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Moussaoui now says binladen gave him approval { March 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Moussaoui Says He Had Bin Laden's Approval
WASHINGTON (AP) - Zacarias Moussaoui admitted Friday that had al-Qaida's terror plot gone according to plan, the White House also would have been destroyed by a hijacked commercial airliner.
In a ``statement of facts'' compiled by prosecutors and signed Friday by Moussaoui, he acknowledged that Osama bin Laden gave his personal blessing and offered words of encouragement for the attack.
The man Moussaoui called his ``father in jihad'' selected the French citizen to learn to fly a Boeing 747 airliner so that he could pilot it into the White House.
``Sahrawi, remember your dream,'' bin Laden told Moussaoui. Abu Khaled al Sahrawi was one of the names Moussaoui used.
Moussaoui is the lone person convicted in a U.S. court in connection with the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. He was arrested a month before the hijackings.
Prosecutors have long contended that he was to have taken part in a suicide attack on the White House. Still unknown is whether that was to have occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or in a subsequent wave of bombings, although the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks concluded a later attack was the more likely scenario.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said additional details could be made known when the government argues that Moussaoui should be put to death for his role in the terrorist conspiracy.
The statement Moussaoui signed makes clear that he underwent the same kind of training as the Sept. 11 hijackers, combining pilot instruction with physical fitness.
He trained at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan and ran a guesthouse in Kandahar, ``a position of high respect within al-Qaida,'' the statement said.
After receiving bin Laden's blessing, Moussaoui traveled to the United States, taking flight training in Norman, Okla., and Eagan, Minn., where his desire to learn to pilot a Boeing 747 despite not having a pilot's license aroused suspicion and led to his arrest.
Moussaoui described detailed preparations, including purchasing knives with blades short enough to get past airport security. The knives were to be used to subdue airplane crew members as the hijackers took control of the plane.
Even after he was detained in August 2001, Moussaoui said he contributed to the Sept. 11 plot by lying to federal agents. He denied being part of al-Qaida and ``falsely denied that he was taking pilot training to kill Americans,'' according to the statement he signed.
Instead, he said he was training for his own enjoyment and intended to visit New York and Washington as a tourist.
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04/22/2005 20:14
APO
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