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Original Post 3/27

Zacarias Moussaoui testified today that he and Richard Reid were going to fly a plane into the White House. He said it was part of the 9/11 operation but he didn't know the details (such as when it would take place.) Is it the truth or is Moussaoui trying to hand the Government a win so he can die what he believes will be a martyr's death?

One thing that militates against believing Moussaoui's testimony is that Reid was mostly pre-occupied with scouting airline security in Israel and the middle east during the summer of 2001--and traveling between Europe and the Middle East. There is no indication he was planning anything against or in the United States at that time. I'm not done trying to find connections, but several outlining Reid's whereabouts and actions are below the fold.

A second sticking point for Mousaoui is that Shalid Sheikh Mohammed, who gave a 58 page statement from his secret overseas prison where reports are he's been tortured, exonerates Moussaoui for involvement in 9/11. Not suprisingly, he viewed Moussaoui as a loose cannon. The statement was read into evidence at Moussaoui's trial:

In testimony read by a public defender, Shaikh Mohammed said he wasn't aware that Moussaoui was in custody until after Sept. 11, and that Moussaoui's arrest on Aug. 16 would have disrupted Sept. 11 plans if he were a part of the operation.

Shaikh Mohammed also said he wanted all the second-wave hijackers to be Europeans or Asians who might face less scrutiny in a post-Sept. 11 world. But that attack never materialized, he said, because he did not anticipate the ferocity of the U.S. response to Sept. 11 and the only other pilot backed out.

Shaikh Mohammed considered Moussaoui too self-confident and too talkative. He instructed Sept. 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh to cut off contact with Moussaoui in early August 2001 for fear that Moussaoui would get Binalshibh caught.

On the other side, one thing that lends possibility to Moussaoui's testimony is a report in the London Observer that the MI-5 were monitoring Moussaoui's phone calls in 2000 and they recorded calls between Reid and Moussaoui which abruptly ended on Dec. 9 when Moussaoui went to Pakistan en route to an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

The Observer can reveal that MI5 agents intercepted phone calls between Reid and the suspect, Zacarias Moussaoui, which directly linked Bromley-born Reid to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda net work, but did not realise their implication until it was too late. This was condemned last night as a serious breakdown in intelligence.

The calls, made between the pair in Britain and monitored by MI5, ended abruptly when Moussaoui left Britain for Pakistan on 9 December last year to attend an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Investigators suspect Reid, who met Moussaoui in London in the mid-Nineties and had been to Pakistan before, followed him to Afghanistan. Moussaoui returned to London last February. Reid reappeared in Britain last summer.

Scotland Yard was not informed of the security risk that Reid posed. MI5 had had Moussaoui under surveillance in the UK in the months before he left for Pakistan. He was then arrested by US authorities in August. However, Reid was not followed or picked up for questioning in Britain.....Investigators are now scouring records of flights between London and Pakistan to see whether Reid and Moussaoui travelled separately or together, and if any other suspect flew with them.

....Al-Qaeda soldiers, interrogated in Kandahar by the CIA, say Reid was a recruit in one of group's camps in southern Afghanistan, and US intelligence sources confirm this. Moussaoui and Reid 'went to the same training camp in Afghanistan where Reid has explosives training' said a US intelligence official.

Another possibly supportive item is that the Court entered an order blocking mail between Reid and Moussaoui in 2003 because the FBI said it contained encrypted messages. And in October, 2002, Reid wrote Moussaoui a letter offering to testify for him.

