A Pentagon review has found that supervisors and colleagues of Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is accused in a shooting spree that left 13 people dead at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in November, failed to confront obvious issues about his behavior and performance, The Associated Press reported.

The review, expected to be released on Friday, doesn’t examine whether Hasan’s alleged shooting spree was terrorism, a subject of a criminal inquiry. But it says as many as eight Army officers could face discipline for failing to report Hasan’s erratic behavior, which included an apparent fixation on religion.

Writes the AP:

Hasan was often late or absent, sometimes appeared disheveled and performed to minimum requirements. The pattern that was obvious to many around him yet not fully reflected where it counted in the Army’s bureaucratic system of evaluation and promotion, investigators found.

Hasan nonetheless earned some good reviews from patients and colleagues. His promotion to major was based on an incomplete personnel file, one official said, but also on performance markers that Hasan had met, if barely.

The Pentagon report also says the military should participate more fully in FBI-run Joint Terrorism Task Forces, including fully staffing teams of f investigators, analysts, linguists and others.

UPDATE: Defense Secretary Robert Gates addressed the report’s findings in a news conference this morning. Read the New York Times report here.

Former FBI Director William Webster (Getty Images)

FBI Director Robert Mueller III has asked former director William Webster to conduct an independent review of the bureau’s actions prior to the Fort Hood shootings, The Washington Post reports.

Webster, a retired federal judge and former CIA director, will also look at policies and procedures that guided the FBI’s efforts in the lead-up to the Nov. 5 shootings, which left 13 dead. He’ll focus on actions pursued by two Joint Terrorism Task Forces in San Diego and Washington that reviewed e-mail messages between accused shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan and radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, according to the Post.

Hasan contacted Aulaqi 18 times by e-mail, last coming in May 2009. Agents in California already monitoring the cleric sent two e-mails to the Washington task force, and an analyst there concluded they were part of Hasan’s research he was conducting about Muslim soldiers and mental heath issues, the Post reports.

In a statement, Mueller said that Webster was “uniquely qualified” for the task and that he would have “complete access and whatever resources necessary to completeâ€� it. Webster will coordinate his review with a similar inquiry already underway by the Defense Department, Mueller said.

“We must be sure that the systems we have in place give investigators the tools they need to carry out their responsibilities. At the same time, we must ensure constitutional protections and the confidence of the American public we serve,� Mueller said. “It is essential to determine whether there are improvements to our current practices or other authorities that could make us all safer in the future.

Congressional leaders praised Mueller’s decision.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said Webster was “exceptionally qualified” to conduct the review.

“The tragedy of Fort Hood is a solemn reminder to all Americans that we must remain vigilant against the threat of home-grown terrorism within our communities. Unfortunately, it appears that while intelligence officials were aware of concerns relating to Major Nidal Hasan, no one raised the red flag,” Smith said. “We must do everything in our power to protect the men and women of our Armed Services from individuals within their own ranks like Hasan. Pending the results of Judge Webster’s review, Congress stands ready to help our intelligence community ensure that this never happens again.â€�

UPDATED 5:01 p.m.

Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate panel today that the Justice Department is not prepared to work with Congress to probe the fatal Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Texas,  until federal law enforcement authorities have a better understanding of the crimes allegedly perpetrated by Maj. Nidal Hasan.

The FBI and the military are in the early stages of investigating the shootings at the Army base near Killeen, Texas. Holder, speaking at a wide-ranging Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing for the Justice Department, said federal authorities are still trying to sort out all of the facts in the case.

“Once we have a handle on that, we can work with the committee to propose ways to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again,” Holder said.

There are few reported details on what caused Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, allegedly to kill 13 people at the military base. But federal authorities have been investigating e-mail conversations between Hasan and Anwar al-Awalki, a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen. Holder said at the hearing that the e-mails are “disturbing.”

Members of Congress have pushed for immediate hearings on the massacre. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will hold a hearing tomorrow on the shootings, but no Obama administration officials are slated to testify.

