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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 e-mails, 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."