Military and intelligence officials have come under fire for missing warning signs about US Army Major Nidal Hasan, a psychiatrist charged with turning his guns on fellow soldiers, killing 13 people and wounding 43 others during the November 5 attack at the military base in Texas.

Hasan is being investigated for links to Islamic extremism, including his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaqi, a US-born radical cleric now in Yemen who blessed the killing spree afterwards.

But details about Hasan's personnel records located in a partially redacted annex of the two-month Pentagon inquiry have been restricted from the public and reserved for official use only.

Republican Representative Mike Coffman told leaders of the review -- former chief of naval operations Vernon Clark and former army secretary Togo West -- that the omission was "offensive" and "politically embarrassing."

"It was just merely a finding of facts prior to the event. And it ought to be available to the American public," he said during the first of a series of hearings delving into the attack.

In a joint statement to the House Armed Services Committee, Clark and West said they would not discuss Hasan's personnel records in a public setting because doing so would compromise "the integrity of the ongoing military justice process."

The 86-page report released last week found that medical officers failed to use "appropriate judgment and standards of officership" when they reviewed Hasan's performance, but did not mention Hasan by name or discuss his motives and how he viewed his Muslim faith.

That has a growing chorus of Republicans -- and some Democrats -- crying foul.

"The report is strangely silent on whether or not Major Hasan gave any clear evidence of his radicalization or whether there were any substantive clues about that radicalization that his supervisors should have acted upon," Republican Congressman Howard McKeon said.

"I'm concerned if political correctness was involved here, and if the need for psychiatrists maybe made us overlook something."

With the US military desperate for more psychiatrists to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, Hasan was promoted and sent from Walter Reed Army Medical Center to Fort Hood, Texas to serve in Afghanistan.

Representative Vic Snyder, an Arkansas Democrat, said he did not understand why the general public could not have access to the military's reviews of Hasan's performance.

"When is the right time going to be?" he asked.

"If I was a family member, I would not be satisfied with 'go to the annex and we'll discuss it.'"

Hasan is said to have discussed Islam with patients, expressed deep reservations about US military campaigns in Muslim countries, praised suicide bombers and shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) during the shooting.

But the review found that "religious fundamentalism alone is not a risk factor" and that "religious-based violence is not confined to members of fundamentalist groups."

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