March 8, 2006
Radical Says Moussaoui Deamed of Plane Attack
By NEIL A. LEWIS
ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 8 — Prosecutors seeking the death penalty for Zacarias Moussaoui played a videotaped statement today in which a member of an Islamic radical group testified that Mr. Moussaoui had visited him in Malaysia in 2000 and said he had a dream to fly an airplane into the White House.

In the four-hour videotape, Fauzi bin Abu Bakar Bafana, the former treasurer of Jemaah Islamiyah, a southeast Asian group linked to Al Qaeda, said that the man who introduced himself as "John" and stayed at his home in Kuala Lumpur also asked for materials to make explosives and help in arranging flight training.

Prosecutors are laying out evidence in the sentencing trial of Mr. Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan heritage who is the only person to be charged in an American court with involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Because Mr. Moussaoui has already pleaded guilty to six felony counts, three of which expose him to the death penalty, the sole issue before the jury is whether he should be sentenced to death by lethal injection or kept in prison for life.

Mr. Moussaoui did not participate in the Sept. 11 attacks, as he had been arrested three weeks earlier on immigration violations in Minnesota, where he was taking flight lessons. Nonetheless, prosecutors have argued that he deserves to die because he was an integral part of Al Qaeda's plans to fly planes into buildings. They say his willful concealment of his knowledge of such Al Qaeda plans when he was arrested contributed to the nearly 3,000 deaths on the day of the attacks.

The videotaped deposition played for the jury today was taken in 2002 after Mr. Bafana's arrest in Singapore in November 2001 for plotting to blow up United States military facilities there. He said that the man known to him as John visited him and came with references noting that he had been sent by Osama bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda.

One night in the bedroom he had offered to his guest, he said, John told him of a dream he had to fly an airplane into the White House as part of his jihad. Mr. Bafana did not, in his testimony, explicitly say that John was Mr. Moussaoui but said he recognized him from photos he was shown by investigators.

Mr. Moussaoui himself made it plain that he was John when he cross-examined Mr. Bafana. At the time of the deposition, Mr. Moussaoui was acting as his own lawyer, a situation that no longer exists, since Judge Leonie M. Brinkema revoked that privilege because of his frequent courtroom outbursts. Although he has been in courtroom since Monday's opening arguments, the videotape was the first opportunity for the jury to see and hear Mr. Moussaoui in action.

In his cross-examination, conducted via a satellite hookup to Singapore, Mr. Moussaoui offered dozens of objections to the questions asked of Mr. Bafana by a prosecutor during the direct examination. While Judge Brinkema, sitting in the Virginia courtroom with Mr. Moussaoui, rejected most of his objections, she did agree that several were valid and occasionally required the prosecutor to change his questions.

The account given by Mr. Bafana has largely been disclosed in previous documents and reports about Mr. Moussaoui's time in Malaysia. But it nonetheless provided a vivid portrayal for the jury of Mr. Moussaoui's activities and sympathies before the Sept. 11 attacks.

When it was his turn to cross-examine Mr. Bafana, Mr. Moussaoui asked pointedly if the witness was cooperating with the United States investigation of him because he had been promised leniency by Singaporean authorities in whose custody he remains. The witness, whose English was as halting as Mr. Moussaoui's, replied that he had not been promised anything but chose to cooperate because he was so opposed to killing innocent civilians.



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March 8, 2006
Moussaoui Jury Watches Video Testimony
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:26 p.m. ET

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Al-Qaida adherent Zacarias Moussaoui told an Islamic radical in Malaysia that he had a dream about flying a plane into the White House, according to court testimony Wednesday.

He also asked the group for $10,000 to bankroll his flight training in the United States, but the group's leaders agreed to give him only a small fraction of that, according to the testimony.

The jury at Moussaoui's sentencing trial for terrorist conspiracy watched videotaped testimony from Fauzi bin Abu Bakar Bafana, acknowledged treasurer of the Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network, a group linked to al-Qaida.

Moussaoui is the only man charged in the U.S. in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Ironically, it was only through Moussaoui's own cross-examination of the witness during a 2002 deposition that Moussaoui was positively identified as the man with the dream. The witness, Bafana, had initially only given a description that matched Moussaoui. Bafana said he knew the man only by the name John.

On cross-examination, Moussaoui -- who at the time was acting as his own attorney -- asked Bafana what John looked like. Bafana responded, ''He looks exactly like you.''

''Are you certain? Is it me?'' Moussaoui asked. Bafana answered, ''Certain.''

Then Moussaoui said that ''maybe somebody looks exactly like me.''

''I confirm it's you,'' Bafana said.

The Singapore-born Bafana said he was asked to host the man known to him as John at his home in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1999 and John talked to him about dreams he had in his sleep, including one to attack the White House with an airliner.

The deposition was taken in 2002, after Bafana was taken into custody in Singapore. On the videotape, Moussaoui frequently objects to prosecutors' questions -- nearly all of his objections were overruled.

During cross-examination, Moussaoui asked Bafana, ''Why are you cooperating with the United States? What is the reason?''

Bafana responded that the Singapore authorities ordered him to cooperate, and he added, ''I believe killing of innocent civilians is not in accordance with Islam.''

Moussaoui also tried to raise doubts about Bafana's testimony, quizzing him about details of his trips to Afghanistan.

In the deposition, Bafana does not identify John as Moussaoui but gives a general description that fits him. The testimony also is consistent with Moussaoui's previous admission in court that Osama bin Laden had once told him to ''remember your dream.'' Moussaoui did not deny being John.

Bafana testified that he wrote proposals to attack U.S. military interests in Singapore and shared them with al-Qaida. He also said he took John to a flying club in Kuala Lumpur but John did not join because it was too expensive.

Bafana said that when John asked for $10,000 in U.S. dollars to help pay for flight training in the United States, he was instructed to give him $2,000 in Singapore dollars -- about $1,200 in U.S. currency -- instead. He said the instruction came from his superior in the terrorist network, Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali.

The testimony on the third day of the trial was part of the prosecution's case that Moussaoui deserves the death penalty instead of life in prison. The government argues that if Moussaoui had not lied about his terrorist links and the flight training he eventually took in the U.S., the government would have unraveled the Sept. 11 plot.

Defense attorneys argue the FBI's incompetence and bureaucratic gridlock kept authorities from stopping the attacks, and a confession from Moussaoui would have changed nothing.

FBI agents acknowledged under cross-examination that the bureau knew years before Sept. 11 that al-Qaida had plans to use planes as missiles to destroy prominent buildings.

They also acknowledged numerous missed opportunities in the months before Sept. 11 to catch two of the hijackers with terrorist links known to the government, even though the pair frequently used their own names in the U.S. to rent cars, buy plane tickets and even, once, to file a police report after one got mugged.

^------

EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press Writer Michael J. Sniffen contributed to this report.



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Update 10: Judge Warns Prosecutors in Moussaoui Trial
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN , 03.09.2006, 07:40 PM


The judge in the death-penalty trial of confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui warned prosecutors Thursday that they were moving their case into shaky legal territory.

"I must warn the government it is treading on delicate legal ground here," U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said at the conclusion of the day's testimony, after the jury had left the courtroom. "I don't know of any case where a failure to act is sufficient for the death penalty as a matter of law."

The key issue in Moussaoui's sentencing trial has been his failure to disclose his terrorist ties to federal agents when he was arrested in August 2001 on immigration violations. He is the only person ever charged in this country in connection with al-Qaida's attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Both sides agree Moussaoui lied to the FBI, but they differ on what Moussaoui was legally obliged to do given the Fifth Amendment's guarantee against self-incrimination. Prosecutors argue that once Moussaoui agreed to talk to federal agents, he was required to tell the truth - to confess his ties to al-Qaida and his plans to fly an airplane into the White House.

The defense argues Moussaoui was not required to confess.

The issue is crucial because, to obtain the death penalty, prosecutors must prove that federal agents would have prevented at least one death on Sept. 11 if Moussaoui had not lied. Their case would be much easier if that means Moussaoui also was obligated to disclose his al-Qaida membership and terrorist training.

Brinkema made her comments as she rejected a defense motion for a mistrial. Moussaoui's lawyers were angry because they believed a question from prosecutor David Novak implied to the jury that Moussaoui had an obligation to speak to FBI agents even after Moussaoui had invoked his right to a lawyer two days into questioning by the FBI. Agents immediately stopped questioning him at that point.

Brinkema said she did not feel a mistrial was warranted because she struck Novak's question from the record as soon as he asked it.

The issue developed as the FBI agent who arrested Moussaoui testified he suspected the student pilot from France was a terrorist, but that Moussaoui's lies sent agents on "wild goose chases" away from his links to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.

Harry Samit testified the lies sent agents futilely searching London - the home listed on Moussaoui's passport - for associates he claimed had given him money, but that Moussaoui never mentioned the alias used by Ramzi Binalshibh, an al-Qaida operative, to wire him cash from Germany.

The 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent did not admit getting money from that operative for almost four years - not until he pleaded guilty last April to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly planes into U.S. buildings.

The jury here will decide whether that guilty plea will put Moussaoui to death or imprison him for life.

Over objections by court-appointed defense lawyer Edward MacMahon, prosecutor Novak asked Samit one by one about Moussaoui's admissions last April and whether he gave any hint of them in 2001. Each time the answer was no.

What if Moussaoui had admitted in 2001 that he was an al-Qaida member who had pledged obedience to bin Laden?

"I would have asked additional questions about his role in al-Qaida and his relation to Osama bin Laden. It would have opened up a whole world of questions," replied Samit, a counterterrorism specialist.

"The answers dictate the logical course of the interview," said Samit, who arrested Moussaoui in Minnesota on Aug. 16, 2001, for immigration violations. "You can't ask logical follow-up questions if he provides misleading answers. It takes you down all sorts of alleys - wild goose chases, essentially."

Samit said that during his initial 90-minute interview of Moussaoui, Moussaoui claimed he was taking commercial flight training lessons in Minnesota "for enjoyment and his own personal ego." Moussaoui claimed the more than $32,000 in cash he brought into the United States was savings from work in an export-import business and from friends and associates.

Agents pressed Moussaoui for the names of the friends and associates who supplied the cash and for a day he supplied only a single name, "Taleal." When Moussaoui a day later said Taleal was Akhmed Atef, Samit immediately asked bureau agents in London to search for that man because the only foreign address they had for Moussaoui was in London.

Samit immediately became suspicious of Moussaoui when executives of a flight school in suburban Minneapolis reported a foreign student training to fly a Boeing 747-400 despite having almost no pilot experience.

