New York, Nov. 21 Prior to going on a killing spree at the US military base, Fort Hood gunman Nidal Malik Hasan had several e-mail exchanges with a radical al Qaeda imam discussing the heavenly rewards he would receive in paradise, investigators said.

"I can't wait to join you" in the afterlife, Hasan, 39, e-mailed radical imam Anwar Aulaqi in the months before he killed 13 and wounded 43 at his Army base in Texas, according to an investigator who read the e-mails.

Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist, interspersed Aulaqi with questions about when jihad is appropriate and when God would permit the murder of innocents in a suicide attack, The New York Post reports.

"Hasan told [Aulaqi] he couldn't wait to join him in the discussions they would [be] having over nonalcoholic wine in the afterlife," the official said.

Pentagon and FBI officials reveal that Hasan's chilling communication with Aulaqi, a US-born militant imam with ties to the 9/11 hijackers and now based in Yemen, was discounted earlier because they seemed to be part of innocent research.

Investigators also found that Hasan had sent between 20,000 to 30,000 dollars of his 92,000 dollars salary to Islamic charities overseas.

"My strength is my financial capabilities," Hasan wrote Aulaqi, who once preached in Falls Church, Va.

The investigators are now trying to figure out whether those charities are fronts for terrorist organizations.

"The choice of this recipient of e-mails says a lot about what Hasan was looking for. What I'm getting at is he may have been looking for spiritual sanctions for what's he accused of ultimately doing," said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. (ANI)