down with murder inc

FBI cover up of Zacarias Moussaoui is a distraction

The revelations [...] about advance warnings of the September 11 terrorist attacks have focused particularly on the role of Zaccarias Moussaoui, the Islamic fundamentalist arrested last August in Minneapolis. Moussaoui is the only person facing criminal charges for allegedly playing a role in the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and killed more than 3,000 people.
Fragments of a May 22 letter from Colleen Rowley, an official in the Minneapolis FBI office, to FBI Director Robert Mueller were reported in the press last week. Virtually the entire text of the letter is published in the current issue of Time magazine and posted on its web site, www.time.com. The letter documents not merely incompetence and bureaucratic indifference, but active opposition to an investigation of Moussaoui, sabotage so obvious that it led Minneapolis FBI personnel to joke that agents of Osama bin Laden must have penetrated the J. Edgar Hoover building. - wsws.org

Coleen Rowley, chief counsel of the FBI's Minneapolis field office, who, in a 13-page memo, outlined how FBI headquarters thwarted agents' attempts to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker. The "bombshell memo" led bureau chief Robert Mueller to reorganize the agency. She testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June about the FBI bureaucracy that frustrates agents' attempts at innovative investigation and mires them in paperwork. - infoplease.com

Why Didn't the FBI Fully Investigate Moussaoui?
The letter portrays the FBI as a place where agents are thwarted from doing their job by a "climate of fear." She writes: "Numerous high-ranking FBI officials who have made decisions or have taken actions which, in hindsight, turned out to be mistaken or just turned out badly (i.e. Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc.) have seen their careers plummet and end. This has in turn resulted in a climate of fear which has chilled aggressive FBI law enforcement action/decisions. In a large hierarchical bureaucracy such as the FBI, with the requirement for numerous supervisors' approvals/oversight, the premium on career enhancement, and interjecting a chilling factor brought on by recent extreme public congressional criticism/oversight, and I think you will see at least the makings of the most likely explanation."
As an example she claims that a supervisory special agent at headquarters balked at approving a request for a warrant because the French intelligence information might be "worthless." Why? The supervisor was concerned that the French only identified Moussaoui by name and that there might be more than one Zacarias Moussaoui in France.
Rowley, an agent at the bureau for more than two decades, describes herself as a whistleblower and asks Mueller not to take retribution against her for her criticisms. She said she wrote her letter "from the heart." Rowley did not return calls from TIME.

While explicitly saying that she does not believe the FBI director engaged in a cover up she accuses Mueller and senior officials at FBI headquarters of having "omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mischaracterized" her office's investigation of Moussaoui "in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons."
Rowley takes aim at what she characterized as Mueller's assertion after September 11 that the FBI may have been able to prevent the attack if it had had advanced warning. She said that she made numerous efforts before writing this letter, dated May 21 of this year, to make it clear that there had, indeed, been such a warning. She attributes the revisionism of FBI leaders to a "circle the wagons" mentality "in an apparent effort to protect the FBI from embarrassment and the relevant FBI officials from scrutiny."
Rowley says that had the FBI supported instead of stymied the Minneapolis investigation the bureau may have uncovered other terrorists in flight training but she does not go so far as to say that the 9/11 attacks might have been prevented entirely.
FBI director Mueller isn't denying Rowley's charges. He said Thursday night he has asked Justice Department Inspector General Glen Fine to investigate her claims. "While I cannot comment on the specifics of the letter, I am convinced that a different approach is required," Mueller said. "New strategies, new technologies, new analytical capacities and a different culture make us an agency that is changing post 9/11. There is no room for the types of problems and attitudes that could inhibit our efforts." - time

Why would TIME do a cover story on Three whistleblowers?: This, a magazine which has a pretty poor track record and made Bush its man of the year [similarly to Hitler in 1936] and subsequently devoted the title to 'the American Soldier'
Is this in reality a distraction exercise??? having the purpose of assuring the American Public that the security of America is now at optimum level, when in reality the USA is a security state which has become reliant on the money devoted to the upgrade of a repressive system - which has the sole purpose in 'the war on terror' of the propaganda of fear.

Chertoff: Homeland Security secretary

The Senate confirmed federal judge Michael Chertoff as the nation's second Homeland Security secretary on Tuesday, placing the tough-on-terrorism former prosecutor in charge of a bureaucracy prone to infighting and turf wars.
Chertoff, 51, has promised to balance protecting the country with preserving civil liberties as head of the sprawling agency that was created as a result of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The 98-0 vote came nearly two weeks after Chertoff faced pointed questioning from Democrats about his role in developing the U.S. investigation immediately after the attacks.
Chertoff headed the Justice Department's criminal division when hundreds of foreigners were swept up on relatively minor charges and held for an average of 80 days.
Some detainees were denied their right to see an attorney, were not told of the charges against them, or were physically abused. - CNN

Chertoff #2
who is Benjamin Chertoff, the "senior researcher" at Popular Mechanics who is behind the [debunking 9-11] article? American Free Press has learned that he is none other than a cousin of Michael Chertoff, the new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
This means that Hearst paid Benjamin Chertoff to write an article supporting the seriously flawed explanation that is based on a practically non-existent investigation of the terror event that directly led to the creation of the massive national security department his "cousin" now heads. This is exactly the kind of "journalism" one would expect to find in a dictatorship like that of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Because the manager of public relations for Popular Mechanics didn't respond to repeated calls from American Free Press, I called Benjamin Chertoff, the magazine's "senior researcher," directly.
Chertoff said he was the "senior researcher" of the piece. When asked if he was related to Michael Chertoff, he said, "I don't know." Clearly uncomfortable about discussing the matter further, he told me that all questions about the article should be put to the publicist - the one who never answers the phone.
Benjamin's mother in Pelham, New York, however, was more willing to talk. Asked if Benjamin was related to the new Secretary of Homeland Security, Judy said, "Yes, of course, he is a cousin." Christopher Bollyn
Alex Jones

notice the 44 - is this Nazi code?
88=Heil Hitler

44=rising from 1944?
some things NEVER change, do they?
William Randolph Hearst [publisher]

According to journalist George Seldes:
"Hitler had the support of the most widely circulated magazine in history, Readers Digest, as well as nineteen big-city newspapers and one of the three great American news agencies, the $220-million Hearst press empire.
Hearst was the lord of all the press lords in the United States. The millions who read the Hearst newspapers and magazines and saw Hearst newsreels in the nation's moviehouses had their minds poisoned by Hitler propaganda."
Seldes recounts that the American Ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, told him that
"[When] Hearst came to take the waters at Bad Nauheim [Germany] in September 1934…Hitler sent two of his most trusted Nazi propagandists…to ask Hearst how Nazism could present a better image in the U.S. When Hearst went to Berlin later in the month, he was taken to see Hitler." - source

This next peice from WSWS while asking important questions, still concerns itself with the following narrative: a cover story:

FBI
[good guys were stopped from investigating]
NSA/CIA
[bad guys Let It Happen on purpose]

Note: Just how hard did the supposed Hijackers try to hide their identities & movements?

FBI inspector general's report:
more evidence of government complicity in 9/11 attacks
By Patrick Martin - 15 June 2005 - WSWS
A report released June 9 by the FBI's Office of the Inspector General raises new questions about the role of the US government in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The internal FBI study provides several important revelations about how US intelligence agencies ignored and even suppressed warnings in the period leading up to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Press accounts published within hours of the report's release gave a very distorted picture of the document, which runs to more than 400 pages. No follow-up reports, based on a thorough study of the text, have yet appeared in the mass media.
The initial media commentary invariably voiced the now-standard claim that the FBI and CIA were guilty of a "failure to connect the dots," due to bureaucratic lethargy, individual incompetence, inter-agency rivalries, even poorly performing software systems. This presentation of events is utterly unserious.
The US intelligence apparatus is the most powerful instrument for spying in the world, not a group of Keystone Cops. If it ignored warnings and suppressed information, a legitimate presumption is that it did so willfully. The question must be posed: did one or more agencies or high-level officials provide protection for known Al Qaeda associates who ultimately participated in the hijack-bombings?
Exactly who knew what, and at what level of the government, is not yet clear. But the political benefits of 9/11 for the Bush administration are undeniable. It used the terrorist attacks as a lever to swing American public opinion behind a major shift in policy, both foreign and domestic. Without 9/11, it would have been politically impossible for the government to embark on military interventions in Central Asia and the Middle East and launch an unprecedented attack on civil liberties at home.
The Phoenix memo
The FBI internal report examines the three best-known episodes in which the bureau, which is the lead agency for counterterrorist activities within the United States, missed or ignored important signals of the coming terrorist attacks. Two of the cases involved local FBI agents who voiced suspicions that were disregarded or suppressed by FBI headquarters. In the third case, the CIA deliberately kept the FBI in the dark-with the assistance of certain FBI officials.
The first instance is the electronic memo of July 10, 2001 from Kenneth Williams, an FBI agent in Phoenix, Arizona, noting the number of students with ties to radical Islamic fundamentalists enrolled at local aviation training schools, and suggesting that a nationwide canvass of these schools be carried out to determine if there was a pattern.
The second is the bureau's response to the arrest of Zaccarias Moussaoui, an Islamic fundamentalist who was detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service after his attempts to obtain training on a Boeing 747 aroused suspicions at a Minneapolis-area flight school. Moussaoui was detained on immigration charges in early August 2001, but FBI headquarters blocked efforts by Minneapolis agents to pursue an investigation that could have identified other Al Qaeda operatives at US flight schools.
The third is the case of Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, believed to have participated in the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon on 9/11. Despite being on a CIA watch list because of connections to Al Qaeda, the two lived openly in San Diego, California for a year or more. The CIA only notified the FBI of their presence in the US on August 27, 2001, 20 months after their arrival, and only two weeks before September 11.
The chapter in the inspector general's report on the Phoenix memo (called an Electronic Communication or EC, in FBI jargon), reveals that the document was sent to the attention of six people at FBI headquarters and two more at the New York Division. The recipients included personnel and leadership of both the Usama Bin Laden Unit and the Radical Fundamentalists Unit, the latter comprising a separate group of agents assigned to investigate Islamist militants not directly affiliated to Al Qaeda.
None of the agents who received the EC took any serious action. Several did not even read it. The report attributes the inaction and inattention to the lack of resources committed to anti-terrorist activities in the summer of 2001. For instance, there was only a single research analyst assigned to the FBI's Bin Laden Unit in 2001, and she was transferred to another unit in July 2001.
One agent at a field office who was sent the Phoenix EC replied that it was "no big secret" that Arab men were receiving aviation training in the United States. (Williams's concern, however, was not over "Arab men," but rather individuals affiliated with radical Islamic fundamentalists who publicly justified terrorist attacks on US targets.) The FBI's New York Field Office, which had the lead role in counterterrorism, flatly rejected Williams's proposal for a more in-depth study of the flight school issue.
In passing, the inspector general's report notes that there was already considerable information "contained in FBI files about airplanes and flight schools at the time the Phoenix EC was received at FBI HQ." It mentions four examples, implying that many more could be cited.
One of these examples is the following: "In August 1998, an intelligence agency advised the FBI's New York Division of an alleged plan by unidentified Arabs to fly an explosive laden aircraft from Libya into the World Trade Center." This previously unreported warning directly contradicts the claims, made repeatedly by Bush administration officials, especially Condoleezza Rice, that "no one could have imagined" hijacked airplanes being used as flying bombs against US targets.
The Moussaoui case
The entire chapter on Moussaoui, 115 pages long, is redacted from the version published last week, at the order of the federal judge who has been presiding over Moussaoui's terrorism trial. Only a few references to Moussaoui survive in other parts of the report.
A fuller analysis of this episode awaits the release of the redacted chapter, after Moussaoui's sentencing. But the gist of the situation is that local Minneapolis FBI agents asked for permission to conduct further inquiries, including searching Moussaoui's computer, while supervisors at FBI headquarters cited the necessity for a warrant from a special court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The supervisors refused to apply for the FISA warrant, saying the case did not meet the court's criteria.
In one passage, the inspector general's report cites a top FBI lawyer's statement that "he had never seen a supervisory special agent in Headquarters so adamant that a FISA warrant could not be obtained and at the same time a field office so adamant that it could." The report also notes that the Minneapolis field office sought an "expedited FISA," which "normally involved reports of a suspected imminent attack or other imminent danger."
While FBI supervisors were blocking action on Moussaoui, a CIA liaison officer in Minneapolis was reporting his arrest to the CIA. George Tenet, the CIA director, was briefed on the matter.
By the end of August, French intelligence officials had provided the US government with information on Moussaoui's connections to Islamic fundamentalist groups, but the FBI still took no action. Moussaoui, who was being held on immigration violations, was not even transferred from the Immigration and Naturalization Service to FBI custody until after September 11.
The San Diego hijackers
By far the most damning material in the FBI inspector general's report relates to Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the 9/11 hijackers who lived in the San Diego area for much of 2000 and 2001. The report details at least five instances during this period when the FBI could have or should have become aware of their presence and purpose.
The two men entered the United States on January 15, 2000, flying from Bangkok, Thailand to Los Angeles International Airport. Mihdhar was a participant at a January 5, 2000 meeting of Al Qaeda operatives in Malaysia, where he and others were photographed by an unnamed intelligence service. These photos were supplied to the CIA.
The US National Security Agency had separately identified Hazmi as an associate of Mihdhar. The two men were tracked by the CIA traveling from Malaysia to Thailand. CIA cables contemporaneously discussed Mihdhar's travel and the fact that he had a US visa in his Saudi passport. So intensive was the surveillance that agents obtained a photocopy of the passport and visa stamp and delivered it to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Two months later, the Bangkok CIA station identified Hazmi as Mihdhar's traveling companion and reported that he had traveled on from Bangkok to Los Angeles on January 15, 2000.
The most critical information about Mihdhar and Hazmi was withheld from the FBI for more than a year and a half. The FBI was informed about the Malaysia meeting as soon as it happened, and even about Mihdhar's presence at it. But there was no mention of his passport with a multiple-entry US visa, giving him easy access to American territory, where the FBI had the principal responsibility for counterterrorism. Nor did the CIA tell the FBI that Hazmi had actually entered the country, which would certainly have triggered an alert. The CIA itself did not put either man on any other security watch list.
Two weeks after their arrival in Los Angeles, Mihdhar and Hazmi moved to San Diego, apparently at the urging of a new acquaintance, Omar Bayoumi, a man once under FBI surveillance and believed to be an operative or asset of the Saudi intelligence service. He invited the two newly arrived Saudis to San Diego, where they rented an apartment in the complex where he lived. Bayoumi co-signed the lease and even wrote a check for the rent because the two had only cash.
In May 2000, the two men rented a room from another San Diego man who was an FBI informant, and who reported their arrival and their first names to his handler. The handler did not ask the last names or show any other interest.
The informant is not named in the inspector general's report, but he has been identified in previous press accounts as Abdussattar Shaikh, another Saudi immigrant. (Both Shaikh and his FBI handler, now retired, refused to speak with the FBI inspector general probing the bureau's response to 9/11, a remarkable circumstance that is recorded in the report only in a footnote, and without explanation.)
The actions of Hazmi and Mihdhar strongly suggest that they were being protected and were themselves aware of it. They conducted themselves, not as underground conspirators, trying to keep one step ahead of the most powerful spy apparatus in the world, but as men seemingly indifferent to threats to their security.
According to the FBI report: "... they did not attempt to hide their identities. Using the same names contained in their travel documents and known to at least some in the Intelligence Community, they rented an apartment, obtained driver's licenses from the state of California Department of Motor Vehicles, opened bank accounts and received bank credit cards, purchased a used vehicle and automotive insurance, took flying lessons at a local flying school, and obtained local phone service that included Hazmi's listing in the local telephone directory."
Even though this is not the first time the actions of Hazmi and Mihdhar have been detailed, one rubs one's eyes in astonishment at this passage. Hazmi could only have made himself more obvious if he had taken out an ad in the Yellow Pages under "T" for terrorist. But the CIA, which knew who he was, chose not to expose him to the FBI.
In June 2000, Mihdhar left the US, not returning until July 4, 2001, when he flew into John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Hazmi lived in San Diego for several more months, then moved to Phoenix and eventually the East Coast.
Following the bombing of the USS Cole in December 2000, interest in Mihdhar and Hazmi revived. A US intelligence source identified one of the participants in the January 2000 Malaysia meeting as the ringleader of the Cole attack, and the FBI, which had lead responsibility for the investigation, began to review all those who attended that meeting.
However, in discussions in January 2001 and again in May and June 2001, CIA officials did not tell the FBI that Mihdhar, now known to be associated with the suspected organizer of the Cole bombing, had a US visa, or that Hazmi, Mihdhar's associate, had entered the United States.
Much of this material in the report is difficult to follow, partly because of bureaucratic complexities, partly because of the large amount of redaction, apparently to conceal the nationality of the intelligence agency that had monitored the Malaysia meeting (most likely the Israeli Mossad). The inspector general's report cites cooperation by Malaysian, Thai and Yemeni security services without redaction.
The CIA finally told the FBI what it knew about Mihdhar and Hazmi on August 27, 2001, five days after the FBI had discovered independently, on August 22, that Mihdhar might be in the US, and the agency had opened its own investigation. The New York FBI office was notified, but the job of tracking down Mihdhar was assigned to a novice agent as his first intelligence case, an indication of the low priority given to the investigation. Only perfunctory steps to locate Mihdhar and Hazmi had been taken by September 11, when the two men boarded the American Airlines jet.
Indications of a CIA cover-up
The FBI inspector general's report reveals for the first time that the CIA not only failed to inform the FBI about Mihdhar, but that CIA officials intervened to suppress a memorandum drafted by an FBI agent detailed to the CIA-run Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC), who wanted to notify the FBI about the suspected terrorist with a US visa. The blow-by-blow account of this incident in the FBI report strongly implies a CIA cover-up.
The FBI agent, dubbed "Dwight" in the inspector general's report, drafted the memorandum, a Central Intelligence Report (CIR), on January 5, 2000, only hours after the Malaysia meeting had taken place. The same day, a CIA desk officer, dubbed "Michelle," relayed instructions from her supervisor barring distribution of the CIR to the FBI.
Three hours later, "Michelle" drafted and circulated an internal CIA cable which summarized the information on Mihdhar, including his multiple-entry US visa. This cable declared that his travel documents had been copied and passed "to the FBI for further investigation." This was a lie, which was later used by the CIA to substantiate its initial claim that it had notified the FBI about Mihdhar.
This cable could not possibly be an innocent mistake, since it was sent out after its author had relayed the instructions to "Dwight" that his memo to the FBI not be sent. Under questioning from the inspector general, no one at the CIA or the FBI could corroborate the claim in the cable by "Michelle" that the CIA had notified the FBI about Mihdhar-a claim that was diametrically opposed to what the CIA was doing in practice.
The report notes that the CIA initially withheld information about the existence of the January 2000 memorandum by "Dwight" from the inspector general's office. Quoting from the report:
"In February 2004, however, while we were reviewing a list of CIA documents that had been accessed by FBI employees assigned to the CIA, we noticed the title of a document that appeared to be relevant to this review and had not been previously disclosed to us. The CIA OIG [Office of the Inspector General] had not previously obtained this document in connection with its review. We obtained this document, known as a Central Intelligence Report (CIR). This CIR was a draft document addressed to the FBI containing information about Mihdhar's travel and possession of a US visa. As a result of the discovery of this new document, a critical document that we later determined had not been sent to the FBI before the September 11 attacks (see Section III, A, 4 below), we had to re-interview several FBI and CIA employees and obtain additional documents from the CIA. The belated discovery of this CIA document delayed the completion of our review."
The aggrieved tone is unmistakable. First the CIA withheld the document from the FBI, then the CIA attempted to conceal the existence of the document from the FBI's postmortem probe.
The cover-up was followed by a curious epidemic of amnesia. No one who worked on, received or read the draft CIR from "Dwight," including "Dwight" himself, could remember anything about it. Again the report:
"When we interviewed all of the individuals involved with the CIR, they asserted that they recalled nothing about it. Dwight told the OIG that he did not recall being aware of the information about Mihdhar, did not recall drafting the CIR, did not recall whether he drafted the CIR on his own initiative or at the direction of his supervisor, and did not recall any discussions about the reason for delaying completion and dissemination of the CIR. Malcolm said he did not recall reviewing any of the cable traffic or any information regarding Hazmi and Mihdhar. Eric told the OIG that he did not recall the CIR.
"The CIA employees also stated that they did not recall the CIR. Although James, the CIA employee detailed to FBI Headquarters, declined to be interviewed by us, he told the CIA OIG that he did not recall the CIR. John (the deputy chief of the Bin Laden Unit) and Michelle, the desk officer who was following this issue, also stated that they did not recall the CIR, any discussions putting it on hold, or why it was not sent."
Again, the tone of incredulity is clear. None of these people remember anything, and one of them actually refuses to be interviewed! And this is not about a minor matter, but concerns the first report on a man who was one of the 19 hijackers on 9/11.
A politically motivated whitewash
The FBI inspector general's report is, like all previous official investigations into the events of 9/11, a cover-up for the state apparatus. These investigations share one common feature: they completely exclude, a priori, any question of government complicity in terrorist attacks. Instead, we have the familiar litany of breast-beating over mistakes, complacency, inattention and inadequate resources.
Despite the all-purpose explanation that "mistakes were made," names are never named in any of these probes. No one is ever held accountable. No one is shamed or punished.
There is a definite reason for this: the US government does not want to generate a Watergate syndrome, in which punishment meted out at a lower level leads to people implicating higher-ups and focuses attention on the role of top officials. There can hardly remain any serious doubt that a section of the American intelligence apparatus functioned as the guardian angels for at least some of the suicide hijackers. The question is: why?
Until there is an investigation of 9/11 by a genuinely independent body-one wholly free of the US military/intelligence apparatus-it is impossible to specify precisely the role of the government in these events.
But on the basis of a political analysis alone, it is clear that 9/11 did not come as a bolt from the blue. As in the investigation of any crime, a critical question to be posed is: who benefits? For powerful sections of the US ruling elite and its state apparatus, a major terrorist attack on US soil was anticipated, desired and, most probably, facilitated in order to provide the necessary climate of fear and patriotic fervor to implement a sweeping program of political reaction, both at home and abroad.
Without 9/11, there would be no US occupation of Iraq, putting an American army squarely at the center of the world's largest pool of oil. Without 9/11, there would be no US bases across Central Asia, guarding the second largest source of oil and gas. And without 9/11, the Bush administration would have been unable to sustain itself politically, faced with a deteriorating economy and widespread opposition to its tax cuts for millionaires and social measures to appease the fundamentalist Christian Right.
The Democratic Party is deeply implicated, supporting both the war in Iraq and the cover-up of the role of the state in the 9/11 attacks. The Clinton administration sought to provoke a confrontation with Iraq in 1998, but had to back off in the face of public opposition to a new war in the Middle East-opposition that was only overcome in the wake of September 11. Moreover, the connection between US intelligence agencies and reactionary Islamic fundamentalists like bin Laden goes back nearly two decades, involving Democratic and Republican administrations alike.
Despite its tactical differences with the White House and squabbles over positions of influence, the Democratic Party accepts the basic program of the Bush administration. Should the Democrats return to power, they would not withdraw US forces from Iraq or Central Asia, nor rescind Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, nor repeal the USA Patriot Act or attacks on democratic rights.

