[Mb-civic] The Man Who Wasn't There on 9/11 - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

The Man Who Wasn't There on 9/11
Next Week, U.S. Will Begin Its Case for Moussaoui's Death

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 4, 2006; A01

Zacarias Moussaoui was sitting in jail when the hijacked planes crashed 
into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in a field in 
Pennsylvania. Now, the government wants him executed for that day of 
terror because he did nothing to stop it.

After the jury is selected Monday, prosecutors will argue that even 
though Moussaoui wasn't there, he should be held accountable for the 
murders of nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001. Their task, on its 
face, is formidable: Federal law says people can be executed only for 
killing someone or participating in a violent act that directly caused a 
death.

Yet legal experts say prosecutors stand a reasonable chance of securing 
a death sentence for the only person convicted in the United States on 
charges stemming from Sept. 11. The reason: Moussaoui's own words. When 
he pleaded guilty, he acknowledged that he had lied to the FBI when he 
was arrested a month before Sept. 11 "to allow his al-Qaeda brothers to 
go forward."

Relying on that admission, prosecutors will argue that Moussaoui might 
as well have pulled the trigger -- because if he had confessed his 
knowledge of the plot, the hijackings could have been stopped. "I think 
they have a good case, given his own statements," said Andrew McBride, a 
former federal prosecutor who has tried numerous death penalty cases. 
"He admits that he lied to further the conspiracy. Legally, that 
probably makes it."

Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty in April to charges that include 
conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy. He has become the poster boy for 
the deadliest terrorist strike in U.S. history, yet his precise role 
remains unknown, even to the government. If he had not been arrested, 
investigators have theorized, he could have been anything from the "20th 
hijacker" to a last-minute replacement to the pilot of a fifth plane 
intended to strike the White House.

Whatever Moussaoui's intentions were, the trial in U.S. District Court 
in Alexandria promises to combine weighty matters of national security 
with elements of the absurd. The trial is expected to last one to three 
months.

The anonymous 18-member jury, including six alternates, will watch the 
Justice Department lay out for the first time in a public courtroom its 
view of how the Sept. 11 attacks were planned and executed. A death 
sentence would do much to support the Bush administration's strategy of 
keeping the case in the criminal justice system -- instead of before a 
military court -- to show that the system can handle complex terrorism 
matters and punish the guilty.

Alexandria Location

The administration is also relying on jurors to validate its decision to 
try the case in Alexandria instead of New York, where most major 
terrorism cases had been prosecuted. Officials have said they felt the 
Northern Virginia jury pool is more conservative and pro-government. Yet 
they are fighting the weight of history: No Alexandria federal jury has 
ever returned a death sentence.

Defense attorneys will try to exploit that by probing the sensitive 
underside of the government's failure to stop the attacks. They will 
argue that U.S. officials knew far more about al-Qaeda's plans than 
Moussaoui did, according to court documents. Even if Moussaoui had told 
all he knew, the defense says, the government's own failures show that 
agents would not have acted properly on the information.

A hint of the high-level nature of the evidence emerged last week when 
the defense battled to secure the testimony of Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), 
who is trying to persuade a judge to quash a subpoena.

Weldon has alleged at congressional hearings that a secret Pentagon 
program, known as Able Danger, identified lead hijacker Mohamed Atta 
more than a year before Sept. 11. "This information is plainly helpful 
to the defense as it showed that the government possessed specific 
information about the presence of the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks 
in the United States before Sept. 11," defense attorneys wrote in a 
court filing.

Defense lawyers are also fighting a highly unusual opponent: their own 
client.

In what legal observers call a first for the U.S. justice system, 
Moussaoui -- an avowed al-Qaeda member who swore a blood oath to Osama 
bin Laden -- is being given a public forum. He has said he plans to 
testify, and sources familiar with the case say his attorneys have no 
idea what he might say.

The French citizen has already shown he will make the most of the 
opportunity. He was repeatedly ejected from the courtroom by U.S. 
District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema during jury selection for erupting at 
his attorneys, the judge and prosecutors. Even when he was allowed back 
in, he muttered blessings for bin Laden and curses for America after the 
judge had left.

His behavior will be witnessed by family members of Sept. 11 victims, 
who are gathering to watch the trial at remote viewing locations at five 
federal courthouses across the country. If jurors decide that Moussaoui 
is eligible for the death penalty, a second phase of the trial will 
feature highly emotional testimony from family members and people 
injured on Sept. 11.

If Moussaoui's own words could hurt him before the jury, they may have 
already helped prosecutors make their case. Prosecutors will argue, 
court documents say, that Moussaoui should die because he allowed the 
plot to proceed by lying to the FBI and that his deception was a direct 
cause of the deaths.

When Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota a month before Sept. 11, he 
told federal agents that he was training as a pilot for personal 
enjoyment and that after finishing, he intended to visit New York and 
Washington as a tourist.

When he pleaded guilty, Moussaoui signed a statement of facts admitting 
that he had lied to the FBI to allow al-Qaeda "to go forward with the 
operation to fly planes into American buildings." Prosecutors pointed to 
this admission in proposed jury instructions they submitted to the judge 
last week.

Stephen A. Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor, said 
the government should be able to prove much of its case. "There is no 
doubt they can prove that he joined the conspiracy . . . and that he 
didn't do anything to stop

9/11," Saltsburg said.

Prosecution's Task

The harder part, Saltzburg said, is showing that Moussaoui's lies 
directly contributed to the murders. In the end, he said, it may depend 
on how Brinkema instructs the jury on the law. "How is he responsible 
for Sept. 11 and the deaths on Sept. 11?" Saltzburg said. "It's that 
last step, the last link."

Prosecutors declined to comment but have indicated in court documents 
that they do not feel they need to prove that Moussaoui had a specific 
task on Sept. 11.

"I think no one will ever know," McBride said. "The only people who have 
an idea are Osama bin Laden and some of his lieutenants."

Moussaoui's intentions have been mysterious ever since his name first 
emerged in press reports -- he was called Habib Zacarias Moussaoui then 
-- a few days after Sept. 11.

He was born in the Basque region of France, to a Moroccan father and a 
French mother, according to interviews and court documents. His father 
was an abusive alcoholic, and Moussaoui spent his first five years in 
and out of orphanages, according to court records filed by the defense.

Although Moussaoui grew up only nominally practicing Islam, he moved to 
London as a young man to master English and became exposed to "the 
radical mosques which flourished in London in the 1990s," the court 
papers said.

Hooking up with bin Laden's organization, Moussaoui trained at an 
al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and managed an al-Qaeda guesthouse in 
Kandahar, he acknowledged in the court document he signed. He entered 
the United States in 2001 and began taking flying lessons at Airman 
Flight School in Norman, Okla.

As Sept. 11 approached, Moussaoui took a series of actions that closely 
mirrored those of the hijackers. He bought two knives and made sure 
their blades were short enough to get through airport security, 
according to court documents and the independent commission that 
investigated the 9/11 attacks. In August 2001, he received nearly 
$15,000 from al-Qaeda and began training on a 747 simulator at a flight 
school in Minnesota.

The 9/11 commission later concluded that Moussaoui was most likely being 
primed as a Sept. 11 replacement pilot and that the hijackers probably 
would have postponed their strike if his arrest had been announced.

Moussaoui's conduct raised suspicions at the flight school because he 
wanted to fly large jets when he had little training. He did not want a 
pilot's license. His instructor reported him to the authorities, and 
Moussaoui was arrested on immigration charges Aug. 16, 2001.

Moussaoui's actions were considered suspicious enough that the 
then-director of the CIA, George J. Tenet, was briefed, but a series of 
government missteps, chronicled at length by the 9/11 commission, 
prevented investigators from piecing together Moussaoui's intentions -- 
or the Sept. 11 plot.

After Sept. 11, Moussaoui emerged as a key suspect. Some government 
officials, including Vice President Cheney, suggested that he might have 
been the 20th hijacker, referring to the fact that the plane that 
crashed in a field in Pennsylvania had only four hijackers aboard. The 
other three planes had five hijackers each.

Moussaoui signed his plea agreement as the "20th hijacker," though he 
often called himself that in handwritten motions filed from jail, 
usually in a mocking tone.

But prosecutors have vehemently pointed out that they never called 
Moussaoui the 20th hijacker in any court proceeding, even as he has 
become known as that to many people. "Instead, the '20th hijacker' 
theory appears to be a creation of the media coverage and the isolated 
statements of certain government officials in the immediate aftermath of 
the Sept. 11 attacks," prosecutors wrote in an appellate court brief 
filed in 2003.

Although the government has never spelled out his role, a federal grand 
jury in Alexandria indicted Moussaoui in December 2001 on conspiracy 
charges.

In July 2002, Moussaoui interrupted a routine court hearing and tried to 
plead guilty, claiming an intimate knowledge of the hijackings.

"I have certain knowledge about September 11," Moussaoui said, according 
to a transcript. "I know exactly who done it. I know which group, who 
participated, when it was decided. I have many information."

After Brinkema gave him a week to think about it, Moussaoui withdrew his 
plea and claimed that although he is an al-Qaeda member, he had no 
advance knowledge of the hijackings.

A constitutional showdown over Moussaoui's access to top al-Qaeda 
detainees, who Moussaoui's attorneys said had information that could 
clear him, then delayed the case for more than two years. Eventually, a 
federal appeals court ruled that Moussaoui could not interview the 
detainees but could present to the jury portions of statements they made 
to interrogators.

Last April 22, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to six conspiracy counts. Yet 
the day's proceedings only added to the uncertainty.

The court document Moussaoui signed said that he had participated in the 
al-Qaeda plot that culminated in Sept. 11 and that bin Laden had 
personally instructed him to fly an airplane into the White House. But 
when Moussaoui stepped to the lectern, he denied any role in Sept. 11 
and said the White House attack would be an attempt to free Sheik Omar 
Abdel Rahman, who is imprisoned for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

"This conspiracy was a different conspiracy than 9/11," Moussaoui said.

As he was led from the courtroom by security officers, he shouted: 
"Lord! God curse America!"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/03/AR2006030301751.html?nav=hcmodule
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