We can only hope the Pentagon has pulled its head out of its ass when it comes to Muslim “outreach.”

(Fox News) — The Pentagon’s top lawyers and the executive director of controversial Muslim group Council of American Islamic Relations were invited to lunch with radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki on Feb. 5, 2002, as part of the Defense Department’s outreach to moderate Muslims, according to new documents obtained exclusively by the Fox News Specials Unit.

For the first time, Fox News is making the document available online.

After the Fort Hood massacre in November 2009, a Defense Department employee came forward to tell FBI investigators that the cleric, the first American on the CIA’s “kill-or-capture” list, was a guest speaker at the Pentagon five months after 9/11.

The internal Defense Department email, obtained by Fox through the Freedom of Information Act, shows that more than 70 people were copied on the luncheon invitation at one of the Pentagon’s executive dining rooms. While most of the names were redacted by the defense department, citing the privacy exemption, the names that remain include Deputy General Counsel Charles Allen, former Deputy General Counsel Whit Cobb, former principal Deputy General Counsel Dan Dell’Orto, former General Counsel William Haynes, Deputy General Counsel Paul Koffsky and former deputy General Counsel Douglas Larsen.

Koffsky, Allen and Dell’Orto responded through a Defense Department spokesman who said they did not go to the lunch. In the case of Mr. Koffsky and Mr. Allen, the spokesman added “Nor do they have any recollection or specific information of who may have vouched for or recommended the cleric.”