Ressam provided detailed information on terror suspects
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian convicted of planning a year 2000 terrorist attack on the U.S., has provided federal agents with detailed information on individuals "identified as significant players in al-Qaida and other terrorist networks," according to documents filed in court yesterday.
All told, the 37-year-old Ressam provided information on more than 100 people, according to documents his lawyers submitted in court in preparation for his sentencing later this month.

Ressam, who was arrested in Port Angeles on Dec. 14, 1999, with a car loaded with bomb-making material, was convicted in May 2001 of conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism and eight other related counts.
Facing up to 130 years in prison for a plan to set off a powerful suitcase bomb at the Los Angeles International Airport, Ressam agreed to cooperate in exchange for a 27-year prison sentence.
His attorneys have said in the past that information from Ressam has proved so valuable, particularly since the Sept. 11 attacks, that he deserves additional time off his sentence.
Federal public defender Thomas Hillier, reached yesterday, declined to discuss the defense strategy for the April 27 sentencing.
However, defense documents filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Seattle lay out in general terms the scope of Ressam's cooperation. Sealed attachments detail that cooperation. The attachments were sealed to allow prosecutors time to decide what portions they believe should remain out of public view.
Telephone messages left at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle were not immediately returned yesterday evening.
The defense documents name only one individual Ressam has talked about — Abu Doha, the man Ressam claims led the Algerian section of the Afghan terrorist training. Doha, who lives in London, was indicted by a New York grand jury a month after the Sept. 11 attacks in connection with the millennium plot.
Between Ressam's conviction in May 2001 and April 2003, the documents say, he spent more than 200 hours in interviews and an additional 65 providing depositions or trial testimony. He has been interviewed by agents from Canada, Spain, Great Britain, Germany and Italy, the defense said.
While not mentioned specifically in the documents, Ressam provided U.S. prosecutors with key information in the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker and the only man indicted in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. Ressam has told investigators that Moussaoui was at a training camp in Afghanistan while he was there, sources have previously confirmed.
Over months of interrogations, the documents state, Ressam gave agents information on everything from the location of other terrorist cells to individuals planning terrorist attacks. He provided an inside look at terrorist recruitment, codes, explosives, ideology and security, the documents claim.
"In short," it concludes, "he provided everything he knew." - By Mike Carter Seattle Times staff reporter

'Millennium bomber' gets 22 years
Last Updated: Wednesday, 27 July, 2005
Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian man convicted of plotting to blow up Los Angeles airport five years ago, has been sentenced to 22 years in prison.
Ressam was arrested as he crossed the US-Canadian border with explosives on the eve of the new millennium. He was convicted in 2001 of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act and smuggling explosives, but was not sentenced because he was helping the authorities. He stopped co-operating in 2003 after being placed in solitary confinement.
Information
Ressam was arrested by US customs in December 1999 as he crossed by ferry from British Columbia on Canada's west coast into the US. Officers found bomb-making materials in the boot of his car. After his arrest, Mr Ressam reportedly helped the US authorities identify more than 100 people with alleged links to al-Qaeda. He also provided information about the network's training camps in Afghanistan.
Prosecutors had hoped he could help in the extradition of two suspected al-Qaeda members, one of whom is currently in Britain, the other in Canada, says the BBC's David Willis in Los Angeles. But he withdrew his co-operation after being placed in solitary confinement and the efforts to extradite the two men foundered, our correspondent says.
Ressam had been denied asylum by Canada, but had nevertheless managed to continue to live in Montreal for seven years. - bbc.co.uk

Hijacking the Facts
FBI worked hard to cover up a 9-11 cover-up-and then hide it some more
June 14th, 2005 WASHINGTON, D.C. - It's no secret the FBI let at least two 9-11 hijackers-Hazmi and Mihdhar-slip through its fingers when they landed in California in 2000 and proceeded to live openly under their own names in San Diego before moving into position for the attack. What makes the situation especially ludicrous is that one of these hijackers rented a room from a San Diego landlord who was an FBI informant on the Muslim community.
That's bad enough. But after 9-11, when the Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee found out what had been going on, the FBI refused to allow the informant to be interviewed by the committee staff or to testify.
The FBI actually took steps to hide this man so Congress could not find him. All this is described at some length in former senator Bob Graham's book Intelligence Matters-the one book on this entire affair written by an actual participant in the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing over what was permitted to come into public view about 9-11. Graham was chairman of the joint congressional investigation.
To resolve the informant question, Graham writes, he met with Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI director Robert Mueller, and other top officials. But when he tried to serve a subpoena on one top FBI official, the man shrank away and would not take the piece of paper. In the end, Graham says, he discovered that the FBI was taking its hard line on the informant on orders from the White House.
Now comes the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General with a lengthy description of the FBI's relationship with the landlord asset. Like the congressional committee, the inspector general did not interview the landlord, but relies on secondhand information gathered from FBI agents. The landlord no longer works for the Bureau. The inspector general reports, "In July 2003 the asset was given a $100,000 payment and closed as an asset."
It is interesting to note that the 9-11 Commission was formed in late 2002. The Joint Congressional Inquiry, which discovered the landlord's existence and sought unsuccessfully to question him, issued its final report July 24, 2003. - by James Ridgeway village voice

Beheaded Nick Berg - Moussaoui 9-11???

Boren - Tenet - CIA - Nick Berg - Moussaoui

Norman, Oklahoma is the home of OU, whose corrupt president, David Boren, was the longest-serving chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, before he resigned from his seat in 1994. In 1987 he launched the inept George Tenet on his career path leading to the CIA director's job, by making him chief of staff for that committee.
According to TIME and other sources, Boren and Tenet were having breakfast together in a Washington hotel on the morning of the 9/11 attack. The media commonly describe Boren as Tenet's "mentor." I would say that Tenet has been his puppet.
You are probably aware that Zacarias Moussaoui spent six months in Norman in 2001, where he took flight lessons, lived in OU dorms, worked out at the OU gym, and was receiving cash wire transfers from the Hamburg cell of Al Qaeda. In August, OU student Hussein Al-Attas drove him to Minneapolis, for more flight lessons, and he was arrested there. There was more Al Qaeda activity in Oklahoma besides this.- source

Nick Berg a CIA plant? Was he killed to cover the Oklahoma connection?
The FBI searched Zacarias Moussaoui's computer after the 9/11 attack and found Nick Berg's email account and password on it. When interviewed by them, Berg reportedly explained that when he was a student at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 1999, he allowed a stranger on a bus ride to use his email. The stranger turned out to be an associate of Moussaoui, we are told, and gave him Berg's password and email account name. This was reported by CNN and other news organizations.
There are several big reasons to be extremely skeptical about this story and to wonder what kind of fools the FBI agents were who bought it. One glaring fact is that, according to his indictment, Moussaoui did not show up in the United States until February of 2001. More connections - In Michael Wright's Opinion

Is this the same guy?

It was a device to connect 9-11 with IRAQ

Are these really facts?

CIA Allowed Known Al Qaeda Members to Buy 9/11 Flight Tickets
When viewed as a whole, a large troubling question emerges from the following brief set of facts: 1. In his June 2002 testimony before Congress, CIA boss George Tenet admitted that the agency had been tracking Al Qaeda members Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar since January 2000, when an Al Qaeda meeting was held in Malaysia.
2. according to a consensus of experts hired by National Review, the State Department acted unlawfully in granting visas to 15 of the 19 hijackers; the article mentioned Khalid Almihdhar as one of them; 2
3. In his briefing for the President of August 6, 2001, Tenet highlighted his knowledge of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden's interest in hijacking aircraft.
4. In his testimony, Tenet admitted that the CIA waited until August 23, 2001, to recommend to the FBI and other agencies that Alhazmi and Almihdhar be put on a watchlist.
5. According to the indictment of Zacarias Moussaoui, Alhazmi purchased his ticket for American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, on or about August 27, 2001. Khalid Almihdhar bought his ticket for the same flight on August 25.
6. It was disclosed to the 9/11 Commission in January 2004 that the watchlist, called TIPOFF, was not shared with FAA.
source

is it not possible that Tenet might be LYING
to cover up an INSIDE JOB

Zacarias Moussaoui admits his part in the plot?

Moussaoui admits terror plot
23/04/2005 - 08:54:12 Zacarias Moussaoui, the first person convicted in a US court over the 9/11 terror attacks, is facing the death penalty after admitting his part in the plot. Moussaoui pleaded guilty last night to conspiring with the hijackers and declared terror chief Osama bin Laden personally instructed him to fly an airliner into the White House in a separate assault. Despite the objection of his lawyers, 36-year-old Moussaoui calmly admitted his guilt in a Washington courtroom a few miles from where one of the hijacked planes crashed into the Pentagon in 2001. Prosecutors immediately confirmed they will seek Moussaoui's execution.
But Moussaoui, a French citizen, told US District Judge Leonie Brinkema as he became the only person convicted in a US court in connection with the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people: "I will fight every inch against the death penalty."
Bearded Moussaoui told the judge he had not been promised a lighter sentence for his guilty pleas.
Then added: "I don't expect any leniency from the Americans."
Moussaoui had pleaded guilty to six charges, four of which carry the death penalty. They accuse him of conspiring with the 19 hijackers and al-Qaida leaders in a broad plot to kill Americans using commercial airliners as weapons. The conspiracy included the 9/11 attacks. In a "statement of facts" compiled by prosecutors and signed yesterday by Moussaoui, he acknowledged knowing about the plot to fly planes into prominent US buildings, then lying to federal agents after his arrest in August 2001 to avoid exposing the plot. But in his court appearance, Moussaoui hinted at a possible death penalty defence. He tried to distance himself from the specific events on September 11, saying that nothing in the statement he signed declared he was "specifically guilty of 9-11".
The pleas ended a three-year legal drama during which Moussaoui attempted to fire his lawyers, ranted against the judge and prosecutors and produced arguments over national secrets and access to captured al-Qaida leaders that reached the Supreme Court. Before accepting the guilty pleas, the judge complimented Moussaoui, who in the past had derided her in handwritten court filings.
"He has a better understanding of the legal system than some lawyers I have seen in court," the judge said.
After the hearing prosecutors confirmed they will seek the death sentence.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a news conference: "The fact that Moussaoui participated in this terrorist conspiracy is no longer in doubt," he said, hailing Moussaoui's "chilling admission of guilt".
Moussaoui was arrested on immigration charges in August 2001 after drawing attention at a Minnesota flight school because he had said he wanted to learn to fly a Boeing 747 although he had no pilot's licence. He was in custody on September 11. In contrast with previous court appearances where he angrily taunted his accusers, Moussaoui yesterday occasionally joked, calmly answered questions and described for the first time how he was being trained to fly a jet into the White House. It was not clear when that attack was to occur.
"How do you plead?" the judge asked him for each of the six counts. Each time, he answered: "Guilty."
The judge asked Moussaoui to review the lengthy statement of facts in which prosecutors laid out their case against him. He appeared to carefully review it as hushed court spectators watched intently. The judge asked if he understood it.
"Yes, I have read more than 10 times this statement," he said. "I pondered each paragraph and find it factual."
In the statement, Moussaoui said bin Laden had personally selected him to take part in an attack on the White House with a commercial airliner.
Bin Laden told Moussaoui, "Sahrawi, remember your dream," according to the statement. Abu Khaled al Sahrawi was one of the names Moussaoui used.
The judge asked defence lawyer Alan Yamamoto, the only attorney Moussaoui has been willing to talk to in recent weeks, if he was satisfied his client understood what he was doing by pleading guilty.
"When I have spoken to him, we have disagreed," Yamamoto said. "He is facing the possibility of death or life in prison. He has told me that he understands that."
Prosecutor Robert Spencer told the court he believed Moussaoui should be ordered to pay restitution to the September 11 victims.
When the judge noted that part of the penalties could include a $250,000 fine, Moussaoui replied, "I wonder where I will get the money?"
Before he formally entered the plea, he was asked if he understood the statement could be used against him to prove he was guilty. "Absolutely, I do understand that," he said.
A few seconds later, he added: "Where do I get the pen?"
Outside the courthouse, family members of the terror attack victims expressed satisfaction with the outcome and their gratitude to the government for pursuing the case.
Dominic Puopolo Jr. of Miami Beach, Florida, whose mother from Dover, Massachusetts, died on American Airlines Flight 11 that crashed into the World Trade Centre, said he had "a tremendous feeling justice is being served". Ireland Online

September 11 account casts pall over Moussaoui death trial
Wed Mar 8, 2006 - A US prosecutor held a courtroom in thrall with a chilling minute-by-minute rundown of the September 11 attacks, on the second day of Al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui's death penalty trial.
"Oh my God, we are way too low," prosecutor David Raskin quoted flight attendant Amy Sweeney as saying in a phone call to the ground, minutes before doomed American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into New York's World Trade Center.
Defense lawyers hit back with a withering attack on US government claims that Moussaoui knew Al-Qaeda planned to use hijacked airliners as missiles. Prosecutors argue that by saying nothing, Moussaoui shares the guilt for nearly 3,000 deaths on September 11, even though he was in jail at the time. Moussaoui sat mute as Raskin raised a pall of emotion, reading a spellbinding account of the quadruple hijackings on September 11, 2001.
Raskin's forensic tones seemed to render details of the day of terror all the more poignant, as relatives of victims watched on television at remote courtrooms around the country.
A defiant Moussaoui broke the spell, saying in a loud voice "God Bless Osama bin Laden," and clenched his fist, before being led from the courtroom for a break in proceedings. His statement, after the jury had left court, was his most prominent intervention in the trial since a string of furious outbursts earned him repeated expulsions at the start of jury selection last month.
In another dramatic move, the defence drew an admission from an FBI investigator that not a single piece of evidence had been found to show Moussaoui had contacted the 19 hijackers. Defence lawyers, appointed by the court despite Moussaoui's protests, are painting him as a lone bumbler, who was rejected by the "real terrorists" who pulled off the September 11 strikes.
Defence Counsel Edward MacMahon cross-examined FBI special agent James Fitzgerald after he had told prosecution lawyers of repeated telephone, personal and email contacts between the lead hijacker and his cohorts.
"In the largest investigation in the history of the FBI, you didn't find a single phone call from Moussaoui to Mohamed Atta," MacMahon said.
"No," Fitzgerald replied.
"They were all talking together on the phone all the time weren't they?" MacMahon said, comparing the behaviour of Moussaoui, who largely lived alone in Oklahoma and Minnesota, with that of the September 11 hijackers.
He also got Fitzgerald to admit that none of the hijackers had spent significant time more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) apart from the others, ensconced as the suicide teams largely were, in New Jersey and Florida.
Fitzgerald did later confirm to the prosecution however that Moussaoui had called co-conspirator Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the financiers of the September 11 attacks in Germany. The prosecution earlier claimed that Moussaoui acted out the Al-Qaeda terror manual perfectly by refusing to divulge the September 11 plot after he was arrested after stirring suspicion at a flight school in Minnesota. Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to six counts of conspiring to fly airliners into US buildings -- but maintains he was involved in a follow-up plot to September 11.
As the trial resumed Moussaoui's mother, who had travelled from France to watch, sobbed quietly in the public benches of the courtroom. She later claimed her son's calm behavior, at odds with the furious outbursts that marked the start of jury selection last month, showed he had been drugged. "That is not Zacary," said Aicha el-Wafi, 59, speaking in French during a break in her son's sentencing trial on Tuesday. "He is too calm. He doesn't even budge." "I believe, in this moment, he has been drugged, in order for him to be calm and not disturb anybody."
The prosecution must prove that acts by Moussaoui directly contributed to deaths on September 11 for him to be eligible for the death penalty. If jurors unanimously agree he is, they will be asked to consider whether to recommend the ultimate punishment. The alternative sentence is life in prison, without possibility of parole.
The 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan heritage is the only man so far tried in a US courtroom in connection with the September 11 strikes in 2001. - Yahoo news

