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

When an Army major turns mass murderer on America's largest military base, it fuels the worst fear of terrorism experts: Are lone wolves who don't need an al-Qaeda training camp the new threat to homeland security?

Illustration by John Ritter for TIME

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...

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