US Army photo by Staff Sgt. Tony M. Lindback via Army.mil.

ABC News says that "US intelligence agencies" knew for weeks that Army Major Nidal Hasan, the suspect in the Fort Hood shootings, had tried "to make contact with people associated with Al Qaeda." The piece also reports (citing an unnamed "senior lawmaker") that the CIA has "so far" refused to brief Congress about whether it had prior knowlege of any connections between Hasan and Al Qaeda.

Over at Talking Points Memo, Mother Jones alum Justin Elliott reports that the CIA is denying that it refused to brief Congress—but Elliott says nothing about whether the CIA contradicted the ABC piece's core claim about the intelligence community knowing that Hasan had been trying to make contact with Al Qaeda.

Bottom line: the situation is still very unclear, but since Hasan is now awake and talking, we'll probably know more very soon.

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