Prosecutors may ditch 9/11 case after sanctions
Associated Press in Alexandria Thursday March 16, 2006 The Guardian
Prosecutors seeking the death penalty for confessed terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui have told a federal judge that it would be a waste of time to continue the trial after key government witnesses were barred from testifying.
The government is considering an appeal against district judge Leonie Brinkema's decision on Tuesday to bar testimony from aviation officials, who were central to the justice department's case.
Judge Brinkema issued the sanctions because a government lawyer violated trial rules by coaching witnesses on their testimony and giving them access to trial transcripts. - guardian.co.uk

FBI Agent Slams Bosses at Moussaoui Trial
By Michael J. Sniffen The Associated Press - Monday 20 March 2006
Alexandria, Va. - The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 testified Monday he spent almost four weeks trying to warn U.S. officials about the radical Islamic student pilot but "criminal negligence" by superiors in Washington thwarted a chance to stop the 9/11 attacks.
FBI agent Harry Samit of Minneapolis originally testified as a government witness, on March 9, but his daylong cross examination by defense attorney Edward MacMahon was the strongest moment so far for the court-appointed lawyers defending Moussaoui. The 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent is the only person charged in this country in connection with al-Qaida's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
MacMahon displayed a communication addressed to Samit and FBI headquarters agent Mike Maltbie from a bureau agent in Paris relaying word from French intelligence that Moussaoui was "very dangerous," had been indoctrinated in radical Islamic Fundamentalism at London's Finnsbury Park mosque, was "completely devoted" to a variety of radical fundamentalism that Osama bin Laden espoused, and had been to Afghanistan.
Based on what he already knew, Samit suspected that meant Moussaoui had been to training camps there, although the communication did not say that.
The communication arrived Aug. 30, 2001. The Sept. 11 Commission reported that British intelligence told U.S. officials on Sept 13, 2001, that Moussaoui had attended an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. "Had this information been available in late August 2001, the Moussaoui case would almost certainly have received intense, high-level attention," the commission concluded.
But Samit told MacMahon he couldn't persuade FBI headquarters or the Justice Department to take his fears seriously. No one from Washington called Samit to say this intelligence altered the picture the agent had been painting since Aug. 18 in a running battle with Maltbie and Maltbie's boss, David Frasca, chief of the radical fundamentalist unit at headquarters.
They fought over Samit's desire for a warrant to search Moussaoui's computer and belongings. Maltbie and Frasca said Samit had not established a link between Moussaoui and terrorists.
Samit testified that on Aug. 22 he had learned from the French that Moussaoui had recruited someone to go to Chechnya in 2000 to fight with Islamic radicals under Emir Ibn al-Khattab. He said a CIA official told him on Aug. 22 or 23 that al-Khattab had fought alongside bin Laden in the past. This, too, failed to sway Maltbie or Frasca.
Under questioning from MacMahon, Samit acknowledged that he had told the Justice Department inspector general that "obstructionism, criminal negligence and careerism" on the part of FBI headquarters officials had prevented him from getting a warrant that would have revealed more about Moussaoui's associates. He said that opposition blocked "a serious opportunity to stop the 9/11 attacks."
The FBI's actions between Moussaoui's arrest, in Minnesota on immigration violations on Aug. 16, 2001, and Sept. 11, 2001, are crucial to his trial because prosecutors allege that Moussaoui's lies prevented the FBI from discovering the identities of 9/11 hijackers and the Federal Aviation Administration from taking airport security steps.
But MacMahon made clear the Moussaoui's lies never fooled Samit. The agent sent a memo to FBI headquarters on Aug. 18 accusing Moussaoui of plotting international terrorism and air piracy over the United States, two of the six crimes he pleaded guilty to in 2005.
To obtain a death penalty, prosecutors must prove that Moussaoui's actions led directly to the death of at least one person on 9/11. Moussaoui pleaded guilty last April to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly planes into U.S. buildings. But he says he had nothing to do with 9/11 and was training to fly a 747 jetliner into the White House as part of a possible later attack.
Samit's complaints echoed those raised in 2002 by Coleen Rowley, the bureau's agent-lawyer in the Minneapolis office, who tried to help get a warrant. Rowley went public with her frustrations, was named a Time magazine person of the year for whistleblowing and is now running for Congress.
Samit revealed far more than Rowley of the details of the investigation.
MacMahon walked Samit through e-mails and letters the agent sent seeking help from the FBI's London, Paris and Oklahoma City offices, FBI headquarters files, the CIA's counterterrorism center, the Secret Service, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, an intelligence agency not identified publicly by name in court (possibly the National Security Agency), and the FBI's Iran, Osama bin Laden, radical fundamentalist, and national security law units at headquarters.
Samit described useful information from French intelligence and the CIA before 9/11 but said he was not told that CIA Director George Tenet was briefed on the Moussaoui threat on Aug. 23 and never saw until after 9/11 a memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix about radical Islamists taking flight training there.
For each nugget of information, MacMahon asked Samit if Washington officials called to assess the implications. Time after time, Samit said no.
MacMahon introduced an Aug. 31 letter Samit drafted "to advise the FAA of a potential threat to security of commercial aircraft" from whomever Moussaoui was conspiring with.
But Maltbie barred him from sending it to FAA headquarters, saying he would handle that, Samit testified. The agent added that he did tell FAA officials in Minneapolis of his suspicions. - news.yahoo.com

FBI agent testifies: Bureau resisted Moussaoui investigation before 9/11 attacks
By Joe Kay - 22 March 2006
The death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui resumed on Monday, after Federal District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema partially reversed a decision that threatened to derail the government's case. Testimony continued with the defense's cross examination of FBI agent Harry Samit. Samit detailed the repeated rebuffs he received from top bureau officials as he sought an investigation into Moussaoui prior to the September 11 attacks.
Moussaoui has already decided to plead guilty to terrorism charges relating to his support for Al Qaeda, and the trial is focused on the sentencing phase. The government is trying to have Moussaoui sentenced to death on the grounds that he knew of plans for the September 11 attack, but did not tell FBI agents of these plans after he was arrested in August 2001. However, the testimony on Monday provided strong evidence of the complicity of top FBI officials, who refused to pursue leads despite clear indications that a plot to hijack airlines was under way.
The death penalty trial was halted last week after an attorney for the prosecution informed the court that Carla Martin, another government attorney who worked for the Federal Aviation Administration, had lied to the court and improperly coached witnesses. Martin flouted the explicit orders of Judge Brinkema, as well as standard procedure in such cases, when she provided trial transcripts and advice to FAA witnesses who were to be called by the prosecution.
Martin also claimed that three FAA officials subpoenaed as defense witnesses had refused to talk to Moussaoui's lawyers, even though they had done nothing of the sort. Rather, Martin herself had told the witnesses not to be interviewed.
Brinkema originally responded to these flagrant breaches of judicial procedure, which came after a series of other mistakes and misdeeds on the part of the prosecution, by moving to prohibit all witnesses addressing aviation security. "I cannot allow that kind of conduct to go without there being serious sanctions," she said. Of Martin, who was involved closely in the prosecution's process of witness selection, Brinkema declared, "Her involvement in that portion of the case so taints everything she touched. How can any rational trier of fact rely on any representation she had made?"
However, by Monday Brinkema had agreed to a major reversal of this earlier decision. She had clearly come under intense pressure over the weekend, and accepted a proposal from the prosecution that would only bar those six witnesses who had received coaching from Martin. She will allow all other witnesses to testify, and will also allow the government to choose replacements for the witnesses who have been barred. This decision has saved the government's case, which under Brinkema's original decision would have been severely undermined.
The case resumed on Monday with the cross examination of Samit, who testified on behalf of the prosecution earlier this month. Samit is an FBI field agent who participated in the questioning of Moussaoui after his August 2001 arrest in Minnesota. The FBI picked up Moussaoui after executives at a flight school he was attending raised concerns due to his background, his lack of flying experience and the fact that he had paid for the school's $6,800 tuition in $100 bills.
Samit was called by the prosecution to testify that if Moussaoui had informed him that he belonged to Al Qaeda, this may have raised alarm bells in the FBI that would have prevented the September 11 attacks. However, his testimony on cross examination has demonstrated that the essential hurdle to a deeper investigation into the September 11 plot was not Moussaoui, but the FBI itself.
Samit said that he was particularly concerned about Moussaoui not only because of the reasons cited by the Minnesota flight school, but also because he could not account for his sources of cash. The FBI was then informed by French intelligence in mid-August that Moussaoui had worked as a recruiter for an Islamic fundamentalist group in Chechnya with ties to Al Qaeda. Samit told defense attorneys that his concern about Moussaoui was based in part on the information provided by Moussaoui's roommate, Hussein al-Attas, who testified on Tuesday.
On Monday, Samit acknowledged that he had warned more senior officials at the FBI at least 70 times that Moussaoui was a terrorist who was plotting to hijack an airplane. He was repeatedly rebuffed in his attempts to seek a warrant to search Moussaoui's computer and other belongings. Samit testified that he had previously accused his superiors of "criminal negligence." He said that agency officials wanted to "run out the clock" to avoid prosecuting Moussaoui. They instead wanted to deport him, Samit said.
In particular, Samit pointed to the role of Michael Maltbie, a supervisor in the FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit, and David Frasca, who was the superior of Maltbie. Both agents scuttled Samit's attempts to get a warrant to search Moussaoui.
According to Samit, the main reason that the FBI sought to prevent agents in Minnesota from getting a warrant was concern over potential criticism from the courts. The story is that the courts had previously chastised the FBI for overreaching in seeking warrants for intelligence gathering. Samit said he was told by Maltbie that an application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court for a warrant "was just the kind of thing that would get FBI agents in trouble."
At the same time, he was told by Frasca that an attempt to get a warrant from a criminal court could not proceed because the FISA court had criticized the government for using intelligence warrants in criminal cases. This rationale, however, appears nonsensical, since FBI officials were already blocking efforts to proceed through FISA, so there could be no question of using FISA warrants in a criminal case.
In addition to blocking attempts to get a search warrant, Samit said the FBI also prevented him from placing an Arabic-speaking guard in Moussaoui's jail cell to gather information. At one point, Samit said that his boss, Greg Jones, told FBI headquarters that the Minnesota office was concerned that Moussaoui was planning on flying a plane into the World Trade Center. "It was a lucky guess," Samit said.
The story of FBI worries about judicial criticism is further undermined by the context of the Moussaoui arrest. At the same time as attempts to get a search warrant were being blocked, the FBI received the "Phoenix memo" from another FBI agent, noting that a number of students with ties to Islamic fundamentalists were taking classes in local flight schools, and warning that terrorists might be seeking to become trained as pilots for hijackings. Indeed, Frasca was in possession of the Phoenix memo, written in July 2001, even as he was blocking attempts to investigate Moussaoui.
News of Moussaoui's arrest also became known to the CIA. By at least August 24, CIA Director George Tenet was informed after receiving a memo on Moussaoui entitled, "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly."
The most obvious explanation for the circumstances described by Samit in his testimony, and for the other evidence of government non-action in the weeks and months preceding September 11, 2001, is that certain high-level officials in the American intelligence apparatus were aware of the hijacking plot. And that not only was nothing done to stop it, but actions were taken-such as the moves to block an investigation into Moussaoui-that were deliberately intended to allow the hijackings to proceed. - wsws.org

my note: "allowing the hijackings to proceed" ???
If the FBI had simply allowed the 911 attacks to go ahead -
presumably giving the PNAC / Neocon / Globalists the excuse for their Pre-emptive policy of Full Spectrum Dominance and allowing a complete & utter shake-up of the Intelligence service - [towards a fascist 'homeland security' / Patriot act]
Isn't that a big gamble... on a big payout...to wait and see if these 'terrorists could pull off the job?
How could these agencies be sure these 'terrorists' would manage to pull the operation off in a way which would allow them the political leverage they needed?

Moussaoui Prosecutors Close With FBI Agent
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 16 minutes ago
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Prosecutors wrapped up their case for executing Zacarias Moussaoui with a former FBI agent's testimony Thursday that the bureau could have identified 11 of the Sept. 11 hijackers if the al-Qaida conspirator had confessed when he was arrested a month before the suicide attacks.
Before court-appointed defense attorneys could begin their case, Moussaoui announced loudly as he left for a recess that he would testify in his own behalf.
"I will testify, Zerkin, whether you want it or not," he said, referring to one of his lawyers, Gerald Zerkin. The 37-year-old Frenchman, who is the only person charged in this country in connection with the 2001 attacks, has refused to cooperate with his lawyers.
Former FBI agent Aaron Zebley testified that Moussaoui's admission, when he pleaded guilty last April, that he received more than $14,000 in wire transfers from a man using the name Ahad Sabet could have allowed the FBI to go through Western Union, cell phone, calling-card and motor vehicle records, as well as leases and other business materials to identify most of the 19 hijackers who flew jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who has told the jury it cannot decide Moussaoui's punishment "on speculation," barred Zebley from explicitly asserting what the FBI would have accomplished had he confessed when arrested Aug. 16, 2001.
But Zebley gave prosecutors their strongest testimony in a week when many of their witnesses ended up buttressing the defense argument that the FBI and Federal Aviation Administration badly bungled better intelligence about 9/11 than Moussaoui had in the summer of 2001.
Zebley implied that Moussaoui's lies when arrested while taking pilot lessons in Minnesota foreclosed several avenues of investigation that might have saved at least one of the nearly 3,000 lives lost on 9/11.
"We could have set about finding the hijackers," Zebley said.
For the first hour of more than two hours on the stand Thursday, Zebley had jurors leaning forward to follow his explanation of how FBI agents moved from the data in records of one money transfer by Western Union, through incoming and outgoing calls to a phone number listed on the Western Union record, to the businesses that were called from all those phone numbers, to home addresses listed on business and bank transaction records, to leases and driver's licenses and other IDs recorded by landlords. He said the identities of 11 of the hijackers were learned by these methods within weeks after the attacks and these records existed in August, 2001.
On cross-examination, defense lawyer Edward MacMahon pointed out that neither Moussaoui's statements after arrest nor anything found in a post-9/11 search of his possessions gave away that he got that money transfer by wire. The defense has argued that under the Fifth Amendment Moussaoui had no obligation to incriminate himself when arrested.
MacMahon asked why the FBI didn't launch a full criminal investigation of Moussaoui in August 2001 based on 70 appeals to Washington by arresting agent Harry Samit who warned that Moussaoui was a terrorist training to hijack an airliner.
"The FBI has to have a confession ... before anybody listens?" MacMahon asked.
Zebley replied that Samit did not know all the details in Moussaoui's 2005 confession.
MacMahon got Zebley to acknowledge that nothing in the confession or in FBI evidence gathered since then shows any contact between Moussaoui and the 9/11 hijackers, who lived, trained and traveled together in small groups. Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly planes into U.S. buildings. But he says he had nothing to do with 9/11 and was training to fly a 747 jetliner into the White House as part of a possible later attack.
MacMahon brought out that the CIA knew in March 2000 that two of the 9/11 hijackers - Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mindhar - had entered the United States in 2000 after attending a conference with Osama bin Laden associates in Malaysia. He showed that the CIA finally told the FBI on Aug. 23, 2001, that the pair were in the United States, and that the FBI sent a message marked "routine" on Aug. 28 asking its New York office to look for them. On Sept. 10, 2001, the FBI New York office asked the Los Angeles office to check for them in hotels there, according an FBI document MacMahon introduced.
"What could have been done if the U.S. government had tracked al-Hazmi and al-Mindhar in the summer of 2001?" MacMahon asked. "We'll never know, right?"
Zebley conceded that point.
The first defense witness, former FBI agent Erik Rigler, summarized a Justice Department inspector general report that criticized the CIA for keeping the al-Hazmi and al-Mindhar intelligence from the FBI for so long and the FBI for assigning pursuit of the pair to one inexperienced, young agent. It said the pair was on Thailand's watchlist in January, 2000, but not on a U.S. watchlist until August, 2001.
Earlier in the trial, Samit said he spent four weeks warning his bosses about the radical Islamic student pilot. He said "criminal negligence" and bureaucratic resistance by FBI headquarters agents blocked "a serious opportunity to stop the 9/11 attacks."
This sentencing trial will determine whether Moussaoui is executed or imprisoned for life.
Meanwhile, Transportation Security Administration lawyer Carla J. Martin, who improperly coached witnesses in the case, was subpoenaed for a Monday hearing, but her legal advisers were considering trying to block the appearance, according to a lawyer familiar with the case. Brinkema said there might be an early Monday hearing. - news.yahoo.com

FBI
[good guys were stopped from investigating]
NSA/CIA
[bad guys Let It Happen on purpose]

FBI 'could have found 9/11 men'
The FBI may have tracked 11 of the 9/11 hijackers if the only person to be charged for the attacks had co-operated when first arrested, a court has heard. Ex-FBI agent and now prosecutor Aaron Zebley said a major probe would have been launched if Zacarias Moussaoui had provided information in August 2001. Mr Zebley was testifying as the prosecution rested its case in its argument for the death penalty.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty last April to six charges of conspiracy.
As he left the court in Alexandria, Virginia, at the end of the prosecution's argument, Moussaoui, who has consistently refused to co-operate with his court-appointed defence lawyers, shouted at one of them: "I will testify... whether you want it or not."

'Right to silence'
Mr Zebley had testified that the FBI could have tracked down 11 of the hijackers via phone cards, wire transfers and by investigating flight schools if Moussaoui had said a plot was under way.
"You've got 11 different names. We could have set about finding them, of course, shared information with the intelligence community and... federal law enforcement," Mr Zebley said. He said Moussaoui did later provide information on the 11 after pleading guilty.
Defence lawyer Edward MacMahon argued that no such investigation would have been launched, saying the FBI had failed to track down two hijackers it did have knowledge of.
The defence also argues that Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan origin, did not have to supply information as he had the right to remain silent.
Moussaoui admits conspiracy to hijack aircraft and commit other crimes but denies a direct role in the 11 September attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.
The jury only has two choices - the death penalty or life imprisonment. BBC

Moussaoui 'let 9/11 happen'? - shoe bomber Reid was his partner?

