ASHINGTON, Dec. 11 ?Three months after 19 men commandeered four planes to kill thousands of Americans, the government today filed its first criminal charge directly related to the attacks, indicting a man who officials believe was meant to be the 20th hijacker.

The indictment accused Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent, of "conspiring with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda to murder thousands of innocent people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11."

Four of the six counts carry a maximum sentence of death.

The indictment also named Mr. bin Laden, the 19 suspected hijackers and three others as unindicted co- conspirators. And it provided the most detailed official accounting yet of what the government has learned about the plot to attack the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and how it was financed.

Administration officials said that the decision to prosecute Mr. Moussaoui in federal court followed a contentious debate between the Pentagon, which wanted to try him in an overseas military tribunal, and the Justice Department, which has secured convictions in several important terrorist cases in American courts. The officials said that recent criticism of military tribunals helped to shape the decision.

White House officials said that President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft made the decision on Monday.

Mr. Moussaoui was arrested on Aug. 16 on immigration violations after officials at a Minnesota flight school, where he spent a couple of days using a jet flight simulator, alerted authorities to what they regarded as suspicious behavior. Since shortly after the attacks, he has been held in New York as a material witness, but he will soon be transferred to Virginia, officials said.

Mr. Moussaoui, who has refused to cooperate with authorities, is to be arraigned on Jan. 2 in federal district court in Alexandria, Va., just outside Washington. Justice Department officials said Mr. Moussaoui had not yet been assigned a lawyer. In a letter to his mother, published in late October by a French newspaper, Mr. Moussaoui denied doing anything wrong.

Over all, the indictment contends that Mr. Moussaoui was a soldier in Mr. bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network and had trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in 1998.

"The indictment issued today is a chronicle of evil, a carefully documented year-by-year, month-by- month, day-by-day account of a terrorist conspiracy that gathered both force and intensity in the weeks before September the 11th," Mr. Ashcroft said. Mr. Moussaoui is charged with having been an active participant in this conspiracy, along with the 19 terrorists who carried it out.

The indictment provides many new details about Mr. Moussaoui's movements and activities in the United States, as well as those of the 19 hijackers. The charges indicate that the government has amassed a wealth of detailed information about the events that led up to the hijackings and has analyzed the plot's financing, tracking withdrawals and deposits from the United Arab Emirates and Europe to the hijackers' bank accounts in the United States.

At the heart of the government's charges against Mr. Moussaoui are accusations that he engaged in a narrow pattern of activities identical to one conducted by the 19 hijackers ?buying knives and flight training materials, receiving wire transfers from abroad ?at about the same time as the others, even though he lived in another part of the country and had no apparent contact with them.

Also, like Mohamed Atta, the man who authorities believe led the plot, the indictment said that Mr. Moussaoui made inquiries at a crop-dusting company and possessed a computer disk with information about the aerial application of pesticides.

The indictment said Mr. Moussaoui entered the United States in February, declaring on a customs form that he was carrying $35,000 in cash. He arrived in Chicago after Ramzi bin al Shibh, a Yemeni national authorities thought to be a possible hijacker, was refused entry into the country on four occasions.

Mr. Shibh quickly became Mr. Moussaoui's financier. Authorities say he also sent money to at least one other hijacker, providing the closest link authorities have offered indirectly connecting Mr. Moussaoui to the hijacker teams.

The indictment said that Mr. Shibh transferred thousands of dollars to Mr. Moussaoui for flight training. On Aug. 1 and Aug. 3, Mr. Shibh, said to be using the name Ahad Sabet, wired $14,000 in money orders to Mr. Moussaoui. The indictment also said that on Aug. 3, Mr. Moussaoui bought two knives in Oklahoma City.

The government said Mr. Moussaoui was preparing to join one of the hijacking teams; investigators theorized from the start that the plotters intended to have at least four teams of five members each. The airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania had only four hijackers, while the other three planes each had five.

In addition to Mr. bin Laden and the 19 suspected hijackers, the indictment named two top Al Qaeda figures as co-conspirators: Mr. bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, who was believed killed in Afghanistan this month; and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi, Al Qaeda's finance manager. It also named Mustafa Ahmed al Hawsawi, who is accused of opening bank accounts used in the plot. Officials said that other co-conspirators could be charged later.

In announcing the indictment at the Justice Department today, Mr. Ashcroft swept aside a question about why Mr. Moussaoui would be tried in a civilian court, rather than a military tribunal.

"My responsibility is to bring charges against those who commit crimes and are to be tried in the criminal justice system," he said, adding that "We believe that the indictment speaks clearly about the nature of this case."

The indictment charged Mr. Moussaoui with conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism; to commit aircraft piracy; to destroy aircraft; to use airplanes as weapons of mass destruction; to murder government employees; and to destroy property.

According to the White House, the decision to indict Mr. Moussaoui came after Mr. Bush met with Mr. Ashcroft on Monday.

"The president asked a series of questions about the case," the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, said. "The attorney general recommended that the case be heard in a civilian criminal court." The president concurred, Mr. Fleischer said.

Mr. Bush was satisfied that a civilian court trial would not jeopardize sensitive intelligence sources, Mr. Fleischer said.

Nothing in the indictment suggested that Mr. Moussaoui had any contact with any of the 19 hijackers, but officials still seemed defensive today when asked why Mr. Moussaoui's arrest did not lead authorities to the Sept. 11 plot.

Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, said law enforcement officials had decided before Sept. 11 that they lacked legal authority to obtain a court-approved intelligence warrant, known as a F.I.S.A. warrant, to search Mr. Moussaoui's laptop computer. It was later found to contain data concerning flight training.

Asked if the bureau could have headed off the attack by investigating Mr. Moussaoui more extensively, Mr. Mueller said, "All I can tell you is that the agents on the scene attempted to follow up aggressively. The attorneys back at the F.B.I. determined that there was insufficient probable cause for a F.I.S.A., which appears to be an accurate decision. And Sept. 11 happened."