Aides from the Justice and Defense departments have briefed senior members of Congress in closed door meetings, according to The Washington Post. Lieberman is also slated to meet with Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates this afternoon, according to Politico.

The Obama administration has made it clear to lawmakers that it doesn’t want Congress interfering with its probe of the shootings at this time, according to The Post.

“I want a successful prosecution, but I also want to know what happened,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said at today’s hearing.

Former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Tuesday during a radio interview with The Washington Times joked that Rep. James Moran (D-Va.) “ought to get professional help, perhaps from Maj. Nidal [Hasan],” the accused Fort Hood shooter, The Huffington Post reports.

Last week, Moran criticized opponents of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his Sept. 11, 2001, co-defendants in the Southern District of New York, Talking Points Memo reported. “They see this as an opportunity to demagogue,” Moran told TPM. “They will seize on any opportunity to do that, and that means they’ll even take a stand that’s un-American.” He added, “It’s un-American to hold anyone indefinitely without trial. It’s against our principles as a nation.”

During his interview, Mukasay was asked to respond to Moran’s comments. “I think he’s lost touch with reality. He ought to get professional help, perhaps from Maj. Nidal.” Last week, Mukasey slammedthe decision to try Mohammed in New York City.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation didn’t open a criminal investigation into accused Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan’s communications with a prominent al Qaeda-linked cleric in Yemen because investigators concluded they were protected “free speech,” Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff reports.

Instead, investigators concluded the communications “were consistent with a research project the psychiatrist was then conducting at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington on post-traumatic stress disorder,” the  New York Times reported.

The new information comes from a background briefing that three unnamed senior government investigators held for reporters Monday evening, according to Isikoff.

Radical cleric Anwar al-Awalki (left) was in communication with Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan before the shootings.

As calls in Congress for an investigation grew Monday, the investigators offered an explanation for how Hasan was allowed to remain in his military post, despite evidence the Army psychiatrist was in contact with an American-born cleric who has provided inspiration for jihad against the West.

Yet the briefing also shows how the government, eight years after the intelligence failures that led to the 9/11 attacks, still wrestles with how to coordinate and assess information vital to national security.

For example, information about Hasan’s recent purchase of a semi-automatic handgun with a magazine allowing him to fire many rounds without reloading wasn’t given to the FBI, the investigators said, according to Isikoff.

Hasan is accused of going on a shooting spree last week at the military base in Fort Hood, Tex., killing 13 people.

On Monday, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote the FBI, CIA, NSA and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to direct them to keep relevant documents for congressional review. And Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said his panel would investigate.

Communications believed to be emails between Hasan and the cleric, Anwar al-Awalki, were intercepted last year and this year. But “[t]here was no indication that Major Hasan was planning an imminent attack at all, or that he was directed to do anything,� a senior investigator told the Times.

The U.S. intercepted 10 to 20 emails from Hasan to Awalki. The cleric answered at least twice, The Washington Post reported. The correspondence was ”not a smoking gun, but communications that in hindsight raise some concern,” a terrorism expert with knowledge of the case told the Post.

Isikoff reported that the FBI wasn’t made aware that Hasan had purchased hand guns in August at a Killeen, Tex., gun shop named “Guns Galore.” Tight restrictions imposed by Congress on how information about weapons purchases can be shared with law enforcement authorities helped keep that crucial information from the FBI, the investigators said at the background briefing.

Still, it appears the FBI had already decided to close its inquiry into Hasan by the time of his gun purchase. And it’s clear that Hasan’s communications with Awalki didn’t elevate the matter sufficiently to remove him from military duty, despite abundant evidence in government files that the cleric promoted jihad.

Law enforcement authorities also suspected that Awalki was assisting al-Qaeda in plotting attacks from Yemen.

Transcripts and audiotapes about Awalki’s lectures about waging attacks on the West were found in the password protected computer files of suspects arrested in bombing plots in Europe and North America.

