GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Osama bin Laden's driver told an FBI interrogator that he overheard the al Qaeda founder's glee at the casualty count in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a former FBI agent testified at the war court Wednesday.

''Bin Laden was happy about the results. He heard bin Laden say he didn't expect the operation to be that successful,'' said Ali Soufan, once one of the FBI's top al Qaeda profilers.

"He only thought 1,000 to 1,500 people would perish.''

It was the third day of the trial of Salim Hamdan, 37, a Yemeni accused of conspiracy and supporting terror in the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War II.

And Soufan was expected to spend much of the day testifying in he-said, she-said fashion about what Hamdan told U.S. intelligence. The agent interrogated the driver here in summer 2002. Soufan related a series of conversations Hamdan heard from the driver's seat while shuttling the al Qaeda godfather around Afghanistan in a Toyota pickup.

Prosecutor John Murphy, on loan to the Pentagon from the Justice Department, also led Soufan through a recitation of Hamdan's whereabouts before and after three al Qaeda attacks on U.S. targets: the 1998 U.S. attacks on embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; the suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Aden, Yemen; and the 9/11 attacks that claimed 2,973 victims.

Soufan did not indicate that Hamdan knew the details beforehand, but took part in complex convoys that spirited the al Qaeda leader around the country in the days leading up to all of them.

Before the 1998 embassies bombings, Hamdan did not know the intended targets, Soufan said, but reported that he heard from an al Qaeda aide that this would be ``the very first time that bin Laden was going head to head with America. So they were careful and nervous about that.''

Once Hamdan learned that the boss was responsible, Murphy asked Soufan repeatedly, if he quit his job.

''No. He stayed,'' the former agent deadpanned.

Still, he testified that Hamdan helped a U.S. intelligence-gathering effort by fingering al Qaeda insiders from a photo array.

Hamdan sat somberly listening to an Arabic translation through a headset clamped atop his white head scarf. His lawyers say he took the $200-a-month job for the wages, a great salary for a Yemeni orphan -- not to wage jihad.

Speaking as an al Qaeda expert, Soufan said he concluded before 9/11 that Hamdan was a trusted bodyguard of bin Laden by virtue of his proximity.

So much so that bin Laden played matchmaker and suggested that Hamdan and another Yemeni bodyguard marry sisters during a 1999 or 2000 trip to Yemen.

Soufan also amplified a bit on a comment attributed to bin Laden in earshot of Hamdan after the 9/11 attacks: "If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane, it would've hit the dome.''

Bin Laden and deputy Ayman al Zawahari were in the back seat studying a news magazine's map of the path of the four hijacked 9/11 airliners, the agent said.

He was quoting Hamdan, who Soufan said didn't know what ''the dome'' meant.

"I assumed [it was] either Congress or the White House.''

U.S. allied forces captured Hamdan in November 2001 in southern Afghanistan, after dropping his wife and daughter off at the Pakistan border. A Special Forces soldier testified Tuesday that when the Afghan forces brought him the car Hamdan was driving at his capture, he found two surface-to-air missiles minus their triggering devices in it.

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