Cleric says he was confidant to Hasan

The cleric said he thought he played a role in transforming Hasan into a devout Muslim eight years ago, when Hasan listened to his lectures at the Dar al-Hijra mosque in Northern Virginia. Aulaqi said that Hasan trusted him and that the two developed an e-mail correspondence over the past year.

The portrait of the alleged Fort Hood shooter offered by Aulaqi provides some hints as to Hasan’s mind-set and motivations in the months leading up to last week’s rampage, in which 13 were killed. Aulaqi’s comments also add to questions over whether US authorities, who were aware of at least some of Hasan’s e-mails to Aulaqi, should have sensed a potential threat. US intelligence agencies intercepted e-mails from Hasan, but the FBI concluded that they posed no serious danger and that an investigation was unnecessary, said federal law enforcement officials.

Aulaqi declined to be interviewed by an American journalist with The Washington Post. But he provided an account of his relationship with Hasan - which consisted of a correspondence of a dozen or so e-mails - to Abdulelah Hider Shaea, a Yemeni journalist and terrorism specialist with close ties to Aulaqi whom the Post contacted to conduct the interview. The Post reimbursed Shaea’s travel expenses but did not pay him.

Yesterday, Shaea offered details of his interview with Aulaqi, an influential preacher whose sermons and writings supporting jihad have attracted a wide following among radical Islamists. Shaea allowed a Post reporter to view a video recording of a man who closely resembles pictures of Aulaqi sitting in front of his laptop reading the e-mails, and to hear an audiotape in which a man, who like Aulaqi speaks English with an American accent, discusses his e-mail correspondence with Hasan.

Born in New Mexico, the thick-bearded, white-robed Aulaqi served as an imam at two mosques attended by three of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers - Virginia’s Dar al-Hijra and another in California. US officials have accused him of working with Al Qaeda in the Persian Gulf after leaving Virginia. In mid-2006, he was detained in Yemen, his ancestral homeland, at the request of US authorities. He was released in late 2007.

Aulaqi described Hasan as a man who took his Muslim faith seriously and who was eager to understand how to interpret Islamic sharia law. In the e-mails, Hasan appeared to question US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and often used “evidence from sharia that what America was doing should be confronted,’’ the cleric told Shaea.