After police acting on a tip detained Abdo at the motel July 27, they say they found the items in his room and backpack. He was stopped just hours before completing assembly of the bomb, showing he “intended to commit mass murder,” prosecutor Gregg Sofer told jurors earlier Tuesday during opening statements.

Abdo, 22, faces up to life in prison if convicted of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and five other charges.

But lead defense attorney Zach Boyd countered in U.S. District Court in Waco that no bomb was ever built and said the government is “not going to be able to get around that fact.”

After going AWOL, Abdo bought a gun in Nashville after meeting the seller online, according to court testimony. He stayed in Memphis for two weeks — paying for motel rooms, food, cabs and bus fare with cash or gift cards so he couldn’t be tracked, and used someone else’s ID card, according to testimony.

FBI Special Agent C. Michael Owens testified Abdo told him that after going AWOL, he wanted to flee the country or go to Edinburg to seek refuge with a man who helped his father years ago. But when the cabdriver in Dallas could not take him to South Texas, Abdo said, he looked at a map and recognized Killeen because of the news reports after the 2009 Fort Hood shooting rampage in which a Muslim soldier is charged, Owens said.

“He said he wanted to give faith to brother Nidal … and said, ‘People think he’s crazy, but he’s not crazy and I came here to remind the people,’” Owens testified.

The reference was to Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the shootings that killed 13 and wounded more than two dozen. Hasan faces the death penalty if convicted at his military trial, set to start in August.

Abdo told investigators that he went to Texas to “martyr himself” for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, Owens said. Abdo told investigators he planned to put a bomb in what looked like a gift box, leave it a Chinese buffet frequented by Fort Hood soldiers, wait outside and shoot any survivors after the blast. Abdo said he expected to be killed by authorities or arrested, Owens told jurors.

Abdo said he didn’t plan an attack inside Fort Hood because he didn’t believe he would be able to get through security at the gates, Owens said. But Abdo said he bought a military uniform at a local store because it was necessary to fit into the community, Owens testified.

Killeen police began investigating Abdo on July 26 after a gun store employee reported a young man bought 6 pounds of smokeless gunpowder, shotgun ammunition and a magazine for a semiautomatic pistol, while seeming to know little about his purchases, the store manager testified Tuesday. Officers also learned that he bought a U.S. Army uniform and a “Smith” name patch from another store, and jurors saw surveillance footage showing Abdo leaving the store wearing the uniform he just bought.

Another incident raised authorities’ concern after Abdo went AWOL. On July 4, police in Oak Grove, Ky., near Fort Campbell, reported finding a shovel, two large containers of bleach, body bags and a digital camera in a trash bin outside a truck stop. Oak Grove police Sgt. Victor Lynch told jurors he found Abdo’s car at a nearby restaurant, where a truck stop employee had reported seeing him go after dumping the items. Lynch said he found a cattle prod, three boxes of handcuffs, trash bags and a large body bag carrier in the car, but Abdo was nowhere to be found.

Owens testified earlier that Abdo said he had planned to offer a Fort Campbell soldier a ride, kill him and videotape it while reciting the names of people he felt had been wronged by the U.S. military — including Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl who was raped before she and her family were killed in 2006. Five current or former U.S. soldiers went to prison, one for a life term, for their roles in that attack.

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He faces up to life in prison if convicted of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and five other charges. Opening statements are expected to begin Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Waco, about 50 miles northeast of Killeen. Abdo, 22, is not being tried in military court.

His lead defense attorney, Zachary Boyd, referred to the mask while questioning potential jurors Monday.

“I have a concern. My client looks a little different today because he has a mask on,” Boyd said, then asking if they had a problem with Abdo’s mask. Nobody raised a hand.

The soldier has been accused of biting through his lip and spitting blood on a deputy U.S. marshal and a sheriff’s deputy who were escorting him after a court hearing last month. Officials reported a previous blood-spitting incident on a jailer.

McLennan County Sheriff Larry Lynch said he couldn’t comment on why Abdo was wearing a mask in court, and a gag order prevents attorneys from discussing anything about the case publicly.

Boyd also asked potential jurors if they would “hold it against my client for being a Muslim,” and no hands were raised.

Killeen police began investigating Abdo after an employee from Guns Galore called July 26, saying a young man bought six pounds of smokeless gunpowder, shotgun ammunition and a magazine for a semiautomatic pistol — while seeming to know little about his purchases, according to previous court testimony and documents. Officers also learned that he bought a U.S. Army uniform and a “Smith” name patch from another store but didn’t know his unit, according to testimony.

After officers tracked Abdo to a motel near one of the Army post’s gates, they detained him July 27. Authorities who searched his backpack and motel room say they found a handgun, ingredients for an explosive device and an article titled, “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom.” An article with that title appears in an al-Qaida magazine.

“I was planning an attack here in the Fort Hood community because I don’t appreciate what my unit did in Afghanistan,” he can be heard telling a detective in a patrol car recording, played at a court hearing last month.

Abdo told authorities he planned to make two bombs and detonate them in a restaurant frequented by Fort Hood soldiers, according to documents in the case.

