THEN WHERE ARE THE REST? :

What Was Moussaoui's Crime? (DAHLIA LITHWICK, 8/02/02, NY Times)

Most of the public and much of the news media may believe the government has a solid case against Mr. Moussaoui. With a careful reading of the indictment in the case, however, this certainty begins to falter. The indictment is a colorful and dramatic depiction of the Sept. 11 attacks, detailing the assembling of the hijackers and their preparations in a perfect narrative arc.

But the story it tells is hardly an airtight case against Mr. Moussaoui. Periodically, the indictment splices in parallel activities of Mr. Moussaoui--weaving his actions into the story of what happened Sept. 11 the way Tom Hanks was spliced into historical footage in "Forrest Gump." The indictment never connects him to the other 19 hijackers--who were interconnected with one another--and never suggests he even met them. Save for a single money transfer to Mr. Moussaoui from someone also transferring funds to the group, nothing in the indictment ties him to these men beyond his membership in Al Qaeda.

Scrutinizing the indictment, three possibilities emerge: the government is not presenting crucial evidence tying Mr. Moussaoui to the Sept. 11 attacks; the government has no evidence tying Mr. Moussaoui to the Sept. 11 attacks; or federal conspiracy law is so infinitely elastic that Mr. Moussaoui could receive the death penalty for simply buying knives, learning to fly and training in Qaeda camps.

Ms Lithwick, whose work is usually very fine, repeats here several of the increasingly popular mental contortions that are required to arrive at the strange idea that Moussaoui was not a co-conspirator of the 9-11 hijackers. In the first place, she ignores the reason that suspicion descended on Moussaoui to begin with, that he was trying to learn how to turn a jumbo jet but didn't care to know how to take off or land. Granted, this in itself is no crime. But we must also note that while he was in custody, just nineteen hijackers undertook an attack that was obviously planned for twenty. The original planners may well have known what they were doing since the only hijacking that was foiled was the one where the 5th man was missing. Setting aside for a moment any technical legal questions and looking at these facts with cold logic, there are two easily discovered forms of proof that might lead us to accept Ms Lithwick's assertion that Moussaoui was part of a different plot. There should either be just one more visiting Arab who was learning to turn jetliners at this same time, which would give us our alternative 20th hijacker. Or, there should be a whole 'nother group of Arab men, those who were participating with Moussaoui in the alleged "other" conspiracy. The absence of any evidence of any other potential conspirators does not prove that Moussaoui must be the twentieth man, but it sure as hell makes it likely, doesn't it?
Posted by Orrin Judd at August 2, 2002 12:00 PM