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FBI agent tells jury of Moussaoui's liesProsecutors say those lies cost nearly 3,000 lives on 9/11By Phil Hirschkorn RELATEDYOUR E-MAIL ALERTSALEXANDRIA, Virginia (CNN) -- After his arrest in August 2001, Zacarias Moussaoui concealed his membership in al Qaeda, the terrorist group on the verge of hijacking jetliners and crashing them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, an FBI agent testified. Instead, FBI agent Harry Samit said, Moussaoui told federal agents his attendance at U.S. flight schools was purely innocent. "For enjoyment. For his own personal ego," Samit told jurors who will decide Moussaoui's fate. "He denied he was involved in terrorism," Samit said during hours of prosecution-led testimony on Thursday. Moussaoui's defense attorneys will cross examine Samit on Monday. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema warned prosecutors they might be headed toward "delicate" legal ground. "I don't know of any case where a failure to act is sufficient for the death penalty as a matter of law," she said. The hours Moussaoui spent answering questions from Samit and immigration officer John Weess on August 16 and 17, 2001, are the centerpiece of the government's case. Agent is key witnessProsecutors argue that Moussaoui deserves to be executed because his lies contributed to nearly 3,000 murders on September 11, 2001. The defense argues that Moussaoui was under no legal obligation to confess. And so, Samit is a very important witness for the government. If only Moussaoui had revealed the truth about himself, "It would have immediately sounded alarm bells," Samit told the jury. "I would have asked additional questions to ascertain the full extent of his role in al Qaeda, his association with Osama Bin Laden, his role in any plot. It would have opened a whole world of questioning," he said. Moussaoui was in federal custody, officially, because he overstayed his visa. Tips from the Pan Am International Flight Academy, a school for airline professionals outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, suggested Moussaoui was dangerous. He stood out, a foreigner without a pilot license who paid cash in a hurry to learn how to navigate a Boeing 747-400 jetliner. Hotel stakeoutTo Samit, a pilot himself and former naval intelligence officer, Moussaoui needed to be checked out right away. Samit and Weess staked out Moussaoui's room and the Marriott Residence Inn. When he left for his first 747 flight simulator session, the agents stopped him for questioning. Moussaoui, carrying $3,000 cash in a money belt and a receipt for a $32,000 bank deposit, claimed he was a businessman and the money was his savings. His hotel room was full of bags. "You may not search my things," Moussaoui told the agents. But they saw Moussaoui's passport revealing that he was here illegally. Samit and Weess found a two-inch dagger inside Moussaoui's leather jacket pocket and a three-inch folding knife on the passenger side of the Subaru Moussaoui traveled in. Both blades were short enough then to legally pass airport security. The car belonged to his Oklahoma roommate and traveling companion, Hussein al-Attas. He told the agents Moussaoui was an Islamic extremist who talked about violence and approved of martyrs. Roommate's statementAl-Attas said Moussaoui, whom he met at a mosque and knew as "Shaqil," believed "that it would be perfectly acceptable to harm civilians in a jihad," or holy war. "He said that if Mr. Moussaoui believed that someone was an unbeliever, a non-Muslim, was harming Muslims, that he would work against them. He discussed Mr. Moussaoui's statements that it was the duty of Muslims to train to fight," Samit said. Moussaoui's passport revealed a two month trip to Pakistan, the gateway to Afghanistan, al Qaeda's base, before coming to the U.S. in February 2001. He "got very angry" when the agents asked if he went to any neighboring countries, Samit said. Moussaoui said he'd been in Pakistan looking for a wife. Samit said the agents told Moussaoui "that we understood that he was an Islamic extremist, that he talked about violence before, and we asked him to identify his associates and what his plan was." Moussaoui did not change his story and never adequately identified his associates. "He repeated that he was training, his aviation training was for fun. He denied that he was a member of a terrorist group. He denied that he had any contact with terrorists and that he had any terrorist purposes," Samit said. Search warrant rejectedIn the ensuing weeks, Samit said, the Minneapolis field office had an "obsession" with Moussaoui and sought a warrant to legally search his belongings. Without a connection to a foreign enemy or terrorist group, FBI headquarters rejected the application. In frustration, the Minneapolis FBI and immigration officials decided to deport Moussaoui to his native France, where his belongings could be searched immediately That was on September 10, 2001. The plan was scrapped the following day as the twin towers lay in smoldering ruins. With a search warrant finally in hand, Samit said he found more knives, fighting gloves, shin guards, and receipts for money transfers from overseas in Moussaoui's bags. Perhaps most crucial were the telephone numbers in Moussaoui's notebook for someone called "Ahad Sabet" in Germany. That turned out to be an alias for Ramzi Binalshibh, a prime facilitator of the September 11 attacks who lived in Hamburg with three of the four hijacker-pilots. 
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