While jailed in Waco last fall, Abdo told a Nashville, Tenn., television station that he originally planned to kidnap and videotape the “execution” of a high-ranking Fort Campbell official “who participated in the Afghan mission” — but fled after military police learned he was visiting nearby gun stores.

He went AWOL from the Kentucky Army post over the Fourth of July weekend, about two months after he was charged with possessing child pornography, which put his conscientious objector status on hold.

Abdo, who was born in Texas and grew up in a Dallas suburb, became a Muslim when he was 17. He enlisted in the military in 2009, thinking that the service wouldn’t conflict with his religious beliefs. But according to his essay that was part of his conscientious objector status application, Abdo reconsidered as he explored Islam further.

In that essay, which he sent to The Associated Press in 2010, Abdo said acts like the 2009 Fort Hood shootings “run counter to what I believe in as a Muslim” and were “an act of aggression by a man and not by Islam.”

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The letter — signed by governors of Texas, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi — says the aircraft currently can be deployed within hours, but receiving the same federal help could take days if the planes are moved out of Texas.

The C-130s have carried more than 3,100 people and delivered more than 900 tons of emergency supplies along the Gulf since 2005, and were among the first into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, according to the letter. The planes also evacuated 800 hospital and nursing home patients before hurricanes Ike and Gustav made landfall in 2008.

“Moving the C-130 operations would absolutely impede disaster response to the Gulf Coast area, and it is crucial that those operations remain where they are in Fort Worth to ensure the protection of Texans and other Gulf Coast residents’ lives in the face of an impending natural disaster,” said Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Texas’ two senators and all 32 congressional members sent a letter last month to Air Force Secretary Michael Donley, saying that moving the aircraft would result in unnecessary costs to taxpayers — $80 million for military construction and about $20 million in training costs.

An Air Force spokeswoman referred questions to the Air National Guard on Wednesday. Guard officials wouldn’t say if the planes will be moved to Montana as some governors and congressional leaders have reported. The Air National Guard will review the entire C-130 fleet to determine which aircraft will transfer to a new location and which will be retired, said spokeswoman Rose M. Richeson.

At the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, asked Donley and Air Force chief of staff Gen. Norton Schwartz to produce a cost-benefit analysis, if one had been done, and to provide all the costs associated with the aircraft transfer.

“We asked questions about their plan, and they can’t provide reasonable explanations as to why they made their decisions,” Granger told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “That makes me angry.”

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Associated Press writer Will Weissert in Austin contributed to this report.

According to court documents, Atwater told the FBI he is a demolitions expert who returned from his third deployment to Afghanistan in April. He said his Army special forces team always carried at least two blocks of C4, but he didn’t know any explosives were in his bag when he returned to his post at Fort Bragg, N.C.

He said the bag had been in his garage since then and he didn’t see any explosives in the main compartment when he packed for his trip to Texas.

Atwater was detained at the Fayetteville, N.C., airport on Dec. 24 when security agents found a military smoke grenade in his carry-on bag. Court documents don’t specify — and transportation officials wouldn’t say Tuesday — whether investigators now suspect C4 was in Atwater’s bag then or whether he acquired it later.

Atwater did not say where he got the C4, although his comments in court documents indicate he could have brought it from Afghanistan.

After the smoke grenade was confiscated, Atwater was “admonished” and allowed to fly to Texas, court documents said. Typically, bags are thoroughly searched and placed on X-ray machines for a second time after a suspicious item is found, although court documents don’t say whether that was done in Atwater’s case.

He and his family were returning home when he was stopped at Midland International Airport. A Transportation Security Administration agent spotted a suspicious item in his carry-on during screening, and a police bomb squad identified it as C4.

C4 looks like a block of clay and requires a blasting cap or detonator to explode. Combat troops have ready access to the explosive, which can also be used as fuel for heating water or rations. The U.S. military forbids troops from taking C4 out of combat zones, but the screening process for troops heading home is not as stringent as for people flying on commercial airlines.

Documents do not say how much C4 was in Atwater’s bag or whether there were blasting caps.

Atwater has been charged with trying to bring explosives onto an airplane, which carries a maximum 10-year federal prison sentence. He waived his initial court appearance Tuesday, and his attorney, Jason Leach, declined to comment on the case.

The FBI didn’t find out about the smoke grenade until after Atwater’s arrest in Midland.

“When I asked him about the December 24 Fayetteville incident after TSA informed me of it, Atwater acknowledged that it had occurred, but said he had forgotten to mention it to us during our initial interview,” the FBI agent wrote in the affidavit filed in the case.

TSA spokesman Greg Soule declined to comment Tuesday.

No one answered the door Tuesday at the home of Atwater’s parents in a quiet middle-class neighborhood in Midland, about 320 miles west of Dallas. An American flag between the two garage doors fluttered in the breeze. Relatives have not spoken publicly since his arrest or returned multiple phone messages requesting comment.

A neighbor who lives two doors down, Pam Moore, 55, said she watched Atwater grow up. She said he was a “wonderful kid” who played high school football.

“We were real proud of him when he joined the military,” Moore said. “I feel sorry that he got caught up in this. … I just hope everything works out for him. I really do.”

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Brown reported from Fort Worth. Associated Press writer Chris Tomlinson in Austin also contributed to this report.