Zacarias Moussaoui

If WikiLeaks had been around in 2001, could the events of 9/11 have been prevented? The idea is worth considering. The organization has drawn both high praise and searing criticism for its mission of publishing leaked documents without revealing their source, but we suspect the world hasn't yet fully seen its potential. Let us explain. There were a lot of us in the run-up to Sept. 11 who had seen warning signs that something devastating might be in the planning stages. But we worked for ossified bureaucracies incapable of acting quickly and decisively.

If WikiLeaks had been around in 2001, could the events of 9/11 have been prevented? The idea is worth considering. The organization has drawn both high praise and searing criticism for its mission of publishing leaked documents without revealing their source, but we suspect the world hasn't yet fully seen its potential. Let us explain. There were a lot of us in the run-up to Sept. 11 who had seen warning signs that something devastating might be in the planning stages. But we worked for ossified bureaucracies incapable of acting quickly and decisively.

A federal judge ruled Thursday that government prosecutors must turn over to alleged terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui their top secret plan for giving him limited access to information from one of the Al Qaeda network's top lieutenants. Prosecutors had filed the plan under seal, but Judge Leonie M. Brinkema immediately ordered the entire document handed over to Moussaoui, who is attempting to have a group of captured terrorists appear as defense witnesses at his trial.

Extremist preacher Abu Qatada, once called Osama bin Laden's ambassador to Europe, faces a hearing after being rearrested in West London. Abu Qatada was taken into custody over the weekend, apparently for violating his strict bail conditions, according to British newspaper reports. British government officials maintain that the Palestinian-Jordanian preacher had ties to convicted would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid and to Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in the United States for the Sept.

Terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui does not suffer from schizophrenia or paranoia but does have deep personality flaws that explain his bizarre behavior since his arrest several weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, a psychiatrist testifying for the prosecution told a jury Thursday. Dr. Raymond F. Patterson also suggested that Moussaoui was justified in being angry with his lawyers because they did not want him to testify in his own defense.

ALEXANDRIA, Va -- The government has revised its indictment of accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, deleting allegations that he inquired about crop-dusting planes and had information about them on his computer. The possibility of crop-dusting attacks was considered so serious after the Sept. 11 attacks that the planes were grounded temporarily. The U.S.

A federal judge asked prosecutors, defense lawyers and alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui on Thursday to give their views on whether she should dismiss the case because the government refuses to make three Al Qaeda captives available for questioning. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema sought the input one day after the government again acknowledged the case could be dismissed because of its refusal to give Moussaoui access to senior Al Qaeda operatives.

Eleven media organizations asked a federal appeals court Friday to allow open oral arguments and to release documents in the case against alleged terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, accused in the Sept. 11 attacks. The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has kept most documents secret and scheduled a closed May 6 hearing as it considers the government's appeal of a trial judge's order.

The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui weeks before Sept. 11 told a federal jury Monday that his own superiors were guilty of "criminal negligence and obstruction" for blocking his attempts to learn whether the terrorist was part of a larger cell about to hijack planes in the United States. During intense cross-examination, Special Agent Harry Samit -- a witness for the prosecution -- accused his bosses of acting only to protect their positions within the FBI.

The brother and mother of accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui said Monday that they were refusing to answer questions from a U.S. prosecutor because the investigation and impending trial of their relative could result in the death penalty. Abd Samad Moussaoui, the brother of the 33-year-old Frenchman suspected of being the "20th hijacker" in the attacks, met Monday with a U.S. prosecutor and an FBI agent in Montpellier in southern France.

A small private college lifted a campus lockdown after police spent hours searching without success for a man who was seen with a gun in a residence hall, school officials said. Classes at Ferrum College were canceled for the rest of the week, and students were told they could leave early for spring break, which was to have begun after classes Friday, school spokeswoman Natalie Faunce said.

Osama bin Laden purportedly said in an audiotape that neither Zacarias Moussaoui nor anyone held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. Moussaoui is the only person convicted in the U.S. for a role in the attacks. "I am the one in charge of the 19 brothers, and I never assigned brother Zacarias to be with them in that mission," the speaker says in the Internet tape, referring to the 19 hijackers.

Convicted Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui began serving his life sentence at the nation's most secure prison on Saturday after U.S. marshals flew him overnight to southern Colorado from Virginia. Marshals brought Moussaoui before dawn to the Supermax federal prison, where he is to spend 23 hours a day in his cell and have little to no contact with other criminals at the facility. "He has now begun serving his sentence of life without the possibility of release," the U.S.

Convicted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, declaring his surprise at having received a fair trial, asked a federal judge Monday to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea so he can go to trial. This time he won't lie on the witness stand, he said. But Judge Leonie M. Brinkema quickly turned down the request. She said federal law prevented a criminal defendant from withdrawing a guilty plea after sentencing. Moussaoui was given life in prison without parole Thursday.

Re "The Slow Rot at Supermax," May 5 It is disturbing to see Americans violate noble principles just to take cruel revenge on a nastily imbalanced man, a minor player whose most serious crime is conspiracy in the 9/11 tragedy, then sentence him to life without parole in a horror like Supermax. Supermax shouldn't exist. Where is the constitutional prohibition against "cruel and inhuman" punishment? The most important thing for any nation is to uphold what it stands for in all cases and not compromise them indulging passions of a much lower order.

For all his taunts, jeers and bombast, Zacarias Moussaoui did not get the last word. When he was formally sentenced Thursday for his role as a Sept. 11 conspirator, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema had the final say. And she delivered it poetically. "You came here to be a martyr, and to die in a great big bang of glory," the judge told him. "But to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper. The rest of your life you will spend in prison."

When the Zacarias Moussaoui trial resumes Thursday, gone will be the images of a shadowy world of Muslim extremists, of an FBI and CIA unable to track their movements, of a conspiracy in which Moussaoui's role on Sept. 11 is still unclear. Now that a jury has found Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty, the trial comes down to a single question: Does he live or die? Federal prosecutors, wanting Moussaoui dead, intend next to turn Courtroom 700 over to the horror of that day 4 1/2 years ago.

A week after their case nearly imploded amid allegations of witness tampering, federal prosecutors began introducing aviation testimony Wednesday in Zacarias Moussaoui's sentencing trial, hoping to prove that had he cooperated, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks could have been prevented. Their first witness was Robert Cammaroto, chief of the Federal Aviation Administration's commercial airports policy division at the time of the attacks.

Halfway through the trial, prison expert James E. Aiken looked straight at jurors and told them what Zacarias Moussaoui could expect if they sent him away for the rest of his life. "I have seen them rot," he said. "They rot." Aiken was describing what happens to the nation's highest-risk prisoners after they settle in at the federal government's maximum-security prison in Florence, Colo., known as Supermax.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person prosecuted in connection with the worst terrorist attack in American history, did not get the death penalty because some jurors concluded that he had little to do with Sept. 11. Yet two presumed key planners of the Al Qaeda plot, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, have not been charged, though they have been in U.S. custody for more than three years.