Moussaoui Pleads Guilty

Interesting. His target was the White House.

Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty today to conspiracy charges linked to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and said his mission included flying a commercial jetliner into the White House.

Acknowledging that he may be sentenced to death, Moussaoui, 36, said, ``I can't expect any leniency from the Americans.'' Still, he said, ``I will fight every inch against the death penalty.''

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, presiding at a hearing in Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington said Moussaoui was competent to enter the guilty plea. She didn't set a date for the penalty phase of the case.

``I came to the U.S. and trained'' on a 747 airplane simulator ``to eventually use this plane to strike the White House,'' Moussaoui said. He denied that he was assigned any direct role in carrying out the Sept. 11 attacks that killed almost 3,000 people. ``I'm guilty of a broad conspiracy,'' he said.

Moussaoui said that, in becoming a trained pilot, the plan for him was to help free blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the Islamic Group's spiritual leader who was sentenced to life in prison for plotting to blow up several U.S. targets including the United Nations building in New York City.

He said his assignment was to fly a jet into the White House if the U.S. didn't cooperate in freeing Rahman.

May Face Death

More from the "Religion of Peace"

Two 16-year-old girls from New York City were arrested last month and charged with immigration violations after the F.B.I. asserted that they intended to become suicide bombers, according to a government document. A spokesman for one of their families, however, said the accusation was false and said the government had probably misinterpreted a school essay written by one of the girls.

The girls are both in the country illegally, one born in Guinea and the other from Bangladesh, and are being held in a family detention center in Leesport, in southeastern Pennsylvania, according to the document, provided by a federal agent. They were arrested on March 24, and one appeared at an immigration hearing on April 1 in York, Pa.

Two Girls Held as U.S. Fears Suicide Bomb