Posted on 08/09/2002 3:21:15 PM PDT by Shermy
Barely two weeks before his arrest outside an Eagan hotel, Zacarias Moussaoui inquired about the University of Minnesota's crop-dusting program, a move suggesting the terror suspect might have considered staying in the state for a year or more.
Moussaoui e-mailed the university's Crookston, Minn., campus on July 31, 2001, seeking information on a "short course you offer to become a crop duster (6 month, 1 years max.)"
Moussaoui made a fleeting reference to the e-mail in a court filing late last month in Alexandria, Va., where he is awaiting trial on six federal charges, including conspiracy to commit air piracy and conspiring to kill Americans. Four of the charges could carry the death penalty.
The importance of Moussaoui's interest in the program is open to interpretation. His motion attempts to cast doubt on his involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The question is implied but not directly raised: Why would someone who was preparing to die in a suicide attack just weeks away be looking for a yearlong training course?
Prosecutors say they won't have to prove a direct link between Moussaoui and the attacks or that he was to have been the so-called "20th hijacker" to get a conviction.
The 34-year-old French citizen is the only person charged in connection with last year's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. Jury selection in his trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 30.
In the e-mail, Moussaoui said that he was in the United States working toward a commercial pilot's license and that he hoped someday to start a crop-dusting business in Morocco or France. His message also asked for advice on setting up such a business.
"I am interested to know what type of aircraft, material, equipment, something in detail, a kind of business plan," he wrote.
Larry Leake, director of the university's agricultural aviation program, didn't pay much attention to the note. The writer, who identified himself only as "Zacarias," was looking for a much shorter course than the university's two- and four-year programs.
"We didn't have what he was looking for," Leake said, "so I just sort of disregarded it."
Concerns that terrorists might use crop dusters to wage a chemical or biological attack arose after investigators discovered that suspects in the Sept. 11 hijackings had been interested in crop-dusting technology.
Crop-dusting information was found on Moussaoui's computer after his arrest. Federal agents also learned that hijacking ringleader Mohammed Atta twice visited a Florida crop-dusting service to ask about equipment and payload capacities.
As a precaution, officials twice grounded all crop-dusting planes in September.
Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, federal agents talked to Leake as part of their nationwide canvassing of flight schools. The e-mail never came up, because Leake didn't know whom it was from until agents discovered Leake's name in a notebook or computer file of Moussaoui's. When agents contacted Leake a second time, he provided a copy of the e-mail.
Leake said he hasn't given much thought since to the message, even as Moussaoui became a central figure in the government's Sept. 11 investigation.
"I haven't heard anything since I sent (federal agents) that note. The FBI hasn't talked to me once," he said.
Moussaoui used the same e-mail account and screen name he used when corresponding with Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla., in the fall of 2000. He arrived at that school in February 2001 and logged nearly 60 hours of flight time but never flew solo and left after two months without earning a license.
He arrived in Minnesota about Aug. 12 to train on a 747-400 jet simulator owned by Northwest Airlines and administered by Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan.
Flight-school officials have said that Moussaoui was unqualified for the training he requested. They also described him as unusually insistent on learning how to steer a jetliner in the air rather than how to take off and land. His behavior prompted a school official to contact the FBI and Moussaoui was taken into custody Aug. 15, before logging any simulator time.
He was booked into the Sherburne County Jail on an immigration charge two days later and stayed there until Sept. 14, when federal authorities transferred him to a New York City detention center.
In court, Moussaoui has acknowledged being a member of al-Qaeda and a follower of Osama bin Laden, but he denied having any knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Prosecutors have said that federal conspiracy law does not require them to show a connection between the Sept. 11 hijackings and Moussaoui to prove their case. But late last month, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema talked Moussaoui out of pleading guilty to four of six charges after he insisted he was not involved in the attacks. Without that involvement, she said, Moussaoui is not part of the alleged conspiracy.
An expert in constitutional criminal law who has been following the case said Moussaoui's e-mail to Leake could be useful at trial.
"It's a question of credibility," said Peter Erlinder, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. "If he says, 'I didn't agree with (the Sept. 11 attacks)' and the government introduces some evidence saying 'Yes you did,' then this extrinsic evidence might be used to bolster the credibility of his statement."
But the fact that Moussaoui was trying to make long-range plans so soon before Sept. 11 doesn't necessarily undermine the government's case, Erlinder added.
Prosecutors don't have to prove he intended to be on one of the hijacked planes, but they must show that Moussaoui agreed to participate in a crime and took at least one tangible step toward furthering that crime, Erlinder said.
Just establishing a pattern of behavior similar to the hijackers, as the government has done in its indictment of Moussaoui, may not be enough.
"There would have to be some (evidence) that communication had passed between him and one of the other co-conspirators, " Erlinder said.
I wonder if Moussaoui made similar inquiries while he was in Oklahoma.
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