Expert Counters Insanity Claim

Terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui does not suffer from schizophrenia or paranoia but does have deep personality flaws that explain his bizarre behavior since his arrest several weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, a psychiatrist testifying for the prosecution told a jury Thursday.

Dr. Raymond F. Patterson also suggested that Moussaoui was justified in being angry with his lawyers because they did not want him to testify in his own defense. Moussaoui, on trial for his life, saw that as his only chance to beat the death penalty, Patterson said.

“My opinion is Mr. Moussaoui does not suffer from schizophrenia and has never suffered from schizophrenia,” he said.

Rather, Patterson found a “personality disorder” in Moussaoui that he explained this way: “The jargon would be ‘that person’s a character’ -- that ‘that person’s a real character.’ ”

The Washington psychiatrist, hired by federal prosecutors, was the last witness in Moussaoui’s sentencing trial, which began March 6.

Attorneys for both sides are to deliver their closing arguments to the jury Monday morning. The nine men and three women on the jury then will begin deliberating whether the 37-year-old Al Qaeda operative should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole.

Moussaoui pleaded guilty a year ago to the Sept. 11 conspiracy, and the jury already has found him eligible for the death penalty because he lied to the FBI after his arrest on Aug. 16, 2001, for a visa violation. Had he told the truth about why he was in the United States taking flight lessons, the government could have made efforts to stop the attacks.

In the last four years, Moussaoui has made many sweeping statements. First, he claimed he was being groomed to fly a hijacked plane in a second wave of attacks. Then, on the witness stand, he said he actually was designated to fly a fifth plane into the White House on Sept. 11.

He said that President Bush would ultimately release him, that he could “clear up” questions about Sept. 11 in two to 15 minutes, and that his defense lawyers wanted him dead.

His defense team brought in two psychologists this week who said they had diagnosed Moussaoui with paranoid schizophrenia, a mental illness that runs in his family.

But only one of them actually interviewed Moussaoui. That session lasted just an hour, because Moussaoui largely refused to talk to defense experts. He was apparently afraid they would diagnose him as mentally unstable and ruin his chance to testify.

But he agreed to talk to Patterson, apparently knowing that the government did not want the jury to think Moussaoui insane. They met for more than seven hours over three days in his cell in the Alexandria City Jail.

Patterson said Moussaoui was well-groomed and his cell was neat, a description far different from what the defense expert recalled. Patterson said Moussaoui never spat water on him, as the psychologist for the defense said happened to him.

Regardless, Patterson said, spitting water was more a sign of anger than irrational behavior.

The psychiatrist also contended that Moussaoui’s belief that Bush would free him was not a delusion, but was grounded in Moussaoui’s Islamic faith and his French-Moroccan culture.

Patterson said Moussaoui’s deep hatred of Americans also was not irrational, but seeded in his loyalty to Al Qaeda. And he said Moussaoui’s many rants in legal briefs and courtroom tirades were likely designed to intimidate Americans and to let his Al Qaeda brothers know that he was still at war.

“He didn’t trust Americans,” the psychiatrist said. “He didn’t trust me because I am an American. He was at war with America and wanted to kill all Americans, including me.”

Moussaoui also made those threats on the witness stand.

“So you can make a stupid decision without being mentally ill?” assistant U.S. Atty. David J. Novak asked.

Patterson smiled. “Most of us do,” he said.

Also Thursday, both sides stipulated to the fact that it was “highly unlikely” that convicted “shoe-bomber” Richard Reid was to be part of Moussaoui’s hijacking crew on a fifth plane to strike the White House -- a claim made by Moussaoui when he testified late last month.

In a three-page stipulation agreement, prosecutors and defense lawyers said that Reid had spent most of the summer of 2001 traveling through Central Asia and the Middle East, during which time he made his plan to plant explosives in shoes and detonate them on planes.

Reid tried to set his explosive-packed sneakers alight over the Atlantic Ocean on a December 2001 flight from Paris to Miami. He was subdued, and after the plane made an emergency landing in Boston, he was arrested.

The jury also was told that Reid, serving life in prison with no parole, knew he was not to be a part of the Sept. 11 plot. Reid cited a dream he had in which a pickup truck passed him by when he was looking for a ride.

“I now believe the pickup was 9/11,” Reid told the FBI after his arrest, “and I was upset that I was not sent.”