Flight instructor gets $5 million for catching 9/11 hijacker

[Hawkwings]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A Minnesota flight instructor who notified his bosses of student Zacarias Moussaoui's suspicious behavior received a $5 million reward Thursday from the State Department, two government officials told CNN.

Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted in 2006 of conspiring to kill Americans on September 11, 2001.

Clarence "Clancy" Prevost was an instructor at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, when Moussaoui was a student there.

Moussaoui, sometimes called the "20th hijacker," is the only person charged and convicted in connection with the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Prevost received the reward from the State Department's Rewards for Justice program in a closed ceremony at the State Department, the officials told CNN.

Moussaoui, an admitted al Qaeda operative, was prevented from participating in the 9/11 attacks because he was in jail. He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole in connection with his role in 9/11.

He is held at the federal Supermax facility in Florence, Colorado.

Prevost, a retired Northwest Airlines pilot, has never spoken publicly about Moussaoui, but testified during the sentencing phase of Moussaoui's trial. He said that by the second day of teaching Moussaoui, he heard that Moussaoui paid the bulk of his $8,300 tuition for a flight simulator course in hundred-dollar bills. And that made Prevost think the FBI should be notified.

He testified that he found Moussaoui to be a "pretty genial guy" until a lunchtime conversation turned to the Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca made by Muslims during Ramadan. Prevost wanted to know if Moussaoui could explain the Hajj to him and asked, "Are you Muslim?"

Prevost testified that Moussaoui responded by raising his voice and saying, "I am nothing!"

Prevost testified that he approached his managers, and recalled telling them, "We don't know anything about this guy, and we're teaching him how to throw the switches on a 747."

But he said his managers at first told him Moussaoui had paid his money and they didn't care.

Prevost testified that he told his bosses, "We'll care when there's a hijacking and the lawsuits come in."

He testified Moussaoui's stated goal of learning to fly from Heathrow Airport in London to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport was unusual from the beginning, because Moussaoui had 50-odd hours of flight time on a single-engine propeller plane and no pilot's license.

Prevost testified he usually had students with more than 600 hours of flight time, and that they are usually professional pilots looking to upgrade their skills and fly bigger jets for a higher salary.

But Moussaoui, he testified, "had no frame of reference whatsoever with a commercial airliner. After 15 minutes I said, 'Let's get lunch.' "

Prevost said he was worried that if Moussaoui completed the three four-hour 747 simulator sessions he had booked, he would know how to operate a real 747.

He testified that he let Moussaoui sit in on another student's simulator session, but he never got any of his own sessions.

A day after Prevost went to his bosses with his concerns, two Pan Am program managers called the FBI, leading to Moussaoui's arrest on an immigration violation. Moussaoui had stayed in the United States past his allowed 90 days on his French passport.

In November, the Air Line Pilots Association, International, presented Prevost with its 2007 Presidential Citation Award for his efforts to alert authorities to Moussaoui, according to an ALPA statement.

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Any idea just how much this guy could have learned and done if he did complete the course?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Enough to maybe put a 747 into Congress. *shrug* The other hijackers managed that, after all.

[Sidewinder]

Prevost testified that he approached his managers, and recalled telling them, "We don't know anything about this guy, and we're teaching him how to throw the switches on a 747."

But he said his managers at first told him Moussaoui had paid his money and they didn't care.

Prevost testified that he told his bosses, "We'll care when there's a hijacking and the lawsuits come in."

The people running the flight schools that the other 9/11 hijackers attended, probably shared this attitude. I hope they're feeling remorse for their apathy instead of trying to cover their asses.

[Sea Skimmer]

Enough to maybe put a 747 into Congress. *shrug* The other hijackers managed that, after all.

Flight 11, 175, and 77 were all hijack by groups of five men, while flight 93 was hijacked by four men. Its pretty damn likely that he would have joined that four man group, not tried to nab another plane on his own. A-Q did try to get several other people in the country though, had a few of them gotten in its likely that a fifth plane would have been taken.

[Broomstick]

Any idea just how much this guy could have learned and done if he did complete the course?

Enough to take over after he and his buddies killed the flight crew and guide the airplane into a building. Just like the other guys on 9/11.

Although I doubt he'd be the primary pilot given that he hadn't actually finished his license yet and some of the others had.

A-Q did try to get several other people in the country though, had a few of them gotten in its likely that a fifth plane would have been taken.

Personally, I think that there WERE other hijack teams on 9/11, it's just that their flights didn't get off the ground before air traffic was halted. Purely my opinion and I have no proof of it. Likely, we'll never know for sure.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I wonder if the presence of a 5th man on flight 93 would have enabled that plane to reach its target.

[Broomstick]

The people running the flight schools that the other 9/11 hijackers attended, probably shared this attitude. I hope they're feeling remorse for their apathy instead of trying to cover their asses.

In defense of those other flight schools, this guy seems to have been the clumsiest of the lot. The others involved, particularly someone like Muhammad Atta, may have come across as an arrogant foreign jackass with misogynist tendencies but arrogance and machoism are hardly rare traits in the piloting world. Sexists are a little less common, but they do exist and wouldn't be surprising in someone from the Middle East.

Part of what tipped off the flight instructor was that here you had a guy who didn't even have a private license yet paying for time in a 747 simulator - that's weird. It wasn't unknown for someone to pay for an hour or receive an hour in such a simulator as, say, a birthday gift or a one-time experience, but to undergo an actual training program... that's the odd thing. Contrast this with Atta, who had earned a commercial pilot's license and, with a stated goal of flying professionally, it wouldn't be so odd to obtain such training as a way of making himself more appealing to future employers.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The original plan was to have two aircraft hit the WTC, one to hit the White House, one to hit Congress, one to hit the Pentagon, and one each to hit the tallest buildings respectively in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and Portland (or Seattle?). Five on the east coast, five on the west coast. OBL vetoed that saying it would be to complex for their planning and coordination, and instead went with an east-coast only attack. Which means they were likely trying to infiltrate enough people for five planes, but only got enough for four--and not enough on the fourth to subdue the passengers, either.