First came questions about whether anyone missed emotional signals that suspected Fort Hood shooter, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was close to cracking. Now U.S. media say Congress wants to know if he was also veering toward Islamist militancy.

A preliminary review of Hasan’s computer has revealed no evidence of any connection to terror groups or conspirators, according to a report by CBS News.

But lawmakers have asked the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to preserve documents on Hasan. That’s according to ABC News, which says the spooks believe he may have been trying to contact U.S.-born imam Anwar al Awlaki, who is based in Yemen and supports holy war against the West.

It’s not clear whether the U.S. military knew one of its officers was under intelligence surveillance, ABC said.

U.S. law enforcement and military investigators are also looking into associations between Hasan and the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, in early 2001, about the same time Awlaki and two of the Sept. 11 hijackers were there, the Los Angeles Times reported.  The mosque is one of the biggest in the United States and thousands of people go there for prayer services and other events.

Witnesses at Fort Hood told investigators that Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is Greatest”  — before killing 13 people and wounding another 30 last week. The 39-year-old psychiatrist was shot four times by police and remains hospitalized.

It is unclear what motivated Hasan and the Army’s chief of staff, General George Casey, is afraid the shooting spree could cause a backlash against Muslims in the military.

But Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who is a hard-liner on security issues, sees the Fort Hood melee as a possible act of terrorism.

“We don’t know enough to say now. But there are very, very strong warning signs here that Dr. Hasan had become an Islamist extremist and, therefore, that this was a terrorist act,” Lieberman told Fox News over the weekend.

Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, wants the Pentagon to launch an independent probe of whether defense officials missed early signs of stress and statements that might have expressed Islamist sentiment.

Photo Credits: Reuters/Ho New (Hasan); Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi (Fort Hood); Reuters/Vivek Prakash (Lieberman)

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the Obama administration's plans to bring terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States -- countering critics who questioned whether it would create security risks.

"There's no question in my mind that those detainees who would be moved to the United States would be held in such a fashion that they would not be any threat to public safety, and I say that as a former prosecutor," Napolitano said in an interview during the Reuters Washington Summit. She served as a U.S. attorney in Arizona during the Clinton administration.

President Barack Obama has pledged to close the controversial prison by Jan. 22, 2010, including bringing some of the terrorism suspects to U.S. soil for trial in military commissions or U.S. criminal courts. There have been questions and doubts about whether his goal can be achieved because of political, legal and logistical complications.

Napolitano held out hope that the administration could meet the fast-approaching deadline: "I would hope so." She declined to comment on the likely location of where the detainees could be held in the United States.

But Republicans have criticized the idea of bringing the terrorism suspects to U.S. soil, arguing that they are not entitled access to the criminal court system and could pose threats to the communities where they may be imprisoned.

Her remarks came as former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey issued a stinging condemnation of the Obama administration plan, writing in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that civilian courts were not the right place to try the terrorism suspects and could make communities, jurors and courts targets.

"Based on my experience trying such cases, and what I saw as attorney general, they aren't. That is not to say that civilian courts cannot ever handle terrorist prosecutions, but rather that their role in a war on terror—to use an unfashionably harsh phrase—should be, as the term 'war' would suggest, a supporting and not a principal role," he wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

Mukasey served as a federal prosecutor in the 1970s and then as a federal judge in New York from 1988 to 2006, presiding over terrorism cases that included the trial of those who plotted to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. He was attorney general under former President George W. Bush.

While Mukasey also argued in his op-ed that imprisoning terrorism suspects in the United States could expose others in the prison to their beliefs, many of the individuals convicted like Zacarias Moussaoui are kept in maximum security facilities isolated from the general population.

He also warned that U.S. criminal court procedures would risk revealing too much sensitive information and that the cases against Guantanamo detainees were not built for civilian court proceedings. Many of the hearings in U.S. District Court for petitions by prisoners seeking their release from Guantanamo have been held in closed session to protect classified information.

So do you believe U.S. criminal courts can handle the terrorism cases and would communities become targets or should terrorism suspects from Guantanamo only be tried in military commissions?

For more news from the Reuters Washington Summit, click here.

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Napolitano speaks to the Reuters Washington Summit)

It boggles the mind.

Why would the Coast Guard decide to conduct a training exercise on the Potomac River, a stone’s throw away from the Pentagon, where the president of the United States and others attended a memorial event, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks???

The media, always on hyper-alert for anything terrorism related on the anniversary of Sept. 11, ran with reports of shots fired on the Potomac.

That unleashed never-far-from-the-surface fears of terrorism amid memories of that day 8 years ago when a hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and another into a field in Pennsylvania — shattering the country’s sense of security.

It turns out the Coast Guard was conducting a training exercise. “Somebody said ‘bang bang’ on the radio” and no shots were fired, Coast Guard Vice Admiral John Currier said, calling it a regular training exercise.

But still, what were they thinking?

The Coast Guard’s first line of defense over the incident was: “The best way that we in the Coast Guard can remember Sept. 11 and our security obligations to the nation is to be always ready and this requires constant training and exercise.”

Did they learn nothing from the photo op Air Force flyover on Manhattan that scared a city permanently scarred from the Sept. 11 attacks all over again?