One of the flight school's instructors testified he urged his bosses to call the FBI after his new student responded angrily to innocent questions about his religion and paid for his training in $100 bills.

Instructor Clarence Prevost told the jury he first assumed Moussaoui was a rich guy "just fulfilling a dream."

But on the first day of class, when Moussaoui, asked whether he was a Muslim, responded with a terse "I am nothing," Prevost became suspicious.

"I said, 'Should we be doing this?'" Prevost told the court. "'We don't know anything about this guy and we're teaching him to throw the switches on a (Boeing) 747.'"



Associated Press writer Matthew Barakat contributed to this report.

March 13, 2006
Judge Recesses Moussaoui Trial Amid Alleged Prosecutorial Misconduct
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- An angry federal judge unexpectedly recessed the death penalty trial of confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to consider whether government violations of her rules against coaching witnesses should remove the death penalty as an option.

The stunning development came at the opening of the fifth day of the trial as the government had informed the judge and the defense over the weekend that a lawyer for the Federal Aviation Administration had coached four government FAA witnesses in violation of the rule set by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema. The rule was that no witness should hear trial testimony in advance.

"This is the second significant error by the government affecting the constitutional rights of the defendant and the criminal justice system in this country in the context of a death case," Brinkema told lawyers in the case outside the presence of the jury.

Defense attorney Edward MacMahon moved to have the judge dismiss the death penalty as a possible outcome, saying "this is not going to be a fair trial." In the alternative, he said, at least she should excuse the government's FAA witnesses from the case.

Prosecutor David Novak replied that removing the FAA witnesses would "exclude half the government's case." Novak suggested instead that the problem could be fixed by a vigorous cross-examination by the defense.

But Brinkema said she would need time to study what to do.

"In all the years I've been on the bench, I have never seen such an egregious violation of a rule on witnesses," she said.

Brinkema noted that last Thursday, Novak asked a question that she ruled out of order after the defense said the question should result in a mistrial. In that question, Novak suggested that Moussaoui might have had some responsibility to go back to the FBI, after he got a lawyer, and then confess his terrorist ties.

Brinkema warned the government at that point that it was treading on shaky legal ground because she said she knew of no case where a failure to act resulted in a death penalty as a matter of law.

Even prosecutor Novak conceded that the witness coaching was "horrendously wrong."

According to descriptions by the lawyers in court, it appeared that a female FAA attorney who had attended closed hearings in the case went over with four upcoming witnesses from her agency the opening statements at the trial, the government's strategy and even the transcript of the questioning of an FBI agent on the first day.

"She was at the Classified Information Act procedures hearing and she should have known it was wrong," Novak said.

MacMahon said the government had told the defense she had wanted the witnesses to be very careful in discussing the FBI agent's acknowledgment that the FBI knew long before Sept. 11, 2001 that al-Qaida terrorists in the Philippines were working on a plan to fly an airplane into CIA headquarters.

The FAA attorney also apparently told the witnesses, erroneously Novak said, that the government was planning to say that magnetometers at airport check-ins are 100 percent effective.

Novak claimed there was no harm in that disclosure because the government is not going to make that argument.



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March 13, 2006
Judge Raises Possibility of Mistrial in Moussaoui Sentencing
By NEIL A. LEWIS
ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 13 — The sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui teetered on the brink of a mistrial today, as the judge in the case angrily said she might spare him the death penalty following the disclosure that a government lawyer had improperly coached some witnesses.

"In all my years on the bench, I've never seen a more egregious violation of the rule about witnesses," Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said.

The judge recessed the trial until Wednesday. She said she would rule then on a request from Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers that she end the sentencing trial, now in its second week, and order that he be imprisoned for life instead of executed, as the government has urged.

She also scheduled a hearing for Tuesday to look into the improper sharing of information with seven witnesses — some of whom were scheduled to testify for the prosecution and some for the defense. The lawyer involved in the incident was identified by a federal official as Carla J. Martin of the Transportation Security Administration. Judge Brinkema had earlier ordered that people scheduled to testify not be given access to transcripts by prior witnesses, a common order in such cases.

But Ms. Martin gave the witnesses transcripts of opening statements and of testimony last week by an F.B.I. agent, Michael Anticev.

Two of the witnesses scheduled to appear for the government were identified as Lynne A. Osmus and Claudio Manno of the Federal Aviation Administration.

The testimony of aviation officials could be crucial because of the unusual nature of the hearing.

Mr. Moussaoui, a 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan heritage, has already pleaded guilty to six felony counts, three of which expose him to the death penalty. The only question before the jury is whether he should be executed or sentenced to life in prison.

When the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were carried out, Mr. Moussaoui was in jail, having been arrested three weeks earlier in Minnesota, where he was taking flying lessons. The government has argued that he deserves to be executed because he lied to investigators after his arrest about his knowledge of Al Qaeda plans to fly airplanes into buildings.

The aviation officials were expected to testify as to what steps might have been taken if Mr. Moussaoui had told the truth.

At the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, Ms. Osmus was the deputy associate administrator of the agency's Civil Aviation Security Program, and Mr. Manno was the director of the Office of Intelligence in that office. After the attacks, Congress transferred the job of aviation security to a new agency, the Transportation Security Administration, but Ms. Osmus and Mr. Manno are still with the F.A.A.

Edward J. MacMahon, Mr. Moussaoui's chief defense lawyer, said Ms. Martin had been engaged in "an obvious effort to shape the testimony of the witnesses."

David Novak, a prosecutor, agreed that the disclosures had been wrong. But he argued that the case should go forward and that any problems caused by Ms. Martin's actions could be remedied during cross-examination by Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers.

It was not clear why Ms. Martin had shared materials with defense witnesses, who are expected to testify about earlier warnings about terrorist threats to hijack airplanes. Judge Brinkema said that she would question all the witnesses for both sides on Tuesday before making a decision on the motion for a mistrial.

Judge Brinkema, who said she had been informed of the coaching by the prosecutors, recalled that on Thursday, she had denied a defense motion for a mistrial because of a separate mistake, although she had admonished prosecutors at that time.

"This is the second significant error of the government affecting the constitutional rights of this defendant," she said. "More importantly, it affects the integrity of the criminal justice system in the United States."

David Novak, a prosecutor, argued that the case should go forward and that any problems caused by Ms. Martin's actions could be remedied during cross-examination by Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers.

Last week, the jury heard testimony from the F.B.I. agent who arrested Mr. Moussaoui on immigration charges three weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The agent, Harry Samit, testified that he was convinced that Mr. Moussaoui was an Islamic extremist who knew about some terrorist plan involving airplane hijackings, but that Mr. Moussaoui's lies sent him off on "wild goose chases" up to the day of the attacks.

Mr. Samit testified that he had tried to obtain warrants to search Mr. Moussaoui's belongings but had been hampered because Mr. Moussaoui had concealed that he was a member of Al Qaeda and that the group was plotting to crash planes into buildings.

If Mr. Moussaoui had not concealed that information, Mr. Samit said, that would have led to an intense investigation, but he did not flatly assert that it would have prevented the attacks.

In questioning Mr. Samit, Mr. Novak asked loudly whether Mr. Moussaoui had reached out from the local jail to tell him what he knew about Al Qaeda in the immediate days before the attack. By that time, Mr. Moussaoui had said he would not speak to investigators without a lawyer.

Judge Brinkema, who had warned prosecutors not to go too far in talking of Mr. Moussaoui's responsibility to confess fully, ruled the question improper, but said it did not rise to a mistrial.

Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington for this article, and John O'Neil from New York.



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--------------------
Judge May Throw Out Death Penalty in Moussaoui Trial
--------------------

By Richard Serrano
Times Staff Writer

March 13 2006, 11:21 AM PST

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- The judge in the sentencing phase of the government's case against confessed Sept. 11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui today threatened to throw out the government's motion for the death penalty after prosecutors told her that a government lawyer had coached seven prospective witnesses.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines

http://news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/mouss...2206ctordw.html

Order Prohibiting Non-Victim Witnesses
From Following Trial Proceedings
U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui Email This

March 15, 2006
Lawyer Thrust Into Spotlight After Misstep in Terror Case
By STEPHEN LABATON
and MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON, March 14 — In a city of lawyers, Carla J. Martin has become the most talked-about lawyer in town.

Ms. Martin, an obscure official in the counsel's office at the Transportation Security Administration, now appears to bear responsibility for undercutting the government's long-running effort to execute the only man tried in an American courtroom for involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Known among her peers as an aggressive, largely behind-the-scenes courtroom strategist, she is said by the judge in the case to have committed a potentially devastating blunder of the sort that law students are routinely warned about: coaching witnesses.

Dealing a major setback to the government's prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema ruled on Tuesday that because of three significant instances of misbehavior by government lawyers during the trial, most notably the missteps by Ms. Martin, she was barring the prosecutors from using any testimony or evidence from a handful of government aviation officials.

Ms. Martin has declined to explain her actions in court or to reporters, and Judge Brinkema said Ms. Martin's lawyer expected his client to invoke her right against self-incrimination. But e-mail messages made public in the Moussaoui case this week, along with accounts from colleagues and supervisors, paint a picture of a lawyer who was often well regarded but also had a reputation for sometimes pushing too hard.

Ms. Martin, 51, is a former flight attendant at World Airways, where she often flew between the United States and Germany because she spoke German. She began working at the Federal Aviation Administration before she completed law school at American University's Washington College of Law in 1989.

Ms. Martin has almost no experience in criminal prosecutions because most of her work has involved defending the government in civil lawsuits. She moved to the Transportation Security Administration when it was created in 2002.

Some lawyers who have worked with Ms. Martin in other cases said they were stunned by the events in the Moussaoui case.

"She's articulate and forceful and aggressive and smart," said Thomas J. Whalen, an aviation lawyer at Condon & Forsyth who has worked on her side in some cases and against her in others. "I'm really surprised about what's happened. It's more than being tough and aggressive."

In the Moussaoui case, her communications with witnesses, and new evidence that surfaced Tuesday that she told some witnesses not to cooperate with defense lawyers, puts the prosecution in the position of having to investigate and sharply criticize a government lawyer who has worked on the case.

In a different case, in which Ms. Martin tried to keep vital evidence out of the hands of a lawyer on the ground that he had been associated with a civil rights group, she was accused by the other side of overstepping court boundaries and running roughshod over standard courtroom procedure in a zeal to protect national security.