Moussaoui lies 'let 9/11 happen'
Convicted al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui has told a US court he lied to US officials to stop them uncovering the 11 September 2001 terror plot. He denied direct involvement in the New York attacks, but said he was training to attack the White House in a fifth hijacked plane on 11 September. Moussaoui said he was to be accompanied by British shoe bomber Richard Reid.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Moussaoui, who has pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy. Earlier, court-appointed defence lawyers tried to stop Moussaoui giving evidence in an effort to stop him incriminating himself on the stand.
The Moroccan-born French citizen pleaded guilty last year to conspiring with al-Qaeda to attack the US. He is the only man to be charged in connection with the 2001 attacks. British-born Richard Reid was caught after an abortive attempt to blow up an American Airlines plane heading from Paris to Miami in December 2001. He was sentenced to life in January 2003.
Partners
Under cross-examination by prosecutor Robert Spencer, Moussaoui told the court he had lied after being arrested in Minnesota in August 2001. Although he did not know exactly when the attacks planned against New York and Washington were due to take place, Moussaoui said he realised that misleading investigators would ensure they were carried out.
"I had knowledge that the two towers would be hit but I didn't have the detail," he told the court.
Instead he described how he was training as part of the plot that saw planes smash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001. Moussaoui said he and Reid were due to hijack a fifth plane and fly it into the White House. He contradicted testimony given when pleading guilty last year, when he said the White House attack was not part of the main 11 September plot.
When asked who ordered him to do this, Moussaoui replied: "Osama Bin Laden."
Prosecution 'gift'
He told the court that his involvement with al-Qaeda had been "gradual", and that he initially turned down invitations to join the hijacking gang. Moussaoui was arrested on 16 August 2001, three weeks before the eventual attacks, as he attempted to speed his way through a pilot's course. US prosecutors have been aiming to prove that Moussaoui deceived federal agents who could have prevented the attacks with more information.
Moussaoui has become well-known for his unpredictable outbursts while in the witness box. During frequent appearances before the US courts he has sometimes contradicted earlier testimony and appeared mentally unstable.
However, the BBC's Justin Webb, in Washington, says it looks like the prosecution has received something of a gift from Moussaoui. They have said all along that he knew enough about the 11 September plot to stop it happening, and that appears to be what he has said in court, our correspondent adds. - BBC

Al-Qaida Plotters Dismiss Moussaoui's Role
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press 28th March 2006 ALEXANDRIA, Va. -
Two more high-ranking al-Qaida captives asserted Tuesday that Zacarias Moussaoui had no role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, one portraying him as a misfit who refused to follow orders. In both cases, for security reasons, their testimony was read to the jury because the government did not want them to appear in court.
Waleed bin Attash, often known simply as Khallad, is considered the mastermind of the 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole and an early planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, plot. He said he knew of no part Moussaoui was to have played in the 9/11 attacks.
Another captured terrorist, identified as Sayf al-Adl, a senior member of al-Qaida's military committee, told U.S. interrogators that Moussaoui was "a confirmed jihadist but was absolutely not going to take part in the Sept. 11, 2001, mission."
The defense introduced an array of written testimony from these captives that was read to the jurors in an effort to undercut Moussaoui's dramatic testimony Monday that he was to hijack a fifth plane on Sept. 11 and fly it into the White House.
Khallad portrayed Moussaoui as something of a loose cannon during a trip to Malaysia in 2000, where he met members of a radical group affiliated with al-Qaida. Khallad said Moussaoui breached security measures and al-Qaida protocol. For example, he called Khallad daily, despite instructions to call only in an emergency, to the point where Khallad turned his cell phone off.
Another witness, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, who served as a paymaster and facilitator for the Sept. 11 operation from his post in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, said he had seen Moussaoui at an al-Qaida guesthouse in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in the first half of 2001, but was never introduced to him or conducted operations with him.
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, chief organizer of the 9/11 attacks, said in testimony heard Monday that Moussaoui had nothing to do with the plot, but was to have been used for a second wave of attacks distinct from Sept. 11.
Al-Hawsawi said he provided money and tickets to four of the Sept. 11 hijackers and to a fifth man, identified as Muhammed al-Qahtani, who was to be a hijacker but was denied entry to the United States before Sept. 11 in Orlando, Fla. In the written statement, Al-Hawsawi quoted Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as describing al-Qahtani as the last hijacker for the mission who would "complete the group."
Thus it appeared al-Qahtani was the so-called missing 20th hijacker of Sept. 11, a role the government initially thought Moussaoui was to have played before his arrest a month earlier.
Also Tuesday, defense attorney Alan Yamamoto read a summary of three Federal Aviation Administration intelligence reports on hijacking from the late 1990s and 2000, reports that concluded a hijacked airliner could be flown into a building or national landmark in the U.S. However, this was "viewed as an option of last resort."
The FAA had reports of questionable reliability that Osama bin Laden had discussed suicide hijackings and had discussed hijacking a U.S. air carrier in an effort to free imprisoned Egyptian cleric Omar Abdul Rahman.
But the reports concluded that crashing a jetliner into a building appeared to be an unlikely option for the goal of winning Rahman's release because it offered no time to negotiate. The FAA was more concerned that bin Laden might try to hijack a U.S. carrier and take the American passengers as hostages to Afghanistan to deter a U.S. military strike there.
Last year, when he pleaded guilty, Moussaoui had said his plot to hijack a 747 and fly it into the White House was supposed to occur if the U.S. refused to release Rahman. Moussaoui's testimony Monday that he was part of the 9/11 plot along with would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid flew in the face of his previous denials that he had any role in the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
As soon as Moussaoui finished testifying, the jury was read statements from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who said Moussaoui was to have been used in a second wave of attacks completely disconnected from Sept. 11.
Moussaoui is the only person in this country charged in the Sept. 11 attacks, during which hijackers crashed passenger jetliners into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. Mohammed is in custody abroad in undisclosed circumstances, having been interrogated but not yet charged. Even prosecutors are not alleging a direct role for Moussaoui in the 9/11 plot. Instead, they argue that Moussaoui allowed the Sept. 11 plot to go forward by lying about his al-Qaida membership and his true plans when federal agents arrested him in August 2001. Moussaoui repeatedly had denied involvement in 9/11, and when he admitted guilt in April 2005 to conspiring with al-Qaida to hijack aircraft and commit other crimes, he pointedly made a distinction between his conspiracy and 9/11.
On Monday, though, Moussaoui put himself at the center of the plot. He was asked by defense attorney Gerald Zerkin: "Before your arrest, were you scheduled to pilot a plane as part of the 9/11 operation?"
Moussaoui: "Yes. I was supposed to pilot a plane to hit the White House." He said he knew few other details, except that planes also were to be flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Moussaoui's defense attorneys, in their opening arguments, suggested Moussaoui may prefer execution, which he would see as martyrdom, to life in prison. He isn't cooperating with his court-appointed attorneys and testified against their wishes.
In his testimony, Mohammed said the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11 after passengers rebelled against the hijackers was to have targeted the U.S. Capitol. There has been ongoing debate about whether the plane was headed for the Capitol or the White House.
Because Moussaoui has already pleaded, the jury must only determine his sentence: death or life in prison. To obtain the death penalty, prosecutors must prove that Moussaoui's actions resulted in at least one death on Sept. 11. - news.yahoo.com

MSNBC VIDEO: Moussaoui wore 'stun belt' for new testimony

If you're looking for a reason why Zacarias Moussaoui suddenly testified today to a version of the 9/11 plotline that sounds more like the Official story than even the official Whitewash Commission report, this video may have the answer.
In it, NBC news reporter Pete Williams lets slip that Moussaoui is wearing a "Stun belt" underneath his clothing controlled by US Marshals. MSNBC host Dan Abrams gets some more details on the stun belt.
A taste of the exchange:
WILLIAMS: The old outbursts were gone... He was very docile today... We believe that he's wearing one of those stun belts, and it may be that he was very worried about doing anything that would cause those Marshals to press the button....
ABRAMS: A stun belt? They literally have something around his waist? That they can push a button and?
WILLIAMS: [Pause] Well...
total911.info

Moussaoui 'Cooked His Own Goose'
But Defense Closing Should Be, Don't Let Him Become a Martyr By Giving Death Penalty
By SYLVIE ROTTMAN March 27, 2006 - -
Confessed al Qaeda co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified in court today that he knew of plans to fly planes into the World Trade Center and that he had planned to fly a plane into the White House. Since he has already confessed to being part of a terrorist plot designed to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings in the United States, the only question before the jury is whether or not he should be sentenced to death.
ABC News asked former federal defense attorney Jonathan Turley, now a professor at George Washington Law School, and former federal defender Barry Boss, now a partner at Cozen O'Connor law firm, to weigh in on Moussaoui's testimony.
Question: Is his goose cooked?
Turley: This is becoming a legal version of suicide by cop. Once again, Moussaoui has saved the government from the brink of defeat. Earlier, the government's case was falling apart on some counts because even American intelligence was admitting that he was never the 20th hijacker. Just when the government was looking increasing ridiculous, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to all counts, including the 20th hijacker count. Notably, he testified clearly and convincingly that he never was the 20th hijacker and just pleaded guilty to that count for kicks.
Now, with the government clearly losing its bid for the death penalty, he has saved the prosecution again. It is hard to imagine that the jury will not vote for death after such a performance.
The problem is that this testimony only highlights questions about his mental incompetence. Moussaoui is clearly a hateful, deranged individual who honestly believes that he is being clever. Every attorney who has spent any time with him has sought an insanity defense, but he has blocked those efforts. For years, we have all had to watch this lunatic engage in a series of self-inflicted wounds. Now, he has not only cooked his goose but served it up to the prosecutors with a signature garnish.
Question: How significant is his admission he lied to federal agents because he wanted his mission to go ahead?
Turley: It is the first real break for the government. His testimony could not have been written better by the prosecutors themselves. He all but confessed to the elements needed to secure the death penalty. The government has long argued that "Moussaoui lied and people died." He has now confirmed the first part, and the second part will be treated as a historical fact.
Question: How significant is his admission he was aware of two flights intended to hit the World Trade Center some time after August?
Turley: He shared information that we have not previously seen in the various investigations. This greater detail reinforces the government's claims that it would have acted had he been truthful. This is far less speculative due to his incriminating statements.
Question: How significant is his apparent admission that his part of the plot was part of what happened on 9/11?
Turley: Moussaoui seemed to take pride in his knowledge of the crime and admitted that he had hoped to fly a plane to achieve the same end. He admitted that he wanted the mission to succeed. Because of the details, it was even worse that we anticipated. The jury could always deadlock on death, but Moussaoui has done all he possibly could do to assist the prosecutors.
Question: Is his goose cooked and has he essentially made the prosecution's case?
Boss: Obviously, Moussaoui's goals in this case are not necessarily the same as his defense team. The defense team is dedicated to saving his life, and it would appear that Moussaoui's dedicated to being a martyr.
Before anything else, the prosecutors have to prove a threshold question -- they have to prove that Moussaoui, by his lies, caused somebody's death. And for this, it doesn't matter what his intentions were. He may have wanted to, but it doesn't mean he did it. On the threshold issue, Moussaoui's lawyers have done a phenomenal job at demonstrating that even if he had told the truth, it would appear unlikely from the testimony that it would have made a difference.
But if they get by that threshold question, then the jury is going to consider -- is this a person who deserves to live or is he somebody that should die? Do the aggravating circumstances sufficiently outweigh the mitigating ones.
Question: Did he serve them the answer on a silver platter?
Boss: In many ways, Moussaoui made a very compelling case. But I had the feeling the defense was trying to bring out how much this guy wants to be a martyr. He didn't get to be a martyr by flying a plane into the World Trade Center so he wants to become a martyr by getting the death penalty. You can be sure that the defense argument in closing is going to be, don't make him a martyr. The defense will likely argue that you can do more to subvert terrorism and deter others by not letting Moussaoui carry out his suicide plot under your watch -- and not to let him become a martyr within the terrorist community. - abcnews

Moussaoui Offered to Testify Vs. Himself
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press - 29th March 2006 - ALEXANDRIA, Va. -
In another twist to an already convoluted case, the jury deciding whether al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui will be executed learned that he offered last month to testify for prosecutors against himself at his death penalty trial.
He also told agents he did not want to die in prison, the jury was told Tuesday.
The disclosure, which came at the end of the testimony phase of Moussaoui's trial, provides the firmest evidence yet that 37-year-old Frenchman is seeking to derail his own defense in an effort to obtain martyrdom through execution.
It also could provide fodder for the closing arguments of both prosecutors and Moussaoui's court-appointed defense attorneys.
Closing arguments in the trial were set for Wednesday afternoon on whether Moussaoui's actions make him eligible for the death penalty. The jury must decide whether the only man charged in this country in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks will be executed or imprisoned for life. He the jury finds he is eligible for the death penalty, a second phase would determine whether a death sentence is imposed.
To be eligible, prosecutors must prove that Moussaoui's actions resulted in at least one death on Sept. 11.
According to Tuesday's testimony, Moussaoui offered in February during a jailhouse meeting with prosecutors to testify for the government that he planned to hijack and pilot a fifth plane on Sept. 11.
FBI agent James Fitzgerald testified that Moussaoui told him - in a meeting requested by the defendant - that he did not want to die behind bars and it was "different to die in a battle ... than in a jail on a toilet."
Moussaoui dropped his effort to testify for prosecutors after he learned that he had an absolute right to testify in his own defense.
On Monday, he stunned the court by asserting publicly for the first time that he was to fly a 747 jetliner into the White House on Sept. 11, despite having claimed for three years that he had no role in the plot. Instead, he had said he was to be part of a possible later attack.
The February meeting with the prosecution was to have been off the record but was ruled admissible after the defense introduced a partial transcript of Moussaoui's guilty plea last April. In that 2005 pleading, Moussaoui said, "Everybody knows that I'm not 9/11 material" and that Sept. 11 "is not my conspiracy." He said he was going to attack the White House if the United States did not release radical Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel Rahman, imprisoned for other terrorist crimes.
The defense on Tuesday also presented evidence from two high-ranking al-Qaida operatives that cast doubt on Moussaoui's claim of involvement in 9/11. Their testimony supports that of another top al-Qaida captive, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, chief organizer of the Sept. 11 attacks. He said in testimony read in court Monday that Moussaoui had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 plot, but was to have been part of a later wave of attacks.
Prosecutors argue that if Moussaoui had revealed his al-Qaida membership and his plans to hijack an aircraft, the FBI could have pursued leads that would have allowed them to track down most of the 9/11 hijackers and thwart or at least minimize the attacks.
The defense argues that nothing Moussaoui might have said would have made a difference because the FBI and other government agencies were consistently ignoring warnings prior to 9/11 that an attack was imminent. The defense also argues that it's legally irrelevant to speculate on what might have happened if Moussaoui confessed, because Moussaoui always enjoyed a constitutional protection against self-incrimination. news.yahoo.com

Jury deliberates in Moussaoui death penalty trial
Thu Mar 30, ALEXANDRIA, United States (AFP) - A US jury launched deliberations in Zacarias Moussaoui's death penalty trial, after prosecutors charged September 11 victims died because of his lies, and the defense mocked him as a "nuisance" rejected by Al-Qaeda.
"Zacarias Moussaoui came to this country to kill as many Americans as he could. In this trial you have heard from the defendant himself that is exactly what he did," prosecutor David Raskin told the jury.
But Moussaoui's court-appointed defence team tried to save his life after a tumultuous three-and-a-half week trial by branding him a lifelong loser, desperate for a place in history alongside the September 11 hijackers.
"Moussaoui was not involved in the 9/11 plot, no matter what he says," MacMahon said of the only person ever tried in the United States in connection with the 2001 attacks. He told jurors "no one will ever know" if the September 11 attacks could have been stopped had Moussaoui told investigators of the plot.
The nine men and three women of the jury retired to consider whether Moussaoui is eligible to receive the death penalty over government claims he "lied with lethal intent" and was therefore culpable in the attacks.
Prosecutor David Novak told the jury to "hold accountable the person who was brazen enough to look you in the face and tell you how proud he was to participate in that horrible, horrible crime."
In lengthy instructions, Judge Leonie Brinkema reminded jurors to act as impartial judges of the evidence presented in the three-and-a-half-week trial. "You don't represent those affected by 9-11," she said.
Moussaoui, who had previously admitted conspiring to fly planes into buildings for Al-Qaeda but denied a role in September 11, stunned the trial on Monday by claiming he had been tapped to fly a fifth plane into the White House on that fateful day. Prosecutors say Moussaoui should have told investigators that Al-Qaeda was planning to fly planes into US buildings after his arrest in August 2001, after he attracted suspicion at a flight school in Minnesota.
"He chose Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and as a result of that 2,971 people are dead and that is what this case is about," said Raskin.
But defence counsel Edward MacMahon berated his client, calling him "ignorant" and prejudiced" and accusing him of telling "a plethora of lies." "You can't believe anything this man says," MacMahon said, recalling Moussaoui's sensational offer to testify against himself for the prosecution, a step that would have all but guaranteed his execution. "He's now trying to write a role for himself in history, when the truth is he was an Al-Qaeda hang-around and a nuisance who people wanted to get rid of," the defence lawyer said. "Ladies and gentlemen, as in everything else in Zacarias Moussaoui's life, he will fail." "Mr Moussaoui (has) absolute contempt for every one of us. He believes that all of you, all of you sitting in that box, that just because you are American, that you want to kill him."
MacMahon meanwhile said the government's case that Moussaoui's lies prevented authorities taking steps to forestall the September 11 plot was "hopeful speculation."
To demonstrate government bungling, the defence presented evidence of other signs of the impending attacks that US intelligence had failed to detect.
"The government needs jurors who have seen 'The Wizard of Oz' all the way through and still think there is a wizard," MacMahon said.
If the jury decides Moussaoui is eligible for capital punishment, new hearings will start to decide on whether he should be executed.
Relatives of those who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks meanwhile delivered damning verdicts as the jury began deliberating.
"Absolutely he deserves the death penalty," said Debra Burlingame, whose brother captained the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon, after following the trial via closed-circuit television in New York.
Diane DeCarlo, who lost her brother in the attack on the World Trade Center, said she had mixed feelings about the possibility of Moussaoui being executed. "I don't believe in the death penalty. But I really don't like him and were he to be given the death penalty, I don't think I'd feel terribly bad," she said. - news.yahoo.com

