Details emerge about Fort Hood suspect's history

(AP Photo/Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences)

This 2000 picture provided by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences shows Nidal Malik Hasan when was a medical student at the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

WASHINGTON— He was by turns caring and contentious, a man quick to say "I am blessed" in casual greeting yet one who seemed to stew in discontent that he could not always keep to himself.

Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, suspect in the assault that killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, and hurt 30, salved the emotional wounds of troops returning from war even as he objected to his own looming deployment to Afghanistan, where he was to counsel soldiers suffering from stress.

But Hasan argued with fellow soldiers who supported U.S. war policy, say those who know him professionally and personally. He was a counselor who once required counseling for himself because of trouble he had dealing with some patients, said a former boss.

Authorities on Friday seized Hasan's home computer, searched his apartment and took away a Dumpster as the 39-year-old Army major lay in a coma in the hospital, attached to a ventilator.

There are many unknowns about the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base.

Most of all, his motive.

For six years before reporting for duty at Fort Hood, in July, Hasan worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center pursuing his career in psychiatry, as an intern, a resident and, last year, a fellow in disaster and preventive psychiatry. He received his medical degree from the military's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001.

While an intern at Walter Reed, Hasan had some "difficulties" that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.

Grieger said privacy laws prevented him from going into details but noted that the problems had to do with Hasan's interactions with patients. He recalled Hasan as a "mostly very quiet" person who never spoke ill of the military or his country.

"He swore an oath of loyalty to the military," Grieger said. "I didn't hear anything contrary to those oaths."