Military Families United put out a statement calling the exercise “the height of irresponsibility” and calling for the organizer to be held accountable for commissioning the exercise “at the same time and less than a mile away from where the families of the 9/11 victims gathered to mourn.”

The statement goes on to say: “Their actions brought back all of the feelings for victims of 9/11 that they originally experienced 8 years ago today.”

Did someone not look at the calendar?

Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama lays wreath at Pentagon on Sept. 11 anniversary)

The nation’s first Homeland Security secretary is airing some dirty laundry from the Bush administration: He says he was pushed to raise the terror alert level on the eve of the 2004 presidential election.

The level was never raised but Tom Ridge reveals how threats of terrorism were used to influence voters in his upcoming book ”The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege … and How We Can Be Safe Again”.

According to the promotion material released by the book’s publisher, Ridge said the DHS was pressured to connect homeland security to the international “war on terror”. He also said he effectively thwarted a plan to raise the alert level before the 2004 election, which Bush won.

Several other Bush administration officials disagree with Ridge’s characterization. Former Homeland Security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend called it “way off base”. She said there was a debate about raising the alert level at that time but politics were never discussed at that meeting.

Politico quotes former White House chief of staff Andy Card saying the Bush administration was very disciplined in its efforts to make sure politics did not influence national security decisions.

So were politics involved? What do you think?

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Mike Segar (Ridge addresses 2008 Republican National Convention)

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama met with families of victims of the September 11 and USS Cole attacks to defend his decision to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

Obama told about 40 family members in an at-times emotional discussion on Friday that his goal was to keep the country safe.

The prison for terrorism suspects is widely seen as a stain on the United States’ human rights record. Obama took action in his first week in office, ordering an end to controversial trials by military tribunals there.

“He explained why he believes that closing Guantanamo will make our nation safer and help ensure that those who are guilty receive swift and certain justice within a legal framework that is durable, and that helps America fight terrorism more effectively around the world,” a White House statement said.

D. Hamilton Peterson, whose father and stepmother, Donald and Jean Peterson, died on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001, said he opposed the prison’s closure but appreciated the president’s candor.

“I was impressed with his sincerity and his willingness to hear from people who are pro-Guantanamo,” he told Reuters by telephone. He said Obama kept an open mind about the issue.

What do you think? Is the president doing the right thing by seeking to close the prison? Will it have positive or negative consequences for U.S. national security?

Reuters photos by Joshua Roberts (parents of a USS Cole victim in Arlington National Cemetery) and Enrique Castro Mendivil (a protest in Lima, Peru against the Guantanamo prison)

Officials from the Bush and Obama administrations crossed paths at the White House Tuesday to participate in a homeland security exercise.

The scary hypothetical scenario was how the federal government should respond to a terrorist attack using improvised explosive devices on the transportation infrastructure and other economic targets in major U.S. cities.

They also looked at responses to other disasters like pandemic flu and hurricanes during briefings, including time spent in the White House basement “Situation Room” where  national security crises are handled.

“As Republicans and Democrats, we disagree on a lot of policy issues, but we agree completely that we want this new team to be as successful as they possibly can be, especially in the areas of national and homeland security,” Josh Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff , said before the exercise began.  “And this morning’s activities, I think, will be an important contributor to that. ”

Both sides were definitely playing nice.

“I’ve now been over with Josh one way or another four separate times.  I’m going miss you,” Rahm Emanuel, who will be Obama’s chief of staff, said standing next to Bolten before reporters at the White House.

Reporters were assured that the security drill did not involve any kind of competition between the Bush and Obama teams. 

And so it goes in the post-election era, where each side is patting the other on the back for a smooth transition.

For more Reuters political news, please click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Emanuel, left, and Bolten outside the White House Tuesday)

CHICAGO - Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign is attacking rival Barack Obama for saying that if al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is caught, the United States should avoid making him into a martyr.
    
Allies to McCain have suggested the comment shows the Democratic candidate opposes the death penalty for bin Laden — an interpretation the Obama campaign says is false.
    
The Illinois senator was asked on Wednesday how he would proceed if bin Laden were captured. He said he was not sure if bin Laden would be caught alive because of shoot-to-kill orders.
 
Concerning how to try the al Qaeda leader, Obama said it was important “to do it in a way that allows the entire world to understand the murderous acts that he’s engaged in and not to make him into a martyr and to be sure that the United States government is abiding by the basic conventions that would strengthen our hand in the broader battle against terrorism.”
    
McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann seized on the word martyr.
 
“Now, the last time I checked the definition of martyr, it’s someone who dies for a cause or is killed for a cause and it seems to be that Sen. Obama is ruling out capital punishment for Osama bin Laden were he to be captured alive under U.S. jurisdiction,” he said.
 
The Obama campaign said that interpretation was wrong and noted Obama is on record saying he believed bin Laden “would qualify for the death penalty.”
    
When he spoke about bin Laden on Wednesday, Obama cited the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals after World War II as an example of how the United States “advanced a set of universal principles” in bringing to justice people who committed heinous acts.
    
After the Nuremberg proceedings, 10 top Nazi figures were hanged following the main trials and several dozen lower-lever figures were hanged following other trials.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage: http:www.reuters.com/globalcoverage/2008candidates

Photo credit: Reuters Afghanistan stringer (Bin Laden speaks at news conference in Afghanistan in 1998)