FBI was warned about Moussaoui, agent testifies

WASHINGTON — 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-Qaida operative was plotting to hijack an airplane, according to federal court testimony Monday.

Agent Harry Samit told jurors at Moussaoui's death penalty trial that his efforts to secure a warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings were frustrated at every turn by FBI officials he accused of "criminal negligence."

Samit said he had sought help from a colleague, writing that he was "so desperate to get into Moussaoui's computer I'll take anything."

That was on Sept. 10, 2001.

Samit's testimony added striking detail to the voluminous public record on the FBI's bungling of the Moussaoui case.

It also could help Moussaoui's defense. Samit is a prosecution witness who had earlier backed the government's central theory of the case: that the FBI would have raised "alarm bells" and could have stopped the Sept. 11 attacks if Moussaoui had not lied to agents.

But under cross-examination by the defense Monday, Samit said that he did raise those alarms — repeatedly — but that his bosses impeded his efforts.

The testimony came as the sentencing hearing resumed for the only person charged in the United States in connection with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty in April to conspiring with al-Qaida. He was sitting in jail on Sept. 11, 2001, because of his arrest a month earlier after his activities raised suspicion at a Minnesota flight school.

Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman, declined to comment on the testimony from Samit, who remains an agent in the FBI's Minneapolis office.

The FBI's missteps have been examined in depth by congressional investigators and the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Monday, defense attorney Edward MacMahon walked Samit through a recital of government mistakes, prefacing nearly every question with: "You wanted people in Washington to know that, right?"

MacMahon zeroed in on increasingly urgent warnings Samit issued to his FBI supervisors after he interviewed Moussaoui at a Minnesota jail in mid-August 2001.

Moussaoui had raised Samit's suspicions because he was training on a 747 simulator with limited flying experience and could not explain his foreign sources of income.

By Aug. 18, 2001, Samit was telling FBI headquarters that he believed Moussaoui intended to hijack a plane. A few days later, he learned from FBI agents in France that Moussaoui had been a recruiter for a Muslim group in Chechnya linked to Osama bin Laden.

But when Samit tried to use the French intelligence in his draft application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings, he said, his supervisor edited out the connection with bin Laden because it did not show that a foreign government was involved.

"How are you supposed to establish a connection with a foreign power if it's deleted from the document?" MacMahon asked.

"Well, sir, you can't," Samit replied.

Samit said he also sent an e-mail to the FBI's bin Laden unit, but he did not receive a response before Sept. 11, 2001. By late August, the agent had concluded that his supervisor and other FBI officials were no longer interested in investigating Moussaoui.

Samit acknowledged that he told the Justice Department's inspector general's office that his supervisors engaged in "criminal negligence" and were trying to "run out the clock" because they wanted to deport Moussaoui rather than prosecute him.