Ms. Martin's mother, Jean Martin Lay, said she spoke to her daughter Monday night.

"She was so devastated," Ms. Lay said in a telephone interview from her home in Knoxville, Tenn. "She said she just didn't hear the judge."

Ms. Lay said her daughter was in the courtroom when Judge Brinkema issued the order on handling witnesses, but was probably concentrating on something else "instead of being mindful."

The judge's written order was issued last month, and Ms. Martin's contact with the witnesses occurred last week, according to e-mail messages made public by the court. The order was meant to sequester witnesses so their testimony would not be corrupted. It barred the witnesses from receiving the testimony of other witnesses or receiving any news accounts of the trial. The e-mail messages and the recent testimony show that Ms. Martin provided testimony and advice to seven witnesses.

Ms. Martin's mother said her impression was that her daughter found her work at the Transportation Security Administration "not the most satisfying or rewarding type job" because it did not involve any big cases. Her current salary, according to a government employee database, is about $120,000 a year.

Others, some speaking for attribution and others not, said they could see why Ms. Martin would find herself in trouble.

Claudio Manno, who at the time of the Sept. 11 attack was the assistant administrator for security at the F.A.A., testified Tuesday that Ms. Martin had taken up too much time second-guessing him and bombarding him with e-mail messages and requests.

"She tended to go off target and wasted our time," Mr. Manno said. "We didn't think it was pertinent."

A. P. Pishevar, a Maryland lawyer who tangled with Ms. Martin in another case, said her conduct in that case "sticks out like a sore thumb."

According to court records, she led an effort on behalf of the government to try to intervene in a defamation, discrimination and malicious prosecution lawsuit brought against Lufthansa by one of Mr. Pishevar's clients. The client was Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, an Iranian-born doctor, now an American citizen and associate professor of medicine at U.C.L.A. who was arrested and spent a night in jail after complaining about discriminatory treatment by Lufthansa officials at Dulles International Airport.

Lufthansa tried to have the case dismissed by filing a secret motion that said it had detained Mr. Kalantar to follow a secret F.A.A. security directive. According to court records, Ms. Martin urged Lufthansa to withhold the summary judgment motion and the security directive from both Mr. Kalantar and his lawyer, Mr. Pishevar.

Court records show that Ms. Martin said to one Lufthansa lawyer that ordinarily much of the evidence would be available to lawyers for a plaintiff. But she said the government sought to keep all the material from Mr. Pishevar, an American citizen and member of the bar in Washington, Maryland and the United States Supreme Court, because he had worked for an organization that fights discrimination in the United States against Iranians.

Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. of the Federal District Court in Washington ultimately denied the effort to dismiss the case and directed the government to turn over the material, which remains under seal, Mr. Pishevar said. The case has not yet been set for trial.

Mr. Pishevar said he still felt numb from his experience with Ms. Martin, who he said was "from behind the scenes, trying to pull many of the strings."

Told about the latest developments in the Moussaoui case, Mr. Pishevar paused, then said, "Res ipsa loquitur," a Latin legal term meaning, "The thing speaks for itself."

Others describe a more positive experience with Ms. Martin.

One of her earliest assignments was to monitor the trial brought by the survivors of those who died when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. Her main job, according to a news account at the time and a lawyer involved in the case, was to get the judge to close the courtroom any time sensitive information was to come out.

James P. Kreindler, an aviation lawyer representing the survivors, said he could not account for what had happened in the Moussaoui trial. "When one is caught up in a massive bureaucracy, you may lose part of your perspective," Mr. Kreindler said. "She may have lost a proper perspective on the proper role for any attorney involved in either the criminal or the civil justice system."

"Carla is in my experience certainly not a bad person," he added, "and this is a very, very unfortunate thing to see happen."



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March 15, 2006
Judge Penalizes Moussaoui Prosecutors by Barring Major Witnesses
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, March 14 — A federal district judge dealt a serious, perhaps crippling, blow on Tuesday to the government's effort to execute Zacarias Moussaoui for the deaths that occurred in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The judge, Leonie M. Brinkema, ruled that because of three major instances of misbehavior by government lawyers in the trial, she was barring prosecutors from using any testimony or evidence from a handful of government aviation officials.

The officials were to provide a pillar of the Justice Department's argument as to why Mr. Moussaoui deserved to die: that had he told investigators when he was arrested three weeks before the attacks on immigration violations about Al Qaeda's plans to fly planes into buildings, the Federal Aviation Administration would have put in place security measures that could have prevented the attacks.

Prosecutors seemed dispirited by the ruling and indicated that they might seek an immediate review before a federal circuit court in Richmond, Va. Judge Brinkema granted their request to postpone the trial until at least Monday while they decide what to do.

Judge Brinkema said the prosecution of Mr. Moussaoui was "too riddled with errors" to proceed without some sanction against the government.

She directed her wrath most strongly against Carla J. Martin, a lawyer for the Transportation Security Administration, who was assisting prosecutors in arranging for the testimony of aviation security officials. When Judge Brinkema learned on Monday that Ms. Martin had coached seven witnesses on how to testify and respond during cross-examination, she called it the most striking example of witness tampering by a lawyer she had experienced in her years on the bench.

On Tuesday, Judge Brinkema's anger grew as she learned of another problem apparently created by Ms. Martin. During an extraordinary special hearing in the middle of the trial to determine if the witnesses had been "tainted" by the coaching, Judge Brinkema said it became apparent that Ms. Martin had violated Mr. Moussaoui's constitutional rights to a fair trial by telling prosecutors that four government officials had refused requests by defense lawyers to speak with them.

"That was a bald-faced lie," Judge Brinkema declared after some of the witnesses testified that they had not said that to Ms. Martin.

The third misstep cited by the judge was a question by a prosecutor in front of the jury last Thursday that she ruled improper. But she said the question, by David J. Novak, was not significant enough by itself to order any sanctions on the government.

"A trial, particularly a death penalty case, simply cannot go forward with this many errors," Judge Brinkema said.

Ms. Martin appeared briefly in court Tuesday after being hurriedly summoned the evening before by the judge. Ms. Martin, dressed all in black, looked as stricken as someone at a funeral as she struggled to maintain her composure.

After Judge Brinkema told her she could face criminal charges, Ms. Martin said she did not want to be questioned without a lawyer. Judge Brinkema said later that she had just concluded a telephone call with Roscoe Brown, a lawyer who said he represented Ms. Martin, and that he had advised her to invoke her constitutional rights against possible self-incrimination and not to testify.

In fashioning a remedy for the violations she cited, the judge stopped short of granting the request of Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers that she rule out the death penalty.

Because Mr. Moussaoui has pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, the sole question before the jury is whether he is to be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison.

Prosecutors had tried to salvage the case by arguing that Ms. Martin was not really part of the Justice Department team that had worked on the case. "We've worked hard on this case for four and a half years," Robert J. Spencer, the chief prosecutor argued. But Judge Brinkema said that Ms. Martin was "an attorney for the United States and you all represent the United States."

She added, "It's not the Justice Department against Mr. Moussaoui, it's the United States" that is trying to have him executed.

David Raskin, a prosecutor, argued that Ms. Martin's coaching did not affect the witnesses' testimony because they were to talk about aviation security procedures that were fact-based and indisputable. "As egregious as it was," Mr. Raskin said of the coaching, "it simply did not affect those witnesses."

But Judge Brinkema said that even after hearing from six of the government witnesses that they were unaffected by Ms. Martin's suggestions, she still could not be sure that the testimony was untainted.

The order Ms. Martin violated, issued by the judge to prevent potential witnesses from learning of previous testimony, was not unusual. "It's pretty basic," said Peter Margulies, a visiting law professor at St. John's Law School in Queens. "Lawyers know you've got to sequester witnesses."

If the elimination of the aviation security witnesses is upheld, prosecutors will have to rely on testimony from investigators about how they may have foiled the plot. Prosecutors described the logic of their case as showing that if Mr. Moussaoui had told the truth, the government would have taken both offensive steps, like having the Federal Bureau of Investigation intensify its investigation of Al Qaeda, and defensive steps, like having the aviation agency increase airport security.

Ms. Martin coached potential witnesses in e-mail messages and personal conversations. In most of the e-mail messages, Ms. Martin included the transcript of the opening trial statements along with her criticism that prosecutors had, in her view, "created a credibility gap that the defense can drive a truck through."

She also included portions of a transcript of the testimony of an F.B.I. agent, who first said last Tuesday that before Sept. 11 the bureau was not looking at the possibility that terrorists might use airplanes as weapons. But the agent, Michael Anticev, acknowledged under cross-examination that the bureau had indeed known of earlier Qaeda plans to fly planes into the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., and the Eiffel Tower. Ms. Martin suggested ways that the witnesses not repeat that mistake.



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March 16, 2006
News Analysis
Crossing a Fine Line on Witness Coaching
By ADAM LIPTAK
The terrorism trial of Zacarias Moussaoui is teetering on collapse, thanks in large part to a government lawyer's efforts to shape the accounts of federal aviation officials set to testify in the case.

The lawyer, Carla J. Martin, provided trial transcripts and gave pointed advice to seven witnesses, in apparent violation of a court order that flatly forbade witnesses from attending the trial or reading transcripts of it.

Trial lawyers and law professors said yesterday that Ms. Martin's conduct was a flagrant violation of the order and of the federal rule of evidence on which it was based. But they added that Ms. Martin could have achieved much of what she had set out to accomplish through more subtle, quite common and perfectly lawful techniques.

"What Martin did in this case is completely out of bounds," said James A. Cohen, a trial lawyer and a law professor at Fordham University. "You don't coach with a capital C the way she did."

But the line between what is permissible and what is not, Professor Cohen continued, can be "like the difference between dusk and twilight."

He gave an example: "I might say, 'What if you learned A, B and C?' I would not say, 'What if you learned an F.B.I. agent said A, B and C?' "

The practice of barring witnesses from the courtroom during trial, known as sequestration, is, according to a classic treatise on evidence by John Henry Wigmore, "one of the greatest engines that the skill of man has ever invented for the detection of liars in a court of justice."

Sequestration has two aims: to frustrate efforts by witnesses to conform their testimony to that of earlier ones and to help the jury detect false testimony by considering varying accounts of the same events.

Yet lawyers often spend hours preparing witnesses to testify, a practice that is not only accepted but also generally considered necessary. Lawyers have been punished for incompetent representation for failing to interview and prepare witnesses.

