9/11 Account Rivets Moussaoui Trial
Reading from radiophone transmissions, a federal prosecutor transfixed the courtroom at Zacarias Moussaoui's sentencing trial Tuesday with a minute-by-minute account of al Qaeda's hijacking of American Airlines' Flight 11 and the plane's journey into the north tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
"We are flying low. We are flying very very low. We are flying way too low," flight attendant Amy Sweeney told ground controllers who had asked at 8:44 a.m. where the plane was. Then a few seconds' pause, and finally: "Oh my God, we are way too low!" The phone went dead at 8:46 a.m. as the Boeing 767 jetliner hit the tower in the first of four crashes by hijacked jetliners that day.
Moussaoui, the confessed al Qaeda conspirator who is facing a life-or-death decision, was as electrified as the jury and the audience by Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin's reading of the transcripts.
Moussaoui's mother, Aicha El Wafi, sat behind her son in the spectator section of the courtroom, wearing a red veil.
"I don't recognize my son," she told journalists at the trial. "He's another Zach. He doesn't seem normal, he's too quiet, he's fatter, he doesn't react, he doesn't move at all. I'm sure he's on drugs so he can stay quiet and doesn't disturb anyone."
Asked about his involvement in al Qaeda, El Wafi said "It's his life, it's his choice, I'm his mother and I love him," adding that the "U.S. people need a guilty man" and he is the scapegoat.
Leaving the courtroom for a recess, the 37-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent surged from his chair, pumped his right fist in the air and shouted: "Allah Akbar! God curse America! Bless Osama bin Laden!" He usually mutters these invocations when leaving court.
Later, Raskin read a similar account of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Somerset County, Pa., after passengers fought the hijackers. Moussaoui tilted his head back and laughed when Raskin recounted the now well-known "Let's roll!" exhortation by passenger Todd Beamer.
Who are the jurors?Watch Jim Stewart's report on the trial.
The actual audio recordings of radiophone calls by flight attendants on Flight 11 have been played in public before. But to avoid inflaming the jury at this sentencing trial, prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed instead to read an account of the flight, including major sections of the phone call transcripts.
Nevertheless, the reading by Raskin riveted the jury and audience — all the more so because it came after two hours of mind-numbing testimony by FBI agent James M. Fitzgerald about how the bureau tracked the hijackers after Sept. 11.
Around the courtroom, heads had been left nodding by Fitzgerald's detailed and precise description of innumerable hotel receipts, phone call records and financial transactions between 19 men with unfamiliar Arab names, which the FBI gathered to reconstruct how they circled the globe and arrived in the United States.
That changed when Raskin took over and began reading the first transmission from flight attendant Betty Ong aboard Flight 11 to American Airlines ground workers at 8:19 a.m.: "The cockpit is not answering. Somebody's been stabbed in business class. I think we've been Maced. We can't breathe."
The point of Fitzgerald's long description of the pre-attack behavior of the Sept. 11 hijackers was to show how similarly they acted: 13 got new passports to remove telltale indications they had visited Pakistan, 10 used e-mail accounts and public computers, 15 signed up at fitness gyms, five bought short-bladed knives, four trained on jet simulators and five bought flight training computer discs. Nearly all communicated with an al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, Germany, and got funds wired to them in this country from one of three al Qaeda operatives.
Prosecutors at some point will summon witnesses to testify that Moussaoui did similar things and got money from the same source.
But Fitzgerald acknowledged on cross-examination that Moussaoui had no direct contact with any of the 19 hijackers, who often traveled and lived together in small groups.
Defense attorney Edward MacMahon also pointed out opportunities the FBI missed to intercept the hijackers in the months preceding 9/11, especially two hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who had terror links known to the government. Fitzgerald acknowledged that al-Hazmi even filed a police report in his own name in Virginia in April 2001 after he was mugged, but the federal government never moved to apprehend him.
Earlier, FBI agent Michael Anticev, testifying for a second day, offered the jury a lesson on al Qaeda cover stories and the organization's techniques of deception when cell members are questioned.
Moussaoui's lawyers are portraying the 37-year-old French citizen as a pathetic loner who dreamed of becoming a terrorist but was shut out of Sept. 11 planning and considered by one al Qaeda leader a "cuckoo in the head."
Anticev read excerpts from an al Qaeda training manual that included instructions on coded communications and how to develop a cover story if cell members are detained.
The manual says members should be prepared to answer questions about how they got their travel money, whether they belong to religious organizations and more.
When Moussaoui was arrested in the month before the attacks, he told the FBI his flight-training was merely an "ego-boosting thing."
The government argues Moussaoui should be put to death rather than imprisoned for life because he told lies that prevented authorities from foiling attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Opening his cross-examination, defense lawyer MacMahon sought to show that the FBI knew more than a decade ago that Osama bin Laden was sending trainees to U.S. flight schools to learn to be pilots, and at least one went to the same Oklahoma school where Moussaoui trained.
Moussaoui pleaded guilty in April to conspiring with al Qaeda to hijack planes and commit other crimes. The trial will simply determine Moussaoui's punishment, and only two options are available: death or life in prison.
To obtain the death penalty, prosecutors must first prove a direct link between Moussaoui and the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui denies any connection to 9/11 and says he was training for a possible future attack.
Several U.S. officials have frequently referred to Moussaoui as the 20th hijacker – the man who missed his plane on 9/11 – but this is the first time the government has argued that Moussaoui's silence was as much to blame for what happened that day as any of the dead 19 hijackers, CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart reports.
During opening statements, prosecutor Rob Spencer maintained that if Moussaoui had told the truth about his plans and his terrorist links when he was arrested in August 2001, the FBI and other agencies would have been able to unravel the al Qaeda threat and thwarted the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Had Mr. Moussaoui just told the truth, it would all have been different," said Spencer.
Moussaoui is the only person to be charged in the U.S. with events that day but as defense attorneys contended, he not only wasn't there he didn't know about it, Stewart reports.
"Don't let Zacarious Moussaoui be a scapegoat for what our government didn't do to prevent 9/11," urged MacMahon. "He never met the hijackers. He never talked to them, trained with them, flew with them, knew them or knew their plot."
Yes, Moussaoui trained at al Qaeda camps and personally swore loyally to Osama bin Laden, but al Qaeda superiors came to mistrust his judgment, considered him "loco" and cut him out of their plans MacMahon said.
The government had an idea it would have defend its actions on 9/11, but the defense gave notice Monday that they intend to put them on trial just as much as Moussaoui.