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Lessons From The Moussaoui Trial

By Neal Conan, NPR's Talk of the Nation

April 5, 2006

This is Talk of the Nation. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington.

A jury returns to a federal courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, tomorrow, to consider a sentence of death for confessed 9-11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. In the first phase of the sentencing trial, the court heard three weeks of testimony and reviewed dozens of documents that disclosed new information, a lot of it about two organizations: al-Qaida and the FBI.

That included a statement from the man who planned the attacks of 9-11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, and embarrassing revelations about bureaucratic inertia at FBI Headquarters that blocked a search of Moussaoui's apartment and computer until it was too late.

A lawyer also committed an egregious error that might have torpedoed the government's case until Moussaoui undermined his own defense with a startling claim that he was supposed to fly a hijacked airliner into the White House that day.

Later on in the program, our weekly visit with Political Junkie, Ken Rudin. If you have questions about politics this week, Tom DeLay, Cynthia McKinney, the immigration bill, anti-war referenda in Wisconsin, you can e-mail us now. The address is talk@npr.org.

But first, what have we learned from the Moussaoui trial? If you have questions about what happened before the attack, al-Qaida planning, and the stalled FBI investigation, or about the conduct of the case in court, give us a call. Our number is 800-989-8255, that's 800-989-TALK. The e-mail address is talk@npr.org.

And we begin with former Democratic Congressman Timothy Roemer, who was a member of the 9-11 Commission. He joins us today from Dulles Airport in Virginia where he's waiting to get on a plane. Congressman, thanks very much for taking the time to be with us today.

Mr. TIMOTHY ROEMER (Former Democratic Congressman, Indiana): Neal, my pleasure.

CONAN: What have we learned that's new, do you think?

Mr. ROEMER: Well, first of all, I want to just say that, as this trial goes on, I hope we bring some kind of resolution forward for the families, Neal. I've worked with them for the past three and a half years. Many still in great pain and hopefully this trial brings some kind of relief of that pain in the longer term.

What we've learned, Neal, it's been a three-ring circus, showing that the United States too oftentimes is resistant to change and building bureaucracies that are more likely to fight the Cold War than to take on a dynamic, changing, entrepreneurial, and nimble al-Qaida threat.

We learned from testimony from FBI's own agents that too oftentimes they picked up clues, they sensed that something was terribly wrong with Moussaoui, they saw that he was a religious extremist, and they couldn't communicate with the appropriate people in headquarters. This is just more of the same and shows us, as many things in the news these days do, Neal, whether it was Katrina showing that we're not ready for first-responders communicating, the border debate on immigration showing our border is still porous, the port debate, where the Dubai Ports World showed that we still haven't adequately set up screening for our containers coming into this country, and finally, Don Rumsfeld said to a questioner at the War College last week, he thought the government was getting a D, D as in Dog, at winning the hearts and minds in the world.

So it reminds us, Neal, that we need to change. We need to pass the rest of the 9-11 recommendations. There are 20 out there, dealing with information sharing, first-responders, change of Congress, and we have plenty of work to go here, and miles to go before the country's adequately safer.

CONAN: Well let me ask you, for a moment, about al-Qaida. There was an extraordinary two-page statement from Khalid Sheikh Mohammad that he wrote, and in addition, a précis of--a longer précis of what the FBI--the CIA has learned from interrogating him.

But in one quote, Sheikh Mohammad says, "I know the materialistic western mind cannot grasp the idea, and it's difficult for them to believe that the high officials in al-Qaida do not know about operations carried out by its operatives. But this is how it works. We do not submit written reports to higher-ups. I conducted the September the 11th operation by submitting only oral reports."

Mr. ROEMER: What the trial continued to show us, and what's evident in the 9-11 Commission report, Neal, is that al-Qaida is very nimble and agile. They can plug in new people at times, they can communicate with their cells and not risk sharing information outside the confines and the secrecy of that cell, they can adopt their plans as they move forward. Remember, you just quoted Khalid Sheikh Mohammad; he was the one in 1998 that took the planes operation to Osama bin Laden. It was ten planes, not five, at that time. They had a dialogue, and they talked in detail about making it simpler; five planes on the east coast, not the ten planes that might go to the east and the west coasts.

The Moussaoui situation, we thought on the 9-11 Commission report, that they were probably priming Moussaoui as a possible pilot. They were very worried about one of the pilots that was dropping out, they thought, in late July. He took a one-way trip on a plane from the United States to see his girlfriend in Germany. He'd always taken round trip tickets, and al-Qaida was very worried that they'd lost this pilot and they started looking for somebody that might be able to get trained quickly enough to move into that pilot role.

CONAN: Yet, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad said Mr. Moussaoui was not exactly considered the most reliable person either. He said in court, in that astonishing testimony, that he was supposed to fly a fifth plane on 9-11, into the White House.

Do you believe him?

Mr. ROEMER: Neal, I think that what we have concluded is that Moussaoui is an al-Qaida mistake, and that we, in the United States government, had missed opportunities to take advantage of that mistake.

