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March 23-April 20, 2006 and July 31, 2006: Evidence from Moussaoui Trial Published on Internet

2006-04-20

Ahmed Alnami’s youth hosteling card found in the Flight 93 crash site. [Source: FBI]During the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui (see March 6-May 4, 2006), the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press publishes a significant portion of the exhibits used during the trial. [Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 12/4/2006] Previously, only a few items of the evidence linking the attacks to al-Qaeda were made public. For example, the 9/11 Commission’s Terrorist Travel Monograph contained 18 documents of the alleged hijackers and their associates. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 171-195 pdf file] The published exhibits include:
bullet Items belonging to the alleged hijackers that were recovered from the crash sites and Logan airport;
bullet Some details of the hijackers’ movements in the US;
bullet Graphic photos of dead victims and body parts in the Pentagon and WTC ruins;
bullet Substitutions for testimony from some of the main plotters such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed;
bullet The missing chapter from the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General’s review of the FBI’s performance before 9/11 (see June 9, 2005); and
bullet FBI and CIA documents. [Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 12/4/2006]
At the end of July, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, publishes more of the exhibits used in the trial. The additionally published exhibits include, for example:
bullet Documents of the hijackers found at the crash sites and Logan airport, such as Satam Al Suqami’s passport (see After 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001), Ahmed Alnami’s youth hosteling card, and old correspondence between Mohamed Atta and the German authorities;
bullet Recordings of calls made by the passengers from the flights and recordings of the hijacker pilots talking to the passengers;
bullet Documents about the alleged hijackers prepared by the FBI such as a True Name Usage Chart for 2001 and chronologies for eleven of the hijackers from August 16-September 11, 2001;
bullet Documents from the hijackers’ flight schools;
bullet A small sample of the hijackers’ banking and phone records.
However, some of the exhibits are not disclosed. For example, the cockpit voice recording from United 93 is sealed and only a transcript is made available. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, 7/31/2006]