Prosecutors Concede Doubts About Moussaoui's Story
By Neil A. Lewis
The New York Times
Friday 21 April 2006
Alexandria, VA - The prosecution acknowledged on Thursday that even the government's chief investigators did not believe the claim of Zacarias Moussaoui that Richard C. Reid, known as the shoe bomber, was to help him fly a jetliner into the White House on Sept. 11, 2001.
The jury, which is considering whether to order either the death penalty or life imprisonment for Mr. Moussaoui, was presented with a document saying Federal Bureau of Investigation analysts had agreed that Mr. Reid was never meant to be part of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The document, read to jurors by one of Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers, was a "substitution" agreed to by prosecutors rather than having Mr. Reid brought from prison in Colorado, where he is serving a life sentence for trying to ignite a bomb in his shoe on an American Airlines flight on Dec. 22, 2001.
The significance of the document is that the Justice Department has now acknowledged that the government's principal investigators on the case are highly skeptical of an important part of Mr. Moussaoui's statement, made on the witness stand last month, about his role in the Sept. 11 plot.
In their summation to the jury last month in the first phase of the sentencing trial, prosecutors repeatedly cited Mr. Moussaoui's testimony that he was to fly a fifth hijacked plane into the White House on Sept. 11 and that Mr. Reid was to have been one of the hijackers.
Defense lawyers had asserted that Mr. Moussaoui concocted the claim to make himself appear a far more important player in Al Qaeda than he really was.
Mr. Moussaoui's statement was widely viewed as an important element in persuading the jury to find him eligible for the death penalty.
The defense lawyers had sought to bring Mr. Reid to court this week to debunk the story, but complications, including objections from his lawyer, made that difficult. Instead, they introduced the substitution, which said the government agreed that "to date, there is no information available that Richard Reid had preknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and was instructed by Al Qaeda leadership to conduct an operation with Moussaoui."
The statement read to the jury said Mr. Reid had left documents before boarding the American Airlines flight showing that he had no intention to take part in a martyrdom operation with Mr. Moussaoui. They included a letter to his mother and a will in which he was to leave his belongings to Mr. Moussaoui.
In addition, Mr. Reid was traveling throughout the world when the Sept. 11 hijackers were assembling in the United States.
Based on that, the document said two F.B.I. analysts had agreed that "it is highly unlikely that Reid was part of this operation."
Mr. Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers, with whom he does not speak, ended their case with the Reid statement.
Mr. Moussaoui, the only person to stand trial in the United States for the Sept. 11 attacks, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy. The jury ruled last month that he was eligible for the death penalty, even though he was in jail at the time of the attacks, because he had concealed his knowledge of Qaeda plans to fly planes into buildings.
The only remaining question for the jury, which will begin deliberations on Monday, is whether to order his execution or allow him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Prosecutors ended their case Thursday with testimony by Dr. Raymond Patterson, a forensic psychiatrist who has examined Mr. Moussaoui. Dr. Patterson said Mr. Moussaoui suffered from a personality disorder but not from schizophrenia or other major mental disease.
The jury heard testimony earlier from a psychologist and a psychiatrist for the defense who had diagnosed Mr. Moussaoui's condition as a schizophrenia of the paranoid variety.
Dr. Patterson disputed much of their conclusions
