Moussaoui, Undermining Case, Now Ties Himself to 9/11 Plot

Moussaoui, Undermining Case, Now Ties Himself to 9/11 Plot

New York Times

March 28, 2006
Moussaoui, Undermining Case, Now Ties Himself to 9/11 Plot
By NEIL A. LEWIS

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 27 — Zacarias Moussaoui, who is facing the death penalty for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, took the witness stand in his own defense Monday, only to bolster the government's case by unhesitatingly acknowledging the charges in the indictment against him and adding a few new, self-incriminating statements.

Mr. Moussaoui said he knew in advance of Al Qaeda's plans to fly jetliners into the World Trade Center and asserted that his role on that day was to have been to fly another plane into the White House. He said he was to have been accompanied on the suicidal mission by Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber who was convicted in a separate failed effort to blow up a plane in flight.

Although Mr. Moussaoui had said over the last few years that he was a member of Al Qaeda and was learning to fly a plane to participate in some "second wave" of terrorist attacks, until now he had always insisted that he knew little of the plot for the attacks and vowed to fight the death penalty to the last of his strength.

But when he began his long-awaited testimony on Monday, he offered a lengthy description of a far deeper involvement with Al Qaeda and its plots. Not only was he a member of the terror network, he told the jury, he also said that he knew most of the Sept. 11 hijackers, admitted that he lied to investigators about his knowledge of their plot when he was arrested on immigration violations three weeks before the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and recounted that he was ecstatic when, behind bars, he heard the news of the attacks on a radio he had bought for that purpose.

Before the day was over, the jury also had the extraordinary experience of hearing a reading of testimony taken in a deposition from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and is being held somewhere in the secret overseas detention system of the Central Intelligence Agency.

That deposition, in which Mr. Mohammed answered questions agreed to by prosecutors and defense lawyers, seemed to contradict Mr. Moussaoui's assertion that he was meant to be a pilot on Sept. 11.

Mr. Mohammed portrayed Mr. Moussaoui as a fringe figure who might have been used in a second wave of attacks if needed.

For more than an hour, Michael Nachmanoff, a public defender, recited Mr. Mohammed's answers in what resembled an oddly disembodied literary reading. Mr. Nachmanoff read out testimony that any planning for a second wave of attacks "was only in the most preliminary stages" and that targets had not even been selected.

But while that might seem to contradict Mr. Moussaoui's version of events, the defendant's first-person account, painting his own role in bold brushstrokes, was the day's main event.

When one of Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers asked if he was to have been the so-called 20th hijacker — a member of the team on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, with only four hijackers aboard, while the planes that hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center had teams of five — he replied, "No, I was not to be a fifth hijacker."

But, he continued, "I was supposed to fly a plane into the White House."

In addition to the other four planes? asked his lawyer, Gerald T. Zerkin.

"That's correct," Mr. Moussaoui answered.

He also asserted, for the first time, that one of his team members was to have been Mr. Reid, a British convert to Islam who was arrested on Dec. 22, 2001, while trying to detonate an explosive device in his shoe during a flight from Paris to Miami. Previous investigations have provided no evidence of Mr. Reid's involvement in any other plots, or any efforts to enter the United States in the summer of 2001.

When Robert J. Spencer, the chief prosecutor, had his turn, Mr. Moussaoui agreed with just about every incriminating question.

Mr. Spencer asked if the reason Mr. Moussaoui had lied to the F.B.I. agent who questioned him in Minneapolis on Aug. 16 was "so you could allow the operation to go forward."

"That is correct," Mr. Moussaoui replied.

After his arrest, was he looking forward to news of the attacks?

"Yes, you could say that," Mr. Moussaoui said calmly.

He used the phrase "that is correct" dozens of times as the prosecutor led him through the facts presented in the indictment.

It was correct, Mr. Moussaoui said, that he knew hijackers were in the United States for some imminent mission that involved flying planes into buildings.

Was his reason for hoping to fly a plane into the White House to kill Americans?

"That is correct," he said.

Mr. Moussaoui, who has been truculent through proceedings in the past three years and whose outbursts have drawn rebukes from the judge, spoke calmly with a heavy French accent, leaning forward in the witness chair, sometimes casually holding out an empty cup for a marshal to fill with water.

He seemed testy only when being questioned by his own lawyer, who tried with little success to elicit replies that would help his case.

Mr. Moussaoui's testimony even undercut one of the pillars of the defense his lawyers had laid out for him, that he did not know any of the 19 hijackers who died on Sept. 11. As Mr. Spencer showed him their photos, Mr. Moussaoui said he knew 17 of them from the days he helped run a Qaeda guesthouse in Afghanistan.

Mr. Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan heritage, has already pleaded guilty to six conspiracy counts in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. The sole question before the jury here is whether he should be executed or spend the rest of his life in jail.

The Justice Department has argued that he should pay with his life because had he not lied, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Aviation Administration would have moved swiftly to thwart the plot.

The defense may complete its case by Tuesday, and Judge Leonie M. Brinkema told the jurors they might get to deliberate as early as Wednesday. Under the federal death penalty law, the jury must first consider whether Mr. Moussaoui's actions caused some deaths on Sept. 11. If they decide unanimously that his actions did, they move to another phase to consider whether the death penalty is appropriate.

Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers, with whom he does not speak, almost certainly did not want him to testify as he did. But under the law they had no power to prevent him from doing so.

Until Mr. Moussaoui took the stand, the momentum seemed to be with the defense, which had contended that he was a fringe figure in Al Qaeda whose leaders held him in low regard.

Moreover, the government's case had been plagued by problems. After the disclosure that a government transportation lawyer had improperly coached some aviation security witnesses, the testimony of two other witnesses about how the F.B.I. handled investigative leads before Sept. 11 raised as many questions over the government's performance as it did about Mr. Moussaoui's culpability.

In addition to having served as the government's star witness, Mr. Moussaoui acknowledged to Mr. Spencer the depth of his hatred of Americans before a jury that is to decide whether he lives or dies.

He agreed that he rejoiced in the death of nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11 and that in August 2002, he wrote that he described a tape recording of a female flight attendant pleading for her life aboard one of the planes as "gorgeous."

David Stout and David Johnston contributed reporting for this article.

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