Pinning the tail

FBI Was Warned About Moussaoui: Agent Tells Court Of Repeated Efforts Before 9/11 Attacks

The Post: 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-Qaeda operative was plotting to hijack an airplane, according to federal court testimony yesterday.

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 yesterday, Samit said that he did raise those alarms -- repeatedly -- but that his bosses impeded his efforts.

The Moussaoui case is really quite a mess. I think really the government is banking on the jurors being prejudiced, rather than believing they'll analytically convince them of anything. Cause I'm not sure how the government expects to get the death penalty with an emperically illogical central theory, which the L.A. Times made explicit in an article last week:

Moussaoui unexpectedly pleaded guilty last year to capital murder for having a role in the Sept. 11 conspiracy; the government has made it a top priority to win the death penalty under the theory that -- although he was in jail at the time of the attacks -- he could have prevented them by telling the FBI about the plot.

Didn't Richard Clarke and the Minneapolis FBI agent and a whole host of CIA analysts all prove that telling the FBI about a plot doesn't prevent anything?

Heck, under the FBI's analysis that if only they had known all would've been averted, you actually could prosecute President Bush.

Courtroom sketch of Zacarias Moussaoui by Dana Verkouteren/ AP via USA Today.