ALEXANDRIA, VA. - The government conceded to a jury on Thursday that it has "no information" that Al-Qaida leaders directed would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid to join Zacarias Moussaoui in a fifth Sept. 11 hijacking, as Moussaoui testified.

"According to two FBI analysts, it is highly unlikely that Reid was part of this operation," said a statement read to jurors in Moussaoui's death penalty trial. The statement is known as a stipulation, meaning it is accepted as fact by both sides.

The document undercuts a central part of Moussaoui's stunning admission last month that he was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, operation -- testimony that provided some of the government's strongest evidence before a jury found him eligible to be executed.

Moussaoui testified on March 27 that, before his arrest on Aug. 16, 2001, he was training at a Twin Cities flight school to fly a plane into the White House, with Reid in his crew, as part of the Sept. 11 attacks.

On the final day of testimony in the seven-week-long trial, defense lawyers introduced the stipulation, as well as other evidence, suggesting that the confessed Al-Qaida conspirator may have had, at most, a minor role in the Sept. 11 plot. They also elicited a second day of emotional testimony from family members of Sept. 11 victims, including relatives of Jeremy Glick and Mark Bingham, among the heroes that forced hijackers to crash one of the hijacked planes in a Pennsylvania field. Their testimony for the defense provided a not-too-subtle message of opposition to a death sentence.

Paula Shapiro, who lost her son on Sept. 11, said afterward that she testified "because of my opposition to any more mothers feeling like I feel."

Weeks of sometimes wrenching testimony ended with a defense lawyer trying to poke holes in a government psychiatrist's finding that Moussaoui is free of mental illness.

'Highly unlikely'

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said the jury would begin deliberations Monday on whether Moussaoui should die for lying to conceal the suicide hijacking plot when questioned after his arrest.

After his initial testimony, Moussaoui took the witness stand again on April 13 and told jurors that Al-Qaida operations chief Muhammad Atef -- now deceased -- had told him that he and Reid would fly a fifth plane, but that he was to keep the plan secret from Reid.

But the stipulation noted that Reid named Moussaoui as the beneficiary of his belongings in an undated will, addressed to his mother and recovered after U.S. troops invaded Afghanistan. Two FBI analysts concluded that "if Reid was to be part of the same martyrdom operation as Moussaoui, it is highly unlikely he would bequeath his belongings to Moussaoui."

It also said that all of the Sept. 11 hijackers were in the United States by July 2001, while Reid was abroad. On Dec. 21, 2001, Reid was foiled in an attempt to ignite his explosives-laden shoe on a trans-Atlantic flight. He later pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence.

Defense lawyers had hoped to again question star prosecution witness Aaron Zebley, a former FBI agent on the Sept. 11 investigation, to underscore that Moussaoui's testimony provided the only evidence that he was to pilot a fifth plane, people close to the case said. But Brinkema, in a ruling that has not been made public, barred the testimony, they said.

Defense lawyers also read to jurors two other stipulations. One noted that six Al-Qaida captives are being held at secret sites overseas and have yet to face any Sept. 11-related charges, though it said "they could be tried in the future in a jurisdiction where the death penalty is a possible sentence." They include mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, coordinator Ramzi Binalshibh and financier Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi.

Diagnosis disputed

A day after testimony from defense psychiatric experts who diagnosed Moussaoui with paranoid schizophrenia, prosecutors called their chief mental health expert, Dr. Raymond Patterson, an associate professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University.

Unlike defense experts, with whom Moussaoui refused to meet because he did not want his mental health to be raised as an issue, Patterson interviewed him for two hours in 2002 and for a total of five hours in late December 2005.

Patterson said that he diagnosed Moussaoui with a nonspecific personality disorder "but no major mental disorder," and that diagnosing such a disorder from his writings and without face-to-face contact is "below what I would consider a responsible standard of care."