Shooter had his sights set on soldiers, sources say

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in the Fort Hood shooting rampage, appears to have targeted soldiers and deliberately passed over civilians as he fired more than 100 rounds, according to U.S. Rep. John Carter and a source close to the investigation.

Carter, whose district includes Fort Hood, told the American-Statesman on Wednesday that Hasan shot one soldier three times until he fell, then shot the soldier three more times when it was apparent he was still alive. Carter said Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, trained his handguns on civilians in the Soldier Readiness Processing Center but would shake his head and move on.

"He skipped civilians," Carter said. "The consensus is that any civilians hit were hit by accident or because they were identified as mental-health workers."

Carter, a Republican from Round Rock, said his knowledge is based on discussions with the soldier who was shot six times, with eyewitnesses who were not injured, and with people who had spoken to others wounded by Hasan, 39.

"Everything is circumstantial at this point ... but it is credible to me," said Carter, a former Williamson County district judge.

All but one of the 13 people killed were soldiers. The military has not released information on the more than two dozen injured.

When asked last week, Chris Grey, a spokesman for the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, would neither confirm nor deny the reports that Hasan was targeting troops and trying to avoid civilians. But a source close to the investigation also said Hasan appears to have done just that.

The source, who has intimate knowledge of the investigation, declined to be named because the government has not granted the source authorization to speak publicly.

Carter said the targeted shootings suggest that Hasan was trying to undermine the U.S. military effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Hasan reportedly compared to a war against Islam, and that he was not someone who simply cracked under the strain of a pending deployment and of counseling troops suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The assessment was shared by U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul of Austin.

Both congressmen said eyewitnesses told them that Hasan shouted "Allahu akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great," sometimes used as a battle cry by Islamic extremists.

McCaul, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee, said Wednesday that investigators didn't know whether Hasan was involved in organized terrorist activities or was acting alone.

"That's the big question that needs to be answered now," McCaul said. "Who was he in contact with, and did they contribute to his radicalization?"

McCaul and Carter said they are pressing for a congressional investigation. McCaul said Congress needs to determine if relevant information from other branches of the government was not shared with Fort Hood officials.

Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that authorities were looking into whether warning signs were missed before the shootings. The Justice Department is particularly looking at the way an FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force handled an inquiry into Hasan's correspondence this year with a Muslim cleric who has encouraged Muslims around the world to kill U.S. troops in Iraq.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is convening Congress' first post-attack public hearing today in hopes of "correcting the system so that our government can provide the best homeland security possible for the American people," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the 17-member panel.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the panel's top Republican, said the inquiry will examine whether there were "inexcusable gaps and communications failures" at Fort Hood or the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where Hasan worked previously, "that might have allowed us to prevent the attack."

The committee's public inquiry comes amid a variety of quickly assembled investigations by the White House, Justice Department, Pentagon and Army. Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of murder and could face the death penalty at a military court-martial.

Hasan is hospitalized in stable but guarded condition in the intensive care unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, his lawyer, John Galligan, said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to announce today a unified review of the circumstances surrounding the shootings and will call for a quick short-term report, followed by a longer, more extensive study, an administration official said.

Components of the wide-ranging investigation could include self-examinations by the Army and the military's medical community.