Washington Post: 8/9/03 (lexis.com)

The FBI has intercepted letters from alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to convicted "shoe bomber" Richard Reid -- communications that might have contained embedded or coded messages, according to court papers released yesterday.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema yesterday denied Moussaoui access to FBI reports supporting the assertion that Moussaoui was trying to pass secret messages to Reid. In the two-page order, Brinkema wrote that Moussaoui is not entitled to "privileged" communications with anyone other than his standby attorneys. Moussaoui, who is charged with conspiring with al Qaeda terrorists to carry out the Sept. 11, 2001, plot to fly hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, has been representing himself in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

Brinkema wrote in yesterday's order that the rules governing Moussaoui's confinement allow the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI to seize any incoming or outgoing mail if it is found to contain "overt or covert discussions of or requests for illegal activities [or] the soliciting or encouraging of acts of violence or terrorism."

Federal prosecutors previously said that Reid, who pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a transatlantic flight, wrote Moussaoui a letter in October 2002. Sources have said that Reid, who once worshiped with Moussaoui at a London mosque, offered in the letter to testify on Moussaoui's behalf.

Brinkema ruled that the government properly notified Moussaoui that his letters to Reid were intercepted and that she will not question the government's judgments about the letters. The order did not address the content of the messages, or how FBI agents determined that they might contain codes. The order says that Moussaoui disputes that he was trying to send coded messages.

The same article notes that prosecutors rejected the 5th plane-White House story:

Also yesterday, the Associated Press quoted from a Jan. 30 court transcript in which a prosecutor theorized that Moussaoui was part of a plot to fly a jetliner into the White House. But since Jan. 30, government officials have backed away from the so-called "fifth plane" theory. Sources familiar with the case said yesterday that the theory was based on information from al Qaeda prisoners that is now outdated because other prisoners have contradicted it. Federal prosecutors in Alexandria, in a document written in May and unsealed this week, called the theory about Moussaoui's intentions "at best, an inference."

Associated Press 8/9/2003:

A prosecutor raised the possibility that terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui and additional would-be hijackers may have conspired in a plot to fly a plane into the White House. "It was going to involve others" besides Moussaoui, prosecutor Kenneth Karas said at a Jan. 30 court hearing, according to the transcript released Friday by a judge.

While previous court documents said Moussaoui spoke of plans to crash a plane into the White House, it was unclear how he could do so without help if the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 attack were committed to four other airplanes.

Karas did not elaborate on the "others" when he mentioned the plot while rebutting defense statements that Moussaoui did not know the objective of al-Qaida's hijacking conspiracy. "The fact that he didn't know the precise whereabouts or even if we can assume he didn't know the names of the people doesn't mean he doesn't know the objects of the conspiracy," Karas said.

....Separately, the FBI apparently determined that a recent letter from Moussaoui to convicted shoe-bomber Richard Reid may have contained embedded or coded messages, according to the newly released court filings.

....While some government officials referred to Moussaoui as the possible 20th hijacker on Sept. 11, prosecutors never referred to him in that role. Karas said on Jan. 30 "the evidence is clear" that Moussaoui had accomplices in the fifth plane plot, although he did not say whether the alleged operation was planned for Sept. 11. Indeed, prior defense filings said Moussaoui contended he was part of a post-Sept. 11 operation outside the United States.

The prosecutor named one of those who provided evidence as Faiz Bafana, a member of Jemaah Islamiya, a Southeast Asian group that Indonesian authorities are investigating in the bombing of a Marriott hotel this week in Jakarta. Moussaoui met with Bafana in Malaysia in 2000 and "talked freely ... about a dream he had to fly an airplane into the White House," defense documents have said. However, the defense lawyers said Bafana did not take Moussaoui seriously.

Agence Presse 8/8/2003:

Separately, Brinkema blocked correspondence from Moussaoui to convicted "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid after the FBI determined the letter could contain "coded messages," the Times report said. Reid was jailed for life in January for trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes.

Here's an angry hand-written missive from Moussaoui to the Judge about intercepting his letter to Richard Reid. Here's one of her orders stating the date of Reid's letter was October, 2003. [Moussaoui's motion was entitled, according to the court's docket sheet, "Defendant's Motion to Force Blood Sucker Fat Standby to Hand Over Shoe Bomber Brother Letter to Natural Born Terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui."

