THE FBI'S COLOSSAL BOTCH WITH AL-AWLAKI

FOX News (via Big Government) has revealed a most outraging admittance the FBI has made: they had the murderous Malik Nidal Hasan's indoctrinator in custody back in 2002...and released him:

The FBI, for the the first time, has admitted publicly that it knew the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was returning to the U.S. in October 2002 and that an FBI agent discussed the American's return with a U.S. attorney before he was detained and then abruptly released from federal custody.

Al-Awlaki, who would become the first American targeted for death by the CIA, eventually was killed last September in Yemen by a U.S. drone strike. Since September 2009, 26 terrorism cases have been tied to him and his digital jihad, according to the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

“I really want to get to the bottom (of this),” said Republican Rep. Frank Wolf, chairman of the committee that has oversight of the FBI. The committee was holding a hearing Wednesday on the Webster report on the FBI’s intelligence failures leading up to the Fort Hood massacre. Al-Awlaki exchanged 19 emails with Maj. Nidal Hasan, accused of murdering 13 in the shooting. [...]

Al-Awlaki was detained at New York City's JFK airport because a customs database flagged him based on an outstanding arrest warrant. Giuliano, under intense questioning by Wolf, also admitted Wednesday there were discussions between an FBI agent and the U.S. attorney in Colorado about the U.S.-born cleric’s re-entry and the warrant.

“Yes, sir, there was a dialogue, as there always will be,” Giuliano replied. “If a case agent has a case on somebody that is coming into the country, the system is triggered and set up so that there will be a call to that case agent.”

Former FBI agents say there are only likely two explanations: The bureau let the cleric into the country to track him for intelligence, or the bureau wanted to work with him as a friendly contact.

During Wednesday's hearing, Giuliano could not explain a significant time discrepancy. Al-Awlaki was being held in the early-morning hours of Oct. 10, 2002, when FBI agent Wade Ammerman told customs agents that "the warrant ... had been pulled back." But that couldn't have happened while al-Awlaki was in custody, since it was only 5:40 a.m. in Colorado where the arrest warrant originated and where the courts had yet to open for the day.

In fact, documents show the warrant was still active at that time and was only vacated later that day.

The FBI has consistently maintained that the arrest warrant was pulled because the case against the cleric was weak, and it has suggested the timing, coming on the same day the cleric re-entered the U.S. at New York City's JFK airport, was coincidental.

Their defenses are pathetic. If it hadn't been for their disastrous work, it's possible that the Ford Hood bloodbath could've been prevented. The same could be said if the military officials who knew of Hasan's dangerous behavior had put morale and the staff's safety before their careers. Thanks to the imcompetence and political correctness tainting both these outfits, the terrorist attack at Fort Hood, among other crimes, tragically took place. The FBI owes a serious apology for their cowardice and inability to maintain an effective war to stop monsters like al-Awlaki from influencing jihadists, and they have a lot of work to do in order to prevent disasters like this from happening again.