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In June 2007 the then captain Hasan gave a PowerPoint presentation to a room full of medical colleagues as part of his residency. His topic was not medical, however; it was religious: The Koranic [sic] World View as It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military.

The presentation aimed to provide tools for military officers to “identify Muslim soldiers that may be having religious conflicts with the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Hasan could hardly have offered a better diagnostic tool than the presentation itself.

Much of the PowerPoint was pure proselytization—slide after slide of quotes from the Koran, along with basic concepts and generalizations about Islam. But it didn’t take long for Hasan to show where his real interests lay. One slide defined an “Islamist” as one who “advocates rule by Gods [sic] law.” Jihad was “a Muslim holy war or spiritual struggle against infidels.” He derided American Muslim clerics’ fatwas on America’s wars as “vague and ambiguous” and suggested that they were made “under duress.”

Muslims who killed other Muslims were condemned to hell by the Koran, Hasan continued. This conflict could lead to “adverse events,” such as the 2003 murder of two U.S. soldiers by Sergeant Hasan Akbar, who threw a grenade into three tents at a base in Kuwait. Hasan delved into complex justifications for defensive jihad, at times grasping for the language of Islamic scholarship.

He went further still, outlining arguments for offensive jihad—the concept that Muslims are obligated to take political control of the world—and quoting the notorious jihadist slogan, “We love death more than you love life.”

Under “Conclusions,” Hasan laid out a view of Islam that should have raised red flags among his fellow officers. “Muslims may be seen as moderate (compromising), but God is not,” the slide read. “Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by force, is condoned by the [sic] Islam.” Finally, “Muslim Soldiers should not serve in any capacity that renders them at risk to hurting/killing believers unjustly.”37

Hasan’s colleagues were stunned, but no action was taken to evaluate the captain’s suitability for the military. Some chalked the speech up to religious zeal. Others noted that complaining about a fellow soldier’s religious views was a good way to end the complainer’s career. Ironically, Hasan would later receive the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.38

Having faced no consequences for his presentation, Hasan decided to revisit the topic when he was required to give another talk. This time, he decided that he needed to do more research, so he e-mailed his former imam—Awlaki, who had only just been released from a Yemeni prison.39

The example of Hasan Akbar and his “adverse event” lingered in Hasan’s mind. The men’s worldviews had similarities. One month prior to his attack, Akbar had written in his diary, “I will have to decide to kill my Muslim brothers fighting for Saddam Hussein or my battle buddies. [ … ] I may not have killed any Muslims, but being in the Army is the same thing. I may have to make a choice very soon on who to kill.”40

When Hasan wrote to Awlaki, he asked whether Akbar would have been considered a martyr. At least eighteen e-mails were exchanged between the two men, most of them from Hasan to Awlaki. The e-mails followed the same lines as the PowerPoint and two subsequent presentations Hasan gave to colleagues on the same topic.

The army wasn’t the only institution that failed to respond to the warning signs; the FBI intercepted Hasan’s e-mails to Awlaki but didn’t investigate. Awlaki was, by most accounts, cautious about the missives from a U.S. military man he had barely met years earlier. He did not advocate violence, officials said, and Hasan did not volunteer that he was planning an attack.41

Yet there were clues. At one point Hasan wrote, “I can’t wait to join you [in the afterlife].” He asked for guidance about when jihad was justified and whether it was Islamically permissible for innocents