Moussaoui Memo Unseen, Court Told

Ex-FBI Official Was Unaware of Agent's Warning

A former top FBI counterterrorism official testified yesterday that he never saw an urgent memo sent to his office three weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks warning that Zacarias Moussaoui was a terrorist intent on hijacking an airplane.

Defense attorney Edward B. MacMahon Jr. asked the former FBI official whether he knew that agent Harry Samit had warned in an Aug. 18, 2001, memo to his office that Moussaoui was a potential terrorist.

"No," Michael E. Rolince answered crisply at Moussaoui's death penalty trial.

Was he aware that Samit said Moussaoui wanted to hijack a plane and had the weapons to do so?

"No," Rolince replied. "What document are you reading?"

Samit's report "sent to your office," MacMahon replied.

Rolince, who at the time was head of the FBI's International Terrorism Operations Section, had been called to the stand by prosecutors to buttress their central argument that if Moussaoui had not lied to FBI agents, the Sept. 11 attacks could have been stopped.

But a series of rulings by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema yesterday prevented Rolince from laying out the steps the FBI would have taken if Moussaoui had told the truth about his intentions.

When the day concluded, it was clear that Rolince, a retired 31-year FBI veteran who once briefed the White House daily on terror threats -- and wore an American flag tie to court -- might instead have helped bolster the defense of an admitted al-Qaeda operative.

His testimony appeared to back up the contentions of Samit, a Minneapolis FBI agent, who testified Monday that his bosses took no action on his repeated warnings about Moussaoui after his arrest a month before Sept. 11. The FBI's well-publicized bungling of the case is critical to Moussaoui's defense.

Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty last year to conspiring with al-Qaeda in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A jury in U.S. District Court in Alexandria will determine whether he lives or dies.

Rolince's testimony came as Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) urged the FBI director to explain the actions of another supervisor whose decisions in the Moussaoui case were questioned in court Monday. Samit said in his testimony that he had warned his superiors more than 70 times that Moussaoui was a terrorist and accused them of "criminal negligence" in impeding his efforts.

Yesterday, Grassley sent a letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III questioning why the main supervisor named by Samit, Michael Maltbie, had been promoted. The letter asked Mueller whether he approved of Maltbie's decision to remove information about Moussaoui's connection to a Chechen group linked to Osama bin Laden from an application for a warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings. The warrant was not obtained until after Sept. 11.

Special Agent Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman, said yesterday that the bureau "will respond directly to the senator's office concerning his inquiry." He said the FBI could not comment further because "this is an ongoing trial, and we respect the courtroom procedures." Maltbie, now a supervisory special agent in the FBI's Cleveland office, declined to comment yesterday.

Prosecutors resumed their effort to lay out how Moussaoui's actions before Sept. 11 were similar to those of the 19 hijackers. They showed jurors the videotaped deposition of Hussein al-Attas, who lived with Moussaoui in Oklahoma, where Moussaoui took flying lessons in 2001.

Al-Attas said he drove with Moussaoui from Oklahoma to Minnesota, where Moussaoui took lessons on a 747 simulator just before he was arrested Aug. 16, 2001. Before they left, he said, Moussaoui took him to a sporting goods store, where they purchased small knives, binoculars and boots. He said Moussaoui instructed him never to speak Arabic and to change his appearance so as not to arouse suspicion.

Under cross-examination, al-Attas said he was unaware of Moussaoui's terrorist intentions and denied that he had been asked to participate. Al-Attas pleaded guilty to seven counts of making false statements after he was arrested with Moussaoui in Minnesota. He was sentenced to time already served in jail, is now living outside the United States and did not want to return for the trial, officials said.

The testimony of Rolince was limited by Brinkema, who said he could discuss only what the FBI could have done if Moussaoui had not lied to agents, not what actions the bureau would have taken. He was then prevented from laying out, as prosecutors wanted, what specific steps agents would have taken if Moussaoui had told them what he later admitted in his guilty plea. Moussaoui said that he was part of an al-Qaeda operation to fly planes into U.S. buildings and that bin Laden had instructed him to attack the White House at another time.

He has denied involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.