FBI given gunman's name six months ago: report

The US Army major who killed 13 people in a shooting spree at America's biggest military base had come to the attention of the FBI six months earlier over possible links to extremist comments posted on the internet. Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a devout Muslim who was trying to buy his way out of the Army, was suspected of being the author of postings which compared suicide bombers to heroic soldiers who throw themselves onto grenades to save others.
It also emerged that Hasan, 39, had described the US Army as "the aggressor" in Iraq and Afghanistan and was resisting a planned deployment to Afghanistan, raising questions over whether the military missed warning signs which might have prevented the massacre. Witnesses said Hasan shouted "Allahu akbar", Arabic for God is great, as he opened fire – a phrase commonly used by Islamic militant suicide bombers – though investigators said there was no evidence he had been recruited by al-Qaeda or other Islamic extremist organisations.
Hasan – who was initially thought to have been killed – is being kept alive on a ventilator after being shot four times by a civilian policewoman who was the first officer on the scene of the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. Officer Kimberley Munley, whose actions were described as "amazing and aggressive", is one of 30 survivors who were shot by Hasan, of whom 28 remain in hospital.
Six months ago the FBI was alerted to postings by a blogger called Nidal Hasan on the Scribd website. The author wrote about a US soldier who had died smothering a grenade blast, saying: "Scholars have paralled (sic) this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers.
"If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory."
Law enforcement sources said that before the shooting no formal investigation had been launched into the internet postings and Hasan had not been confirmed as the author, but his apartment in Killeen, Texas, has now been searched and his computer seized. "This is going to be a long and convoluted and messy investigation," the source said.