Moussaoui's Star Witnesses
By Andrew Cohen Special to washingtonpost.com - Friday, March 31, 2006; 12:00 PM
With jurors now in the midst of their capital sentencing deliberations, it ought to tell you something about the case against Al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui that no fewer than six current or former Bush Administration officials testified on his behalf Tuesday.
The list reads like a litany of Who's Who in Washington over the past few years -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet and counterterrorism guru Richard Clarke all went to bat for the terrorist the government wants to execute for knowing in advance about the 9-11 plot and not telling anyone.
These luminaries did not of course come into federal court and appear live at the witness stand on behalf of the man connected to the worst crime in American history. But they did offer in their own words, on videotape, during testimony they gave years ago to the 9/11 Commission some of the most convincing evidence at the trial that nothing Moussaoui would have said when arrested in August, 2001 would have enabled the government to prevent the terror attacks.
And those words were highlighted by defense attorney Edward MacMahon during his closing arguments Wednesday. Over and over again, he cited Rice and Company to support defense claims that our government was simple unable and unwilling before 9/11 to understand and process what was about to happen. In this often surreal trial, where defense attorneys impeached the credibility of their own client, and prosecution witnesses embarrassed the US government more than Moussaoui ever could, it was a delicious bit of endgame theatrics from Moussaoui's lawyers to throw back at vital policy makers some of the fancy phrases (and pathetic excuses) they offered Commission members in discussing how it came to be that a few dozen men took down the mighty World Trade Center and gravely damaged the Pentagon. The message could not have been lost on jurors: the government has been saying out of court something completely different from what prosecutors are saying in court about the cause of 9/11.
Take Rice, for example, who was the head of the National Security Council on 9/11. She testified that there "was no silver bullet" that would have foiled the attacks in advance and that the government could not have hardened aircraft cockpits in three months even if it had known of a direct threat by hijackers. This is crucial to the case against Moussaoui because a prosecution witness last week had told jurors of many security measures that would have been implemented in the 25 days between Moussaoui's arrest and the terror attacks, if there had been advance warning. Rice's statement was so devastating to this government claim that prosecutors did not even mention the possibility of hardened cockpits during their closing argument.
John Ashcroft, meanwhile, also appeared in the trial, on tape and on behalf of the confessed terrorist he once famously, and incorrectly, labeled as the "20th hijacker." He told the 9/11 Commission that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's computer system actually was "42 systems" that often did not communicate with one another. Ashcroft also told the Commission, and therefore jurors, that the pre-9/11 legal wall that precluded intelligence sharing among law enforcement and spy agencies "impeded the investigation" of Moussoaui before the terror attacks. Remarks like this forced prosecutors to tell jurors during closing arguments to "keep your focus. This stuff is not what this case is about."
Meanwhile, Thomas Pickard, the acting FBI director from June to September 4, 2001, told the Commission, and therefore jurors, that he "was not aware" of Moussoaui before 9/11, despite frantic pleas for action by the agent who arrested Moussaoui. Pickard also testified that he was not made aware of the search for two Al Qaeda operatives (who later turned out to be 9/11 hijackers) who were known to be in the United States in the summer of 2001. The FBI, he said, was "being fed out of a fire hydrant" and could not process "tons of material" and for good measure he told the panel that the Attorney General had cut the budget for counterterrorism.
Then, it was left to Tenet, from the CIA, to summarize the essence of this part of the Moussaoui's defense. He told the Commission that a specific attack warning "is not good enough without a structure to put it into action." That's precisely what Moussaoui's lawyers say -- that even if Moussaoui had told federal agents whatever he knew about plans to use planes as missile, the bureaucratic structure in place before 9/11 would not have enabled enough people to know enough to do anything to prevent the attacks.
And, finally, Clarke's image was brought to the jury. The controversial face of anti-terror measures both before and after 9/11 also echoed a major defense theme of the case-- that it is only for the realm of regret and speculation to wonder what might have happened on 9/11 if things had happened differently before that awful day. "We'll never know" what would have happened, Clarke told the Commission. Later, he told Commissioners "I don't know what we would have done" with the information Moussaoui and other terrorists might have provided before 9/11. That's vital to the case because prosecutors must convince jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that had Moussaoui told the truth when arrested, the terror plot, or a great part of it, would have been foiled.
None of this testimony guarantees or even suggests that jurors will reject the government's argument that Moussaoui caused death on 9/11 and therefore is eligible for the death penalty. But now the record is even clearer than before that there were many reasons why Tuesday, September 11, 2001 turned out to be one of the worst days in American history. Jurors now are deciding whether and to what extent Moussaoui is culpable for what happened that day. But as Moussaoui's star-studded, surprise witnesses pointed out on video, the verdict already is out on the government's role in this sad affair. - washingtonpost.com

Moussaoui vows: 'You'll never get my blood'
MARGARET NEIGHBOUR - Tue 4 Apr 2006
ZACARIAS Moussaoui, the al-Qaeda conspirator, was last night declared by a US jury to be "eligible to be executed".
The federal jury decided that his lies to FBI agents led directly to at least one death in the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September, 2001. The verdict means that the maximum sentence British- educated Moussaoui now faces for his role in the attacks is death rather than life imprisonment.
A second phase of the sentencing trial will determine whether he deserves to be executed, with victims' families giving evidence to describe the human impact of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
Moussaoui, 37, who used to attend London's Finsbury Park mosque, prayed silently as the verdict was read and refused to stand. Afterwards, he said: "You'll never get my blood, God curse you all."
Last week the Frenchman, the only person ever charged in the United States over the 2001 events, stunned the court when he testified that he and Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber, were supposed to hijack a fifth aeroplane that day and fly it into the White House. Previously, he had said the White House attack was to come later if the US refused to release a radical Egyptian sheikh imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions.
Moussaoui, who has a master's degree from South Bank University in London, pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy last April. He had been detained three weeks before 11 September, 2001 on immigration charges, after a flying school in Minnesota reported that he had been acting suspiciously.
In the next phase of the trial, which begins on Thursday, experts summoned by defence lawyers will suggest that Moussaoui is schizophrenic, following an impoverished childhood in France during which he faced racism. Moussaoui has tried to reject the lawyers.
The key question before the jury, which had been deliberating since last Wednesday, was whether at least one victim died 11 September, 2001 as a direct result of Moussaoui's actions. Their answer was yes. The jurors ruled that he was guilty on three counts: conspiracy to commit international terrorism; to destroy aircraft and to use weapons of mass destruction.
He was in prison at the time of the attacks, but prosecutors argue that they could have been at least minimised if he had revealed his membership of al-Qaeda and terrorist plans when interrogated. - news.scotsman.com

The Moussaoui Verdict: What Does It Mean?
The jury in the death penalty phase of Zacarias Moussaoui's criminal trial found today that he was legally responsible for at least one September 11-related death, thereby potentially clearing the way for him to be executed. The same jury will now deliberate whether to recommend death or life imprisonment.
For most Americans, executing a would-be terrorist like Moussaoui probably isn't very controversial. But the case has some interesting wrinkles. Moussaoui didn't participate in the September 11 attacks--he was in jail--so the theory is that the attacks could have been prevented if he had told the truth to investigators. For some, that theory is highly troublesome. Fox News quotes law professor Jonathan Turley:
"I find the decision of the jury to be very problematic," said Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School. "I do not see in the evidence any basis to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that had Moussaoui revealed what he knew, we would have prevented 9/11."
If Moussaoui is executed for lying about a crime he did not commit, a dangerous precedent will be set, Turley said. In that event, a Supreme Court challenge could be on the horizon.
"He's basically being put to death for the act of omission. There would be no limit to how far this type of theory could be used," Turley said.
Well, there are some obvious limits, I think. I don't think Turley's point is frivolous; intuitively, executing a man for a crime that he did not participate in seems questionable. But if we assume that Moussaoui was a co-conspirator, there is nothing novel about holding him responsible for the acts of his confederates.
I think the concern about this case arises, at least in part, from the fact that it is not clear that Moussaoui did know about the September 11 attacks in advance. He made the jury's job easier by testifying that he did:
Last week, Moussaoui appeared to drop a bombshell in the case when he testified that he knew about the attacks ahead of time and that he and failed shoe-bomber Richard Reid were slated to hijack a fifth airliner and crash it into the White House.
I don't know what he knew or didn't know, but his claim about Reid seems suspect. Reid didn't try to enter the U.S. until October.
Moussaoui may be put to death someday, but not for a very long time, given the inevitable appeals. It seems likely that he testified that he knew about the September 11 plot because he wanted to be a martyr, but that won't prevent him from fighting execution every step of the way. In the end, the verdict the jury reached today probably won't mean much, one way or the other. - powerlineblog.com

Moussaoui Judge OKs Playing Plane Tapes
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press - 5th April 2006 ALEXANDRIA, Va. -
The cockpit recording from the hijacked jetliner that passengers tried to retake on Sept. 11 will be played in public for the first time - at the sentencing trial of al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui - the judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said the jury considering whether to execute Moussaoui could hear the recording from United Airlines Flight 93 and see a transcript of it. The flight is best known for one passenger's rallying cry to other passengers, "Let's roll," which was overheard over a cell phone connection between a passenger and a family member on the ground.
This cockpit tape was played privately April 18, 2002, for the families of Flight 93 victims, but it has never been played in public. Family members told reporters afterward they heard "yelling and screaming" and muffled voices that were hard to identify.
"Listening to the tape confirmed for me that there was a heroic teamwork effort," said Alice Hoglan of Los Gatos, Calif., whose son, Mark Bingham, called from the air before the plane crashed into an empty field - the only one of four jets hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, that did not kill anyone on the ground.
There has been debate over whether the hijackers intended to crash it into the U.S. Capitol or the White House. But last week the Moussaoui jury heard a government-approved summary of statements made during interrogation of the captured mastermind of Sept. 11, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who said it was to hit the Capitol.
Prosecutors asked the judge to order the tape and transcript kept sealed from the general public after it is played in open court, but Brinkema did not decide that question immediately.
Noting that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered trial evidence made public, she said relatives of Flight 93 victims would have until next Tuesday to advise her whether they object to general release of the material. She said if no family members object, she will release the material to the general public the day after it is submitted into evidence. No date was set for that.
The sentencing trial of Moussaoui resumes Thursday morning. In the first phase, the jury unanimously found the 37-year-old Frenchman eligible for the death penalty on counts of conspiracy to commit international terrorism, to commit air piracy and to use weapons of mass destruction. The second phase will examine aggravating and mitigating evidence about his crimes, and the jury will decide whether he deserves to be executed or imprisoned for life for his role in the Sept. 11 attacks.
In an order describing a closed hearing Wednesday morning, Brinkema said the government's policy reason for wanting to keep the tape and transcript sealed from general release was "to protect the National Traffic Safety Board against premature public speculation regarding the cause of any airline crash so it may `conduct a full and fair investigation.'" Brinkema said even prosecutors admitted in court that that reason "is not implicated in this sentencing proceeding."
Much of what happened aboard Flight 93 is known because passengers used cell phones in flight to call their loved ones. Earlier in the trial, prosecutor David Raskin transfixed the jury by reading accounts of the last moments of several of the Sept. 11 planes based on cell phone calls by passengers and flight attendants to family members and ground controllers.
A Hollywood movie re-enacting Flight 93 is to be released later this month.
Discussing general public release of the tape and transcript, Brinkema wrote, "The court is also mindful that family members of the flight crew or passengers on Flight 93 may object to the voices of their loved ones being publicly revealed in this manner."
Prosecutors began calling relatives of the victims Wednesday afternoon to advise them of the judge's decision.
Thursday is the only trial day this week. The sentencing's second phase begins then, with opening statements from both sides before any testimony is heard. The jury will return next week to its Monday-Thursday schedule. Phase 2 could last two weeks to two months.
The government will bring in testimony in an effort to prove that Moussaoui's victims suffered cruel physical abuse; that his acts resulted in "serious physical and emotional injuries, including maiming, disfigurement and permanent disability" for numerous survivors; and that his acts injured or harmed not only the victims but also their families, friends and co-workers.
Prosecutors intend to identify for the jury, by name and photograph, each of 2,972 victims and to call witnesses to tell the stories of about 45 victims. This sample will include victims from each of the four hijacked jetliners, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And it will cover the diversity of race, religion, economic status and occupations of victims as well as the range of people affected, including spouses, parents, children, siblings and friends.
Prosecutors also intend to show the harm the attacks did to New York's economy and public employees and to the Pentagon.
To make a case for life in prison, the court-appointed defense team wants to call a doctor to testify that Moussaoui is schizophrenic and to call sociologists to describe his impoverished childhood in France and the racism he encountered in France and England because of his Moroccan ancestry. They have yet to outline all the mitigating factors they hope to show.
To obtain a death penalty, the prosecution must prove at least one of three aggravating factors beyond a reasonable doubt: Moussaoui knowingly created a grave risk of death to one or more innocent bystanders; he subjected victims to serious physical abuse in a heinous and cruel way or relished the killing; or he acted to cause death or terrorism after substantial planning or premeditation.
That plus any other damage they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt would have to outweigh any mitigating evidence submitted on Moussaoui's behalf. - news.yahoo.com

911 psyops - trial as a movie promo?
did Zacarias Moussaoui really cause those deaths while he was in prison?
if he was Schizophrenic - why wasn't he diagnosed under a medical check-up before he was incarcerated...
If he had revealed the 911 plot - would the authorities have believed him under his mental condition...?

Moussaoui Trial to Move Into Next Phase
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer 6th April 2006 - ALEXANDRIA, Va. -
Jurors deciding the fate of Zacarias Moussaoui are being exposed to some emotionally jarring testimony as the al-Qaida terrorist's death-penalty trial moves into a second phase. On Wednesday, prosecutors received the judge's approval to play cockpit voice recordings from United Flight 93, the plane that crashed into a western Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001, after passengers fought back against the hijackers.
The tape has never been aired publicly, although relatives of the Flight 93 passengers have been permitted to hear it. When family members heard the 30-minute recording in April 2002, the government had grief counselors on hand and warned the families that graphic details would be audible.
While the recording will be played for the jury and the courtroom gallery, it is unclear whether it will be publicly released. Most court exhibits are being made available to the public, but U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema is giving Flight 93 family members until Tuesday to request that the recording be kept under wraps.
Moussaoui, 37, is the only person charged in this country in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. On Monday, a jury concluded that Moussaoui was directly responsible for at least one death on that day and is therefore eligible for execution.
He was in a Minnesota jail on 9/11. Nevertheless, the jury concluded in the first phase of the trial that Moussaoui could have thwarted or at least minimized the attacks if he had confessed his al-Qaida membership and his plan to hijack aircraft when federal agents arrested him in August 2001 after his efforts to obtain flight training aroused suspicion.
The second phase of the trial, which begins Thursday, will include evidence on whether Moussaoui deserves to be executed. Prosecutors intend to present testimony from relatives of 9/11 victims on the personal toll exacted by the attacks. They have indicated they will have up to 45 victim-impact witnesses and they plan to identify each of the 2,972 people killed that day by name and photograph to the jury.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was expected to testify, according to CNN. Giuliani's spokeswoman Sunny Mindel declined to confirm or deny the report.
The defense has indicated it will try to present evidence that Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent, suffered a difficult childhood, punctuated by racism. They also will seek to introduce evidence of mental illness. A defense expert has said Moussaoui most likely suffers from schizophrenia.
The jury will be asked to balance aggravating and mitigating factors in determining whether to sentence Moussaoui to death or life in prison. - news.yahoo.com

Giuliani recalls horror of twin towers attacks
· Ex-mayor says he froze as he watched people jump · Defendant appears bored as jury decides fate
Edward Helmore in New York and agencies Friday April 7, 2006 - The Guardian
The horror of al-Qaida's attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York was replayed by the city's former mayor yesterday as US government prosecutors began their efforts to secure the death sentence for Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person to be prosecuted in connection with the September 11 2001 onslaught.
Jurors in a federal court in Washington were warned by the judge that testimony over the next few weeks would be harrowing and dramatic, and include cockpit tapes from the hijacked planes, phone calls from doomed victims in the burning towers, 45 witnesses' accounts of death and injury, and a roll call of all 2,972 people killed in the assault.
Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani was called to describe how he heard of the attacks. He said he was unwilling to believe the horror until he saw people jumping from the twin towers. "I froze. I realised in that couple of seconds, it switched my thinking and emotions. I said, 'We're in uncharted territory.'
"As I looked up, my eyes caught on a man on the 100th floor of the north tower near the top. I realised I was watching the man throwing himself out. I watched him go all the way down and hit."
Mr Giuliani used a model of the towers to describe the attacks and said he has never been able to erase the images from his mind: a man clutching his briefcase case as he fell; a woman holding her skirt down to protect her modesty during her 1,000ft plunge.
"Over the course of time I saw several other people jumping, I can't remember how many. Two of them I saw were holding hands. Of the many memories that stick in your mind from that day, that's the one I remember every day." "It was horrid," he said of the scenes after the twin towers collapsed. "The worst thing I've ever seen in my whole life ... parts of human bodies ... hands or legs."
Jurors and spectators, including relatives of the victims, watched video clips of two planes hitting the towers and then about five minutes of footage of people jumping from the burning buildings. Many gasped and dabbed at tears while watching the videos.
Last week jurors decided that Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty. This phase of the trail is to determine whether he deserves it. Prosecutors must prove his victims suffered heinous and cruel physical abuse, and that his acts resulted in "serious physical and emotional injuries, including maiming, disfigurement and permanent disability" for numerous survivors, and injured or harmed the victims' families, friends and co-workers.
Prosecutor Rob Spencer said the attacks turned the towers into "slaughterhouses" and added: "The only verdict and the only punishment that fits this crime is the death penalty."
Throughout the hearing Moussaoui, 37, appeared distracted, becoming animated only at a break in the proceedings when he shouted, "Burn in the USA!"
He has thwarted the efforts of his defence lawyers to depict him as a deranged terrorist wannabe. He successfully contradicted the testimony of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who told the court Moussaoui was never a part of his terrorist cell and was considered by al-Qaida to be too unreliable and disorganised to be included.
Moussaoui has said he wants to be executed to avoid a life sentence because it is "different to die in a battle ... than in a jail on a toilet". After jurors found him eligible for execution last week and he was being led away, he screamed, "You'll never get my blood!"
The testimony in court in Alexandria is as close the victims' relatives are likely to get to an official judicial hearing of their loss and suffering. In what is expected to be exceptionally harrowing evidence, audio tapes of the passenger uprising on Flight 93 and its crash into a Pennsylvania field will be played.
Defence lawyers acknowledge it will be hard to counteract the emotionally wrenching testimony. To make a case for life in prison, the court-appointed defence team wants to call a doctor to testify that Moussaoui is schizophrenic. They will call sociologists to describe his impoverished childhood in France and the racism he encountered in France and Britain over his Moroccan ancestry.
There have been other recent reminders of 9/11. Last week, authorities released transcripts of fire and police operators receiving calls for help from people in the towers. While developers, government agencies and victims' groups continue to squabble over what will be built on the site of the towers, construction workers still discover human bone fragments. Yesterday, 74 pieces were found on the roof of an adjacent buil - guardian.co.uk/