There is no doubt that Moussaoui is, and the al-Qaida recognized that he is, a bit strange, a bit unpredictable, and volatile. And the FBI agent in Minnesota found that out right away when they arrested him. He reacted very violently to questions about religious extremism, and they were very worried about it on the ground.

But they could not communicate that worry to headquarters. They could not appropriately get the FISA application that they needed through, and once again, we have a situation where the FBI could not communicate with the headquarters and get sufficient attention to something that they saw was a big concern in the field.

CONAN: Let's bring another voice into the conversation now. This is Harry Skip Brandon, former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI, with responsibility for National Security and Counter-Terrorism Programs. He's been following the Moussaoui sentencing trial as well.

It's nice to have you here with us in Studio 3-A today.

Mr. HARRY "SKIP" BRANDON (Former Deputy Assistant Director, Counter- Intelligence division, FBI): Well, thank you.

CONAN: I wonder, would you agree? I mean, some of this testimony about the efforts of this agent, Mr. Samit, in Minnesota, to try to get the attention of FBI Headquarters, you can hear him banging his head against the wall.

Mr. BRANDON: Well, I think it's very clear this is not the FBI's best moment.

The problem is I think we've only heard, kind of, half of that story. We've heard the story from the frustration evident in the field office. There's always some tension between the field and Headquarters. One of the things that we have not heard is what happened at the Department of Justice.

An FBI agent doesn't just go to the FISA court on his own or her own and make an application. The Department of Justice has always, since the start of FISA and the FISA court, shown concern over the fact that this is, in a way, a secret court. And, the concern was manifested by the fact that they were very, very demanding, properly so, in terms of the strengths of the affidavits that would go forward to the FISA court.

CONAN: Well one of the things we heard in this testimony was, in fact, that the supervisor in Washington was unwilling to approach the FISA court because an associate or somebody else in the bureau had been, you know, reprimanded by the FISA court, why are you bringing us this?

Mr. BRANDON: Yeah.

CONAN: And he thought it would be bad for his career. Preventing terrorism, bad for your career? Which way do you go?

Mr. BRANDON: Well, clearly, with hindsight, you see this. There's no question about this. Unfortunately, government agencies tend to bang people down enough that they do become fearful. But I'm not sure that that's the full answer. And I'm not trying to say the Department of Justice was the problem; but for years their requirements, in the FISA court in particular, in involving individuals, were extraordinarily rigorous. And many, many times agents would come back from a meeting with the Department of Justice saying they want more, they want more, they want more.

CONAN: Mm-hmm. Let's get a listener involved in the conversation. If you'd like to join us, by the way, 800-989-8255; or e-mail us: TALK@NPR.org. This is Caroline. Caroline's calling us from Anchorage, Alaska.

CAROLINE (Caller): Yes, good morning. I wanted to ask a question as to whether or not--this is something I'd heard, but only once: That the predecessor for Ashcroft had been very open to reviewing requests for subpoenas. And in this case, it was a subpoenas for the computer that came out of the Minneapolis, I think it was, office. And that Ashcroft did not have the same open door policy. In fact, he strongly discouraged being bothered about those kinds of things.

CONAN: Congressman Roemer, she's of course referring to former Attorney General John Ashcroft. And what do you think about that?

Mr. ROEMER: Well, I can speak to Caroline's question a bit, Neal, in my terms of my experience on the Intelligence Committee, and how cooperative or non- cooperative the FISA courts were with us in trying to appeal for FISAs. I believe it was very, very cooperative; that the turnaround time was usually pretty swift and that in the course of many, many applications for FISA requests, when they're done right, there were probably less than 10 turned down out of more than 15,000 that were asked for.

CONAN: That's certainly, Mr. Brandon, what we heard in the wireless wiretap hearings. Only a handful of subpoenas were turned down in dozens of years.

CAROLINE: Hello, sir?

Mr. BRANDON: I think the congressman would agree with me that one of the reasons was that they were very, very carefully prepared. This court was not viewed as any sort of a rubberstamp operation.

CONAN: Mm-hmm. Okay, Congressman Roemer, do you think Mr. Ashcroft was reluctant?

Mr. ROEMER: I don't know if he was or not, Neal. I don't know if we can answer that question about whether it got to his level. I know on the FISA issue, which is a bit different from the Moussaoui questions that we're asking today...

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

Mr. ROEMER: ...that the Congress has asked former justice, Attorney General John Ashcroft, to testify before the Congress and talk about this FISA issue and to see if we can look for a legislative fix in terms of this very, very difficult question of using this technology, the wiretapping technology, in a legal and appropriate way and still go after al-Qaida aggressively.

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

Mr. ROEMER: I think the two can be hammered out. I think we need to go after this technology and make sure that we're listening in to al-Qaida, if they're listening to or communicating with people in America, but I think you need to go to Congress to get the right fix for this.

CONAN: Caroline, thank you very much for the call. And, Congressman Roemer, we know you've got a plane to catch. We appreciate your time today. Happy flying.

Mr. ROEMER: Thank you very much, Neal.

CONAN: Former Democrat Congressman from Indiana, Tim Roemer, member of the 9/11 Commission. We'll have more after a short break. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.