Lawyer headed to meet Fort Hood shooting suspect

Soldiers and their families pray during a church service at the First Air Calvary Division Memorial Chapel at Fort Hood, Texas on Sunday, Nov. 8, 2009. (LM Otero/AP)

WASHINGTON — The Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood massacre apparently acted alone and without outside direction, investigative officials said Monday evening, even as the FBI launched an internal review of how it handled information gathered about the doctor nearly a year before the shooting.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan will be charged by the U.S. military rather than in a civilian court, the officials said.

As the investigation continues, FBI Director Robert Mueller has ordered an internal inquiry to see whether the bureau mishandled worrisome information gathered about Hasan beginning in December 2008 and continuing into early this year.

Based on all the investigations since the attack, including a review of that 2008 information, the investigators said they have no evidence that Hasan had help or outside orders in the shootings.

In late 2008, officials said, a separate investigation revealed Hasan's communications with another individual they declined to identify. Separately, another U.S. official said the person Hasan was communicating with was Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical imam overseas who has come under scrutiny for possible links to terror groups. All of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case on the record.

Eventually, a joint terrorism task force learned of about 10 or 20 such communications between the two. Officials would not identify the exact type of communications, but al-Awlaki operates a Web site that invites readers to e-mail him. Al-Awlaki was formerly an imam at a Falls Church, Va., mosque where Hasan and his family occasionally worshipped.

The military was made aware of the communications, but because the messages did not advocate violence or threaten violence, law enforcement authorities could not take the matter further, the officials said. The terrorism task force concluded Hasan was not involved in terrorist planning.

One official said Hasan reached out to al-Awlaki, and the other officials said the content of those messages was "consistent with the subject matter of his research," part of which involved post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from U.S. combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

No formal investigation was ever opened based on the contacts, the officials said.

Awlaki, who was released from a jail in Yemen last year, writes a blog that denounces U.S. policies as anti-Muslim.

Investigators tried to interview Hasan on Sunday at the military hospital where he is held under guard, but he refused to answer and requested a lawyer, the officials said.