The judge in the Moussaoui case, Leonie M. Brinkema, has barred the government from using testimony or evidence from the aviation officials as a sanction for its misconduct in the case. Lawyers for the government have indicated that they are considering an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va.

Should they appeal, they may rely on a 2000 decision of that court reversing a trial court ruling somewhat similar to the one issued by Judge Brinkema. In the 2000 case, a defense lawyer had described an earlier witness's testimony to a witness about to testify. As punishment, the trial judge barred the testimony of the witness.

The appeals court ruled that the lawyer had not violated the sequestration order in that case. The order did not mention lawyers, the appeals court said, and lawyers are generally be free to prepare their witnesses as they see fit. The appeals court went on to say that the sanction of excluding the affected witness's testimony was, in any event, too harsh.

A dissenting appellate judge protested that the majority had created an exception for lawyers that "is contrary to precedent and common sense."

Judge Brinkema's order similarly did not specifically mention lawyers. It said only that "witnesses may not attend or otherwise follow trial proceedings (e.g., may not read transcripts) before being called to testify."

Prosecutors in the Moussaoui case called Ms. Martin's conduct reprehensible and notified the judge soon after they learned of it.

Paul W. Butler, a former federal prosecutor who helped try and convict four men for the 1998 terrorist bombings of American embassies in East Africa, said that the difference between acceptable preparation and unethical coaching should not be hard to discern.

"Your obligation as a prosecutor is to bring out the truth," said Mr. Butler, now in private practice at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington. "You can't shape it around what other people have to say."

But he, too, drew some distinctions. "It's proper to share the questions you're going to ask them but not to tell them what answers they should give," Mr. Butler said. "It's O.K. to point out additional facts or show them documents that would refresh their recollection. It's entirely proper for someone to come in and do a mock cross-examination to draw out what might be vulnerabilities in the witness's testimony."

What is not proper, he said, is to recite, much less transmit wholesale the testimony of an earlier witness.

"You would never say so-and-so said such-and-such on the stand," Mr. Butler said.

Professor Cohen, who has litigated many cases against federal prosecutors, said they can spend "unbelievable amounts of time with their witnesses." But he said he had never suspected improper coaching.

Yale Kamisar, who teaches criminal procedure at the University of San Diego, said Ms. Martin's crucial mistake was writing her advice in e-mail messages and handing over transcripts to witnesses.

"That's not the way you coach," Professor Kamisar said. "In the real world, it's more of just, 'Let's go over your testimony.' Here, there was not even a pretense, not even a cover."



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Prosecutors Scramble to Salvage 9/11 Case After Ruling

By Jerry Markon

Federal prosecutors yesterday implored a judge to reverse her decision banning key witnesses from testifying at the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, saying the misconduct of a government lawyer they labeled a "lone miscreant" should not imperil the case.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

Embattled Lawyer Had Limited Role in 9/11 Trial

By Jerry Markon and Carol Morello

The government lawyer who has thrown the death penalty trial of Sept. 11, 2001, conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui into turmoil by improperly contacting witnesses was supposed to be playing a limited role and was never to be involved with legal strategy or litigating the case.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

Terrorist Trial on Brink of Collapse

WASHINGTON-Prosecutors in Zacarias Moussaoui's case ask that a ban
on aviation security witnesses be lifted, or 'there's no point for
us to go forward.' By Richard A. Serrano and Johanna Neuman.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/ezb...Io30G2B0HNPa0Eg

March 16, 2006
Prosecutors Seek to Revive Moussaoui Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:01 a.m. ET

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- Fighting for a death penalty in a 9/11 case, prosecutors are beseeching a federal judge to reconsider her decision to exclude half the government's case against confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

They acknowledge their only hope of obtaining the death penalty for the 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent is to persuade U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema she punished the government too harshly for tampering with trial witnesses and lying to defense attorneys.

Brinkema did not immediately respond to the motion for reconsideration that prosecutors filed Wednesday evening. But she had indicated earlier she had time available Thursday to hear such a motion if it were filed.

The jury has been sent home until Monday to give prosecutors time for their next step.

Brinkema barred prosecutors from submitting any witnesses or exhibits about aviation security. Prosecutors responded in their motion that this evidence ''goes to the very core of our theory of the case.''

At the very least, the prosecutors argued, they should be allowed to present a newly designated aviation security witness who had no contact with Carla J. Martin, the Transportation Security Administration lawyer responsible for the government's misconduct. This would ''allow us to present our complete theory of the case, albeit in imperfect form.''

''The public has a strong interest in seeing and hearing it (aviation security evidence), and the court should not eliminate it from the case, particularly not ... where other remedies are available,'' they wrote Brinkema.

Brinkema ruled Tuesday that Martin violated federal rules when she sent trial transcripts to seven aviation witnesses, coached them on how to deflect defense attacks and lied to defense lawyers to prevent them from interviewing witnesses they wanted to call. The judge said Martin's actions and other government missteps had left the aviation evidence ''irremediably contaminated.''

The only person charged in this country in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Moussaoui pleaded guilty in April to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly airplanes into U.S. buildings. But he denies any involvement in 9/11, saying he was training for a possible future attack.

This trial is to decide whether he is executed or spends life behind bars.

Prosecutors said the excluded evidence ''is one of the two essential and interconnected components of our case.''

The prosecution's case is based on offensive and defensive measures they argue the government would have taken if Moussaoui had not lied to FBI agents about his terrorist connections when arrested in Minnesota three weeks before al-Qaida flew jetliners into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on 9/11.

They say offensive steps by the FBI to locate 9/11 hijackers in advance and defensive airport security measures by federal aviation officials would have combined to prevent at least one death that day. To get a death penalty, prosecutors must show beyond a reasonable doubt that an action of Moussaoui's -- his lies, in this case -- led directly to at least one 9/11 death.

As a compromise, prosecutors offered to drop arguments that the Federal Aviation Administration would have barred small knives, like those used by the hijackers, from planes and would have altered its terrorist screening profiles to catch the attackers.

Instead, they would call one witness, whom they did not identify, who worked at the FAA in August 2001 and could discuss the government's use of ''no-fly'' lists to bar named terrorists from planes and how those lists evolved. They said Martin had no contact with this witness.

''We don't know whether it is worth us proceeding at all, candidly, under the ruling you made today,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Rob Spencer said in an unusually blunt assessment during a conference call Tuesday. Spencer added that continuing under these conditions would ''waste the jury's time and the court's time, and we're all mindful of the expense of this proceeding.''

If Brinkema refuses to budge, it's not clear what appeals remain open. Defense attorney Edward MacMahon said the government can't appeal Brinkema's ruling to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond now that the trial is under way.

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said prosecutors might ask the appeals court for a rarely used common law relief order called a writ of mandamus, but such orders are granted only in extraordinary circumstances.

------

On the Net:

Court's Moussaoui site: http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/...aoui/index.html



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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0316/dailyUpdate.html?s=mesdu

Moussaoui case may become latest 'flub'

US record has not been good in high profile terror cases.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

This week's discovery of potential witness tampering in the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, which may strip the prosecution of its one chance to get the death penalty for him, is just the latest in a series of mistakes that have marked terrorist trials in the US.
The Los Angeles Times reported this week that juries have rejected the government's arguments in high-profile cases, convictions have been thrown out because of mistakes by US prosecutors, and at least one individual has been falsely accused of participating in terrorist events. And top Bush administration officials have often promised "more than they can deliver" in the prosecutions.

"There have been a lot of flubs," said George Washington University law professor Stephen A. Saltzburg. "I think most observers would say they were underwhelmed by the prosecutions brought so far."
Some of the government's problems include:

A computer science student in Idaho was accused of aiding terrorists when he designed a website that included information on terrorists in Chechnya and Israel. A jury in Boise acquitted Sami Omar Al-Hussayen of the charges in June 2004.

A Florida college professor was indicted on charges of supporting terrorists by promoting the cause of Palestinian groups. A jury in Tampa acquitted Sami Al-Arian in December.

Two Detroit men arrested a week after the Sept. 11 attacks were believed to be plotting a terrorist incident, in part on the basis of sketches found in their apartment. A judge overturned the convictions of Karim Koubriti and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi after he learned that the prosecutor's key witness had admitted lying to the FBI, a fact the prosecutor had kept hidden. The Detroit News reported in February that a special grand jury was "nearing the end of its probe into whether three government officials conspired to obstruct justice and induce perjury in the 2003 Detroit terrorism trial."

In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the US had arrested an American citizen, Jose Padilla, and said he had been trying to find a way to build a dirty bomb to use against the US. Mr. Padilla was held in a US military brig for four years, and when charged with conspiring to aid terrorists abroad in early 2006 in Miami, there was no mention of any "dirty bomb."

In early 2004, the FBI arrested Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer and Muslim convert in Portland, Ore. The agency said that they had found his fingerprints on a knapsack used by one of the bombers in the Madrid train attacks of March 2004. Mr. Mayfield was held for in custody for over two weeks, even though the Spanish police told the FBI the evidence was inconclusive. When finally released, the FBI apologized and blamed the problem on a bad digital image. Mayfield is suing the federal government.

The Washington Post reported that a Justice Department report released on March 10 said that while the FBI did not misuse its powers in the case, "the Patriot Act anti-terrorism law 'amplified the consequences' of the FBI's misidentification of a fingerprint by allowing numerous agencies to share flawed information." One good thing that came out of the Mayfield case, reports the Chicago Tribune, is that the botched fingerprinting led to "improved fingerprint identification."

Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the Guantánamo prison camp where many terrorist detainees are held, was arrested and accused of espionage. Wikipedia.com writes that, "When returning from duty at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, he was arrested on September 10, 2003, in Jacksonville, Florida and charged with five offenses: sedition, aiding the enemy, spying, espionage, and failure to obey a general order. He was then transferred to a United States Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina." CNN reported at the time that he might also be charged with treason.

The military never said what country Yee was supposed to have been spying for. He was held for 76 days in detention. All court-martial charges against him were "quietly" dropped in March 2004. The US military has never offered an explanation for its actions, or an apology to Yee.

The LA Weekly reported on March 1 that there are now doubts about the FBI case against a father and son accused of terrorism in Lodi, Calif. That case went to trial in February. The Los Angeles Times also reported Wednesday "terrorism experts and even federal officials" are expressing serious doubts about the testimony from the government's key informant in the case, who said he saw Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman Zawahiri, in 1999 in Lodi. Government sources say that while Zawahiri was in the US in the early 90s, he had not returned to the US since 1995 at the latest.

