As if aware of the impact of those meetings, government lawyers took every opportunity in cross examination yesterday to keep them in the jury's mind.
Mahmood changed his account during cross-examination last Thursday.
"You are a liar, a deceitful, self-centered, arrogant fantasist," Michel Massih, a lawyer for one of the defendants, told Mr. Babar during cross-examination last April.
Under cross-examination last Thursday, Mahmood conceded that he had in fact received an emailed copy of the statement three days before the pre-trial hearing and had spoken to Smith about it.
During cross-examination last week, Mr. Martin used Mr. Gordnick to support his contention, asking if Mr. Williams had panicked.
Still, Mr. Al-Fadl did admit under cross-examination last week that he once came up with a plan to have Mr. bin Laden "liquidated".
As the city's lawyers began to frame those suggestions into questions during cross-examination last week, the strategy came fully into view.
During cross-examination last week by Paul R. Grand, a lawyer for Timothy J. Rigas, Mr. Brown said prosecutors made another mistake in a transcript of a tape recording of a May 16, 2000, conference call with analysts.
The opportunity has already arisen: in a truly spectacular unforced error by the government, an FBI special investigator collapsed under cross-examination last week and admitted, among other things, to not having even looked at a picture of Mecca before testifying that it was what was pictured at the top of Tsarnaev's Twitter account.
He said he would continue his cross-examination today.
By the end of cross-examination today, one prosecution theme had emerged.
