Moussaoui could have stopped 9/11, jury told

WASHINGTON — The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks would have been prevented and nearly 3,000 lives would have been saved if Zacarias Moussaoui had not lied to cover up the terrorist plot, prosecutors said Monday as they began the death-penalty trial for the al-Qaida conspirator.

If Moussaoui had revealed al-Qaida's plans when he was arrested a month before Sept. 11, investigators would have identified 11 of the 19 hijackers and stopped the attacks, prosecutors said in their opening statements.

"Moussaoui lied and nearly 3,000 people died," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Spencer told a jury in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. "... His lies killed the Sept. 11 victims as surely as if he had been at the controls of one of those planes."

But defense attorneys turned hindsight back on the government, arguing that investigators ignored warning signs before the attacks and would have failed to act on Moussaoui's information. They portrayed Moussaoui as bumbling, unstable and someone whom associates called "cuckoo."

"Moussaoui poses the ultimate test for our legal system," attorney Edward MacMahon told the 12 jurors and five alternates. "You cannot judge him to get revenge for the victims of Sept. 11, or for what happened on 9/11 or as some substitute for Osama bin Laden."

The passionate interchanges marked the beginning of the first — and likely the only — trial in the United States that will probe the events that brought down the World Trade Center towers, damaged the Pentagon and killed 40 people in a field in Pennsylvania when four planes were hijacked and used as missiles. Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty in April to conspiring with al-Qaida in the Sept. 11 plot and is the only person charged in the country in connection with the attacks.

The opening statements ended 4 ½ years of anticipation for many of the victims' families, who crammed the courtroom or watched via closed-circuit television at private satellite locations.

What they got Monday was a glimpse of the man who for many has come to personify the attacks. While Moussaoui admitted a role in the conspiracy, neither he nor the government has been specific about that role. He has said in court that he was part of a planned second wave of terrorism and was to fly a plane into the White House.

Still, he is a powerful presence for victims' families. Bradley Burlingame, whose brother Charles was the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, said that "it was quite chilling to be in the courtroom with this man. He epitomized what you think evil will be, and I think he enjoys it."

Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, pleaded guilty in April to six criminal charges in the Sept. 11 conspiracy.

Three of the charges make him eligible for the death penalty. He admitted that he conspired to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries, that the conspiracy was aimed at destroying aircraft, and that planes were used as "weapons of mass destruction."

Because he has pleaded guilty, the 10 men and seven women chosen as jurors and alternates Monday morning have two tasks.

First, they must decide whether the government has proved that Moussaoui's refusal to cooperate with the FBI after his arrest left them unable to unravel the Sept. 11 plot and arrest the hijackers. If they decide not, he automatically will be sentenced to life in prison with no parole.

If prosecutors do make their case, the sentencing trial moves into a second phase. Then the government will be allowed to bring survivors of the attacks and the families of those killed into the courtroom to describe the loss of loved ones.

Material from The Washington Post is included in this report.