The Bush administration says that more than 400 people have been charged with terrorism-related crimes and that 228 have been convicted. But LA Weekly points out that "the vast majority of these cases have involved minor crimes not directly related to terrorism, such as immigration violations." In June 2005, The Washington Post looked at 361 "terrorism-related" cases, as identified by the Justice Department, and found that only 39 convictions for crimes related to national security or terrorism.

David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, told the Los Angeles Times that pressure from the top may have led to many of the errors.

"The government in the war on terrorism has generally swept broadly and put a high premium on convictions at any cost," he said. "That puts pressures on prosecutors — to overcharge, to coach witnesses, to fail to disclose exculpatory evidence."
In the Moussaoui case, USAToday.com reports the prosecutors Wednesday asked US District Judge Leonie Brinkema to reconsider her ruling that would prohibit testimony from key witnesses because of witness tampering. "The sanction is simply too severe, making it impossible for us to present our theory of the case to the jury," the prosecutors said in their appeal. Judge Brinkema will hear their appeal Thursday.

March 16, 2006
Prosecution Lawyer in Moussaoui Case Placed on Leave
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:16 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The lawyer accused by a judge of coaching witnesses in the death penalty case of Zacarias Moussaoui was placed on paid administrative leave from her job Thursday as the trial remained in recess.

The move was confirmed by Yolanda Clark, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration.

The TSA lawyer, Carla Martin, violated federal witness rules when she sent trial transcripts to seven aviation witnesses, coached them on how to deflect defense attacks and lied to defense lawyers to prevent them from interviewing witnesses they wanted to call, a federal judge said Tuesday.

Martin's attorney, Roscoe Howard, did not immediately return calls seeking his comment on his client being placed on leave.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said that Martin's actions and other government missteps had left the aviation evidence ''irremediably contaminated,'' and the judge has excluded virtually half of the prosecution's case against the confessed al-Qaida conspirator.

Prosecutors now say their only hope of obtaining the death penalty for Moussaoui is to persuade the judge that she punished them too harshly for Martin's alleged witness tampering and lying.

The only person charged in this country in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Moussaoui pleaded guilty in April to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly airplanes into U.S. buildings. But he denies any involvement in 9/11, saying he was training for a possible future attack.

The trial in Alexandria, Va., is to decide whether he is executed or spends life behind bars.

Now Martin is facing charges. Brinkema told her she could be charged with civil or criminal contempt, and later said she appeared to have violated rules of legal ethics. That means she could be fined, disbarred or imprisoned, or some combination of those.

Martin, whose formal title is attorney-adviser, earns about $120,000 a year, according to TSA officials. She came to the agency from the Federal Aviation Administration in April 2002.

^------

On the Net:

Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov



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March 17, 2006
French: Moussaoui Trial About Death Penalty
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:03 p.m. ET

PARIS (AP) -- In Zacarias Moussaoui's native France, his trial is less about terrorism than about what Europeans consider the perplexing American attachment to the death penalty.

In the Arab world, the trial is just another news story -- one that reflects little of the rage, fear and sorrow that it has conjured up for relatives of Sept. 11 victims.

While the world's media has converged on the Alexandria, Va., courtroom for the trial, not all regard it the way their American counterparts do: as a watershed, the first time anyone has been put on trial in the United States for the worst attacks on the U.S. in peacetime.

No one is portraying Moussaoui -- who has pleaded guilty to conspiring with al-Qaida to fly planes into U.S. buildings -- as a victim. But some French and Arab commentators see him as a scapegoat for a U.S. administration eager to produce results in its increasingly discredited anti-terror war.

Most French coverage of the trial has focused on what sentence the judge will hand Moussaoui, the French-born son of Moroccan immigrants: life in prison or execution.

France, which abolished capital punishment in 1981, has demanded that none of the information it provided for the U.S. case against Moussaoui be used to seek the death penalty.

''Al-Qaida is the best propagandist for the electric chair,'' wrote the daily Liberation in an editorial. But the paper went on to urge the U.S. jurors to avoid letting emotions guide their decision.

''In putting Moussaoui on trial, American justice is putting itself on trial before the entire world,'' Liberation wrote. ''The majesty of the rule of law should be so great that a murderous explosion like the one at the World Trade Center should not make it bat an eyelash.''

While France has had its own battle with terrorists, the death penalty is long forgotten here. Europeans -- who require that prospective entrants into the European Union abolish capital punishment -- are often puzzled by America's continued use of executions.

Moussaoui says he was not involved in the terrorist group's Sept. 11, 2001, plot. To obtain a death sentence, prosecutors must prove his actions led directly to at least one death.

''For American public opinion, still traumatized by the 3,000 deaths of 2001, this man presents the ideal profile of a guilty party,'' wrote the Christian weekly newsmagazine Temoignage Chretien.

''For the federal authorities, this process could provide a diversion helping them avoid explaining the memorable failures of the anti-terrorist policy,'' it said.

French and Arab television have aired interviews with Moussaoui's mother, Aicha, who accuses the United States of making an example of her son.

The Pan-Arab television station Al-Jazeera has been largely straightforward in covering the trial, avoiding commentary.

Other Arab media have given it cursory attention -- less attention, even, than the trial of Tayssir Alouni, an Al-Jazeera correspondent convicted in Spain last year of collaboration with a terrorist organization and sentenced to seven years in prison.

In Morocco, coverage of the trial has been minimal. Moussaoui's Moroccan heritage has pulled few heartstrings -- and the government's anti-terrorist stance and cooperation with Washington has cooled anti-American commentary in recent years.

European media, though, have paid closer attention to this than most American courtroom dramas.

''There's an awareness that this is the only guy that's been convicted in connection with 9/11,'' said BBC Washington correspondent James Coomarasamy, who is covering the trial. ''And if you're talking about Europe, he's a Frenchman.''

France's Le Monde newspaper, Radio France International, Agence France Presse and Al-Jazeera are among the 25 news organizations -- most of the others are from the U.S. -- that reserved seats for the trial.

------

Associated Press reporters Paul Duke in Paris, Nadia Abou El-Magd in Cairo and Elizabeth White in Washington contributed to this report.



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March 17, 2006
Judge in Moussaoui Case Accepts Compromise on Testimony
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, March 17 — The government salvaged part of its death penalty case against Zacarias Moussaoui today as a federal judge partly reversed herself and said prosecutors could call aviation officials as witnesses. But she barred those who had been tainted by the improper coaching of a government lawyer.

Judge Leonie M. Brinkema refused to reconsider her earlier ruling that the government cannot use aviation witnesses who had been subjected to the improper conduct of the lawyer, Carla J. Martin. But Judge Brinkema said that an alternative proposed by the government, namely that it be allowed to call witnesses unaffected by Ms. Martin, "has merit."

Accordingly, the judge said, those witnesses can be called to testify as to what the United States government "could" have done to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, had Mr. Moussaoui disclosed what he knew before that date. But she said the witness could not testify about what the government "would" have done, "as such testimony would be unduly speculative and misleading to the jury."

Judge Brinkema said prosecutors must provide the names of such witnesses to the defense at least three days before they are to appear.

Today's ruling was far from everything the federal prosecutors had sought, but had Judge Brinkema ruled against them entirely their case might have been fatally harmed.

Ms. Martin has been forced to take a leave from the Transportation Security Administration, a department spokeswoman said Thursday.

The actions of Ms. Martin threw into turmoil the case against Mr. Moussaoui, the only person charged in a United States courtroom with responsibility for the deaths from the Sept. 11 attacks. She has not yet offered an explanation for her behavior, disclosed over the last few days, but her lawyer, in a statement Thursday, said, "Ms. Martin has now been vilified by assertions from the prosecution and assorted media pundits."

Her lawyer, Roscoe C. Howard Jr., said Ms. Martin was preparing a response.

"When her opportunity comes," Mr. Howard said, "her response will show a very different, full picture of her intentions, her conduct and her tireless dedication to a full trial."

The disclosure Monday that Ms. Martin had sent trial transcripts and e-mail messages to seven government aviation officials listed as witnesses with suggestions as to how they should testify caused a furor. Judge Brinkema called it the worst case of a lawyer tampering with witnesses she had experienced on the bench. Judge Brinkema also said Ms. Martin had not told the truth when she told prosecutors that some of the government officials had refused to talk to Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers.

The judge ruled Tuesday that the government would not be permitted to call any of the witnesses who might have been tainted by Ms. Martin's conduct.

Even though Mr. Moussaoui was in jail at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, prosecutors have argued that he bears responsibility for the deaths that day because he lied to investigators who arrested him three weeks earlier.

Judge Brinkema recessed the trial until Monday. In asking her to reconsider her ruling, prosecutors argued that the sanction against the government was excessive.

In a response Thursday, Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers reminded Judge Brinkema that courts were obliged to be especially sensitive to problems that might deny a fair trial to someone facing a death penalty.

Because Mr. Moussaoui has pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, the sole question is whether he will be executed or imprisoned for life.



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March 17, 2006
Moussaoui Judge Allows Some Aviation Witnesses
By REUTERS
Filed at 2:29 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge in the sentencing trial of September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui on Friday refused to reconsider her decision barring witnesses who were improperly contacted by a government lawyer but said new witnesses may testify about crucial aviation-related evidence.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema gave new life to federal prosecutors who are seeking the death penalty in the government's only case involving the airliner hijackings that killed about 3,000 people.

Earlier this week, after discovering that government lawyer Carla Martin had violated a court order on contacting witnesses, Brinkema banned the testimony of six aviation witnesses and aviation-related evidence that Martin might have handled.

Prosecutors petitioned for Brinkema to reconsider, saying much of the aviation testimony was undisputed and they could find witnesses with whom Martin did not discuss trial proceedings. The aviation testimony affects about half the government's case against Moussaoui.

Aviation-related testimony was expected to deal with how much information the Federal Aviation Administration had about possible threats to airlines and also discuss pre-September 11 security measures.

In her ruling, Brinkema said the prosecution could call ''untainted'' aviation witnesses and produce ``untainted physical evidence.'' But she gave limited parameters for the testimony.

Prosecutors are trying to prove that if Moussaoui had not lied to the FBI when he was arrested three weeks before September 11, the attacks might have been thwarted in part due to heightened security efforts by the FAA.

Moussaoui, an al Qaeda member who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in connection with the September 11 attacks, is on trial to see if he will be executed or get life in prison. His trial is scheduled to resume on Monday.



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March 18, 2006
Judge Gives Prosecutors New Chance in Terror Case
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, March 17 — The judge in the sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui said on Friday that prosecutors could try to find new, untainted aviation-security witnesses to replace those who were barred from testifying because they were improperly coached by a government lawyer.

