KILLEEN, TEXAS, AND SILVER SPRING, MD. — Over the last few weeks, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan drove off the vast Army base at Ft. Hood, Texas, at least a dozen times to enjoy seafood dinners with Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old he was mentoring in the ways of Islam.
They would pray at the simple Masjidu-Ttaqwa prayer hall out along the highway, hit the all-you-can-eat buffet at the Golden Corral and then rush back for evening worship. Twice they drove to Hasan's one-bedroom apartment to pick up books or to talk.
Only once -- on Wednesday, the night before Hasan allegedly shouted, "Allahu akbar!" pulled out two guns and opened fire on dozens of fellow soldiers -- did the dinner talk stray from religion.
"He said he didn't want to go to Iraq or Afghanistan," said Reasoner, who was raised as a Catholic. "He didn't want to be deployed. He said Muslims shouldn't be in the U.S. military, because obviously Muslims shouldn't kill Muslims. He told me not to join the Army."
And around 1:30 p.m. the next day, authorities say, Hasan, a 39-year-old military psychiatrist, went on the shooting rampage at Ft. Hood that left 13 people dead and at least 38 wounded. Hasan was shot by two civilian police officers and remains hospitalized in stable condition with multiple gunshot wounds.
On Friday, agents were trying to find a motivation for the attack, retracing the suspect's steps in the last days and months, interviewing colleagues, neighbors, friends and family to glean details about Hasan's life -- and whether he was moved, at least in part, by radical Islamic ideology.
But officials also warned the public against drawing conclusions about the attack until more facts are known. President Obama said as much at the White House, as did Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. at Ft. Hood.
Much of the furious hunt for answers Friday occurred behind closed doors, as FBI cyber-agents and other forensic experts scoured Hasan's computer, his home and even his garbage.
FBI officials would not say whether they had definitively confirmed that Hasan was the same "NidalHasan" who in one Internet posting -- a comment to an essay titled "Martyrdom in Islam Versus Suicide Bombing!"-- likened a suicide bomber to a soldier who jumps on a grenade to save the lives of his fellow officers in that both were sacrificing their lives "for a more noble cause."
But there were indications that Hasan was active on the Internet and that he had posted numerous inflammatory comments.
