Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Sept. 11 Co-conspirator Could Get Death Penalty, 04/05/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june06/moussaoui_4-03.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What happened on September 11, 2001?

2. Who were the hijackers behind the September 11 attacks?

3. Has anyone been arrested in connection with the attacks?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. Who is Zacarias Moussaoui?

Zacarias Moussaoui,, the alleged 20th hijacker and admitted al-Qaida operative, is eligible for the death sentence for his role in the attacks of Sept. 11, 20001 -- even though he was in jail at the time.

Moussaoui, a 37-year-old French citizen of Moroccan heritage, is charged with lying to FBI investigators and, therefore, sharing the blame for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.

2. Why was Moussaoui arrested? How have FBI agents connected him to the September 11 attacks?

Moussaoui was arrested in August 2001 after he raised the suspicion of instructors at a Minnesota flight school by asking to learn to how to fly -- not takeoff or land -- a Boeing 747.

The flight school turned his name over to the FBI, which detained him on immigration charges while they investigated his potential connection to terrorism.

Fellow inmates of Moussaoui said when he learned of the 9/11 attacks, he cheered. At that point, Moussaoui became a material witness to the attacks and has been in jail ever since.

3. Why does the Justice Department argue that Moussaoui should get the death penalty?

The Justice Department argued that even though Moussaoui did not take part in the actual attacks, he deserves to die because he refused to reveal details that might have prevented the attacks.

His lies "made him just as guilty as if he were at the controls of one of those planes," prosecutors told the jury during the trial.

4. What has the trial revealed about mistakes made by the FBI leading up to September 11?

During the trial, defense lawyers were able to reveal embarrassing details of how the government mishandled the case, including just how close Minnesota FBI agents came to unveiling the plot.

Minnesota agent Harry Samit testified he sent as many as 70 messages warning his superiors about Moussaoui, but that his warnings were ignored.

When local FBI agents arrested Moussaoui, they found flight manuals for a Boeing 747, a flight-simulator computer program, binoculars, knives, fighting shields and a laptop computer.

However, constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure prevented the FBI from searching the computer.

Samit wrote his superiors at FBI headquarters asking them to request the necessary search warrant.

In a memo dated Aug. 31, 2001, Samit urged his superiors to act quickly because "the details of this plan are not yet fully known, it cannot be determined if Moussaoui has sufficient knowledge of the 747-400 to attempt to execute the seizure of such an aircraft."

Samit also warned that it was not clear "how far advanced Moussaoui's plan is or how many unidentified co-conspirators exist."

5. What happened when Moussaoui took the witness stand?

However, the trial took a dramatic turn, when, against his lawyers' advice, Moussaoui himself took the witness stand.

Moussaoui then calmly asserted that he knew the hijackers and that he was to have flown a fifth plane into the White House on Sept. 11, 2001.

Prior to this testimony, Moussaoui had denied any knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and had sworn to fight the death penalty with all his strength. Yet his statements made it easy for the jury to find him guilty.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. What do you know about the death penalty? There are groups in the United States that oppose any form of the death penalty. What are their arguments against it? What are the arguments in favor of the death penalty? Which side do you agree with?

2. Do you think Moussaoui should be put to death? Why or why not?

3. What might happen if Moussaoui becomes a martyr to anti-American groups? What can the U.S. government do to keep him from being a martyr?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.