The ruling effectively allows the government to try to salvage its effort to execute Mr. Moussaoui, the only person charged in a United States courtroom with responsibility for the deaths in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The judge, Leonie M. Brinkema of Federal District Court, declined to undo her earlier decision prohibiting the prosecutors from using any of the aviation officials they originally intended to call as witnesses because they had been coached by Carla J. Martin, a government lawyer who was assisting the prosecutors.

The trial, which is solely about whether Mr. Moussaoui should be executed or jailed for life, was on the brink of falling apart after the judge's ruling on Wednesday struck at the heart of the government's case. The chief prosecutor, Robert J. Spencer, had told the judge there would "be no point in going forward" unless she relented in some manner.

But even as Judge Brinkema denied the prosecutors' request that she reconsider her striking of those witnesses, she accepted a suggestion that they put forward in a court filing: that they be allowed to try to find someone new to present the same testimony.

"The government's proposed alternate remedy of allowing it to call untainted aviation witnesses or otherwise produce evidence not tainted by Ms. Martin has merit," Judge Brinkema wrote.

Tasia Scolinos, the Justice Department's spokeswoman, said in response, "We are pleased to be able to move forward with this important case on behalf of the thousands of victims and their families."

That means the trial, in its second week when it was thrown into turmoil by the disclosure of Ms. Martin's behavior, will resume Monday morning with the cross-examination of an F.B.I. agent who arrested and interviewed Mr. Moussaoui three weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.

But the question remains as to whether it is possible to find new witnesses who are not only untainted, as the judge has required, but familiar enough with the state of aviation security in August 2001 to help support the government's case.

Mr. Moussaoui was in jail at the time of the attacks after having been arrested for immigration violations in Minnesota, where he was learning to fly a jetliner. The Justice Department has asserted that he is nonetheless responsible for the Sept. 11 deaths because he had lied to investigators and concealed his membership in Al Qaeda and his knowledge of that group's plans to fly planes into buildings.

The government's main aviation-security witness, Lynne Osmus, a senior official of the Federal Aviation Administration in August 2001, was to testify about what steps the agency "could" have taken had Mr. Moussaoui told investigators what he knew about Al Qaeda's plans.

The prosecutors were prepared to have Ms. Osmus, in particular, assert that the agency could have issued a directive putting in place 10 security measures, including a ban on short-blade knives like those used by the Sept. 11 hijackers and also owned by Mr. Moussaoui. The judge has barred aviation witnesses from testifying as to what the government "would" have done, because that would be speculation.

Edward B. MacMahon Jr., the chief defense lawyer for Mr. Moussaoui, said in a court filing that he did not believe it was possible to find any new, untainted witnesses because anyone who had the expertise of Ms. Osmus would by now have been exposed to the coaching suggestions of Ms. Martin through news reports.

Mr. MacMahon said that it was possible that someone familiar with how the aviation agency operated in August 2001 might not have had contact with Ms. Martin, but that it was highly implausible that such people would not have read about her suggestions to the witnesses.

But Justice Department officials said they were confident they could find witnesses who would be deemed authoritative and untainted.

Ms. Martin's name came up in other court proceedings Friday as lawyers defending the airlines against Sept. 11 liability suits denied that they had communicated with her. Lawyers for family members of flight attendants killed in the attacks had raised questions about alleged contacts between Ms. Martin and the airlines' lawyers.



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March 20, 2006
F.B.I. Discounted Suspicions About Moussaoui, Agent Says
By NEIL A. LEWIS
ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 20 — The F.B.I. agent who arrested and interrogated Zacarias Moussaoui just weeks before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, told a jury today that his efforts to confirm his strong suspicions that Mr. Moussaoui was involved in a terrorist airline hijacking plot were thwarted by senior bureau officials in Washington who acted out of negligence and a need to protect their careers.

Harry Samit, under intense cross-examination by Mr. Moussaoui's chief court-appointed lawyer, detailed his frustration over the days before the hijacking as he made numerous requests to look into what Mr. Moussaoui had been up to at the time of his arrest. Mr. Moussaoui was arrested on immigration violations in Minnesota, where he was learning to fly a jetliner.

"I accused the people in F.B.I. headquarters of criminal negligence" in an interview after Sept. 11, Mr. Samit acknowledged under questioning by Edward B. MacMahon Jr. He said that the senior agents in Washington "took a calculated risk not to advance the investigation" by refusing to seek search warrants for Mr. Moussaoui's belongings and computer. "The wager was a national tragedy," Mr. Samit testified.

Mr. Samit said that two senior agents declined to provide help in getting a search warrant, either through a special panel of judges that considers applications for foreign intelligence cases or through a normal application to any federal court for a criminal investigation.

As a field agent in Minnesota, he said he required help and approval from headquarters to continue his investigation. He acknowledged that he had written that Michael Maltbie, an agent in the F.B.I.'s radical fundamentalist unit, told him that applications for the special intelligence court warrants had proved troublesome for the bureau and seeking one "was just the kind of thing that would get F.B.I. agents in trouble." He wrote that Mr. Maltbie had told him that "he was not about to let that happen to him." During that period, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, had complained about improper applications from the bureau.

Mr. Samit also acknowledged that he had written that David Frasca, a supervisor of the radical fundamentalist unit, had similarly blocked him from seeking a search warrant under the more common route in a criminal investigation. Some of the special court's complaints dealt with the idea that law-enforcement officials were sometimes using the lower standard required for warrants in intelligence investigations and then using the information they obtained in criminal cases.

Mr. Frasca, Mr. Samit explained, believed that once the Moussaoui investigation was opened as an intelligence investigation, it would arouse suspicion that agents had been trying to exploit the intelligence law to get information for an investigation they now believed was a criminal one.

(An F.B.I. spokesman, Bill Carter, said the agency did not comment on pending trials or litigation.)

The distinction between the two standards for obtaining warrants has since been eliminated following the Sept. 11 attacks.

The government is trying to prove to a jury that Mr. Moussaoui should be executed because he bears some responsibility for the deaths from Sept. 11. Prosecutors have argued that if Mr. Moussaoui had told Mr. Samit and other investigators what he knew about Al Qaeda plots to fly planes into buildings, the attacks might have been foiled.

Although Mr. Samit was a government witness who sought to bolster the government's case that he could have uncovered the plot had Mr. Moussaoui spoken to him truthfully, his responses to Mr. MacMahon today appeared to provide a lift for the defense. Mr. MacMahon sought to show that the problem was not with Mr. Moussaoui but with senior F.B.I. officials in Washington who would not budge no matter how hard Mr. Samit pressed them.

The F.B.I.'s handling of clues to the impending Sept. 11 attacks was sharply criticized in a report by the Justice Department's inspector general's office in 2004. Citing a memo from a Phoenix agent who had become suspicious of several students taking flying lessons in Arizona, the report said the agent's memo did not get the timely attention it deserved, not so much because of individual lapses within the F.B.I. but because of "critical systemic failings" that kept information from being effectively evaluated and shared.

The slow and incomplete attention given the memo from Phoenix was illustrative of a system "in which important information could easily 'fall through the cracks' and not be brought to the attention of the people who needed it, the inspector general's office concluded.



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March 20, 2006
FBI Agent: Warnings About Moussaoui Unheeded
By REUTERS
Filed at 6:31 p.m. ET

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - An FBI agent testified in the sentencing trial of September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui on Monday that agency superiors repeatedly blocked his efforts to warn of a possible terror attack.

Harry Samit, the FBI agent who arrested Moussaoui three weeks before the deadly airliner hijackings that killed 3,000 people, said he tried to tell his superiors that he thought a hijacking plan might be in the works.

``You tried to move heaven and earth to get a search warrant to search this man's belongings. You were obstructed,'' defense attorney Edward MacMahon said as the trial resumed after a week's delay over improper witness coaching.

``From a particular individual in the (FBI's) Radical Fundamentalist Unit, yes sir, I was obstructed,'' Samit said.

Moussaoui has already pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy. The trial -- the only one for anyone charged in connection with the September 11 attacks -- will determine if he is sentenced to death.

Moussaoui, an admitted al Qaeda member who regularly yells ''God curse America!'' when the jury and judge leave the courtroom, was arrested on August 16, 2001, after raising suspicions at a flight school.

Samit said after questioning Moussaoui he knew the Frenchman of Moroccan descent had ``radical Islamic fundamentalist beliefs'' and thought he was part of a bigger plot to attack the United States. In an message to his superiors on August 18, 2001, Samit said he believed Moussaoui was ``conspiring to commit a terrorist act.''

Samit also warned that Moussaoui, who did not have a pilot's license, had been taking simulator lessons to learn the basics of flying a jumbo jet. Samit expressed his concerns that Moussaoui was plotting a possible hijacking.

WARNINGS GO UNHEEDED

``You thought you had a terrorist who was planning a terrorist attack. And you wanted everyone in the government to know,'' MacMahon asked Samit.

``Yes,'' he replied.

Although he sent numerous e-mails and formal requests to agents and to his superiors warning of a potential hijacking attack, Samit said he was unable to get authority to seek a warrant in order to search Moussaoui's belongings.

He even sought assistance from FBI agents in France and Britain and consulted with people in different agencies.

``I am so desperate to get into his computer, I'll take anything,'' he wrote in an e-mail to Catherine Kiser, an intelligence official, one day before the deadly attacks.

Her response was ominous: ``You fought the good fight. God help us all if the next terrorist incident involves the same type of plane.''

Samit also drafted a memo to the Federal Aviation Administration warning that Moussaoui might have been part of a plot to seize a jumbo jet but it was not clear ``how far advanced were his plans to do so.'' Samit's bosses at FBI headquarters did not send the memo.

MacMahon quoted from a report in which Samit accused people at FBI headquarters of ``criminal negligence'' and said they were just trying to protect their own careers.

The trial resumed on Monday after a week's delay caused by the discovery that a Transportation Security Administration lawyer, Carla Martin, had improperly discussed the trial with aviation witnesses who were to testify for the defense and the prosecution.

After initially throwing out all aviation-related evidence and testimony, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema agreed to allow the government to bring forward new ``untainted'' witnesses and evidence, but limited the parameters for the questioning.



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March 21, 2006
F.B.I. Agent Testifies Superiors Didn't Pursue Moussaoui Case
By NEIL A. LEWIS
ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 20 — The F.B.I. agent who arrested and interrogated Zacarias Moussaoui just weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks told a jury on Monday how he had tried repeatedly to get his superiors in Washington to help confirm his certainty that Mr. Moussaoui was involved in an imminent terrorist airline hijacking plot.

