Grandma: Shooter A ‘Good Doctor’ But Troubled

The grandmother of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base, wept Friday as she discussed her grandson.

Hasan’s maternal grandmother, Salha Hamad, age eighty-four, said her grandson was a “good boy” and a “good doctor with a good heart” with whom she would speak frequently on the phone.

She told NBC News that he was extremely unhappy in Fort Hood. Hamad said Hasan told her he was so troubled by his upcoming deployment that he was plagued by nightmares.

She said Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was particularly upset by seeing soldiers who were suffering as a result of being injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the United States, his family on Friday described Hasan's actions as “despicable and deplorable.”

A day after the attack, there remained many unknowns about the suspect, and President Barack ObamaBarack Obama, in remarks in the Rose Garden, cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

Yet details of his life and mindset, emerging from his family, personal acquaintances and official sources, were troubling.

For six years before reporting for duty at Fort Hood in July, the 39-year-old Army major — who is seen as a balding, heavy-set man in photos — 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. He was in the preparation stage of deployment to Afghanistan.

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."

But, more recently, federal agents grew suspicious. At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.

They had not determined for certain whether Hasan was the author of the postings, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting. Law enforcement officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the case.

Reports have emerged that Hasan, a devout Muslim, felt he was discriminated against for his beliefs.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Hasan's aunt, Noel Hasan said he had been harassed about being a Muslim in the years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and he wanted out of the Army.

"Some people can take it, and some people cannot," she said. "He had listened to all of that, and he wanted out of the military."

She said he had sought a discharge from the military for several years, and even offered to repay the cost of his medical training.

Noel Hasan said her nephew "did not make many friends" and would say "the military was his life."

Hasan was born and raised in Virginia, the son of Palestinian parents who immigrated to the United States from Albireh, a West Bank suburb of Ramallah. His grandmother told NBC News that many members of his extended family have American citizenship and she has a U.S. green card.

During an interview with on NBC’s Today Show, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, a Fort Hood spokesman, was asked about reports that Hasan yelled “Allahu akbar” — an Arabic expression for “God is great” — during the shooting rampage. Cone said witnesses at the scene had reported similar accounts.