentagon wrote regulations on "dissident and protest activities" in response to soldier participation in skinhead and other racially motivated hate groups. The current rules were written in 1996 and last updated in 2003.

The rules prohibit membership or participation in "organizations that espouse supremacist causes," seek to discriminate based on race, religion or other factors or advocate force or violence. Commanders can investigate and can discipline or fire people who "actively participate in such groups."

The rules also cover the distribution and possession of "printed materials," and gatherings held outside military posts.

The language appears to loosely cover some of the activity law enforcement sources have ascribed to Hasan.

But it is geared toward racially motivated groups and toward preventing public espousal of hateful ideology, such as attendance at a rally or the recruitment of new members. The language also applies most directly to materials and communication in the pre-Internet age.

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Associated Press writers Devlin Barrett and Eileen Sullivan contributed to this report.

[Associated Press; By PAMELA HESS and ANNE GEARAN]

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