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WASHINGTON (ArmyTimes/AP) — Intelligence agencies intercepted communications last year and this year between the military psychiatrist accused of shooting to death 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., and a radical cleric in Yemen known for his incendiary anti-American teachings.
Major Hasan’s 10 to 20 messages to Anwar al-Awlaki, once a spiritual leader at a mosque in suburban Virginia where Major Hasan worshiped, indicate that the troubled military psychiatrist came to the attention of the authorities long before last Thursday’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood, but that the authorities left him in his post.
Counterterrorism and military officials said Monday night that the communications, first intercepted last December as part of an unrelated investigation, were consistent with a research project the psychiatrist was then conducting at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington on post-traumatic stress disorder.
WASHINGTON (NT Times) — The Homeland Security Department’s intelligence division became concerned about Awlaki late last year when he published a new group of violent lectures targeting U.S. audiences, according to a Jan. 22, 2009 intelligence note.
On Dec. 23, 2008, Awlaki, on his Web site, encouraged Muslims across the world to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. Awlaki also used these postings to declare his support for the Somali terrorist group, al-Shabaab, according to the Homeland Security intelligence note, obtained by The Associated Press.
In December of last year, Customs officials intercepted a flash drive of Awlaki’s lectures that his wife sent from Yemen to an Islamic publishing house in Denver, the intelligence note said.
January 5, 2009 – Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, the famous da’i who originated from the USA harshly condemned the brutal Israeli strikes on the Gaza strip, and at the same time he criticized the leaders of the Arab nations and called them “impotent” for their incapability of taking any assertive action on the Zionist regime for their brutality towards the Palestinian citizens, which had taken place for decades. In his personal blog entitled “The Meaning of Gaza”, Sheikh al-Awlaki gave three important points from his thoughts about what have been happening and what is currently happening.
First, al-Awlaki stated that the occurrence in Gaza showed that the enemies of Islam (Zionist Israel) have succeeded in giving a hard slap on the face of the Islamic ummah. He assessed that the responses received from the Islamic ummah for the brutality of the Zionist Israel were not enough and their directions were unclear. In this matter, Awlaki compared it with what happened during the time of Rasulullah SAW, the moment a Muslimah was attacked by the Jews. Rasulullah SAW declared war towards the Jews.
- “Today in Gaza, though the number of casualties amongst the Palestinian Muslims had reached by their hundreds, we only saw demonstrations and criticisms, and the Arab leaders only held a high level meetings which are useless. Those were the only actions and therefore it has become our responsibility to heighten the awareness of the masses around us regarding the events.” Awlaki wrote.
The Shuhada Of Palestine- Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki
Israeli Ambassador Meridor: “We have no grand political scheme”
(FP) Jan. 6, 2009 – I spent the morning at a lecture organized by GWU’s outstanding Homeland Security Policy Institute’s Ambassador’s Roundtable Series featuring Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Sallai Meridor. It was a profoundly dismaying experience. Because if Ambassador Meridor is taken at his word, then Israel has no strategy in Gaza.
Asked three times by audience members, Meridor simply could not offer any plausible explanation as to how its military campaign in Gaza would achieve its stated goals. Indeed, he at times seemed to offer this absence of strategy as a virtue, as evidence that the war had been forced upon Israel rather than chosen: “we have no grand political scheme… we were forced to defend ourselves to provide better security, period.” With current estimates of 550 Palestinians dead and 2500 wounded, and the region in turmoil, the absence of strategy is not a virtue.
Meridor’s narrative is assuredly familiar to anyone who follows the op-ed pages. He argued repeatedly that “this was not a matter of choice, not something we picked or were hoping for”, but rather a war launched by Hamas to which Israel was forced to respond.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
