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A court martial at Fort Hood charged Major Nidal Hasan with 13 counts of capital murder. "He will not face a terrorism charge because the military justice system does not have one," NBC's Pete Williams explained. There are two strands of speculation about Hasan's mindset leading up to the shooting: radically militant or mentally unstable? CBS' Don Teague emphasized the former reporting that Hasan's colleagues found his Islamic views so extreme that "some believed he could be delusional but they worried taking action against him might be considered discrimination." ABC's Brian Ross focused on Hasan's ideology instead, citing "reports on the many contacts Hasan allegedly made with people who have urged attacks on the United States."
ABC's Ross mentioned only one of these "people" by name. He profiled Hasan's exiled onetime imam Anwar al-Awkali. The cleric accuses the FBI of torturing him during an 18-month imprisonment in Yemen. Upon his release, Ross reported that the imam switched from being "a strict but mainstream Islamic preacher" to urging "attacks on the United States" in online lectures. Ross asserted that al-Awlaki "is considered," he did not say by whom, to be "an important al-Qaeda recruiter." A pair of foiled conspiracies--against soldiers at Fort Dix and against the Canadian parliament in Ottawa--used al-Awkali's video sermons as inspiration, Ross pointed out.
Ross did not report that Major Hasan watched the same sermons, only that he corresponded with al-Awlaki by e-mail. Ross did zero in on Hasan's personal business cards, which were found in his apartment. Instead of identifying himself as a member of the US military, the cards designated Hasan as SoA. "al-Awlaki addresses his followers as Soldiers of Allah," Ross warned, which makes Nasan himself "a Soldier of Allah." NBC's Williams saw no such ominous connection. He told us that under Hasan's name the card had "the abbreviation SoA (SWT), standing for Servant of Allah (His Name be Praised), a sign of Hasan's fervent religious beliefs."
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