Who knew what, and when, about Major Hasan?

A Senate panel is scheduled to look into the Fort Hood terror attack by lone wolf jihadist Major Hasan. That same panel issued a report and a warning last year about just this type of threat.

“The Senate committee report warned that the Internet was serving as a ‘virtual terrorist training camp,’ and cited that as a contributing factor in the United States becoming more and more susceptible to homegrown extremists….’No longer is the threat just from abroad, as was the case with the attacks of September 11, 2001; the threat is now increasingly from within, from homegrown terrorists who are inspired by violent Islamist ideology to plan and execute attacks where they live,’ it said.”

Questions are also being asked about what was known about Hasan prior to the attack and why warning signs were ignored.

“Neil Livingstone, terrorism analyst and chairman of GlobalOptions, said Hasan was a ‘walking time bomb’ who showed ‘all the signs’ of instability. Livingstone said ‘political correctness’ may have prevented other officials from taking action against him, but that his actions fit the ‘definition’ of terrorism. ‘He was a loner. … He was in contact with radical elements overseas. He was obsessed with his Muslim faith. And I think nothing was done,’ Livingstone told Fox News. ‘I think we have to face up to the fact that this guy was killing innocent people because of his Muslim faith, and we need to say that, and I think that’s going to come out in the hearings and in the trial.’”

Meanwhile, the FBI apparently knew about Hasan’s email contacts with an al Qaeda-connected radical imam in Yemen. The question is whether the FBI communicated with anyone else, especially the CIA and the Army about this, or whether we are back to operating under the failed pre-September 11, 2001, criminal justice approach to terrorists. And that is not all. Evidence is emerging that Hasan had as yet-unspecified connections to other persons the FBI was tracking.

With all this information and the failure of the government to act, the question becomes not just whether Hasan acted alone in this specific attack, but whether, and how many, others like him are there ready to act? Ed Morrissey of Hot Air asks, “As the scope of this failure becomes known, the big question will be this: how many more Hasans do we have, communicating with known terrorists and 9/11 attack suspects?  If counterterrorism officials had this much information about Hasan and still didn’t act, it doesn’t leave any confidence at all that Hasan was just an anomaly.”

Yet some Democrats in the House and the Senate want to eliminate Patriot Act provisions that allow roving wiretap surveillance of “lone wolf” terror suspects (those not affiliated with al Qaeda or other terror groups or networks). Even left-liberal Vermont Sen. Patrick (”Leaky”) Leahy endorses extending such wiretap authority. The Hasan case shows the importance of such actions against “lone wolves” whom the above-noted Senate committee believes to be an increasing threat. The caveat here is that, since Hasan was not a “non-U.S. person,” such wiretap authority would not have extended to him, anyway. But perhaps it would have applied to his conversations with the imam in Yemen.