But, said the agent, Harry Samit, he was regularly thwarted by senior bureau officials whose obstructionism he later described to Justice Department investigators as "criminally negligent" and who were, he believed, motivated principally by a need to protect their careers.

Mr. Samit's testimony added a wealth of detail to the notion that officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation played down, ignored and purposely mischaracterized the increasingly dire warnings from field agents in the Minneapolis office that they had a terrorist on their hands in Mr. Moussaoui.

"I accused the people in F.B.I. headquarters of criminal negligence" in an interview after Sept. 11, Mr. Samit acknowledged under intense questioning by Edward B. MacMahon Jr., Mr. Moussaoui's chief court-appointed lawyer.

Mr. Samit confirmed that he had told Justice Department investigators that the senior agents in Washington "took a calculated risk not to advance the investigation" by refusing to seek search warrants for Mr. Moussaoui's belongings and computer. He testified that he had come to believe that "the wager was a national tragedy."

Mr. Samit was a witness for the prosecution, which is trying to have Mr. Moussaoui executed for the deaths that occurred on Sept. 11. In his direct testimony more than a week ago, he bolstered the prosecutors' case by saying that had Mr. Moussaoui answered his questions honestly when he arrested him for immigration violations, it would have set off a chain of inquiries that could have foiled the Sept. 11 plot.

But under Mr. MacMahon's questions, Mr. Samit provided much new evidence and testimony suggesting strongly that the more significant factors in the failure to learn of the plot from Mr. Moussaoui involved the decisions of senior F.B.I. officials.

Mr. Samit's testimony paralleled the complaints of Coleen Rowley, an agent and lawyer in the Minneapolis office who sent a letter on May 21, 2002, to the bureau director, Robert S. Mueller III, bitterly criticizing the performance of F.B.I. headquarters agents in handling the Moussaoui case.

But unlike Ms. Rowley, who has since left the bureau, Mr. Samit remains an agent and tried on Monday to adopt a defensive posture on its behalf. Nonetheless, his testimony provided a vivid condemnation of the bureau, as he was obliged to confirm how he had told investigators of his belief that his superiors had tried to sidestep their responsibilities.

Mr. Samit said two senior agents had declined to provide help in obtaining a search warrant, either through a special panel of judges that considers applications for foreign intelligence cases or through a normal application to any federal court for a criminal investigation.

As a field agent in Minnesota, he said, he required help and approval from headquarters to continue his investigation. He acknowledged that he had asserted that Michael Maltbie, a supervisor in the bureau's Radical Fundamentalist Unit, had told him that applications for the special intelligence court warrants had proved troublesome for the bureau and that seeking one "was just the kind of thing that would get F.B.I. agents in trouble."

Mr. Samit wrote that Mr. Maltbie had told him that "he was not about to let that happen to him." During that period, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had complained about improper applications from the bureau.

Mr. Samit also acknowledged that he had asserted to investigators that David Frasca, Mr. Maltbie's superior, had similarly blocked him from seeking a search warrant under the more common route, a criminal investigation. Some of the special court's complaints dealt with the idea that law-enforcement officials were sometimes exploiting the lower standard required for warrants in intelligence investigations and then using the information that they obtained in criminal cases.

Mr. Frasca, Mr. Samit explained, believed that once the Moussaoui investigation was opened as an intelligence inquiry, it would arouse suspicion that agents had been trying to abuse the intelligence law to get information for a case they now believed was a criminal one.

Mr. Samit's comments, which were made to investigators for the Justice Department's inspector general and in a subsequent memorandum to the F.B.I., had not been made public before. The report by the inspector general on the bureau's Sept. 11 performance was released in June 2005 but had substantial deletions.

Mr. Samit said senior bureau officials had even been told he was trying to prevent someone from flying a plane into the World Trade Center.

William Carter, an F.B.I. spokesman, said that neither the bureau nor Mr. Maltbie nor Mr. Frasca, who are still employed there, would have any comment.

The cross-examination of Mr. Samit was delayed after his initial testimony when the trial was interrupted following disclosures that a government lawyer had improperly coached several aviation security officials who were to testify.

Judge Leonie M. Brinkema ruled that because of the coaching, the prosecution would be unable to use those witnesses to make the case that security could have been bolstered, possibly foiling the plot, if Mr. Moussaoui had told Mr. Samit about his knowledge of plans by Al Qaeda to fly planes into buildings.

Judge Brinkema's sanctions on the prosecution for Ms. Martin's behavior nearly wrecked the government's case. But on Friday, Judge Brinkema ruled that the government could try to find new untainted aviation security witnesses.



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FBI Was Warned About Moussaoui

By Jerry Markon and Timothy Dwyer

An FBI agent who interrogated Zacarias Moussaoui before Sept. 11, 2001, warned his supervisors more than 70 times that Moussaoui was a terrorist and spelled out his suspicions that the al-Qaeda operative was plotting to hijack an airplane, according to federal court testimony yesterday.

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March 21, 2006
F.B.I. Agent Testifies Superiors Didn't Pursue Moussaoui Case
By NEIL A. LEWIS
ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 20 — The F.B.I. agent who arrested and interrogated Zacarias Moussaoui just weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks told a jury on Monday how he had tried repeatedly to get his superiors in Washington to help confirm his certainty that Mr. Moussaoui was involved in an imminent terrorist airline hijacking plot.

But, said the agent, Harry Samit, he was regularly thwarted by senior bureau officials whose obstructionism he later described to Justice Department investigators as "criminally negligent" and who were, he believed, motivated principally by a need to protect their careers.

Mr. Samit's testimony added a wealth of detail to the notion that officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation played down, ignored and purposely mischaracterized the increasingly dire warnings from field agents in the Minneapolis office that they had a terrorist on their hands in Mr. Moussaoui.

"I accused the people in F.B.I. headquarters of criminal negligence" in an interview after Sept. 11, Mr. Samit acknowledged under intense questioning by Edward B. MacMahon Jr., Mr. Moussaoui's chief court-appointed lawyer.

Mr. Samit confirmed that he had told Justice Department investigators that the senior agents in Washington "took a calculated risk not to advance the investigation" by refusing to seek search warrants for Mr. Moussaoui's belongings and computer. He testified that he had come to believe that "the wager was a national tragedy."

Mr. Samit was a witness for the prosecution, which is trying to have Mr. Moussaoui executed for the deaths that occurred on Sept. 11. In his direct testimony more than a week ago, he bolstered the prosecutors' case by saying that had Mr. Moussaoui answered his questions honestly when he arrested him for immigration violations, it would have set off a chain of inquiries that could have foiled the Sept. 11 plot.

But under Mr. MacMahon's questions, Mr. Samit provided much new evidence and testimony suggesting strongly that the more significant factors in the failure to learn of the plot from Mr. Moussaoui involved the decisions of senior F.B.I. officials.

Mr. Samit's testimony paralleled the complaints of Coleen Rowley, an agent and lawyer in the Minneapolis office who sent a letter on May 21, 2002, to the bureau director, Robert S. Mueller III, bitterly criticizing the performance of F.B.I. headquarters agents in handling the Moussaoui case.

But unlike Ms. Rowley, who has since left the bureau, Mr. Samit remains an agent and tried on Monday to adopt a defensive posture on its behalf. Nonetheless, his testimony provided a vivid condemnation of the bureau, as he was obliged to confirm how he had told investigators of his belief that his superiors had tried to sidestep their responsibilities.

Mr. Samit said two senior agents had declined to provide help in obtaining a search warrant, either through a special panel of judges that considers applications for foreign intelligence cases or through a normal application to any federal court for a criminal investigation.

As a field agent in Minnesota, he said, he required help and approval from headquarters to continue his investigation. He acknowledged that he had asserted that Michael Maltbie, a supervisor in the bureau's Radical Fundamentalist Unit, had told him that applications for the special intelligence court warrants had proved troublesome for the bureau and that seeking one "was just the kind of thing that would get F.B.I. agents in trouble."

Mr. Samit wrote that Mr. Maltbie had told him that "he was not about to let that happen to him." During that period, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had complained about improper applications from the bureau.

Mr. Samit also acknowledged that he had asserted to investigators that David Frasca, Mr. Maltbie's superior, had similarly blocked him from seeking a search warrant under the more common route, a criminal investigation. Some of the special court's complaints dealt with the idea that law-enforcement officials were sometimes exploiting the lower standard required for warrants in intelligence investigations and then using the information that they obtained in criminal cases.

Mr. Frasca, Mr. Samit explained, believed that once the Moussaoui investigation was opened as an intelligence inquiry, it would arouse suspicion that agents had been trying to abuse the intelligence law to get information for a case they now believed was a criminal one.

Mr. Samit's comments, which were made to investigators for the Justice Department's inspector general and in a subsequent memorandum to the F.B.I., had not been made public before. The report by the inspector general on the bureau's Sept. 11 performance was released in June 2005 but had substantial deletions.

Mr. Samit said senior bureau officials had even been told he was trying to prevent someone from flying a plane into the World Trade Center.

William Carter, an F.B.I. spokesman, said that neither the bureau nor Mr. Maltbie nor Mr. Frasca, who are still employed there, would have any comment.

The cross-examination of Mr. Samit was delayed after his initial testimony when the trial was interrupted following disclosures that a government lawyer had improperly coached several aviation security officials who were to testify.

Judge Leonie M. Brinkema ruled that because of the coaching, the prosecution would be unable to use those witnesses to make the case that security could have been bolstered, possibly foiling the plot, if Mr. Moussaoui had told Mr. Samit about his knowledge of plans by Al Qaeda to fly planes into buildings.

Judge Brinkema's sanctions on the prosecution for Ms. Martin's behavior nearly wrecked the government's case. But on Friday, Judge Brinkema ruled that the government could try to find new untainted aviation security witnesses.



