The FBI's top counterterrorism official at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks told a jury on Tuesday that he did not know a bureau agent had filed a report three weeks earlier detailing his suspicions that Zacarias Moussaoui was involved in some imminent airline hijacking plot.
The official, Michael Rolince, who was the chief of the FBI's international terrorism section until his retirement, testified that he had little knowledge of Moussaoui before the attacks. Rolince said he was unaware that the agent, Harry Samit, who was working in Minneapolis, had filed a lengthy report asking for a complete investigation of Moussaoui, whom he described as a radical Islamic fundamentalist who hated the US and was learning to fly jetliners.
When Moussaoui's chief court-appointed lawyer, Edward MacMahon Jr, asked Rolince if he knew that when Moussaoui was arrested he was under suspicion of planning a hijacking, he replied: "No." Then, after a moment he asked sharply, "Can I ask what document that's coming from?"
MacMahon offered a quick reply: "That's Mr Samit's communication to your office," he said. "Aug. 18, 2001."
Rolince said that Samit's "suppositions, hunches and suspicions were one thing and what we knew" was a different matter.
Despite his efforts to recover, Rolince became the second witness for the prosecution in two consecutive days at the sentencing trial for Moussaoui whose testimony appeared to provide clear benefits to the defense.
Samit, who was similarly cross-examined by MacMahon on Monday, testified, albeit reluctantly, that he had told investigators after the attacks that he believed that his superiors at the bureau in Washington were guilty of "criminal negligence" and ignored his increasingly dire requests to obtain a search warrant in order to protect their careers. He said that they took a gamble that Moussaoui was not going to have any valuable information and they lost a wager that proved to be a national tragedy.
The government has argued that Moussaoui, the only person to go to trial in the US in connection with the deaths of Sept. 11, should be executed because when he was arrested three weeks earlier on immigration charges he lied to investigators about his knowledge of plans by al-Qaeda to fly planes into buildings. Because Moussaoui has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, the sole question before the jury is whether he should be executed or spend the remainder of his life in prison.
Both Samit and Rolince were called as witnesses by the government to press the argument that had Moussaoui told Samit and other investigators what he knew, the FBI could have taken steps to foil the plot.
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