EDITORIAL: The warning signs that noone noticed

The suspect in the Fort Hood shootings, it turns out, exhibited telltale warning signs that something was amiss, but none of them seemed alarming enough to prompt authorities to act. The killings at the
Texas base should lower that threshold.

According to published accounts, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, 39, was a quiet loner who was once counseled for his difficulty in getting along with patients. He had no apparent relations with
women even though he had told the imam of his mosque that he wanted to get married.

A year and a half ago, the Washington Post reported, instead of giving a medical presentation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Hasan lectured — complete with slides — his audience of
physicians “on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter” from its own Muslim soldiers.

He warned of “adverse events” if the military didn’t allow Muslims to leave the service. “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly
engaged against fellow Muslims,” the Post quoted him as saying.

Hasan had lobbied strenuously against being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and wanted out of the military, but the Army, having invested heavily in his medical education and having great need of his
specialty, post-traumatic stress, refused to let him go.

At least six months ago, the authorities came across troubling posts on the Internet about suicide bombings that appeared to have originated with Hasan.

And news accounts say U.S. intelligence intercepted 10 to 20 e-mails of Hasan’s to Anwar al-Awlaki, the former imam of his mosque in the Washington suburbs who decamped to Yemen and set up
shop as a radical Islamic cleric. In a recent posting, the imam said the only way a good Muslim could justify serving in the U.S. military is if he planned to do what Hasan supposedly did.

However, the authorities were satisfied that Hasan’s e-mails, which apparently received only two replies, were consistent with research he was conducting, although Awlaki, who was an imam at mosques
frequented by three of the 9/11 hijackers, seems like a curious resource.

At least one congressional committee plans to hold hearings on whether the military and civilian intelligence agencies had enough information to connect the dots on Hasan. But for all our elaborate
spyware, we are still unable to peer into the dark recesses of the human heart.

— Scripps Howard News Service