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DEBKAfile adds: Various intelligence and other informants encountered the same Washington unresponsiveness as did FBI agent Samit prior to 9/11

March 21, 2006, 4:09 PM (GMT+02:00)

From early 1997 up until mid-2000, certain intelligence agencies and private individuals, including Israelis, tried to bring relevant information of the coming al Qaeda attack in New York to the attention of security authorities in Washington. Most were general in nature, but in at least one instance, specific data was put before Clinton administration officials and the FBI of a possible air attack by hijacked airliners against the Twin Towers. They encountered a wall of resistance. At that time, the Clinton White House was deeply engaged in a bid for a breakthrough in Israel-Palestinian peacemaking. Washington then believed that an American strike against al Qaeda would provoke anti-US demonstrations across the Muslim world and disrupt the American mediation effort in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The Bush administration took office in January 2001. Eight months later, FBI agent Harry Samit arrested Zacarias Moussaoui. He tried in vain to persuade his superiors to take seriously and investigate his findings about an Islamic fundamentalist who took flight training and was interested in Osama bin Laden. The new administration, which had no knowledge of the previous president’s motives in setting aside the al Qaeda inquiry, saw no reason to change standing directives for the CIA and FBI on the subject. So Samit’s warnings went unheeded by default.

The situation in Jerusalem today strongly recalls Washington’s heedlessness in the years before the Sept. 11, 2001 to attacks that cost more than 3,000 lives. Al Qaeda lurks on Israel’s doorstep in the Gaza Strip and more recently the West Bank, but the current Israeli government has no time to address the danger.

Copyright 2000-2006 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.

March 21, 2006
Top FBI Official Unaware of Moussaoui Terror Ties
By REUTERS
Filed at 4:31 p.m. ET

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - The FBI official in charge of international terrorism before September 11 said on Tuesday he did not know an agent had warned three weeks before the hijackings that he suspected Zacarias Moussaoui was plotting a terrorist act.

Michael Rolince, the chief of the FBI's international terrorism operation section in 2001, testified at Moussaoui's sentencing trial that he was unaware of a long report written by the FBI agent spelling out his theories.

Harry Samit, the FBI agent who arrested Moussaoui three weeks before the deadly airliner hijackings that killed 3,000 people, testified on Monday that agency superiors repeatedly blocked his efforts to warn of a possible terror attack.

Moussaoui, an admitted al Qaeda member, has pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy in connection with the September 11 attacks. The trial -- the only one in the United States in connection with the attacks -- will determine if he is sentenced to death.

Samit said after questioning Moussaoui he knew the Frenchman of Moroccan descent had ``radical Islamic fundamentalist beliefs'' and thought he was part of a bigger plot to attack the United States. In an message to his superiors on August 18, 2001, Samit said he believed Moussaoui was ``conspiring to commit a terrorist act.''

But Rolince said although he knew of Moussaoui's arrest, he did not know that Samit had sent a long message to FBI headquarters.

Defense lawyer Edward MacMahon asked Rolince if was aware that Samit believed Moussaoui was a Muslim fundamentalist who was learning to fly a jumbo jet, and that the agent believed he was a terrorist who could be possibly planning a hijacking.

``No,'' Rolince said. ``Can I ask what document that's coming from?''

``Sure, that's Mr. Samit's communication to your office ... August 18, 2001,'' MacMahon replied.

Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota on August 16, 2001, after raising suspicions at a flight school. He was held on immigration charges.

Rolince said the FBI did not have enough evidence to charge Moussaoui at the time.

``Agent Samit's suppositions and hunches were one thing,'' he said. ``What we actually knew was something else.''



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March 22, 2006
Superior Says He Didn't See Agent's Report on Moussaoui
By NEIL A. LEWIS
ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 21 — The F.B.I.'s top counterterrorism official at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks told a jury on Tuesday that he did not know that a bureau agent had filed a report three weeks earlier detailing his suspicions that Zacarias Moussaoui was involved in an imminent airline hijacking plot.

The official, Michael Rolince, who was the chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's international terrorism section until his retirement, testified that he had little knowledge of Mr. Moussaoui before the attacks.

Mr. Rolince said he was unaware that the agent, Harry Samit, who was working in Minneapolis, had filed a long report asking for a complete investigation of Mr. Moussaoui, whom he described as a radical Islamic fundamentalist who hated the United States and was learning to fly jetliners.

When Mr. Moussaoui's chief court-appointed lawyer, Edward B. MacMahon Jr., asked Mr. Rolince if he knew that when Mr. Moussaoui was arrested he was under suspicion of planning a hijacking, he replied, "No." Then, after a moment, he asked sharply, "Can I ask what document that's coming from?"

Mr. MacMahon offered a quick reply. "That's Mr. Samit's communication to your office," he said. "Aug. 18, 2001."

Mr. Rolince said Mr. Samit's "suppositions, hunches and suspicions were one thing, and what we knew" was a different matter.

Despite his efforts to recover, Mr. Rolince became the second witness for the prosecution in two consecutive days at the sentencing trial for Mr. Moussaoui to give testimony that appeared to provide clear benefits to the defense.

Mr. Samit, who was cross-examined by Mr. MacMahon on Monday, testified, albeit reluctantly, that he had told investigators after the attacks that he believed that his superiors at the bureau in Washington were guilty of "criminal negligence" and had ignored his increasingly dire requests to obtain a search warrant in order to protect their careers.

He said that they had taken a gamble that Mr. Moussaoui was not going to have any valuable information and that they had lost a wager that proved to be a national tragedy.

The government has argued that Mr. Moussaoui, the only person to go to trial in the United States in connection with the deaths of Sept. 11, should be executed because when he was arrested three weeks earlier on immigration charges, he lied to investigators about his knowledge of plans by Al Qaeda to fly planes into buildings.

Because Mr. Moussaoui has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, the sole question before the jury is whether he should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison.

Mr. Samit and Mr. Rolince were called as witnesses by the government to press the argument that had Mr. Moussaoui told Mr. Samit and other investigators what he knew, the F.B.I. could have taken steps to foil the plot. Mr. Rolince testified as to how the government disrupted a plan to blow up Los Angeles International Airport when another man, Ahmed Ressam, was arrested at the Canadian border in 1999 and agreed to cooperate with the authorities.

But he seemed to unwittingly reinforce the defense's counterargument that Mr. Moussaoui's silence was not as important as the inability of law enforcement authorities to react to leads like those given by Mr. Samit.

Mr. Rolince also testified that he had a "hallway" conversation, lasting about 20 seconds, with one of the supervisors at headquarters whom Mr. Samit has identified as blocking his efforts. He said the supervisor, David Frasca, briefed him on an alternate plan to have Mr. Moussaoui's belongings searched by extraditing him to France and having French authorities do the search.

That plan, Mr. Samit has testified, was to go into effect on Sept. 11, 2001.



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FAA Reportedly Dismissed Moussaoui Concern

By Jerry Markon and William Branigin

In emotional testimony in the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui today, the former manager of an Arizona flight school that trained one of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers told a federal jury that she had expressed alarm about her student to the Federal Aviation Administration and cried when she...

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Moussaoui's Guilt: Less Profound Than the FBI's Own Negligence?:

FBI Special Agent Harry Samit's testimony yesterday at the Zacarias Moussaoui trial adds just one more piece of evidence to a growing list of incidents showing what Samit himself labeled "criminal negligence."
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/index.php...dgeway&id=72620

March 23, 2006
Case for Moussaoui Execution Seems Bolstered by 2 Witnesses
By NEIL A. LEWIS
ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 22 — The government's effort to have Zacarias Moussaoui executed for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which has been troubled by serious problems over the last two weeks, appeared to have been bolstered significantly on Wednesday by the testimony of its final two witnesses.

A senior aviation security official at the time of the attacks in 2001 told the jury that several measures could have been put in place that might have foiled the plot if Mr. Moussaoui had disclosed what he knew about Al Qaeda's plans when he was arrested three weeks earlier.

The security official, Robert J. Cammaroto, was followed on the witness stand by Aaron Zebley, an F.B.I. agent at the time of the attacks, whose testimony made similar points about law enforcement.

The detailed testimony of the two witnesses provided the prosecution's strongest presentation to date at the trial, which is being held solely to determine whether Mr. Moussaoui, who has already pleaded guilty, should be executed or remain in jail for the rest of his life. The testimony from the two followed several days of disarray in which the government's case nearly fell apart.

Two F.B.I. officials who testified this week for the prosecution seemed mainly to help the defense by reinforcing the notion that the bureau had dragged its feet in following up leads from agents in the field that Mr. Moussaoui had valuable information about an imminent hijacking plot.

The trial was disrupted last week after the disclosure that a lawyer for the Transportation Security Administration had improperly coached aviation security officials about how to testify. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema ruled that because of the actions of the lawyer, Carla J. Martin, the prosecution would be prohibited from calling those witnesses, a crippling blow to the government's case.

Judge Brinkema relented, however, and allowed prosecutors to try to find another, "untainted" aviation security witness to help make their argument. It was Mr. Cammaroto who appeared on the witness stand Wednesday afternoon as that substitute, and he briskly listed the steps the Federal Aviation Administration could have taken in the middle of August 2001 when Mr. Moussaoui was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota, where he was learning to fly a jetliner.

At the time, Mr. Cammaroto was the F.A.A.'s official in charge of issuing security directives to United States airlines in response to the latest intelligence reports.

Under questioning by David J. Novak, a prosecutor, Mr. Cammaroto listed a half-dozen ways that airport security could have been increased if he had learned what Mr. Moussaoui acknowledged in his guilty plea last April: that he was an Al Qaeda member and that the group had discussed flying planes into buildings by disabling crews using short-bladed knives that were allowed on planes at the time.

"We could have taken several steps," Mr. Cammaroto said, listing among others the banning of all knives, shifting resources like air marshals to domestic flights, ordering physical "pat-downs" of passengers and making metal detectors more sensitive.

Gerald T. Zerkin, a public defender representing Mr. Moussaoui, suggested in his cross-examination that such security measures could not have been adopted quickly. Mr. Cammaroto acknowledged that the hiring of new air marshals would have taken months. But he said many of the steps could have been put in place within hours, and he cited the foiling of a multiple-plane hijack plot in the Philippines in 1995 as an example.

Mr. Zebley, the former F.B.I. agent, who has not yet been cross-examined, testified that information discovered after the attacks could have provided important leads beforehand. He noted that Mr. Moussaoui had received payments for his flight training from the same person who had sent money to some of the hijackers. He said that had Mr. Moussaoui told investigators at the time of his arrest about his paymaster and his intentions to commit a terrorist act, it would have been easy to trace the other payments made by the same man.

The prosecutors contend that even though Mr. Moussaoui was in jail at the time of the attacks, he is responsible because his lies allowed "his brothers to go forward." Mr. Moussaoui's lawyers, who are to begin making their case next week, have said in papers that the government should not be able to execute someone on the speculative theory that had he provided information, the attacks would not have occurred.



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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 agen