As to Reid's whereabouts and actions:

Govt Sentencing Statement in Richard Reid case:

In early July 2001, Reid flew from Karachi, Pakistan, to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. On July 6, 2001, he turned in his existing British passport and obtained a new one at the British Consulate in Amsterdam. On July 12th he flew on El Al Airlines from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv, Israel. He traveled within Israel, and then took a bus to Cairo, Egypt on July 22nd. He stayed in Cairo until July 29th, when he flew to Istanbul, Turkey. He traveled within Turkey, and then flew to Karachi, Pakistan on August 7th. During his trip, Reid focused on El Al security at the airports and aboard his flight. He later claimed that the idea of placing explosives in his shoes came from his observations of El Al security, and the fact that security personnel did not check the insides of his shoes. He also scouted possible bombing missions within Israel and Egypt, including the train station in Tel Aviv. At the end of his
trip, he reported to an associate in Afghanistan that the reception area of the Tel Aviv train station would be a particularly good bombing target, especially on a Saturday night, because it could be entered without being searched and contained at least 100 people at the arrival time of any given train. The report was found in late 2001 on a computer in Afghanistan. (A copy of the Rule 11 transcript page where the defendant admitted that he made the trip and the report is attached hereto as Exhibit D.) (A copy of the English translation of Reid's report is attached hereto as Exhibit E.) Therein, Reid is referred to as Abdul Ra'uff.)

In the letter, Reid writes about a dream he had about a year earlier. In the dream, Reid was waiting for a ride, but when the ride (a pick-up truck) came, it was full and Reid could not go. He was upset and had to go later in a smaller car. Reid
explained the meaning of the dream as follows: "i now believe that the pickup that came first was 911 as its true that i was upset at not being sent."

Reid further stated that he switched his target from Israel to America after America began bombing the Taliban in Afghanistan (in October 2001), which made him very angry. (my emphasis.)

Time Magazine:

In January the Wall Street Journal published an astonishing tale. Journal reporters in Kabul purchased a secondhand computer whose hard drive contained thousands of files written by al-Qaeda members. One file was a detailed account of the travels last summer of "Abdul Ra'uff," who flew from the Netherlands to Israel, Egypt and Turkey scouting locations for terrorist attacks. Abdul Ra'uff's itinerary matched one known to have been taken at the same time by Reid. FBI analysts now firmly believe that Reid and Ra'uff are the same man. Moreover, in the past two weeks, European investigators have linked Reid to some of the best-known terrorist cells on the continent.

By the summer of 2001, Reid was back in London. In July he obtained a new British passport in Amsterdam, claiming that he had accidentally put his old one through a washing machine, and flew to Israel on an El Al flight. Once in Israel, according to security sources there, Reid spent most of his time in Tel Aviv, where he cased the mall and office complex called the Azrieli Center as well as the local bus and train stations. ("Abdul Ra'uff" also checked security at the Western Wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.) After 10 days in Israel, Reid crossed into Egypt and from there flew to Turkey and back to Pakistan before being debriefed (if the Journal's Abdul Ra'uff is in fact Reid) in Afghanistan. He didn't stay there long. On Aug. 9, Reid was back in Amsterdam.

Reid and Moussaoui apparently go back a long way, to 1996 or 1997. Overlap at the London Mosque

Another worshiper at the mosque between 1996 and 1997 was Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman who was studying in London. Both Reid and Moussaoui were known to attend services in North London at the Finsbury Park Mosque. That's where the education of Richard Reid, suspected terrorist, evidently began, investigators say.

One would think that financial records could connect the two. How did Reid get the cash for his airline tickets and hotel bills in 2001? Was it from the same person who funded Moussauoi's airline training?

So what do you think? Is Moussaoui trying to save his life with the Reid testimony or help the Government get the death penalty?

Update: News accounts: New York Times; Washington Post; Los Angeles Times