Hasan earned about $92,000, but he rented a $350-a-month apartment in a run-down neighborhood and drove a 2006 Honda Civic.
"It seems like there is a lifestyle that was beneath his means," Dennis Lormel, a former FBI special agent who directed the agency's efforts to identify sources of terrorist financing. Lormel, now a managing director for IPSA International, a consultant to banks on combating money laundering, said, "Where is the money going?"
Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said he has confirmed that Hasan wired money to Pakistan, a country that Muslim extremist groups use as a base to raise funds and carry out terrorist attacks.
Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism expert who has consulted with the FBI and Defense Department, noted that Hasan is a U.S. citizen of Palestinian descent, with no known family ties to Pakistan. That leaves only two reasons, he said, for the psychiatrist to wire money to the South Asian country: to support charity or to support jihad.
Westerners who want to give to a legitimate Pakistani charity typically would do so by putting money in a U.S. or British bank account, he added. "It raises huge alarm bells," Kohlmann said of Hasan's reported wire transfers.
Pakistan borders Afghanistan, the country to which Hasan was supposed to deploy soon. Pakistan is battling an Islamist insurgency and is widely believed to be the hiding place of Osama bin Laden.
Lormel said Hasan could have used several different channels to wire money abroad, including remittance services that cater to immigrant workers who send money to their native countries. If that were the case, there may be documentation of the transaction, Lormel and others said.
Banks and other money transmitters must tell the Treasury Department if an individual sends more than $10,000 outside the country.
STL Today
Hasan also owned a top of the line paper shredder.
Check out the jihadi's crib. Nothing but prayer and paper shredders. That is a heavy duty paper shredder, a Staples top of the line 10 cut micro shredder, as shown on their website here.