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West Coast 9/11 families left in dark?Trial broadcasts available only at East Coast courthousesBy Phil Hirschkorn  Brent Woodall, 31, worked as a stock trader at the World Trade Center, on the South Tower's 89th floor. Related: FindLaw docketSPECIAL REPORTYOUR E-MAIL ALERTSNEW YORK (CNN) -- Unlike their East Coast counterparts, relatives of 9/11 victims who live in California won't be able to watch the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. Los Angeles and San Francisco, the cities where all four planes were headed until they were hijacked, won't have a closed-circuit broadcast venue for families to watch the first 9/11 trial, despite an act of Congress clearing the way. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema has decided the difference of time zones is an insurmountable obstacle, leaving nearly 200 eligible family members in the dark and wondering if she considered all the options. "It surprised me," said John Woodall of San Diego, a father of a 9/11 victim. "I would have gone up for part of it." Congress mandated that closed-circuit broadcasts of court proceedings be organized for victims' families, but the legislation left the locations to the discretion of Brinkema, who is presiding over the Moussaoui case. Besides the New York area, which bore the brunt of World Trade Center casualties, most victims came from four metropolitan regions: Boston, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco. They were primarily Pentagon casualties or passengers and crew members on the planes. New York and New Jersey families will be accommodated at federal courthouses in Manhattan and on Long Island; in Newark, New Jersey; and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There will be a viewing site in Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington-area families can watch the signal in a room at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, where the trial will take place. Father puzzled by decisionBut Brinkema rejected prosecutors' recommendations for viewing sites in San Francisco and Los Angeles. "It puzzled me to the point of annoyance that this judge said we're just going to go with these geographies, and the hell with the rest of them," Woodall said. Brinkema's reasons are not disclosed in her November 22 order, but are revealed in a letter sent the same day to Sen. George Allen and viewed by CNN. "The sites in California are not feasible," Brinkema wrote Allen, a Virginia Republican who sponsored the 2002 trial-watching bill. "Because the trial will begin at 9:30 a.m. ET in Virginia, the sites in California would have to be opened at an extremely early hour," the judge continued. "Given the need to check credentials and provide for security screening, security and court personnel would have to be in place by at least 5:30 a.m. to be ready for a 6:30 a.m. start," Brinkema wrote. "Looking at it from the California point of view, you almost want to be there at 6 in the morning to get rid of the traffic," Woodall said. "If it's at 6:30 in the morning, it's a bonus." Talking with son after 2nd plane hitWoodall is accustomed to rising early. His son, Brent, a stock trader, used to call home every morning from his desk on the 89th floor of the trade center's South Tower at 8:30 a.m. ET -- 5:30 a.m. PT. They were on the phone with each other minutes after a plane struck the North tower. "This is not a pretty sight. There are people jumping out of windows," Woodall recalls his son saying. "It didn't dawn on either one of us that this would be on purpose." Brent was trapped on a floor above the second plane after it struck. His wife was pregnant with their first child. "My interest in Moussaoui is he's the first guy on U.S. soil that we might be able to connect to this tragedy," Woodall said. The court won't discuss whether it considered allocating some of the $2 million budgeted for to pay overtime for court security officers to arrive a couple of hours earlier in California, or whether it considered other venues. Between 2000 and 2002, about 30 New York-area family members regularly went to an FBI building to watch a taped transmission from the Netherlands of the trial of two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103. The London-to-New York flight exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, with 259 passengers and crew on board. Bert Ammerman, a president of the Pam Am 103 families organization whose brother died in the attack, was among them. They entered the federal building with a secure ID. A similar credential is being made for Moussaoui trial families. "It's important. For some of our families, this was a lifeline to their loved one to see justice take place," Ammerman said. "What you say to the California families is, 'If it's feasible, would you avail yourself of this?'" 200 registered to watch trialAccording to the Justice Department, nearly 200 family members registered to watch the Moussaoui trial. They must be "the spouse, legal guardian, parent, child, brother or sister, or have a relationship of similar significance" to an attack victim. Prosecutors previously played families the Flight 93 cockpit voice recording and phone calls from passengers and flight attendants on all four flights. People physically injured by the attacks or responding to them are also eligible for the closed-circuit viewing. Similar federal legislation allowed victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to watch the federal trial of Timothy McVeigh without traveling to Denver. Around 50 people killed in the September 11 attacks were from California. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were bound from Boston to Los Angeles, but they crashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers. American Airlines Flight 77 was bound from Washington to Los Angeles, but hijackers steered it into the Pentagon. United Airlines Flight 93, the plane that did not reach its target and crashed near the western Pennsylvania town of Shanksville, was en route from Newark to San Francisco. Some will attend trial in personJudge Brinkema told Sen. Allen that prosecutors had informed her that "many of the California victims would be satisfied by the Boston site, because many have relatives in Boston with whom they could stay." Some 9/11 families plan to attend the Moussaoui trial in person. "I plan on being there as much as possible and hopefully being able to witness history," said Hamilton Peterson, from the D.C. area. His father and stepmother died in the Shanksville crash. Moussaoui admits conspiring with al Qaeda to fly planes into landmark buildings but denies knowing the 19 hijackers or advance knowledge of the plot. The trial will determine whether he is sentenced to execution or to spend the rest of his life in prison. Opening statements are scheduled March 6. Jury selection began Monday. In 2002, Brinkema rejected a request by broadcasters to televise the trial. 
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