Report: Defense not told of Hasan e-mails

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- The Pentagon says intelligence agencies disclosed intercepted e-mails between Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and a radical imam only after the Fort Hood rampage.

For months, a Pentagon official told The Wall Street Journal, intelligence officials had intercepted e-mails between Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood shootings, and Anwar al-Aulaqi, who knew three of the Sept. 11 hijackers and praised Hasan as a "hero" after Thursday's massacre.

"Based on what we know now, neither the United States Army nor any other organization within the Department of Defense knew of Major Hasan's contacts with any Muslim extremists" before the shootings, the official said.

The Journal said the Pentagon's disclosure that it had not been told of the intercepted e-mails earlier heightened debate about whether Hasan should have been the focus of more investigation before he opened fire at a soldier-readiness center on the sprawling Texas base. The shooting killed 13 people and wounded 38. Hasan remained hospitalized under guard in San Antonio.

Federal investigators are examining e-mails between Hasan and Aulaqi, who now lives in Yemen, for any indications of a wider relationship between the alleged shooter and overseas Islamic extremists, the Journal said. Thus far, none has been found among 10-20 e-mails, investigators said.

Hasan and some of his relatives had attended a Virginia mosque when it was led by Aulaqi.