"Moussaoui went back to court Thursday on a third indictment. Charges were initially filed against him in December. In June, prosecutors dropped references to Moussaoui's interest in crop-dusting aircraft. "
Why dropped? Consequences too scary for the public? Air Industry fears? Or cropdusters doesn't fit with the prosecutor's attempt to fit Moussaoui with 9/11 airplane attacks?
I think the latter is possible - and don't fault them for trying at first, but if new information develops, as it has, changes in prosecution should be made. Of course, sometimes one feels they've painted themselves into a box and have to stick with it. Especially applicable to bureaucrats.
American justice.
Another Hijacker? (FR Threead, October 21, 2001)
Another Hijacker? (Newsday link)
He had shown an interest in crop dusters, and may have information relating to anthrax attacks. With links to Afghanistan, European terror cells allegedly planning attacks on U.S. interests abroad, and three Muslim men in Norman who also have been detained, he may have key insights into how Osama bin Laden's network works. And, flagged by French intelligence as a bin Laden operative as early as 1994 and arrested in Minnesota in August, his story is an object lesson in the lack of urgency that accompanied law enforcement efforts prior to Sept. 11.
If Moussaoui is a clue, however, he is so far proving to be an indecipherable one. His interest in flight training and crop dusters links him to the Sept. 11 plots, as do reports that investigators have found that he called hijacker Mohamed Atta's apartment in Germany and received money from someone in Germany. But in other respects, he doesn't fit.
He came to the United States later than the other hijack pilots, and earlier than most of the foot soldiers in the plot. He was a North African based in Britain, while the Sept. 11 hijackers were Arabs -- from Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates -- based in Germany and the Middle East. At the time Moussaoui desperately was seeking flight training, the Sept. 11 team was in the final stages of its preparation.
Moussaoui is indecipherable for another reason as well. He is one of about 700 people detained for questioning in relation to the terror attacks, and one of a smaller group held on "material witness” warrants that assert an individual is believed to have evidence and might flee if released. The FBI has revealed little about the status of those detainees, including their names or attorneys. So far, however, there is no indication that Moussaoui -- or any of the others -- have provided important cooperation about the origins or planning of the Sept. 11 operation.
"They say they have 700 in custody, and that makes you feel good,” says Ted Fraumann, a former FBI agent and partner in Business Integrity International, a Manhattan-based security consulting firm. "But then something like the anthrax scare comes along, and you say, ‘How much do we know?' They may have 700, but none of them are talking.”
....
Officials at Norman's Airman Flight School first started hearing from Moussaoui last fall, in a series of e-mails from a British man using the name "zuluman tangotango” and asking about commercial pilot training. He called admissions director Brenda Keene "Mrs Brenda,” ended his messages with "bye bye” and was deeply concerned about financial arrangements.
"I just want to know if I do the training then I go to take the exam and I fail (hopefully I will not happen) do I have to pay anything to your school in order to get more training?” he asked in an Oct. 22 e-mail.
Earlier that summer, in July, Keene had given a tour to two Middle Eastern men -- one of whom she later identified as Mohamed Atta -- who decided to take classes elsewhere. And two years earlier, FBI agents had visited the school asking questions about a one-time Florida cab driver, Ihab Ali, who had taken flight training at the school and allegedly had been a bin Laden contact code-named "Nawawi” by some of the men accused of plotting attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.
But school officials had no way of connecting "zuluman tangotango” with those encounters.
....
He also began attending mosques in Norman and nearby Oklahoma City, but did not leave fond memories with some. As with his family years earlier, he had no hesitation criticizing other worshipers for their relaxed religious habits. "He was really a loner here,” says Suhaib Webb, imam at the Oklahoma City mosque. "He was very dogmatic. People did not like him here. He got mad at the Muslims. He did not think we were religious enough.”
...
According to some members of the Muslim community there, he found temporary housing with two other men -- Hussein al-Attas, who said he was from Saudi Arabia, and Mukarram Ali, who said he was from India. Members of the mosque understood that both were students, and they had been attending the mosque for some time before Moussaoui appeared. In mid-August, al-Attas apparently drove Moussaoui to a flight-training facility outside Minneapolis, where he sought instruction on simulators for commercial jets but attracted attention by offering cash and telling instructors he only wanted to learn to steer, but had no interest in takeoffs and landings.
Suspicious instructors notified the FBI, and Moussaoui was picked up for an immigration violation. By Aug. 28, the French had informed U.S. officials that Moussaoui was believed to have ties to bin Laden. But the FBI was unable to get a warrant to search his computer, and Moussaoui sat in jail until Sept. 11.
Then, within hours of the hijackings, agents descended on Norman. A subsequent search of his computer and possessions, according to law enforcement sources, indicated that he had been studying crop dusters and wind dispersal patterns.
Al-Attas and Ali both were detained. In a series of newspaper interviews, another member of the local mosque, Mujahid Abdulqaadir, described them as innocent bystanders who had befriended Moussaoui, and said he was trying to arrange legal representation for the two men. But now Abdulqaadir, an American Muslim with a family and a son who played high school football in Norman, also has been taken into custody, according to mosque officials.
...
Information emerging since Sept. 11, on the other hand, has only added to the suspicion surrounding Moussaoui. His interest in crop dusting appeared to parallel hijacker Atta's inquiries about crop dusters in Florida early this year. His use of the University of Oklahoma gym this summer paralleled several of the hijackers, who bought gym memberships in Florida and Maryland and worked out over the summer.
Investigators also have discovered, according to European and American press reports, that Moussaoui made at least one phone call while he was attending flight school in Norman, to a roommate of hijackers Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi in Hamburg, Germany. German police have issued arrest warrants for two men who lived with those hijackers -- Said Bahaji and Ramzi Binalshibh -- and identified them as key members of the cell that carried out the hijackings. And they have identified two wire transfers totalling $15,000 from Western Union offices in Germany to Moussaoui in Norman in early August, just before he went to Minnesota for simulator training.
One widely shared theory, advanced by Cheney in a television interview recently, is that Moussaoui was intended to be a member of the team that hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 out of Newark -- the only plane on which a team of four, rather than five, hijackers has been identified.
But that skyjacking crew had a trained pilot, Ziad Samir Jarrah. Moussaoui, based on information uncovered so far, had no known intersection with any other hijackers while he was in the United States, and his behavior in Norman -- emphasizing strict fundamentalism at the local mosques -- ran counter to other hijackers' efforts to blend in. Some law enforcement professionals tie him in with intelligence obtained after Sept. 11 suggesting that as many as six hijackings may have been planned.