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Major Nidal Hasan Photo: Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

The Army and FBI versions of Major Nidal Hasan’s history do not add up. When American intelligence notified the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington last December that the major was sending e-mail questions to a radical cleric in Yemen, the Defense Department investigator allegedly pulled Hasan’s personnel file, read the e-mails and decided nothing was wrong. The cleric, Anwar-al-Awlaki, had counseled three of the 9/11 hijackers during the same time frame that Hasan had attended his mosque in Falls Church, VA. Awlaki has remained a target of American surveillance continuously since it let him leave the country in 2002. Now preaching hate in the friendly confines of Yemen, Awlaki’s activities are known to U.S. intelligence in painful detail.

Connecting the dots from the e-mails, to Hasan’s Web postings, to his Power Point presentation and other comments said to colleagues at Walter Reed Army Hospital about possible “adverse events” if Muslim soldiers were forced to fight other Muslims was not hard. Journalists, without wiretaps or subpoenas, did it in a week.

The Army and FBI are pointing blame at each other. They claim they notified each other of anything significant. But no one has explained exactly why the Army promoted Hasan from captian to major not long before he was transferred to Fort Hood, Texas, where he killed 13 people, beyond they were short of staff. No one is comparing Hasan’s transfer and pending deployment to a war zone to the assignment of other psychiatrists at Walter Reed. Why was such an obvious problem officer still in the Army, much less promoted? Was this just another series of huge government screw ups resulting in the deaths of innocent American that could have been prevented?

Ugly hints to the real answers are emerging. We now know that Hasan at some point was being tracked by the Defense Intelligence Agency, CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and Army Intelligence. Routine investigations because of heritage, religion or odd behavior do not justify this kind of intelligence coverage. This surveillance is what the intelligence services do to support a full, on-going intelligence operation.

Were Hasan and his contacts seen as a way into Al Qaeda? If the answer is yes, was Hasan selected as unwitting bait to be dangled in front of potential Al Qaeda operatives? Was the operation thought more important than doubts about Hasan’s stability and loyalty? Was this troubled man so tempting a door into Al Qaeda that Army Intelligence or an affiliated service decided to walk through it? The worst answer is that, like 9/11, once again innocent Americans died because intelligence agencies believed that their operations were more important than American lives.

The Army is still trying to atone for the most embarrassing Al Qaeda recruitment in history.  At Fort Bragg, they still talk about how Osama bin Laden’s top security man, Ali Mohamed, joined the Special Forces and was even given leave to fight with bin Laden in Afghanistan before 9/11.

One of Mohamed’s jobs for bin Laden was to plan his escape route from Afghanistan. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, FBI special agent Jack Cloonan asked the Army to send a team to debrief Mohamed, by then in federal custody. Mohamed had agreed to show them all the escape routes he had arranged for bin Laden. The Army delayed the debriefing. Cloonan described the missed opportunity with Mohamed “as a tragedy on top of the bigger tragedy.”

Since the beginning of the Cold War, Army Intelligence routinely scours the records of soldiers for backgrounds that show intelligence promise. They run personnel files through computers that identify soldiers with connections. During the Cold War they looked for soldiers with families behind the Iron or Bamboo Curtain, in places like former Soviet bloc countries or North Korea or China. These operations were run out of Army Intelligence at Fort Meade, Maryland. Often they were a complete disaster and ended in tragedy.

In our book Widows: Four Spies and the Wives They Left Behind, we told the story of an operation codenamed GRAHIC IMAGE. Unimaginable infighting among the FBI, CIA and Army left the country’s most valuable agent, Ralph Sigler, vulnerable. He was murdered at a motel near Fort Meade under horrifying circumstances.

Ralph Sigler

Sigler became GRAPHIC IMAGE because his mother lived behind the Iron Curtain. The Army’s computer spit out Sigler’s name as someone who would be a good dangle or bait that the Soviets would find tempting and bite on for recruitment as a Soviet agent, and they did. His operations during the ’60s and ’70s are legendary. He was the best intelligence operative the Army ever had. When he became eligible for Army retirement, every spy agency tried to recruit him to work for them. Those secret interviews and recruitment overtures resulted in Sigler failing an Army polygraph test. When asked if he had ever spoken about his spy career, the polygraph showed deception. Sigler was ordered from Fort Bliss, his home base in El Paso, Texas, where he ran operations against the Russians in Mexico, to Fort Meade for further questioning. Unfortunately, Sigler’s Gold Team handlers did not know there was a Soviet mole on their staff. That mole gave up Sigler’s and other agents’ identities to the Russians. The Army found Sigler dead in his Holiday Inn room, not far from Fort Meade, electrocuted after being brutally tortured.

Sigler’s widow - at the dress store where she worked in El Paso - got a desperate phone call from her husband just before he died. His last words to her were: “I am dying, sue the Army.” The Army told Mrs. Sigler and the media that Ralph had committed suicide. Elisa Sigler did not believe them.

Is the Army capable of covering up an embarrassing episode or making up stories to burnish its image? Based on my reporting, the military is far more capable than the CIA. We have seen example after example during the ongoing wars, especially the fictional story of Private Jessica Lynch that the Army circulated in 2003 and the now infamous story of Pat Tillman’s friendly fire death in Afghanistan.

The answer to the question “was Major Hasan seen as a potential road into the Al Qaeda network by intelligence officers so hopeful of a breakthrough that Hasan’s beliefs and mental state were overlooked” might never be known.

Mrs. Sigler followed her husband’s instructions; she sued the Army. She spent every dime she had trying to find out what had happened to him. It made her crazy. The Army won in court using laws that protect it against civil actions. Then, one day, the Army delivered a package to her home in El Paso. In it was the Legion of Merit, the Army’s highest award. In the end, Mrs. Signer never got what she desperately sought: an apology and explanation from the Army. She died last year.

President Obama, not happy about the inconsistencies in the FBI and Army versions of the Hasan story, has asked for a full accounting. He has asked Congress to wait until his internal investigation is done.  We can only hope the President keeps up the pressure.

The stakes are huge.

Ilse Sigler Ralph Sigler's wdiow Photo: Unsolved Mysteries

The question is not just the possibility of an inconceivably stupid intelligence operation. The questions are: Was the Hasan case something more? Does Al Qaeda have recruits inside the U.S. military? Did our intelligence officials conclude it could track suspected recruits and keep them in the military in the hopes of getting inside Al Qaeda?  It is imperative we get real answers, not only to protect our military, but to exonerate patriotic American Muslims who serve in our military and who have been tarred by Major Hasan’s murderous rampage.

The President is requesting a serious counterintelligence investigation. He is right to demand it. In the past our intelligence agencies have buried any notion of foreign penetrations. For decades the CIA and military claimed they had never been penetrated.  As we now know, all the denials were a series of lies.

We cannot allow another cover up in the Hasan case.