FBI responds to Fort Hood 'failures'

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (UPI) -- Following U.S. Senate criticism Thursday of "a string of failures" in the investigation of the Fort Hood massacre, the FBI said it awaits judicial review.

The FBI said it looks forward to recommendations from Judge William H. Webster's team on whether improvements the FBI made in dealing with terrorist threats in light of the Fort Hood, Texas, incident are sufficient.

Senate leaders said the federal government failed in tracking the violent tendencies of an Army major before he allegedly opened fire at Fort Hood.

U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Ind-Conn., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Thursday said Army supervisors repeatedly referred to Maj. Nidal Hasan, who allegedly killed 13 people and wounded 32, as a "ticking time bomb," the Los Angeles Times reported.

The rampage in the deployment center was the worst domestic terror incident since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the senators said.

Hasan, 41, a U.S.-born Muslim of Arab descent, was an Army psychiatrist. He allegedly yelled, "Allahu Akbar" -- Arabic for "God is great"-- and opened fire.

"People in the Department of Defense and the FBI had ample evidence of alleged killer Nidal Hasan's growing sympathies toward violent Islamist extremism in the years before the attack. He was not just a ticking time bomb but a traitor," said Lieberman, who with Collins led the investigation into the November 2009 incident for the Senate Homeland Security Committee.