Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials are working with groups around the United States to combat possible anti-Muslim backlash following the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, reported the Associated Press in November . Hasan, who was serving as a US Army psychiatrist, was born in Virginia and is an American-born citizen.

President Barack Obama's policy of "Islamic rapprochement" has come under scrutiny after the Fort Hood shootings, followed by the discovery of a number of domestic terrorist plots, questioning if the president has been too conciliatory to a group comprising 1.3 billion people worldwide, reports the National.

Even before the Fort Hood shootings, the ground underneath the president's “Islamic rapprochement” was shifting because of a spate of alleged domestic terrorist plots uncovered in recent months.

Reports then had shown that US intelligence agencies learned that the gunman had contacts with US-born Anwar Al-Awlaki late last year. Al-Awlaki has spent years publishing anti-US views sympathetic to Al-Qaeda to his English-language followers on the Internet, using blogs, video, audio lectures and lengthy articles.

One of Al-Awlaki's favorite themes is the minority status of Muslims in the West, which intensified when a blog entry was posted on his website in his name praising the killings and calling Hasan "a hero." Yet, findings so far remain inconclusive to determine if the shootings were motivated by terrorism.

In an interview published on Al-Jazeera's Web site, radical Muslim cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki says that Nidal Hasan, charged with killing 13 in last month's Fort Hood massacre, asked for guidance about killing American military personnel in his very first e-mail, according to ABC News .

"I wondered how didn't the American security agencies who claimed that they can read numbers of car plates from space, from everywhere in the world, I wondered how" they didn't reveal Hasan's plans, Al-Awlaki said, according to MEMRI.

Al-Awlaki insisted in the interview that he did not "recruit" Hasan to kill US soldiers, but Al-Awlaki said he wishes he had "the honor of having a bigger role" than he actually did. "I may have a role in his intellectual direction, but nothing beyond that," Al-Alwaki said.

Peter Bergen, an Al-Qaeda expert at the New American Foundation, says in an interview with Time magazine that Awlaki was merely "important as an inciter to jihad, no more." Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University says it is unlikely Al-Awlaki would have been involved in operational activities. "He was a cleric, not a field commander," he says.

The news site explains that in Yemen, he became something of an e-imam, using the internet to preach fiery anti-American and anti-West sermons. He called upon believers to rise up against the US. Because his sermons were published in English, he became popular with radical American Muslims. "He understood American society and was able to tailor his message to American audiences," says Hoffman.

The New York Times reports that a Yemeni air raid may have killed the top two leaders of Al-Qaeda's regional branch on Thursday, and possibly Al-Awlaki linked to the man who shot dead 13 people at a US army base may also have died, a Yemeni security official said. "Anwar al-Awlaki is suspected to be dead," the official said of the cleric who was on the run in Yemen, where he was on the government's most-wanted list of terrorist suspects.

His relatives said they believe he is alive, although they have not heard from him since the attack. "Our tribesmen said Anwar was not there. They would not bury him in a small grave. They would ask all the tribesmen of Awlaqi to attend his funeral," the father said. "He wouldn't be buried in secret in the night."

A recent terrorist attack may keep the debate on Al-Qaeda's presence in Yemen alive. The Examiner remarks that Umar Farouk Abdul-Mutallab, a Nigerian terrorist who tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day, arrived in Yemen in the middle of July.

“The 23-year-old (Abdul-Mutallab) claimed that he had received training and instructions from Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen, a US law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing,” reports The Examiner .

The Yemen Post declared that the government is ramping up security and administrative measures affecting foreign students who come to the country to study. Yemen expressed dismay at the attack against the endangered U.S. plane, which was traveling from the Netherlands to Detroit when the terrorist made his move.

Local analyst believes that Yemen is trying to change the view of international media to Al-Qaeda organization to cover up the failures the Yemeni government has witnessed in fighting the Houthi rebels in the north.