Briefing: why Moussaoui confession doesn't add up
Daniel McGrory,a Times expert on al-Qaeda, examines the inconsistencies behind Zacarias Moussaoui's confession that he was part of the 9/11 plot
"From the start of the hearing to decide whether he should be executed or spend the rest of his life in jail, Zacarias Moussaoui made it clear he regarded the proceedings as a joke. He mocked the judge, shouted obscenities at the jury and has repeatedly shown his contempt for the court, saying he only recognises Islamic law.
"His exasperated defence lawyer, Gerald Zerkin, admits he has no idea what his client is going to say or do next as he has no control over the former London university student.
"Asked why he signed a guilty plea as "the twentieth hijacker", Moussaoui smirked and said: 'Because everybody used to refer to me as the 20th hijacker and it was a bit of fun.'
"Prosecutors have no interest in demolishing Moussaoui's extraordinary confession as the self- proclaimed al-Qaeda terrorist seems to have done their job for them. It does not appear to matter to them that Moussaoui's testimony contradicts their own evidence.
"The CIA has in custody the man who orchestrated the attacks on the World Trade Center, and he has told his interrogators that Moussaoui was not part of any 9/11 cell. That handpicked team came from similar backgrounds and bore little resemblance to the Frenchman of Morrocan descent who was too indisciplined to be trusted on such a crucial mission.
"Al-Qaeda did pay for him to take flying lessons in America, as they did for dozens of others, but, unlike the pilots recruited for 9/11, Moussaoui proved incompetent. He not only raised suspicions by refusing to be taught the basics of how to take off or land a Boeing 747, but in the flight simulator he couldn't even steer straight and instructors told the truculent Moussaoui that he was wasting his money.
"Defence lawyers argue he has repeatedly changed his story about his supposed role in a deliberate attempt to confuse US authorities.
"First he claimed he was to be used in a plot to free a blind Egyptian cleric, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, jailed in the US in 1996 for an earlier attempt to blow up the World Trade Centre. Moussaoui told how he was to pilot a plane carrying the freed sheikh to Afghanistan.
"Then he changed his mind and said that he was to take part in a second wave of aerial attacks in the US. He did not give a date, but claimed he was to crash his aircraft into the White House.
"The question to be asked about his latest confession is, why would he implicate Richard Reid, his friend from their days at Finsbury Park mosque? Both men were at training camps in Afghanistan at the same time but, as evidence has shown, Reid, and another young Briton, Saajid Badat, were being groomed for an entirely different role.
"FBI agents are expected to question Reid, who is already serving an 80-year jail sentence for trying to detonate a shoe bomb on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001.
"Investigators know that Reid's path never crossed that of the 9/11 cell. Before he was ordered to carry a bomb onto a plane, Reid had other uses for al-Qaeda. Using his British passport, he was sent on reconnaissance missions across Europe and the Middle East at the time the 9/11 hijackers were finalising their plans.
"In July 2001 he was in Amsterdam obtaining a new passport from the British Consulate, claiming that he had ruined his original document by leaving it in his trouser pocket which he stuffed into a washing machine.
"He then flew to Israel, Egypt and Turkey, scouting possible targets for attack.
"His travel diary was later discovered by FBI agents at an al-Qaeda safe house in Kabul after the US led invasion of Afghanistan. There is no mention of anything remotely connected to 9/11.
"On August 9, 2001 Reid returned to Amsterdam where he linked up with other al-Qaeda activists who have since been jailed for plotting bomb attacks in Europe. In November Reid was back in Pakistan with Badat to be shown how to detonate their shoe bomb.
"On December 5, Reid went to Paris to get yet another passport, using the same stunt as before. At his trial he freely admitted what his mission was to be, adding he was "a soldier for al-Qaeda".
"Those who remember Moussaoui from his loudmouth displays at London mosques, and who trained with him in Afghanistan, describe him as a man who enjoyed exaggerating his own importance. He claimed to be a particular favourite of Osama bin Laden, which none of the al-Qaeda captives verify.
"He liked the idea that London had provided al-Qaeda with a small army of would-be suicide bombers, and that he would be the first to die. He continually boasted about wanting to be a martyr for al-Qaeda.
"After his testimony yesterday he may yet get his wish."
- Times online.co.uk

all rise: PSYOPS in court

Moussaoui Jury Shown Gruesome 9/11 Photos
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer - 11th April 2006 - ALEXANDRIA, Va. -
Jurors weighing the fate of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui were shown gruesome photographs Tuesday of bodies burned inside the Pentagon and heard from two determined military officers who crawled almost blindly through falling debris, choking smoke and searing heat to safety.
Despite Judge Leonie Brinkema's warning on Monday that too much highly emotional evidence could imperil a death sentence on appeal, prosecutors showed the most gut-wrenching evidence yet in a trial studded with horrific images. The images came from the mammoth military headquarters just a few miles from the courtroom.
In the third day of testimony from relatives of 9/11 victims, the jurors showed little emotion. One man discreetly wiped his face with a tissue; on earlier days as many as six of the 17 jurors and alternates did so.
After a three-minute bench conference to argue with the defense over what could be shown, prosecutors displayed photos of a charred body on a blue stretcher, another charred body sitting upright inside a wrecked Pentagon office, several charred bodies piled together inside another destroyed office and a small torso covered with ash on a blue stretcher. The mostly intact bodies had barely discernible facial features.
Each picture was displayed for a few seconds. Within minutes, the jury left for lunch.

Moments later with judge and jury gone, Moussaoui defiantly shouted to spectators as he was led out: "Burn all Pentagon next time."
Jurors also heard from two officers who may have been saved by their military training, Lt. Col. John Thurman, who was a major working on Army promotion policies on the Pentagon's second floor on 9/11, and Lt. Nancy McKeown, who was working on the first floor as chief weather forecaster for the Navy's top brass.
The impact of hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon sounded like a bomb to Thurman and an earthquake to McKeown, but they both immediately dropped to the floor and rolled under their desks for cover as light fixtures, ceiling tiles, bookcases and file cabinets fell everywhere.
Both called out to co-workers and groped around in the dark as the lights in their windowless offices went off and hot black smoke filled the air.
McKeown never heard any response from the two young sailors in her office; they died that day. Thurman briefly reached two of the five co-workers in his office. One woman briefly held his belt, but neither could follow him crawling through debris. Three of the co-workers died.
At one point, both Thurman and McKeown thought they would die.
Having crawled to one door only to find fire on the other side and seeing no easy way to reach the door on the opposite side of the room, Thurman felt he needed a nap. "That's when it hit me: I'm going to die," he testified, "and I got very angry. Angry that terrorists would take my life on the same day my parents were getting their first grandchild" (from his sister).
"I realized I had to get out. I pushed file cabinets with all of my strength and found an opening," Thurman said.
Having crawled around her office without finding her aides, McKeown said she thought: "Is this how it's supposed to end?"
"I got angry and called out again. My insides were on fire. It was hard to breathe," she testified, but she pushed toward a glimmer of light and rescue.
After a medically induced coma and hospital stay, Thurman said, "Today, I'm fine. ... I feel incredibly lucky; nothing fell on me. But there's guilt about getting the lucky break."
McKeown broke down describing how she took the body of one aide, Petty Officer Edward T. Earhart, to his family for a funeral. "Before turning him over, I checked to see his buttons were buttoned and his medals were straight," she said, weeping. "I stayed until he was buried and I presented the flag" to his relatives.
Now, her daughter is haunted by fear of losing her. "I must call her when I get to work and when I'm coming home," McKeown sobbed.
Pentagon Police Sgt. Jose E. Rojas Jr. testified that when he and colleagues saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center on television, they rushed outside in time to see a mushroom cloud of fire over the Pentagon. Racing to the crash site, he could hear "people inside moaning, groaning and screaming" and told them to walk through the thick smoke toward his voice at a blown-out window.
He grabbed one man by the hands. But "he slipped back into the building because the skin came off his hands into my hands," Rojas testified. He had to reach in and dig his hands into the man's hands and pull him out while the man was screaming in pain. Rojas and his colleagues pulled nine people out; all but one badly burned woman survived.
Late in the day, the jury heard brief calls to air traffic control from the cockpit of United Flight 93, which ultimately crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers attempted to retake the plane. During the two calls, which came as the hijacking began at 9:28 a.m., a voice was heard saying: "Mayday! Mayday! ... Get out of here!"
Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly planes into U.S. buildings. A week ago, the jurors ruled him eligible for the death penalty even though he was in jail in Minnesota on 9/11. They decided that lies he told federal agents a month before the attacks led directly to at least one death that day by keeping agents from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers. Now they must decide whether he deserves execution or life in prison
Defense lawyers say the jury should spare Moussaoui's life because of his limited role in the attacks, evidence that he is mentally ill and because execution would only fulfill his dream of martyrdom. The defense has subpoenaed would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, serving life in Colorado after a failed try to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001. In a surprise, Moussaoui testified Reid was to help him fly a fifth plane on 9/11 into the White House. - news.yahoo.com

guess which movie is being released soon?

Jury hears 9/11 victim's scream
11th April 2006 - The dying scream of a man who was talking on his mobile phone as the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed has been heard in a US court. Jurors who must decide whether al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui should be executed listened to the final moments of Kevin Cosgrove on 11 September 2001.
Trapped in his 99th floor office, the executive was talking to an emergency dispatcher when the building came down.
The tape was the culmination of a day of harrowing evidence.
It was played with a synchronised videotape showing the moment when the tower fell.
Cosgrove, vice-president of insurance broker Aon, was heard shouting "Oh my God" amid crashing sounds, before he screamed and the line went dead.
Tuesday will see further evidence of the suffering caused by the 11 September attacks presented to the jury.
US district judge Leonie Brinkema has warned prosecutors not to overplay emotional testimony, reminding them that appeal judges could overturn a death sentence if they believed it was overly prejudicial.
Prosecutors say they have scaled back some testimony, and are presenting evidence from a fraction of those affected by nearly 3,000 deaths that day.
'I am going to die'
On Monday, jurors also heard calls for help to emergency services from 34-year-old Melissa Doi, who was on the 83rd floor of the south tower.
"The floor is completely engulfed, it is very, very hot. I am going to die aren't I? I am going to die, I am going to die," a panicking Doi could be heard saying. "Please God, it is so hot, I am burning up."
C Lee Hanson told the court that his son Peter, daughter-in-law Soo-Kim, and two-and-half-year-old granddaughter Christine Lee were on a plane bound for Disneyland on 11 September when it was hijacked. Theirs was the second aircraft deliberately flown into the twin towers in New York.
"I think they are going to try to crash this plane into a building," Mr Hanson quoted his son as telling him in a mobile phone call. "He said: 'Don't worry Dad. If it happens, it will be quick'. "As we were talking, all of a sudden he stopped and said very softly: 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God'. "I looked over at the television set and saw a plane fly into the building."
Judge Brinkema has ruled against the public release of the cockpit voice recording from one of the hijacked aircraft after it is played in court this week. The decision follows several objections by relatives of those on board Flight 93, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Only the transcript will be released.
'God bless Osama'
Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, is the only person charged in the US in connection with the attacks. AFP news agency reports that he seemed to be smiling during some of Monday's evidence.
At the end of the day, he shouted: "God curse you all, God bless Osama" - a reference to al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. The jury deciding his fate has already declared him eligible for the death penalty.
Although he was in jail in Minnesota at the time of the attacks, jurors ruled that lies told by Moussaoui to federal agents kept them from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers. Defence lawyers say the jury should spare Moussaoui's life because of his limited role in the attacks, evidence of mental illness, and because his execution would only fulfil his dream of martyrdom. - BBC

Just a coincidence

Last moments of hijacked plane to cap Moussaoui prosecution
Wed Apr 12, ALEXANDRIA, United States (AFP) -
Desperate moments when passengers battled to seize back a hijacked jet during the September 11 attacks, will echo through a US courtroom. Prosecutors seeking the execution of Al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui plan to play excerpts from the cockpit voice recorder of the final moments of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed into a Pennsylvania field.
The tape, never before played in an open public forum, will form one of the most compelling, and final pieces of evidence from government lawyers, who are expected to rest their case later Wednesday. Prosecutor David Novak formally informed the judge the tape would be played in a discussion during Tuesday's trial proceedings.
Defense lawyers are expected to open their case on Thursday, arguing that Moussaoui is delusional and mentally ill.
As part of an outpouring of sometimes gruesome evidence and emotional testimony, jurors heard Tuesday how passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, vowed to overpower the hijackers. They also listened to two short recorded messages sent from the plane to air traffic controllers -- apparently just as the Al-Qaeda suicide squad stormed the cockpit. In one message, a voice is clearly heard hollering "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday ... Mayday, get out of here! Get out of here."
The jet crashed in a field in eastern Pennsylvania. The 33 passengers, seven crew members and four terrorists were all killed.
Judge Leonie Brinkema accepted a prosecution request to play the tape, but owing to complaints by victims' families, decided that it would not be released publicly, or played outside the courtroom.
Authorities believe hijackers were trying to get the plane to Washington to attack a target such as the US Capitol building. Washington was only about 20 minutes in flight time from where the jet crashed.
On Tuesday, the jury heard the latest outpouring of grief, and horror in the case in which they must decided whether Moussaoui faces execution or life in prison, as the only man charged in the United States over the attacks.
Pentagon survivors told how furnace-like heat consumed parts of the US military headquarters after it was rammed by a hijacked jet.
"It seemed to me that it was just a curtain of fire," said US Army Lieutenant Colonel John Thurman, describing the moments after a wing of the vast building caught fire.
Some 189 people were killed at the Pentagon and jurors were shown photographs of the inferno, damage inside and several shots of twisted, blackened, burned corpses, along with some barely recognisable body parts.
Jose Rojas, 43, a Pentagon Police sergeant, pulled victims from the blaze. He looked down at one victim: "His skin came off into my hands ... I just had to shake it off."
New Jersey police sergeant Ray Guidetti meanwhile related the phone call passenger Todd Beamer made to the ground from Flight 93, just before leading a take-over bid of the plane with the words "Let's roll!"
Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman smiled and yawned through a day of wrenching testimony, declaring "Burn All Pentagon, next time," as he left court for a lunch break, then "Let's Roll, to victory," at the end of the day.
Jurors also heard witness after witness describe the emotional torment of losing a loved one in the 9/11 attacks.
"I get to go to school alone, I get to go to church alone, I get to go to bed alone," sobbed Shari Tolbert, 37, who's husband, a Gulf War vet Vince Tolbert was killed in the Pentagon.
Lawyers for Moussaoui meanwhile, called on the court to subpoena convicted British "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, apparently hoping his testimony would undercut their client's claims of a key role in the attacks. Moussaoui claimed two weeks ago, while testifying at his trial, that had he not been in jail on September 11, 2001, he would have flown a fifth hijacked jet into the White House with Reid as part of his crew. Prosecutors later filed a sealed motion opposing the request. Judge Leonie Brinkema made no public statement, but issued a writ calling for an unnamed person to be delivered to testify, though the exact status of the Reid issue could not immediately be established. - news.yahoo.com

No one would be so cynical...

images released by the U.S. District Court, a government exhibit shows a photo of the flight data recorder found at the scene in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001, that was introduced at the sentencing trial of admitted terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. (AP Photo/U.S. District Court)

Moussaoui Jurors Hear Flight 93 Tape
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press 12 April 2006 - ALEXANDRIA, Va. -
In the final minutes of doomed United Air Lines Flight 93, on Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers try to shake off passengers clamoring for control of the plane over Pennsylvania. Amid groans and sounds of a struggle, a voice says, "I am injured." A hijacker asks, "Shall we finish it off?"
Moments later, the plane hurtles out of control to the ground, according to a cockpit voice recording played for a jury on Wednesday by federal prosecutors seeking the execution of Zacarias Moussaoui.
Culminating their case, the prosecutors figuratively placed the jury aboard the flight for its last heart-wrenching moments, using a computerized simulation of the plane's flight path based on information from the flight data recorder.
Hamilton Peterson, whose parents were on Flight 93, earlier heard an enhanced audio version that was played for family members only. He believes the recording provides evidence that passengers attacked and killed a hijacker guarding the cockpit door.
The audio played in the courtroom made it impossible to confirm that interpretation. The Sept. 11 Commission concluded there was a struggle for control but reached no conclusion about whether passengers killed a hijacker.
Much of what was heard was open to interpretation. In the last minute, voices could be heard in English saying "push up" and "pull down," as flight data showed the steering yoke moving wildly. Some interpreted that as a struggle for control in the cockpit between passengers and hijackers. The hijackers for more than four minutes before that had been swinging the plane wildly in an effort to throw the rebelling passengers off balance.
At 10 a.m. a hijacker asks in Arabic "Shall we finish it off?" The response come back: "No, not yet."
Then a voice is heard in English: "In the cockpit! If we don't, we die!"
At 10:01 a.m., a hijacker asks again: "Shall we put it down? The response: "Yes, put it down."
At 10:02 a.m., a hijacker says, "Give it to me. Give it to me." At 10:03 a.m., the recording ends, and the simulation shows the plane flying nose down, then rolling over belly up and hitting the ground nose first.

to take advantage of a nation

The Flight 93 cockpit voice recording is the only such tape that investigators were able to hear from any of the four airplanes hijacked on Sept. 11.
The government later Wednesday rested its case after the judge rejected prosecutors' request to display a running presentation of the names and photos of all of the nearly 3,000 victims of Sept. 11. Prosecutors were instead allowed to show one large poster with the pictures of all but 92 of the victims, and three victim-impact witnesses gave testimony following the playing of the Flight 93 tape.
The judge sent the jury home for the day. Just after that, Moussaoui shouted, "God curse you all!"
His defense will commence its case on Thursday.
During the government's playing of the recording, a voice is heard from the cockpit, possibly that of a flight crew member, saying, "Please don't hurt me. Oh God!" A few seconds later, somebody says, three times, "I don't want to die."
But then, amid sounds of a struggle, a hijacker asks, "There is something, a fight?" The response is, "Yeah."
The last words heard as the plane nears the ground were repeated four times in Arabic: "Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest." Then, just the sound roaring static can be heard.
The flight, one of four hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, crashed in a Pennsylvania field as passengers tried to retake it. The cockpit voice recording had not been played publicly before.
The recording began at 9:31 a.m. with the hijackers' voice clearly stating "ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain ... we have a bomb on board, so sit." For the next few minutes, passengers are repeatedly told, in English, "Don't move," "Shut up" "Sit," and "down down down."
The hijackers alternated between Arabic and English.
As the tape proceeded, it was clear that passengers were gaining the upper hand.
A voice of a hijacker, presumably inside the cockpit, says, "They want to get in." The voice continues, "Hold from within." At 10 a.m., there is a voice that says, "I am injured."
Sounds of a struggle can be heard. At that point, the plane appears to go out of control. There are sounds of the hijackers trying to shake off the passengers. The plane pitches back and forth.
The plane had been headed for the U.S. Capitol, according to Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Moussaoui, who has admitted to being a terrorist conspirator and al-Qaida sympathizer, is the only person charged in this country in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. The jury deciding his fate has already declared him eligible for the death penalty by determining that his actions caused at least one death on 9/11. Even though he was in jail in Minnesota at the time of the attacks, the jury ruled that lies told by Moussaoui to federal agents a month before the attacks kept them from identifying and stopping some of the hijackers. Now they must decide whether Moussaoui deserves execution or life in prison.
Defense lawyers have already said they think the jury should spare Moussaoui's life because of his limited role in the attacks, evidence that he is mentally ill and because his execution would only play into his dream of martyrdom.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued an order requiring an unidentified individual to be produced for testimony. The order apparently applied to would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid - defense lawyers issued a subpoena last week seeking his testimony. Prosecutors had opposed the subpoena. Moussaoui testified previously that he and Reid were going to hijack a fifth plane on Sept. 11 and fly it into the White House. The defense lawyers, who have tried to discredit their client's credibility, have said Moussaoui is exaggerating his role in Sept. 11 to inflate his role in history. - - Yahoo News

