ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Zacarias Moussaoui killed Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, by lying to investigators just as surely as he would have killed them by flying a plane into the White House, prosecutors argued Wednesday in his death-penalty case. Moussaoui's lawyers said that claim was mere speculation and not enough to put a man to death.

Prosecutor David Raskin gave the government's closing argument in the first phase of Moussaoui's penalty trial, which determines whether the al-Qaida operative is responsible for any deaths Sept. 11.

If the jury decides he is, a second phase will determine whether he deserves execution.

"Zacarias Moussaoui came to this country to kill as many Americans as he could," Raskin said. "He was supposed to fly the fifth plane into the White House. Instead he killed people by lying and concealing the plot...that resulted in the worst terrorist attack in the country's history."

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Raskin said that Moussaoui lied "with lethal intent" when he failed to tell federal agents after his arrest in August 2001 about his al-Qaida membership and the plot to kill Americans using hijacked aircraft.

Defense lawyer Edward MacMahon countered that his client was merely an "al-Qaida hanger-on" who had nothing to do with Sept. 11. He accused the prosecution of trivializing bureaucratic blunders that might have prevented the 9/11 plot from being exposed.

"Moussaoui was never involved other than in his dreams," MacMahon said, trying to minimize damage that Moussaoui might have done to himself when he claimed on the stand that he was to have crashed a plane into the White House on Sept. 11.

"The government cannot prove a hypothetical, what would have happened if Moussaoui had not lied," he said. "We will never know what could have happened in the 25 days between Moussaoui's arrest and Sept. 11."

He said of his client: "He's now trying to write a role for himself in history when in reality he's an al-Qaida hanger-on."

The arguments followed a disclosure Tuesday that Moussaoui offered last month to testify for prosecutors against himself at his death penalty trial, the firmest evidence yet that the 37-year-old Frenchman was seeking to derail his own defense to try to gain martyrdom through execution.

The jury must decide whether the only man charged in this country in the Sept. 11 attacks will be executed or imprisoned for life. If the jury finds he is eligible for the death penalty, the question now before the court, a second phase would involve another round of testimony, probably focusing on the victims, which could last weeks.

In a hearing Wednesday morning outside the jury's presence, prosecutors and defense attorneys argued over fine points of jury instructions and the implications of a hung jury in this phase. Prosecutors want a mistrial declared if the jury does not agree unanimously, which could mean a new trial with a new jury. Defense attorneys argued that result should end the trial with a sentence of life in prison. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema appeared to lean toward the defense argument, but did not immediately resolve the issue.

To win eligibility for the death penalty, prosecutors must prove that Moussaoui's actions resulted in at least one death on Sept. 11.

According to Tuesday's testimony, Moussaoui offered in February during a jailhouse meeting with prosecutors to testify for the government that he planned to hijack and pilot a fifth plane on Sept. 11.

FBI agent James Fitzgerald testified that Moussaoui told him -- in a meeting requested by the defendant -- that he did not want to die behind bars and it was "different to die in a battle ... than in a jail on a toilet."

Moussaoui dropped his effort to testify for prosecutors after he learned that he had an absolute right to testify in his own defense.

On Monday, he stunned the court by asserting publicly for the first time that he was to fly a 747 jetliner into the White House on Sept. 11, despite having claimed for three years that he had no role in the plot. Instead, he had said he was to be part of a possible later attack.

The February meeting with the prosecution was to have been off the record but was ruled admissible after the defense introduced a partial transcript of Moussaoui's guilty plea last April.

In that 2005 pleading, Moussaoui said, "Everybody knows that I'm not 9/11 material" and that Sept. 11 "is not my conspiracy." He said he was going to attack the White House if the United States did not release radical Egyptian cleric Omar Abdel Rahman, imprisoned for other terrorist crimes.

The defense on Tuesday also presented evidence from two high-ranking al-Qaida operatives that cast doubt on Moussaoui's claim of involvement in 9/11.

Their testimony supports that of another top al-Qaida captive, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, chief organizer of the Sept. 11 attacks. He said in testimony read in court Monday that Moussaoui had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 plot, but was to have been part of a later wave of attacks.

Prosecutors argue that if Moussaoui had revealed his al-Qaida membership and his plans to hijack an aircraft, the FBI could have pursued leads that would have allowed them to track down most of the 9/11 hijackers and thwart or at least minimize the attacks.

The defense argues that nothing Moussaoui might have said would have made a difference because the FBI and other government agencies were consistently ignoring warnings prior to 9/11 that an attack was imminent.

The defense also argues that it's legally irrelevant to speculate on what might have happened if Moussaoui confessed, because Moussaoui always enjoyed a constitutional protection against self-incrimination.