Less than two weeks after the Fort Hood shooting, a man who was identified as Anwar al Awlaki spoke through an intermediary with the Washington Post. Awlaki, of course, has been tied to Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Numerous published reports have cited Awlaki’s emails with Hasan in the months prior to the Fort Hood attack. Those emails should have set off alarm bells as Awlaki is a known al Qaeda recruiter with ties to some of the 9/11 hijackers. Instead, the FBI dismissed the emails as being consistent with Maj. Hasan’s research on the effects of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan on soldiers.   But how could correspondence with an al Qaeda cleric be a legitimate part of this research? As far as the deleterious effects of combat on American soldiers is concerned, Anwar al Awlaki is all for them.   The Washington Post‘s November 16 account of Awlaki’s purported description of his emails with Hasan provided some additional color. Awlaki claimed that he did not instigate the attack, and that Maj. Hasan already had deep knowledge of sharia law. The implication was that Hasan did not really need guidance from Awlaki. According to the Post, the intermediary (Abdulelah Hider Shaea, “a Yemeni journalist and terrorism expert with close ties to” Awlaki) relayed this description of the contents of the emails:

The description that was given to the Post certainly downplayed Awlaki’s involvement with Hasan. But even this description was more troubling than the FBI had let on in its public statements. Hasan reached out to Awlaki, according to the Post‘s account, to question ongoing American military operations and to suggest that America “should be confronted.” This is hardly consistent with the views of a loyal American serviceman or a doctor who is just doing research.   According to another account in ABC News, Hasan also wrote to Awlaki, “I can’t wait to join you” in the afterlife. Again, we are far from the realm of legitimate research interests.   Now Awlaki has come forward to directly discuss his emails with Major Hasan. There is even more reason to worry about the contents of those emails. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Awlaki had the following Q&A session (translation provided by MEMRI):