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American Morning

Interview of Michael Isikoff, "Newsweek Magazine"

Aired December 12, 2001 - 09:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: An arraignment is set for early January for the first suspect charged with conspiring in the September 11th terrorist attacks. Zacarias Moussaoui is accused of working with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. According to the charges, he underwent the same -- quote -- "preparation for murder as the hijackers." Moussaoui is a French citizen of Moroccan descent. This morning in London, Attorney General John Ashcroft talked about tracking suspects across international borders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES: The acts of September 11th have taught us something about the international nature of terrorist activities. That the training frequently takes place in one jurisdiction, that the development and planning of an operation takes place in another jurisdiction, and the operation itself might be executed in a third or fourth jurisdiction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: Moussaoui has not been seen in public since his arrest in August on an immigration charge. So, if Zacarias Moussaoui was in U.S. custody for almost a month before 9-11, why weren't law enforcement officials able to prevent the hijackings? Newsweek's Michael Isikoff joins us now from Washington with more on the indictment. What is the answer to that question, Michael?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF, NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE: Well, it is a good question, and there's a lot of unanswered questions aspects to it.

In August, the flight school in Minnesota, where Moussaoui was attending, tips off the FBI. They are suspicious about him. The FBI comes in, interviews him. He is detained on immigration charges. There are a lot of suspicious aspects to Moussaoui's behavior. You know, his intent interest in flying large jetliners without -- without being adequately trained as a pilot was the first sort of tip off. The agents in Minnesota very aggressively wanted to pursue Moussaoui. They wanted to get a foreign intelligence surveillance warrant to open up his computer, and they were denied access to that by FBI lawyers in Washington who felt they didn't have sufficient evidence, probable cause, to get that FISA (ph) warrant.

ZAHN: So, in retrospect, Michael, did they play it too safe here? ISIKOFF: Well, if you listened to FBI Director Mueller yesterday, he clearly felt very conflicted about this. He said that the lawyers in Washington made what appeared to be an accurate decision, but the emphasis, in his words, when he talked about the aggressive agents who wanted to pursue this case, and then raised the question, "could September 11th have been thwarted if the agents in Minneapolis had been allowed to go further." He left it as an unopened -- an unopened question. So, that clearly suggests that there's a lot we don't know here. There's a lot that might have been done, in retrospect. But again, a lot of this is hindsight.

ZAHN: Share with us more of the very specific evidence that would link Moussaoui to the September 11th attacks.

Sure. Very compelling circumstantial case. Particularly devastating is the series of financial transactions where Ramzi bin al Shibh, Mohammed Atta's room-mate in Hamburg and a confederate of the hijackers, wires $14,000 to Moussaoui in early August of this year, shortly after Moussaoui calls him, calls a phone number in Dusseldorf, Germany. Right after that, Moussaoui plunks down $6200 in cash for that flight school in Minneapolis. He enters the country, after bin al Shibh is denied access, denied four separate times, attempt to get a visa the year before. He buys flight videos from the same flight school in Ohio.

A lot of his activities are patterned and parallel to hijackers. The problem, though, in the case -- and I don't know -- I don't know if it's fair to call it a problem, but it is noteworthy that there doesn't seem to be any direct contact between Moussaoui and the hijackers, and doesn't seem to be, and I've confirmed this with Justice Department officials -- there doesn't seem -- there's no direct testimony tying Moussaoui to the conspiracy. No confederate who has cooperated to say, yes, they were there, listening in on a phone conversation or attending a meeting in which Moussaoui agreed to participate in the conspiracy.

So, what you are left with is a conspiracy case with no overt acts tying Moussaoui to a criminal act. You have the criminal acts committed by others, Moussaoui, a confederate of the people who committed the criminal acts.

ZAHN: Michael, I need quick reaction to an editorial that ran in the "Wall Street Journal" saying it's significant that Moussaoui's indictment was filed in U.S. District Court, and not before a military commission, and the editorial goes on to say that shows, perhaps, the Bush administration has some faith in the civilian court system. What do you make of that?

ISIKOFF: Exactly. Well, this does diffuse some of the controversy about military tribunals because most of the critics of military tribunals were most concerned about it being applied to people who were detained in the United States. You know, bin Laden and others captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, people kind of expected that they would receive some sort of military justice.

It was people arrested here in this country that the critics had focused on, and Moussaoui was, clearly, the most conspicuous and suspicious character who had been arrested in this country. If anybody was going to be a candidate for the military tribunals, which could be conducted in secret, it would have been Moussaoui, and the Bush administration, by choosing to try him in open public court, laying out its evidence in a civilian court with all criminal rights afforded Moussaoui, has taken a lot of the steam out of the controversy.

ZAHN: Well, thanks for covering so much territory with us this morning. Glad to see you, I think this is first opportunity I've had to interview you.

(CROSSTALK)

ISIKOFF: -- new job.

ZAHN: Take care, Michael. Thanks again.

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