images of death as Hollywood stands to make millions

More tales of horror in 9/11 trial
By GREG GORDON McClatchy Newspapers Apr 12, 2006, 00:30
Army Lt. Col. John Thurman said that when he was blown back from his desk, he first thought terrorists had planted bombs in the Pentagon _ not smashed it with a Boeing 757 jetliner. Thurman, now 39, and two colleagues lay in the darkness on Sept. 11, 2001, their heads on the carpet to avoid choking smoke and the searing heat from a "curtain of fire" nearby, he told a riveted federal jury Tuesday. He credited his harrowing escape to a wave of anger that swept over him just as he was succumbing to the smoke _ anger that terrorists would kill him and that his parents would lose their eldest child on the same day their first grandchild was to be born. His colleagues weren't so lucky.
Thurman, other Pentagon employees and a Navy officer's widow shared their stories and their grief, some for the first time publicly, as federal prosecutors neared completion of their case for the execution of confessed al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.
On Wednesday, prosecutors plan to air for the first time publicly the cockpit voice recording of passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who rushed to take back that plane before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
Thirteen more Sept. 11 victims and family members strode to the witness stand Tuesday as jurors endured a third day of graphic evidence of the horrors and haunting impact of the nation's worst terror attack.
While the material was supposedly toned down in response to defense lawyers' complaints, it included videos of American Airlines Flight 77 hitting the building at 530 miles per hour and photos of charred bodies - one on a stretcher and another sitting upright in an office _ of some of the 64 airline passengers and crew and 125 Pentagon workers who died that day.
[My note: relatives & jurors were shown VIDEOS OF THE PLANE HITTING THE PENTAGON]
Moussaoui, who was found eligible for the death penalty last week, seemed unfazed. He smiled as an FBI agent summarized the damage to the military's headquarters, and during a recess shouted: "Burn all Pentagon next time!"
Prosecutors also played air traffic control tapes in which a pilot of United Flight 93 shouted "Mayday! Mayday! Get out of here!" moments before his apparent stabbing death as hijackers seized the cockpit.
Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers, who will begin their last push to spare his life on Thursday, asked U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to subpoena testimony from attempted shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who is in a federal prison in Colorado. Brinkema issued a sealed writ for a witness not identified publicly. Defense lawyers are seeking to show that Moussaoui lied in testifying that, before his Aug. 16, 2001 arrest in the Twin Cities, he was training to pilot a fifth plane on Sept. 11 with Reid in his crew.
As witnesses told of the Pentagon strike, Alice Fisher, chief of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, sat teary-eyed in the front row.
Pentagon police officer Jose Rojas Jr., 43, described rushing to his boss' office upon learning that morning that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Then a jet hit the other tower. "All of us just said together . . . 'We're next,' " Rojas said. Moments later, he said, the building shook and he looked out at "a mushroom cloud of fire." Rojas said he ran around the perimeter of the building and heard "moaning, groaning, screaming" through blown-out windows. He shouted to people to come "to the sound of my voice," he said, and a man approached. But when Rojas grabbed his hands, his skin was so burned it came off. "I had to dig my fingernails into his flesh," Rojas said. "He screamed. I carried him as far as I could." Rojas said he rescued nine people, eight of whom survived.
Thurman, a major who was working on Pentagon promotion policies on Sept. 11, said the initial blast may have temporarily deafened him, because he could not hear two colleagues _ Lt. Col. Karen Wagner and William Ruth _ as they crawled to him in the dark. Ruth soon stopped talking, and Wagner did so later, he said. As he nearly drifted off to sleep, he said, he suddenly "got very angry that this was the method that I was going to die . . . that terrorism was going to take my life." He said he mustered his strength, pushed some file cabinets and opened a door into a smoke-free hallway. A senior Pentagon official tried to go back inside to search for Wagner and Ruth, but the heat was too intense, he said. Thurman said he knew 26 of the dead and now feels "guilt about getting the lucky break."
Navy Lt. Nancy McKeown, a 42-year-old meteorologist, similarly groped her way to a hallway where she was carried to safety. Sobbing, she said she later escorted the body of one of her two dead aides, Petty Officer Tom Earhart, home to Kentucky for his funeral, ensuring that "his buttons were buttoned and his medals were straight."
Shari Tolbert, 37, of California, was also in tears as she described life without her husband, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Vincent Tolbert, of Lemoore, Calif. "I get to raise three kids alone. I get to never have a 50th anniversary. I get to go to church alone. I get to go to bed alone. That's what I get." - capitolhillblue.com

All in the name of the Almighty dollar

Moussaoui attacks own lawyers
Staff and agencies - Thursday April 13, 2006
Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man to be prosecuted in connection with the September 11 2001 attacks, took the witness stand at his trial today and immediately launched into a vehement criticism of his lawyers.
"You have put your vested interest in keeping this case in your hands above my interest to save my life," Moussaoui said when asked by the lawyer Gerald Zerkin if the defence team was conspiring to kill him, complaining also of "criminal non-assistance".
Moussaoui was testifying - against the wishes of his court-appointed lawyers - on the opening day of defence arguments in the second stage of his trial in Alexandria, Virginia, where the jury must decide whether the self-professed al-Qaida conspirator should be executed or jailed for life.
It is a daunting task for the defence team, made all the more difficult by their belief that despite his outburst, the 37-year-old Moroccan-born French national actively wants to be executed so as to become a martyr.
The defence case came a day after prosecutors wrapped up their arguments for Moussaoui's execution by playing a tape from the cockpit voice recorder of United Airlines flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11 after passengers apparently tried to retake the plane from hijackers.
The 30-minute tape, never previously played publicly, includes the noise of crew members pleading for their lives and the hijackers apparently discussing whether to deliberately crash the plane as they come under attack.
The first defence witness, James Aiken, an expert on prisons, testified that Moussaoui would always need the highest level of supervision in jail, meaning he would be isolated not only from the outside world but also from other prisoners.
"I don't care how good he is ... I don't care how compliant he is. He will be in the security envelope as long as he lives," Aiken told the court.
The defence team is also expected to call as a witness Richard Reid, the failed British shoe bomber jailed for life by a US court in 2003 for trying to blow up a Paris-Miami flight carrying 197 people.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to plotting terrorist attacks. The jury has already declared him eligible for the death penalty by determining that his actions caused at least one death on September 11.
However, Moussaoui's lawyers argue he is merely "an al-Qaida hanger-on" who was not fully trusted and had only a limited role in the September 11 attack. They also say that he lied during his court testimony to ensure he would be executed. The defence is expected to reveal a history of schizophrenia in Moussaoui's family, with a defence expert having already said that Moussaoui probably suffers from schizophrenia. He has refused to cooperate with doctors' evaluations.
As he was being led out of the courtroom today during a break for closed legal argument, the defendant shouted: "Victory for Moussaoui! God curse you all!"
Earlier in his trial, Moussaoui, who studied for a time in London, testified that he and Reid were to have piloted a fifth plane into the White House on September 11, evidence that contradicted his earlier claim to have been training for a separate attack on another day. The jury has heard testimony about their loss from dozens of family members of people who died on September 11. Other relatives are expected to testify for the defence, although trial rules prohibit them from offering a direct opinion on Moussaoui's sentence. - guardian.co.uk/

so...guess which movie is being released soon?

Moussaoui Jury Won't Hear From Shoe Bomber
By Jerry Markon - Washington Post Staff Writer - Saturday, April 15, 2006;
"Shoe bomber" Richard Reid will not testify at the death-penalty trial of al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, according to an order issued yesterday by a federal judge in Alexandria. Attorneys for Moussaoui had tried to call Reid to the stand to discredit Moussaoui's story that he was planning to fly a fifth hijacked airplane into the White House on Sept. 11, 2001. Moussaoui testified that his crew was to include Reid, who is serving a life term for a separate attack in which he tried to blow up a transatlantic flight with a bomb hidden in his shoe.
A 12-member jury has determined that Zacarias Moussaoui, who pleaded guilty last April to six counts of conspiring with al Qaeda in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, is eligible to be executed.
But U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema yesterday vacated her earlier order that required the federal government to produce the so-called shoe bomber, sources familiar with the Moussaoui case said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because although Brinkema's order was posted on the court's Web site, the specifics of it remain under court seal.
Sources said prosecutors and defense attorneys are trying to work out an agreement to tell the jury what Reid would say, partly because of the security concerns and expense of moving him to Alexandria.
Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty last year to conspiring with al-Qaeda and is the only person convicted in the United States on charges stemming from the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A federal jury is considering whether he should be executed. Testimony will resume Monday. Moussaoui's attorneys have told jurors that Moussaoui was lying when he testified about his planned attack on the White House.
On Thursday, Moussaoui testified that he and Reid met at a mosque in London in the 1990s and were close friends. They have both professed their allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. - washingtonpost.com

Moussaoui said mentally ill, mistreated as child
By Deborah Charles Mon Apr 17, ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) -
Defense lawyers trying to save Zacarias Moussaoui's life presented evidence on Monday that the September 11 conspirator was a schizophrenic who had an abusive father and an unsettled childhood.
Witnesses were brought forward to try to blunt the impact of Moussaoui's recent testimony on the first day back in court since he announced that he had no remorse for the September 11 hijackings and said he wished Americans more pain.
Moussaoui has pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy in connection with the September 11 attacks and his lawyers are trying to convince the 12-person jury not to sentence him to death.
Dr. Xavier Amador, a witness who is an expert in schizophrenia, said he had diagnosed Moussaoui with the disease and said several other experts had confirmed his opinion.
Several witnesses, including Moussaoui's two sisters, said he had a rough childhood and an abusive father who beat all four siblings and their mother.
"Zacarias ... suffered from not having been loved by his father," said his oldest sister, Nadia, in videotaped testimony. "We were terrorized."
Clinical social worker Jan Vogelsang said Moussaoui was in and out of orphanages for the first six years of his life, as his mother struggled to deal with her four children while trying to separate from her abusive husband.
As he grew up, Moussaoui was seen by his friends as outgoing and fun. Several childhood friends from France said Moussaoui enjoyed parties and going out at night as a teenager.
One friend, Gilles Cohen, said he and Moussaoui had often joked about how they could be friends even though Cohen was Jewish and Moussaoui was of Moroccan descent.
Cohen's testimony came shortly after Moussaoui yelled "death to the Jew" at a break. Moussaoui often yells out curses after the judge and jury leave the room and has frequently targeted Jews, including his lawyer Gerald Zerkin.
Moussaoui's friends said he changed after he went to London in 1992 to study international business and learn English. They said had become much more serious about Islam, had grown a beard and was less outgoing.
An imam at the mosque Moussaoui first attended in London said Moussaoui was initially pleasant and eager to learn about Islam but then got involved with fundamentalists.
In videotaped testimony, Brixton mosque chairman Abdul Haqq Baker said he eventually asked Moussaoui to leave the mosque once he got involved with more extremist Muslims. Baker said Moussaoui became disrespectful and he was concerned he might try to spread extremist views. - news.yahoo.com

Another day looms on couch for Moussaoui
19th April 2006 - ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (AFP) -
Prosecutors and defenders battled over the mental sanity of September 11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui, as the judge asked the jury for more patience in the longer-than-expected death penalty trial.
The Osama bin Laden acolyte bragged he had a "beautiful terrorist mind" and shouted "Crazy, or not crazy, that is the question!" after the jury Tuesday left court for breaks, framing a day of legal jousting over his mental state.
Psychologist Dr. Xavier Amador, called as an expert witness by the defense, endured an all-day grilling on the witness stand, sometimes bickering with a prosecutor determined to debunk his credentials.
Amador, who diagnosed Moussaoui as a paranoid schizophrenic, described a healthy human mind as one where bits of information are strung together in a sequence, and so make sense, as in the scenes of a movie.
"His movie is like you have scattered all the pieces up on a table and try to make sense of it," he said, referring to Moussaoui, the only man tried in the United States over the September 11 attacks. Amador said Moussaoui's delusions that his lawyers were trying to kill him and belief Bush would release him before he leaves office in 2009, and other behavior, all added up to a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. He argued Moussaoui's frequent reversals of position during his trial, including his claim that he was a key part of the September 11 plot -- were more evidence of delusions. At first "he absolutely wanted to make clear that he had nothing to do with it. We have seen the flip flop in this courtroom very recently. He is saying he had everything to do with it," Amador said.
The psychologist, author and academic saw prosecutors try to discredit him over his comments to the media on the case, and his description of a visit to Moussaoui's cell, when the Frenchman spat water all over him.
"This episode is not so much that he is crazy -- he just wanted to get rid of you," Prosecutor David Novak said.
Amador did admit under cross-examination that he had conducted several interviews with media outlets after Moussaoui's defense team undertook that any future comments on the case would take place in court.
Novak also argued that Moussaoui had acted properly in court, chosing not to repeat earlier outbursts, apparently seeking to establish the Al-Qaeda plotter was in full control of his mental faculties.
Prosecutors are expected to introduce their mental health experts who have concluded that Moussaoui does not suffer from mental illness.
Amador testified that Moussaoui's fervent denials that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia are a symptom of the illness.
On Thursday, Prosecutor Robert Spencer asked Moussaoui if he was "crazy" -- he replied "Thank God, I am not."
Judge Leonie Brinkema meanwhile will Wednesday tell jurors they are unlikely to get the case until next Monday at the earliest, after defense arguments dragged on longer than expected.
Earlier in the trial, Moussaoui claimed he would have flown a fifth hijacked jet on September 11, 2001, into the White House, had he not already been arrested, and said he had "no remorse" for the strikes.
The jury already has ruled Moussaoui eligible for execution, accepting prosecution arguments that his "lies" while jailed in Minnesota concealed plans for the September 11 attacks. Now they must decide whether the sentence should be carried out, after sifting aggravating and mitigating evidence.
Moussaoui's sisters, both battling mental illness, told in video testimony Monday how their brother, facing execution or life in prison, was once a "sweetheart" who believed in the redemptive power of love. - news.yahoo.com

9/11 loved ones testify -- hoping to save Al-Qaeda plotter
20th April 2006 - ALEXANDRIA, United States (AFP) - Loved ones of September 11 victims gave poignant testimony for Al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui, telling jurors in his death penalty trial they had rejected vengeance and hate.
A woman who journeyed to the Middle East to meet relatives of the pilot hijacker who killed her son in the World Trade Center, said she didn't want to get "caught in a whirlpool of frustration and sadness."
A man whose father died in the twin towers inferno vowed terrorists would never hijack his life by replacing love with anger.
Testimony from six family members, which left faces in the courtroom streaked with tears, was the latest intriguing twist in a trial soaked in grief and horror, which has often turned legal logic on its head. Several more loved ones of September 11 dead are expected to follow suit on Thursday, a day which could also see the defense rest its case for Moussaoui to be spared, and sent to jail for life without parole.
Jurors are expected to start deliberations as early as Monday. They have already ruled Moussaoui eligible for execution, accepting prosecution arguments that his "lies" while jailed in Minnesota concealed plans for the September 11 attacks.
Defense lawyers dipped into the well of pain left by the 2001 attacks, in a bid to blunt harrowing prosecution testimony from other grief-stricken relatives and tapes and pictures of the horror of September 11.
Their move came six days after Moussaoui, whom some observers believe is bent on martyrdom, said courtroom displays of grief were "disgusting" and he wished it could be September 11 every day.
"If I let myself succumb to the fear ... that would lead to fear, and anger and hatred, not only planes were hijacked that day but my life would be added to that list of casualties," said Antonio Aversano, from Troy, New York, who lost his father in the World Trade Center.
Christian minister Donald Bane, whose son Michael also perished in the twin towers, told of a September 11 dilemma. "It was a mixture of rage, vengeful feelings ... I was feeling a lot of rage at times," he said, adding that he now looked how to forge links with the Islamic world, and supporting music, which his son loved. "I think one of the things, I have a choice about, is keep music going, keep life going ... (to get) people talking to each other, to solve their problems without killing each other. That is what I think our lives ought to be now."
None of the witnesses, according to court rules, was allowed to comment on the kind of sentence Moussaoui should be given. But their testimony was a clear sign that they, disagree with the drive to execute Moussaoui, the only man tried in the United States over the 2001 attacks, which killed 3,000 people.
Marilynn Rosenthal, 75, who lost her son, Josh, vice-president of a financial company in the World Trade Center, told of how her family had faced the crisis. "We all have a very strong feeling that we are not going to get caught up in a whirlpool of frustration and sadness," she said. "We want something good to come out of this for us ... and for our country."
Rosenthal is writing a book about the attacks, and traveled to the United Arab Emirates to seek out the family of Marwan Al-Shehhi, who piloted a hijacked jet into the twin towers in New York.
Defense lawyers had earlier called testimony to show young Moussaoui was lonely, broke, spiritually adrift and an outsider, and therefore easy prey for Islamic terror recruiters when he lived in London in the mid 1990s.
Dr. Paul Martin, a certified psychologist from Ohio, said the Al-Qaeda member had found a sense of belonging at the moderate Brixton Mosque in south London. But while the mosque embraced him, he soon fell under the spell of fundamentalists who preyed on young Muslims outside its walls, Martin said.
"They trumped Brixton, they said, 'look we've got the pure form of Islam, we are moving, we are acting'," Martin said, quoting his assessment of radical Islamists' views.
Martin's testimony was followed by another attempt by the defense to prove Moussaoui suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and delusions, with testimony from clinical psychiatrist Dr. Michael First.
The Frenchmen appeared to be enjoying the spectacle hugely, laughing and nodding his head, as First detailed what he said was Moussaoui's primary delusion -- the belief that President George W. Bush is going to set him free. "Moussaoui fly over the cuckoo's nest," he shouted as he was led from court for a break, referring to the 1975 movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" set in a mental institution starring Jack Nicholson. - news.yahoo.com

Someone Does Not Mean Anyone
By William Fisher [t r u t h o u t Tuesday 25 April 2006
The trial of Zakarias Moussaoui has all the makings of a soap opera. If Kafka wrote soap operas, that is.
Consider the cast of characters:
A defendant who alternately proclaimed his innocence and boasted of his guilt.
A prosecution that magnified the importance of a bit player in the 9/11 terrorist plot, and put the death penalty on the table despite charging him not with doing anything, but only with conspiring to do something.
A government that claimed that if only Moussaoui had not lied to the FBI, they could have prevented the attacks of 9/11, even though on 9/11 Moussaoui was in a Minnesota jail, while FBI headquarters was minimizing repeated alarms from its Minneapolis field office about Moussaoui's flight training.
A heart-wrenching chorus of survivors of 9/11 victims, unified in their view that the defendant was guilty of committing a crime, but divided about whether to exact retribution by executing him (thus conferring the martyrdom he says he welcomes), or jailing him for life (so that he will have to look in the mirror every morning and hate himself for the terror he wrought). Except that he didn't actually commit any act of terrorism. And, judging from his testimony, if he hated himself for anything it would be for not killing any American infidels.
Psychiatrists who painted the defendant as a paranoid schizophrenic, prompting some of us to label him "crazy" and others to decide he's "crazy as a fox."
A media that slavishly focused on the defendant's bizarre courtroom rantings and portrayed the trial as some kind of 21st century passion play about retribution vs. forgiveness, good vs. evil.
But there remains a major issue this trial has ignored. As lawyer David Cole wrote me, "There is something fundamentally wrong with trying to execute Moussaoui, an admittedly marginal figure who was not himself even involved in the planning of 9/11, when we have detained the mastermind of the attack, and the alleged 20th hijacker, but have brought no charges against them - and probably never will, because our torture of them effectively immunizes them from prosecution."
The reputed mastermind of 9/11 is, of course, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who was arrested by the Pakistani government in a safehouse outside Islamabad in March 2003. President Bush characterized the arrest as "fantastic" evidence of the success of his crusade to bring the perpetrators of 9/11 to "justice," and immediately had Khalid whisked off to an undisclosed location in the custody of undisclosed persons who doubtless interrogated him using undisclosed techniques.
The so-called "20th hijacker" is said to be Mohammad al-Qahtani, who has been held in Guantanamo and is touted by the US military as a major informant.
Moussaoui's trial heard from neither, because evidence obtained through torture would probably still be inadmissible in a US court.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty to all the charges against him, though during the trial he denied that he was part of the 9/11 plan, but rather part of a separate plan to fly a plane into the White House. He signed his guilty plea "the 20th hijacker," implying that he was supposed to be on Flight 93, which had only four terrorists, and which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. But Zakarias Moussaoui and Mohammad al-Qahtani can't both be the 20th hijacker.
Moreover, information garnered from Khalid Sheikh Mohammad portrays Moussaoui as a bit player, a fringe figure who was never in contact with the 9/11 hijackers.
In fact, on 9/11, Moussaoui was in a Minnesota jail. A month before the 9/11 attacks, Minnesota FBI agent Harry Samit warned his superiors that Moussaoui was dangerous, and that his flight training could be part of a terrorist plot. Samit told the Moussaoui jury he sent Washington about seventy fruitless warning messages about Moussaoui. And the 9/11 Commission concluded that the government had enough information to "join the dots."
So what has truly given this trial its Kafkaesque quality is that it is trial by proxy. It is a surrogate for the trials of those we'll never hear from, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Mohammad al-Qahtani, and those who are still at large, like Osama Bin Laden.
Even among those who oppose capital punishment, it is not difficult to understand why America would want to punish someone for 9/11. But someone does not mean anyone.
If the jury votes to execute Zakarias Moussaoui, it will be elevating this bit player to above-the-marquee prominence, and he will be laughing all the way to Paradise.

