“After two days of inquiry into the mass shooting at Fort Hood, investigators have tentatively concluded that it was not part of a terrorist plot,” The New York Times’ David Johnston and Eric Schmitt relate — though the Army Chief of Staff yesterday said to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos he wouldn’t rule that possibility out, and Senate Homelander Joe Lieberman told FOX News he plans hearings on what could qualify as a “terrorist act” rooted in Islamic radicalism — the worst since 9/11. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s rampage “is just the latest in a string of [Muslim] attempts to murder American soldiers at home,” an IPT News op-ed observes. Whatever the Army shrink’s motivation, his action highlights the sensitivity of American Muslims serving in the U.S. military, BBC News’ Penny Spiller surveys. “Muslims will have to ask themselves . . . why there are still those among us who continue to find justification for acts such as this in their faith,” Shahed Amanullah muses on altmuslim — as The Associated Press sees backlash-fearing mosques stepping up security.

Wild blue yonder: Official statements may not “totally still the murmurs about alleged Muslim conspiracies and anti-American terrorist plots in the coming days,” Earl Ofari Hutchinson predicts in The Huffington Post. “Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a ‘spiritual adviser’ to three of the [9/11] hijackers,” The Daily Telegraph’s Philip Sherwell and Alex Spillius report. He also was listed as a participant in a Homeland Security Policy Institute presidential transition task force last year, Gawker’s John Cook discovers — which fact WorldNetDaily’s Jerome R. Corsi, unsurprisingly, transmutes into: “Shooter advised Obama transition.” “The facts we already know about Hasan and his behavior prior to the deadly shootings just screams out ‘patsy’ and ‘setup’ and almost exactly mirrors other terror scams, Prison Planet’s Paul Joseph Watson most implausibly conspiracizes. “Was there any radioactive material stored in Fort Hood? I’m always uneasy when the FBI immediately rules out anything, especially terrorist involvement,” a Colbert Nation poster needlessly worries.

Homies: Addressing European Parliamentarians on Friday, DHS’s Janet Napolitano defended the imposition of a $10 screening fee to on Europeans entering the United States, AP’s Constant Brand recounts — while Yedioth Ahronoth has her warning against a post-Fort Hood anti-Muslim backlash. DHS is finalizing plans to collect fingerprints or eye scans from all departing foreign travelers at U.S. airports, a costly screening program that airlines have opposed, The Washington Post’s Spencer Hsu spotlights. “The Obama operatives at DHS have pared back one of the most successful immigration-enforcement programs, known as 287(g),” James R. Edwards Jr. jabs for Human Events. “Immigration advocates say it happens too often: Non-violent [ICE] detainees placed in criminal jails, where family, friends, and attorneys can’t find them,” Voice of America’s Carolyn Presutti reports.

Feds: The House on Friday approved a bill requiring DHS to compile a list of chemical plants that contain sufficient quantities of “substances of concern” to pose a serious security risk, The New Orleans Times-Picayune relates. The director of the Federal Air Marshal Service warns that the sexual assault trial in Britain of a marshal could lead to his agents being barred from some overseas flights, The Washington Times reports. Administration officials will decide by Nov. 16 which Guantanamo detainees should face trial in American courts and which will go before “reformed” military tribunals, Bloomberg has A.G. Eric Holder telling reporters yesterday.

State and local: A year before South Carolinians elect a new governor, a tussle over the possibility of housing terror detainees in the state offers perhaps the first sign of how heated the race will be, The Columbia State relates. New York is in line for $3 million from DHS “to help protect State and local government networks from cyber-attacks and incidents,” The North Country Gazette recounts — while Idaho Falls’ KIFI 8 News boasts that DHS “now has a major presence in the Gem State with the help of the Idaho National Laboratory.” Alabama’s Emergency Management Agency may hire a Mississippi firm to install its Alert FM system in nine western counties, The Tuscaloosa News notes.

Going buggy: An opportunistic thief stole a refrigerated truck holding 930 doses of swine flu vaccine in Milwaukee last week, the Journal Sentinel says — while Antiwar.com suggests “the current shortage of H1N1 vaccines demonstrates the public’s vulnerability to bioterrorism,” and see Newsweek on “the looming H1N1 vaccine wars.” Rhode Island’s Disaster Medical Assistance Team is making sure its computers can handle the swine flu season, Providence’s NBC 10 News notes. Dr. Bill Frist, ex-GOP Senate Majority Leader, “agrees with a national security assessment that the United States has let down its defenses against bioterrorism,” OneNewsNow.com spotlights — as Global Security Newswire has the Senate homeland panel last week voting out a bill intended to improve security at bioresearch facilities.

