| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Counterterrorism officials say Moussaoui's a liar |
| 2005-04-27 |
| Counterterrorism officials said on Tuesday that they did not believe Zacarias Moussaoui's statements that he had been involved in a plot to fly an airplane into the White House as part of a plan to free an Islamic cleric serving a life sentence for terrorist acts. Mr. Moussaoui, in pleading guilty last Friday to six counts of conspiracy to engage in terrorism, insisted that although he was a member of Al Qaeda and had trained to fly planes into buildings, he was not part of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington. Instead, he said, he was preparing to participate in a different plot on a different day to free Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Muslim scholar serving a life sentence for conspiracy to blow up New York landmarks in 1993. Prosecutors and investigators, accustomed to Mr. Moussaoui’s unpredictable, often angry courtroom ramblings, were surprised by the assertions, said the counterterrorism officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because much of the investigation remains classified. After more than three years of investigation, they had never heard of or found evidence of such a plot, they said, and in the days since Mr. Moussaoui’s plea, they have not uncovered any information to corroborate it. Mr. Moussaoui’s statements about his plans were imprecise. He said he had planned to use a hijacked plane to fly Sheik Rahman to Afghanistan. But he also said, "I came to the United States of America to be part, O.K., of a conspiracy to use airplane as a weapon of mass destruction, a statement of fact to strike the White House, but this conspiracy was a different conspiracy than 9/11." Mr. Moussaoui has a strong motive to disassociate himself from the attacks: he faces a trial before a jury over whether he should be put to death or imprisoned for life. He told Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of Federal District Court that he would fight the death sentence and that linking him to Sept. 11 would lead the jury to hold him responsible for those killed in the attacks. Justice Department officials have insisted that Mr. Moussaoui, the only person to stand trial in the United States for the Sept. 11 attacks, was directly involved in them. They point to a statement signed by Mr. Moussaoui in connection with his guilty plea in which he acknowledged that he misled investigators the month before the attacks, when he told them he had enrolled in flight school for the pleasure of it. The authorities said that at the time of his arrest in August 2001, Mr. Moussaoui could barely have flown a small plane by himself, much less piloted a wide-bodied airliner. Prosecutors also noted, in the statement of facts that accompanied the guilty plea, that he had acknowledged a personal relationship with Osama bin Laden, who is said to have had a fondness for Mr. Moussaoui, a French citizen born in Morocco. Mr. bin Laden, by this account, had selected Mr. Moussaoui to take part in an aircraft attack and urged him to "follow his dream," which investigators said meant a suicide attack on the White House. Whether the White House was a target on Sept. 11 remains unclear. Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who helped plan the attacks, said during interrogation that from the start, Mr. bin Laden had wanted to attack the White House, according to the final report of the independent commission that investigated the attacks. But Mohamed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, regarded the White House as a "difficult" target, according to the report. At a meeting on Aug. 3, 2001, Mr. Atta told Mr. bin al-Shibh that he would keep the White House under consideration, but wanted to keep the Capitol as an alternative, the report said. Initially, authorities believed that Mr. Moussaoui was a backup pilot for United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. In the months before the attack, the intended pilot of that plane, Ziad al-Jarrah, was uncertain that he wanted to participate, the officials said. After one clash with Mr. Atta, the commission report said, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks, ordered Mr. bin al-Shibh to "send the skirts to Sally," a coded instruction to wire money to Mr. Moussaoui so he could begin training. Mr. Mohammed denied in his interrogations that he had ever thought of Mr. Moussaoui as part of the Sept. 11 plot, the commission report said. Mr. Mohammed said that he believed Mr. Moussaoui was to be part of a "second wave" of attacks that never materialized. Some investigators suspect that even though Mr. Moussaoui was a favorite of Mr. bin Laden, other Qaeda operatives regarded him as unstable and undisciplined. Beyond that, there was no evidence that Mr. Moussaoui had met the other Sept. 11 hijackers, which investigators said indicated he was not meant to take part in the attacks. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |