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US-born terror boss Awlaki e-mailed accused Fort Hood gunman

The US-born terror mastermind Anwar al Awlaki used more than 60 e-mail addresses and sent several thousand e-mails to his followers, some with encryption and code words, while under FBI surveillance — according to a five-month investigation by FOX News.

Some of those e-mails were exchanged with accused Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan.

“FOX Files: The Enemy Within,” which debuts on FOX News Channel at 10:00 p.m. on June 15, draws on exclusive interviews and firsthand accounts of the Fort Hood massacre that killed 13 people and injured at least 43 others on Nov. 5, 2009. For the first time, victims of the shooting, as well as senior investigators, break their silence about the worst act of terrorism on US soil since 9/11.

“He [Awlaki] was incredibly busy. He — during his peak period — had upwards of 60 email accounts that he was using at any given time,” retired FBI agent Keith Slotter told FOX Files.

Slotter, whose career spanned 25 years at the Bureau, was the special agent in charge of the San Diego field office from 2007 to 2012. His agents at the Joint Terrorism Task Force tracked the cleric, who was the public face of al Qaeda 2.0 and the new digital jihad.

But in the 2011 Senate Homeland Security Committee investigation of the Fort Hood massacre, the FBI came under criticism for failing to act as an “effective interagency information sharing and operation coordination mechanism.”

In other words, at times the FBI failed to share key information with intelligence analysts under their supervision.

Slotter, who now works at a private international investigative firm specializing in cyber crime and digital forensics, characterized the number as “thousands of emails … over a three-year period, tens of thousands.”

By 2009, the cleric, the first American on the CIA’s kill-or-capture list, understood he was the target of US and foreign intelligence services. FOX Files learned that Awlaki shunned the use of phones and turned to his keyboard because he believed e-mail communications were more secure.

Slotter said he reviewed the e-mails between Awlaki and Hasan “many times” after the attack to consider if anything was missed.

“I had them bound on my desk, had all of them. There was nothing really in there that would indicate al Awlaki prompting Major Hasan to do something,” he said.

Also in 2009, at the same time Awlaki was exchanging e-mails with Hasan, the radical US-born cleric was sending highly-encrypted e-mails calling for a major terrorist attack.

British court documents obtained by FOX Files through the Freedom of Information Act show the highly-encrypted e-mails included specific operational instructions to blow up a British plane heading to the United States. The recipient, Rajib Karim, is serving 30 years in a British jail.

To read more, go to Fox News