USA Today
WASHINGTON — The FBI should have launched a deeper investigation into a U.S. Army psychiatrist’s correspondence with a known terror leader before Army Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire on his colleagues in 2009, killing 12 servicemembers and wounding 42 others at Fort Hood in Texas, a review of FBI actions concluded Thursday.
The review, conducted by former FBI director William Webster, however found that FBI mistakes were not intentional and did not reflect a “disregard of duties.” Webster’s review centered on 18 e-mail communications, 16 of them written by Hasan to Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American cleric who had sought refuge in Yemen.
At the time, the FBI concluded that the contents of the e-mails did not suggest that Hasan represented a terror threat.
The “shootings are a grim reminder that violent radicalization is a persistent threat to the United States and its citizens and residents,” Webster concluded.
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