Excerpts of Messages Sent to Witnesses

Some of the e-mails Transportation Security Administration attorney Carla J. Martin sent Tuesday and Wednesday to upcoming witnesses, whose full names were redacted from the e-mails by the court. Martin violated a court order by e-mailing trial transcripts to seven witnesses -- all current and former federal aviation employees -- and coaching them on their upcoming testimony, court papers say. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema called Martin's conduct "the most egregious violation of the court's rules on witnesses" she had seen "in all the years I've been on the bench."

· . . . all of us aviation lawyers, were stunned by the opening. The opening has created a credibility gap that the defense can drive a truck through. There is no way anyone could say that the carriers could have prevented all short bladed knives from going through -- Dave MUST elicit that from you and the airline witnesses on direct, and not allow the defense to cut your credibility on cross, (just as they did yesterday with the FBI witness) by saying, "do you really believe, as the prosecution has stated, that all knives could have been found, when there are x-thousands of domestic flights daily in the US, that even now post 9/11 the screener detection rates are very law and that's all it would have taken to prevent 9/11? That's all he would really need to say.

· . . . I don't want you to respond to this by email, but I want you to think about this: I am of the opinion, based on what was said in the opening, (and I am VERY CONCERNED about this opening) and how the defense can exploit it -- i.e., the fact that by merely finding all the "primitive weapons" (assuming that could be done) that that's all it would take to prevent the 9/11 attacks from happening? I don't think so.

· . . . Lynne, Claudio -- you need to read this transcript of the prosecutor's opening statements -- it is all about the FAA, and how it would have caught the hijackers and prevented 9/11. I believe there are more than a few errors here.

· . . . the FBI agent today got tripped up when questioned about flying airplanes into buildings -- he said that no one, before 9/11 "had ever thought about flying airplanes into buildings."

· . . . In other words, the defense will exploit the fact that the FAA was not clued in to what was going on -- you need to assert that we did not necessarily need to wait until we got all available information, that we acted independently, indeed, we had a statutory mandate, to follow up on any issue that we thought was a threat to civil aviation, regardless of whether the IC had any information to share on the subject or not.

SOURCE: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia