3rd day of graphic evidence in terror trial
http://www.azstarnet.com/news/124250
By Greg Gordon
McClatchy Newspapers
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 04.12.2006
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Army Lt. Col. John Thurman said that when he was blown back from his desk, he first thought terrorists had planted bombs in the Pentagon — not smashed it with a Boeing 757 jetliner.
Thurman, now 39, and two colleagues lay in the darkness on Sept. 11, 2001, their heads on the carpet to avoid choking smoke and the searing heat from a "curtain of fire" nearby, he told a riveted federal jury Tuesday.
He credited his harrowing escape to a wave of anger that swept over him just as he was succumbing to the smoke — anger that terrorists would kill him and that his parents would lose their eldest child on the same day their first grandchild was to be born. His colleagues weren't so lucky.
Thurman, other Pentagon employees and a Navy officer's widow shared their stories and their grief, some for the first time publicly, as federal prosecutors neared completion of their case for the execution of confessed al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.
Today, prosecutors plan to air for the first time publicly the cockpit voice recording of passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who rushed to take back that plane before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
Thirteen more Sept. 11 victims and family members strode to the witness stand Tuesday as jurors endured a third day of graphic evidence.
While the material was supposedly toned down in response to defense lawyers' complaints, it included videos of American Airlines Flight 77 hitting the building at 530 miles per hour and photos of charred bodies of some of the 64 airline passengers and crew and 125 Pentagon workers who died that day.
Moussaoui, who was found eligible for the death penalty last week, seemed unfazed. He smiled as an FBI agent summarized the damage to the military's headquarters, and during a recess shouted: "Burn all Pentagon next time!"
Prosecutors also played air-traffic-control tapes in which a pilot of United Flight 93 shouted "Mayday! Mayday! Get out of here!" moments before his apparent stabbing death as hijackers seized the cockpit.
Moussaoui's court-appointed lawyers, who will begin their last push to spare his life Thursday, asked U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to subpoena testimony from attempted shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who is in a federal prison in Colorado. Brinkema issued a sealed writ for a witness not identified publicly.
Defense lawyers are seeking to show that Moussaoui lied in testifying that, before his Aug. 16, 2001, arrest in the Twin Cities, he was training to pilot a fifth plane on Sept. 11 with Reid in his crew.
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