GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- The Pentagon opened its first war-crimes prosecution Tuesday with words purportedly from the mouth of Osama bin Laden, a ghoulish postmortem overheard by his driver in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks:

''If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane, it would've hit the dome,'' the U.S. Capitol building -- the al Qaeda godfather supposedly told his deputy, Egyptian Ayman al Zawahari.

And so with his first remarks to a military jury, a Pentagon prosecutor, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Stone, evoked a conversation -- a conspiracy theory, actually -- revealed by the accused, driver Salim Hamdan.

CONFLICTING ACCOUNT

Bin Laden told his No. 2 that U.S. forces -- not heroic passengers -- stopped al Qaeda hijackers from slamming United Airlines Flight 93 into the U.S. Capitol Building. It crashed into a Pennsylvania field, instead.

Hamdan, 37, of Yemen, is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terror as bin Laden's driver, bodyguard and weapons courier in the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks.

Prosecutors put him at the heart of the conspiracy -- driving bin Laden to a meeting with some of the 9/11 co-conspirators, to an al-Jazeera interview, and to a Ramadan feast at a paramilitary training camp to ``further recruit and indoctrinate young individuals for their organization.''

Defense attorneys cast him as a nobody, an orphan who left the poverty of Yemen for Afghanistan and became bin Laden's $200-a-month driver because ``he had to earn a living, not because he had a jihad against America.''

If permitted by the government, one of the alleged senior al Qaeda captives now held in seclusion at Guantánamo would testify that Hamdan ''was not fit to plan or execute,'' said defense attorney Harry Schneider.

``He is fit to change tires. And oil filters. And clean cars.''

The spectator's gallery was nearly half-empty as the two sides addressed a military jury of six U.S. colonels and lieutenant colonels, whose names are withheld by court order.

The Pentagon brought in about 30 international and American journalists later in the day to watch a slice of the historic trial, the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War II.

Hamdan sat somberly in traditional Yemeni garb, stroking a wisp of a beard while the Pentagon prosecutor laid out the government's case, for which the Pentagon seeks life in prison.

To support its claim, the prosecution called two U.S. Special Forces soldiers who were in the area of Hamdan's November 2001 capture by allied Afghan forces near Taktapol, Afghanistan. The captors said they found two SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles in Hamdan's car.

A Special Forces soldier, identified only as ''Sgt. Maj. A.,'' testified that soldiers also found in Hamdan's car a walkie-talkie on which al Qaeda members were chattering; a chart of codes for describing topics such as SAM-7s and chemicals; and a Taliban-issue weapons carry permit issued to Saqr, Arabic for ``Hawk.''

Hamdan's Pentagon charge sheet lists Saqr al Jedawi as one of the Yemeni driver's aliases.

''You will not see evidence from the government that [Hamdan] fired a shot,'' Stone said.

``What you will see is . . . the accused's role in al Qaeda, how he became a member of al Qaeda and helped, facilitated and provided material support for that organization.''

Seattle defense attorney Schneider, in black suit and red tie, followed the prosecutor in Navy white and described an entirely different Hamdan -- a fringe character being prosecuted in place of his boss.

''Both Osama bin Laden and Mr. Hamdan are Muslim. So what?'' Schneider said. ``There is no evidence that he espoused, embraced, believed extremist Islamic beliefs. He needed a job. He was offered a job. We are here only because he took the job.''

Schneider lamented the ''horrible crimes'' ever-present in the war court -- the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings, the 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole off Yemen -- capped by 9/11.

`SCAPEGOAT'

But he described Hamdan as a government scapegoat or stand-in for the perpetrators.

``This man -- the only man before you in this trial -- did not commit those crimes.''

The day ended with the prosecution calling the FBI's former top al Qaeda profiler, Ali Soufan, to counter the defense image of a hapless driver.

As early as 1999 or 2000, Soufan said, while investigating the terror group, he heard of a Yemeni driver and bodyguard for bin Laden, called Saqr al Jedawi.

The trial resumes Wednesday with Soufan testifying about a series of Camp Delta interrogations he conducted with Hamdan at Guantánamo in 2002.

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