Military officials charged an Army psychiatrist with 13 counts of premeditated murder Thursday in connection with last week's shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, and said more charges could be filed as investigators continue their probe into the deadly rampage.
Chris Grey, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigative Division, announced the charges Thursday against Maj. Nidal Hasan. The maximum sentence under the military justice system for the crime is death; the minimum is life in prison without possibility of parole.
Grey said Hasan is the sole suspect in the killings, but investigators are continuing to sift through evidence on the nation's largest Army post, as well as in the nearby community of Killeen.
"We are aggressively following every possible lead," Grey said during an afternoon news conference. "We still believe there was only one gunman," but investigators haven't questioned all of the witnesses, he added.
Col. John Rossi, a Fort Hood spokesman, said 12 of the gunman's victims remain hospitalized in stable condition. One is in intensive care.
Authorities said Hasan, 39, fired off more than 100 rounds of ammunition before he was brought down by civilian police. He remains hospitalized in stable condition at Fort Sam Houston's Brooke Army Medical Center near San Antonio.
Details have emerged that Hasan, who is Muslim, was strongly opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His family has said he was trying to get out of being deployed to Afghanistan later this month.
"We are looking at every reason that could have motivated" the shootings, Grey said, adding that investigators have learned that Hasan was not at the post for a scheduled appointment or "command directed" activity.
"We are looking at every possible angle in this case," Grey said. "We're working closely with numerous agencies to get a complete picture of the entire event, and we are seamlessly sharing that information with those agencies."
John P. Galligan, a retired military officer hired to represent Hasan by the suspect's family, said the military has not shared information with him. He said his military-appointed co-counsel told him charges were being read to Hasan in the hospital without his lawyers present.
"I don't like it. I feel like I'm being left out of the loop," Galligan said.
"What I find disturbing is that my client is in ICU, and he's 150 miles south of his defense counsel, and he's being served with the charges," he told The Associated Press. "Given his status as a patient, I'm troubled by this procedure and that I'm not there. I'm in the dark, and that shouldn't be the case. I am mad."
Meanwhile, President Obama ordered a review of any intelligence information related to Hasan and a probe into whether information was shared with the proper agencies and whether it was subsequently acted upon.
Two government officials have said a joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI was notified of communication between Hasan and radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki.
The White House review will be led by John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism. Initial results are due by Nov. 30.
Obama also ordered that intelligence documents be preserved. Members of Congress, particularly Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, have called for a full examination of what agencies knew about Hasan's contacts with Awlaki and others of concern to the U.S., and what they did with the information.
A Senate hearing on Hasan is scheduled for next week, and the Senate Homeland Security Committee announced it is opening its own investigation this week.
Contributing: NPR staff and wire services
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