As former Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt wrote Monday in an article for the International Assessment and Strategy Center:

The 9/11 Commission and congressional investigators reported that Aulaqi was visited in early 2000 by a close associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh jailed for conspiracy [connected to] the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Soon after, however, in March 2000, the FBI shut down its counterterrorism investigation of Aulaqi, saying later it did not have sufficient evidence to bring a case. A month before it did so, hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, fresh from an al Qaeda planning meeting in Malaysia, arrived in the United States and turned up at Aulaqi’s mosque in San Diego.

Awalki was a spiritual leader to 9/11 hijakers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who slipped into the country after the CIA failed to alert the FBI, the congressional 9/11 commission report found. The cleric befriended them at a San Diego mosque in 2000, and he later counseled the future hijakers when he moved east to Falls Church, Va., where he was imam at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center.

Hasan and his family also worshiped at Dar al-Hijrah.

Awalki moved to Yemen after the 9/11 attacks. He was arrested in 2006 and released in 2007 under still unexplained circumstances. The cleric said in a taped interview posted on a British Web site after his release that he was interrogated by the FBI several times.

Awalki now runs his own English-language Web site. On Monday, he posted a blog item praising Hasan’s alleged shooting spree.  ”How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done? In fact the only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal,” Awalki wrote.

Update: The New York Times reports that a joint terrorism task force knew of 10 to 20 communications between Hasan and Awlaki. Read our update here.

The al Qaeda-linked former imam of a prominent Northern Virginia mosque today praised Fort Hood shooting suspect Maj. Nidal Hasan as a hero. ”How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done?” Anwar al-Awlaki wrote in a posting on his personal blog.

Awlaki is the American-born former spiritual leader of the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., which has long been under law enforcement scrutiny for suspected ties to radical Islam. Aulaqi counseled two of the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers in the months before they carried out the attacks on New York and Washington. He later moved to Yemen, where he conducted on-line propaganda campaigns on al-Qaeda’s behalf, U.S. authorities have said. The U.S. also suspects Aulaqi helped plot al-Qaeda attacks, according to this February 2008 article in The Washington Post.

The Washington Post and The Associated Press reported last night that federal investigators are examining links between Hasan and Awlaki, who was the imam at Dar al-Hijrah in 2001, a time when Hasan and his family attended the mosque. The funeral of Hasan’s mother, Hanan, was held at the mosque on May 31 2001.

Former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Sunday called the attacks at Fort Hood “the worst terrorist act carried out on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.” He made the remarks in an address to military families at an early Veterans Day ceremony in central Pennsylvania, according to a local newspaper.

Awlaki wrote on his blog:

“Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people,” wrote al-Aulaqi, who now lives in Yemen since leaving the U.S. in 2002. “This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier.”

Full blog post reprinted below:

Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier. The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges.

Nidal opened fire on soldiers who were on their way to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done? In fact the only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.

The heroic act of brother Nidal also shows the dilemma of the Muslim American community. Increasingly they are being cornered into taking stances that would either make them betray Islam or betray their nation. Many amongst them are choosing the former. The Muslim organizations in America came out in a pitiful chorus condemning Nidal’s operation.

The fact that fighting against the US army is an Islamic duty today cannot be disputed. No scholar with a grain of Islamic knowledge can defy the clear cut proofs that Muslims today have the right -rather the duty- to fight against American tyranny. Nidal has killed soldiers who were about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to kill Muslims. The American Muslims who condemned his actions have committed treason against the Muslim Ummah and have fallen into hypocrisy.

Allah(swt) says: Give tidings to the hypocrites that there is for them a painful punishment –
Those who take disbelievers as allies instead of the believers. Do they seek with them honor [through power]? But indeed, honor belongs to Allah entirely. (al-Nisa 136-137)

The inconsistency of being a Muslim today and living in America and the West in general reveals the wisdom behind the opinions that call for migration from the West. It is becoming more and more difficult to hold on to Islam in an environment that is becoming more hostile towards Muslims.

May Allah grant our brother Nidal patience, perseverance and steadfastness and we ask Allah to accept from him his great heroic act. Ameen