Close air support: A Delta Airlines flight from JFK to Heathrow was aborted last night after someone reported seeing an onboard intruder: a mouse in the cabin, the Times tells. A TSA blogger insists that the notorious plastic cup with which Britney Spears waltzed through an LAX checkpoint held ice, “permitted as long as it’s screened by the x-ray (Which it was),” though Gadling.com says paparazzi shots clearly show that the Big Gulp was never screened. If anyone still cares, ABC 4 News says more info is coming out now “about what really happened” between Rep. Jason Chaffetz and TSA screeners at the Salt Lake air hub — as WHEC 10 News has a man trying to board at Rochester’s airport with a loaded gun in his carry-on. “Everyone who travels on aircraft sees up-close and personally the efforts made by politicians to ensure that air travelers are safe. That is why TSA spends massive amounts of money on unproven technology,” a Washington Times reader rebukes.

Coming and going: The same international firm hired by Israel’s Ben Gurion airport will train transit police and supervisors at the Caltrain and SamTrans Bay Area commuter lines to detect potential terrorist activities, The Oakland Tribune tells. DHS expects to award a maximum of 40 discretionary grants to promote safety in recreational boating, with estimated total program funding estimated at $6,008,000, Targeted News Service notes. DHS and State are considering using DNA tests with some refugee applicants to root out fraud among those claiming family links to join relatives already here, AP reports. Two ICE agents now work full-time at the Clackamas County Jail to weed out undocumented aliens, prompting “a steady flow of inmates into federal custody, many to be deported,” The Oregonian spotlights.

Courts and rights: DHS has abandoned efforts to deport an Egyptian student acquitted in April of explosives charges, The Tampa Tribune tells — while The Bergen County Record sees DHS’s long-running bid to deport an influential New Jersey imam going back to an immigration judge for a rehearing. An Ohio man, meantime, has been given 30 months in prison for sending messages to the media and the FBI last fall threatening to blow up landmarks and kill President Bush, The Cincinnati Enquirer informs — and see Denver’s Westword for more on an unexpected wrinkle: the defendant’s penchant for cross-dressing. Two weeks after a Bay State man was arrested in an alleged terror plot, Justice announced his indictment last week along with an alleged co-conspirator supposedly now in Syria, The Boston Globe reports.

Over there: Recent arson attacks and shootings in Guyana are the work of a “terrorist” mastermind living in the United States, AP has that South American nation’s president charging — while a U.S. diplomat tells Agence France-Presse that Washington is helping track the alleged suspect. According to Afghan villagers, several U.S. soldiers burned Korans when they couldn’t locate insurgents they believed had blown up part of their convoy, Asia Times tells. “That a seemingly well-integrated member of French society could be so deeply involved in terrorist activity suggests that France remains at risk to al Qaeda affiliated networks,” Terrorism Monitor remarks of terror-charged physicist Adlene Hicheur.

Qaeda Qorner: An Osama bin Laden video released Friday is merely the Pashto-language version of a tape aired last June, Reuters quotes a terror monitoring group. Top dip Hillary Clinton last week disclosed that the “United States had two close chances of rooting out al Qaeda from Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, but the outlawed group somehow slipped out of its hands on both the occasions,” ANI notes. With the appointment of Ilyas Kashmiri as head of its military committee, al Qaeda has recruited a veteran honed on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Kashmir, Asia Times profiles. A Lashkar-e-Taiba plot to launch new terror attacks in India via two Pakistan-born Chicago men took a new turn when FBI agents recovered inflammatory al Qaeda videos from the home of one, The Times of India leads.

Driver, follow that taxi: “Apparently Osama bin Laden has not been captured in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else in the Arab world because he was driving a cab here in the United States,” The Spoof spoofs. “ ‘That was bin Laden,’ exclaimed his New York City fleet boss. ‘I honestly didn’t recognize him.’ All the other cab drivers stated that the man was quiet and kept to himself and showed little emotion except when the Yankees kept losing after hiring all the best players in baseball. ‘That’s right,’ another driver stated. ‘I noticed that when the Yankees were beaten by the Red Sox eight times in a row, he made a slash across his throat and went and called someone.’ Another thing the supervisor stated was that the man the FBI and the CIA was after did not have a beard but grew a handlebar mustache and said ‘You all’ a lot. ‘When the Yankees finally started to win he suddenly yelled out “Jihad!” really loud but then glanced around and yelled ‘Yee-Haa!’ ten times in a row but I’m sure the first one was “Jihad!”’ a fellow cabbie said.”