Key MOUSSAOUI quotes
"I have no participation in Sept. 11, but ... I have certain knowledge about Sept. 11, and I know exactly who done it. I know which group, who participated, when it was decided." - July 18, 2002.
"So I am guilty of a broad conspiracy to use weapon of mass destruction to hit the White House if the American government refuse to negotiate." - April 22, 2005.
"It is correct that I want to plead guilty to the six charge that face in the indictment. It's absolutely correct." - April 22, 2005, during his hearing at which he pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy related to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"I knew Mohamed Atta had something to do in this operation. I knew definitely that the White House and World Trade Centre would be hit. I knew it would happen after August. I was told it would happen at the end of the summer." - March 27,2006
"I had knowledge that the Twin Towers would be hit. I didn't know the details of this." - March 27,2006
"I'm sorry, I don't know about the number of planes but I was not the fifth (pilot) hijacker." - March 27,2006
"Because everybody used to refer to me as the 20th hijacker and it was a bit of fun." - When asked by his lawyer why he signed a guilty plea in April 2005 as the "20th hijacker," March 27,2006
"Motion to remove Federal Public Defender from any activity in this case because of their conspiracy to kill me and their ineffective assistance. As well as any government court appointed lawyer." Here he is complaining about his public defenders
Moussaoui discussing his point that well-tempered evidence has been left out of the discussion: "Motion to STOP THE FBI TO TEMPER WITH EVIDENCE AND TO HAVE HUSSEIN AL ATTAS AND ALI MUKHRAM CALLED AS WITNESS. Immediate Hearing. ALLAH U AKBAR. THE FBI NOW IS HIDDING CONCRETE EVIDENCE OF THEIR COVER UP OPERATION BEFORE SEPT 11 AGAINST ME AND THE 19 HIJACKER: THE BUG ELECTRIC FAN PLANTED BY THE FBI."
"The fundamental U.S. right to an impartial jury �guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment also necessarily includes a jury composed of the defenders peers.' Brown v. Kelly, 1992. I am sure that the government will be delighted to bring 12 Talebans from Cuba." On jury trials in the US justice system
"Nobody want to hear my fbi cover up. Reality. too much at stake. Long have passed the time of deep throat. now it is deep bribe with the fight against terrorism at the end of the financial year. Any journalist who want good reality should come to the alexandria jail (of course pending financial arrangement ... to finance my defense life)." On US court suppressing his statements...
court transcripts

U.S. seeks to keep evidence from 9/11 families
Prosecutors ask Moussaoui judge to reconsider order
From Phil Hirschkorn ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (CNN) Wednesday, April 26, 2006 -- Prosecutors asked a judge to rethink granting 9/11 families suing airlines access to evidence gathered for the criminal case against al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema's April 7 order requires prosecutors to provide copies of all unclassified aviation security documents to attorneys representing September 11 families in a civil lawsuit pending in New York.
Prosecutors called the order "unprecedented" and urged Brinkema to withdraw it. The motion was filed by Chuck Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Brinkema's order would allow the families' attorneys access to "highly sensitive" law enforcement documents and could compromise the continuing investigation into the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The inquiry is "the largest criminal investigation in our nation's history, which is still ongoing," the motion says.
"This order will likely provoke negative consequences for numerous criminal cases in the future," prosecutors said. Rosenberg requested a May 19 hearing.
American and United airlines each lost two passenger jets to al Qaeda hijackers on September 11, 2001. Among the 65 plaintiffs in the civil case is Mike Low, whose daughter, Sara, was a flight attendant on the first plane to strike the World Trade Center. He testified as a government witness in the criminal case. The plaintiffs sued the airlines for wrongful death in 2002, rather than accept compensation from a federal fund that gave $7 billion to families. Brinkema agreed with their attorneys that legislation creating the victims compensation fund protected the rights of nonparticipating families to bring a negligence claim.
In their motion, prosecutors argued that the aviation security documents are specially selected materials provided to a small group of attorneys cleared to handle sensitive evidence in the Moussaoui case.
"The government never contemplated this material would be disclosed more widely for use in private civil litigation," the motion says.
Ron Motley, an attorney who successfully argued for access to the documents last month, said he would reply to the government's motion next week. "We have not asked the government to give the 9/11 victims one single thing they didn't provide to Moussaoui's lawyers," Motley said.
The order would require the government to begin turning over copies of documents two weeks after a verdict is returned in Moussaoui's trial. The plaintiffs have struggled with the Transportation Security Administration to obtain pre-September 11 aviation security documents.
"It is amazing what some agencies think is secret," Brinkema said before issuing her order last month. "As a culture, we need to be careful not to be so wrapped up in secrecy that we lose track of our core values and laws."
The families' pursuit was triggered by the revelation early in the Moussaoui trial that TSA lawyer Carla Martin improperly coached witnesses. Martin, who had prepared aviation security documents and witnesses in the case, sent witnesses transcripts and commentary by e-mail, even though a court order required scheduled witnesses to ignore the proceedings.
Martin's e-mail chain revealed she had been communicating with airline attorneys, and the families' attorneys suspected collusion.

Moussaoui Sentenced to Life in Prison
By MATTHEW BARAKAT and MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writers ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Yahoo News - 4th May 2006
Zacarias Moussaoui claimed victory over America after a jury rejected the government's effort to put the Sept. 11 conspirator to death and instead decided to lock him away in prison for the rest of his life.
Moussaoui, who spent much of his two-month trial cursing America, blessing al-Qaida and mocking the suffering of 9/11 victims, offered one more taunt after the jury reached its verdict Wednesday: "America, you lost. ... I won," he proclaimed, clapping his hands as he was escorted from the courtroom.
Moussaoui gets one last chance to speak publicly Thursday when U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema sentences him to life in prison without the possibility of release for his part in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.
Barring an unforeseen circumstance, Moussaoui then will be sent to a super-maximum federal prison in Colorado under special conditions that will prevent him from having any contact with the outside world.
After seven days of deliberation, the nine men and three women rebuffed the government's appeal for death for the only person charged in this country in the suicide hijackings of four commercial jetliners that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001. From the White House, President Bush said the verdict "represents the end of this case but not an end to the fight against terror." He said Moussaoui got a fair trial and the jury spared his life, "which is something that he evidently wasn't willing to do for innocent American citizens."
Families of 9/11 victims expressed mixed views.
Carie Lemack, whose mother, Judy Larocque, died on hijacked American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed into New York's World Trade Center, said her mom didn't believe in the death penalty and would have been glad Moussaoui was sentenced to life. "This man was an al-Qaida wannabe ... who deserves to rot in jail."
Patricia Reilly, who lost her sister Lorraine Lee in the New York attacks, was deflated. "I guess in this country you can kill 3,000 people and not pay with your life," she said. "I feel very much let down by this country."
It is not known how many jurors wanted Moussaoui sentenced to life and how many wanted a death sentence. Under federal law, a defendant automatically receives life in prison when a jury is split. The 42-page verdict form gives no indication on how, or if, the jury split. The jury rejected two key defense arguments - that Moussaoui suffers a mental illness and that executing him would make him a martyr. No jurors indicated on the verdict form that they gave any weight to those arguments. Nine jurors found that Moussaoui suffered a difficult childhood in a dysfunctional family where he spent many of his early years in and out of orphanages. Three found that Moussaoui only played a minor role in 9/11.
Defense lawyer Gerald Zerkin said outside court that "it was obvious that they thought his role in 9/11 was not very great and that played a significant role in their decision."
Prosecutors, who pursued the Moussaoui case for 4 1/2 years, declared themselves satisfied with the jury's verdict.
Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who was chief prosecutor in Alexandria in December 2001 when Moussaoui first was charged, noted that the jury in the trial's first phase found Moussaoui responsible for the 9/11 attacks by concealing the al-Qaida plot from FBI agents after he was arrested in August 2001 on immigration violations.
"It only takes one juror to reject imposition of the death penalty, and we respect that," McNulty said.
The trial put jurors on an emotional roller coaster and gave the 37-year-old Frenchman a platform to needle Americans and revel in the pain of the victims and their families.
When the verdict was announced, Moussaoui showed no visible reaction and sat slouched in his chair, refusing to stand with his defense team. He had declined to cooperate with his court-appointed lawyers throughout the trial. The verdict was received with silence in the packed courtroom, where one row was lined with victims' families.
In their successful defense of Moussaoui, defense lawyers overcame the impact of two dramatic appearances by Moussaoui himself - first to renounce his four years of denying any involvement in the attacks and then to gloat over the pain of those who lost loved ones.
Using evidence gathered in the largest investigation in U.S. history, prosecutors achieved a preliminary victory last month when the jury ruled Moussaoui's lies to federal agents a month before the attacks made him eligible for the death penalty because they kept agents from discovering some of the hijackers.
But even with heart-rending testimony from nearly four dozen victims and their relatives - testimony that forced some jurors to wipe tears from their eyes - the jury was not convinced that Moussaoui, who was in jail on Sept. 11, deserved to die.
The case broke new ground in the understanding of Sept. 11, releasing to the public the first transcript and playing in court the cockpit tape of United Flight 93's last half hour. The tape captured the sounds of terrorists hijacking the aircraft over Pennsylvania and passengers trying to retake the jet until it crashed in a field.

Moussaoui Asks to Withdraw Guilty Plea
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer Mon May 8, ALEXANDRIA, Va. -
Convicted Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui says he lied on the witness stand about being involved in the terrorist plot and wants to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial. The judge turned him down. Moussaoui said he was "extremely surprised" that he was sentenced to life in prison instead of execution and now believes he can get a fair trial from an American jury.
In a motion filed Friday but released Monday, Moussaoui said he testified on March 27 that he was supposed to hijack a fifth plane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House "even though I knew that was a complete fabrication."
A federal court jury spared the 37-year-old Frenchman the death penalty last Wednesday. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema gave him six life sentences, to run as two consecutive life terms, in the federal supermax prison at Florence, Colo.
As she handed down the sentence, Brinkema told Moussaoui that he could appeal the life term but that she doubted he would win. "I believe it would an act of futility," she said. The judge also pointed out that, although he could appeal the sentence, he had lost his right to appeal his conviction when he pled guilty in April 2005. "You waived that right," she said.
On Monday, Brinkema said his request to set aside his guilty plea and go back to trial on the facts of the case was "too late" under federal rules and must be rejected.
Explaining his latest reversal, Moussaoui said in an affidavit: "I had thought I would be sentenced to death based on the emotions and anger toward me for the deaths on Sept. 11. But after reviewing the jury verdict and reading how the jurors set aside their emotions and disgust for me and focused on the law and the evidence ... I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial even with Americans as jurors."
Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers told the court that they filed the motion even though a federal rule "prohibits a defendant from withdrawing a guilty plea after imposition of sentence." They did so anyway, they said, because of their "problematic relationship with Moussaoui" and the fact that new lawyers have yet to be appointed to replace them.
The defense lawyers were not immediately available for comment Monday. Brinkema said they would be replaced after they filed any appeal Moussaoui might want.
The motion said Moussaoui told his lawyers Friday that he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea because when he entered it his "understanding of the American legal system was completely flawed."
In an attached three-page affidavit, Moussaoui cited his new opinion of American jurors and wrote that he now believes he has a fair chance "to prove that I did not have any knowledge of and was not a member of the plot to hijack planes and crash them into buildings on Sept. 11, 2001."
"I wish to withdraw my guilty plea and ask the court for a new trial to prove my innocence of the Sept. 11 plot," Moussaoui wrote. "I have never met (lead 9/11 hijacker) Mohammed Atta and, while I may have seen a few of the other hijackers ... (in Afghanistan), I never knew them or anything about their operation."
Explaining his twists and turns, Moussaoui said, "Solitary confinement made me hostile toward everyone, and I began taking extreme positions to fight the system."
Moussaoui said that, coupled with his inability to get a Muslim lawyer, led him to distrust his lawyers when they told him he could be convicted of being an al-Qaida member but acquitted of involvement in 9/11.
Moussaoui wrote that he pleaded guilty because he mistakenly thought the Supreme Court would immediately review his objection to being denied the opportunity to call captured enemy combatant witnesses to buttress his claim of not being involved in the 9/11 plot.
An appeals court agreed with the government that national security would be at risk if captured operatives like 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed testified or were even questioned by Moussaoui's lawyers. Instead, statements taken from their interrogations were read to the jury.
Shaikh Mohammed's statements said Moussaoui was never considered for the 9/11 plot, only a later attack.
Moussaoui shocked the courtroom at his sentencing trial when he recanted his four-year-old claim of having nothing to do with 9/11. When he pleaded guilty in 2005, he had explained that he was to hijack a 747 jetliner and fly it into the White House at some later date if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik who is serving a life term for terrorist acts in New York.
But when he testified, Moussaoui claimed that the 747 was to be a fifth plane hijacked on Sept. 11 and that Richard Reid, now imprisoned for a December 2001 shoe bombing attempt aboard a trans-Atlantic flight, was to be on his hijacking team.
That testimony revived the government's flagging case in the first part of the sentencing trial.
On April 3, the jury found Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty. It apparently accepted prosecutors' arguments that by withholding information from federal agents who arrested him on Aug. 16, 2001, he bore responsibility for at least one death on 9/11 by preventing the agents from identifying and stopping some hijackers.
Nevertheless, the same jury was unable to unanimously find that Moussaoui, who was in jail on 9/11, deserved execution. Three jurors wrote on the verdict form that they doubted he knew much about the 9/11 plot.
After Moussaoui's testimony, his lawyers made clear in court that they thought he was lying to achieve martyrdom through execution. Prosecutors even stipulated that the government doubted Moussaoui's claim that Reid was part of his team. And the judge told lawyers, out of the jury's hearing, that she doubted his testimony about how much he knew about the 9/11 plot.

Alleged bin Laden tape: Moussaoui not part of 9/11
Voice on tape says two Guantanamo detainees knew of plot
CNN May 24, 2006 -
-- A Web site message purportedly from Osama bin Laden says admitted al Qaeda follower Zacarias Moussaoui had nothing to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001.
"I am certain of what I say, because I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers -- Allah have mercy upon them -- with those raids, and I did not assign brother Zacarias to be with them on that mission," the taped statement says.
"And his confession that he was assigned to participate in those raids is a false confession, which no intelligent person doubts is a result of the pressure put upon him for the past four and a half years."
If the tape is confirmed as authentic, it would be the first time that bin Laden has claimed to have personally assigned the jobs for 9/11.
The audio message, addressed to the American people in Arabic with English subtitles, was posted on a Web site that typically carries such messages.
Earlier this month, a federal jury sentenced Moussaoui to life in prison without parole for his connection to the attacks. Although he was not charged with direct involvement in the plot, prosecutors had sought the death penalty.
Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, pleaded guilty more than a year ago to six counts of terrorism conspiracy related to the attacks. He was caught two weeks before September 11 when he aroused the suspicions of a flight instructor in Minnesota from whom he was taking flying lessons.
Although he had previously said he had no knowledge of the attacks, Moussaoui testified during his sentencing trial that he was to have piloted a fifth plane. He said Richard Reid, who tried to blow up an airplane in December 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes, would have been part of his crew.
Prosecutors at the trial agreed to a defense stipulation that al Qaeda leaders never assigned Moussaoui and Reid to work together on any terrorist operation.
"If Moussaoui was studying aviation to become a pilot of one of the planes, then let him tell us the names of those assigned to help him control the plane," the purported bin Laden tape says. "But he won't be able to tell us their names for a simple reason: that in fact they don't exist."
CNN is unable to independently verify that the voice on the tape is bin Laden's; a U.S. intelligence official told CNN the recording is being checked to verify its authenticity. (Watch how analysts gather clues from images and audio -- 5:02)
A U.S. counterterrorism official told CNN that "there is no reason to doubt that it is him." The official characterized the tape as "a propaganda tape" and "an effort to be relevant, to show he's knowledgeable about recent events."
The tape also mentions prisoners held at the U.S. Navy detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying "all the prisoners to date have no connection with the events of September 11 and knew nothing about them, with the exception of two of the brothers, may Allah free them all."
The tape does not name the two "brothers" who supposedly knew about the attacks.
The tape further says that the Bush administration is aware that none of the Guantanamo prisoners have any connection to the attacks, "but they avoid mentioning it" to justify the Defense Department's budget.
About 500 detainees from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being held at the facility.
Unlike two previous tapes from bin Laden, this one does not threaten any new attacks. Instead, it offers a way "to safety and security."
"My mentioning of these facts isn't out of hope that Bush and his party will treat our brothers fairly in their cases, because that is something no rational person expects," it says. "But rather it is meant to expose the oppression, injustice and arbitrariness of your administration in using force and the reactions that result from that." "This is from one perspective, and from another perspective, perhaps there will one day come from the Americans someone who desires justice and fairness, and that is the path to security and safety, if you are interested in it," the tape says.
Last month, the complete version of what had been bin Laden's most recent audio message appeared on Islamist Web sites, four days after excerpts were broadcast on the Arabic-language TV channel Al-Jazeera.
In that message, al Qaeda's leader focused much of his almost 52-minute message on what he continually referred to as "a Zionist-crusader war on Islam," which he said was shown most explicitly by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that were published by a Danish newspaper in late 2005 and later reprinted around the world.
In that message, bin Laden also attacked the Western public for its support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, blasted Western governments for cutting off aid to Hamas and called for jihad in the Sudanese region of Darfur.
CNN's David Ensor contributed to this report.