E-mails between a U.S. Army officer and a radical Muslim cleric did not worry anti-terrorism investigators, they said, because nothing in the correspondence presaged violence. But elsewhere on the Internet, the imam was urging people to kill soldiers and others.

After accused Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan started e-mailing in December, the cleric increased the pace of his fundamentalist rhetoric on the Web, a Dallas Morning News investigation found.

"I pray that Allah destroys America and all its allies," Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric with suspected ties to al-Qaeda, wrote in a February blog entry.

The cleric and the Army major are believed to have met at least eight years ago, when al-Awlaki preached at a northern Virginia mosque attended by Hasan's family. Both were born in the United States to prosperous Middle Eastern parents nearly 40 years ago; both earned advanced degrees at American universities.

Then they went seemingly separate ways. Hasan focused on becoming an Army psychiatrist, while al-Awlaki left the U.S. after the FBI questioned him about ties to the 9/11 hijackers.

The bilingual imam ended up imprisoned in his parents' native Yemen, accused of supporting terrorists there. He emerged nearly two years ago, more radical than ever. He set up a Web site that gave him an even broader reach and included an e-mail link so readers could contact him.

For those who didn't speak Arabic, such as Hasan, al-Awlaki made pronouncements in English: "We will implement the rule of Allah on Earth by the tip of the sword whether the masses like it or not."

In the months leading up to Nov. 5 Fort Hood massacre, the two men's paths began to intersect again.

FBI officials acknowledged that a terrorism task force began intercepting Hasan's e-mails with al-Awlaki starting in December. The information was not flagged to the attention of the Army, which had its own concerns about Hasan's performance as a psychiatrist.

Instead, investigators determined there was no need to probe further because Hasan's questions to al-Awlaki were consistent with his psychiatric research, there was no indication he was planning violence, and he was not "directed to do anything," officials said.

But the Muslim cleric didn't need to give specific direction by e-mail. His exhortations about killing – soldiers, innocent women and children, blasphemers, even oneself – were readily available until his online site went dead a few days after the Fort Hood shootings. The News found al-Awlaki's speeches and blogs by combing through Web archives and reviewing online recordings and transcripts.

Al-Awlaki blogged on subjects that touched on the very core of the major's identity: military membership; U.S. wars in Muslim countries; the legitimacy of suicide attacks; Israel's war with Palestinians in Gaza, an occupied territory near Hasan's parents' homeland.

In a Dec. 11 posting, for example, al-Awlaki condemned the Muslim who seeks a religious decree "that would allow him to serve in the armies of the disbelievers and fight against his brothers." Shortly after, according to the FBI timeline, Hasan sent his first e-mail to al-Awlaki.

In another blog posting, on July 14, al-Awlaki railed against armies of Muslim countries that assist the U.S. military, saying, "the blame should be placed on the soldier who is willing to follow orders ... who sells his religion for a few dollars." On Aug. 1, Hasan purchased a handgun and laser sight at a Killeen gun store.

The Department of Homeland Security's chief intelligence officer warned, two months before Hasan first contacted al-Awlaki, that the imam was an "example of al-Qaeda reach" into the United States.

Now working outside government, Charles E. Allen sees no legitimate reason for Hasan's e-mails.

"I find it difficult to understand why an Army major would be in repeated contact with an Islamic extremist like Anwar al-Awlaki, who preaches a hateful ideology directed at inciting violence against the United States and the West," Allen told The News. "It is hard to see how repeated contact would in any legitimate way further his research as a psychiatrist."

But Allen stopped short of criticizing the FBI, saying that it is "extraordinarily stretched in working counterterrorism cases."

Former CIA officer Bruce Riedel, who was a senior adviser to three presidents on Middle East and South Asian issues, is less forgiving.

"E-mailing a known al-Qaeda sympathizer should have set off alarm bells," said Riedel, who also left government recently. "Even if he was exchanging recipes, the bureau should have put out an alert."

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