Instructor Warned of Moussaoui: Warnings were Ignored

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Flight Instructor Recalls Unease With Moussaoui
Warnings About Suspect to School's Supervisor Were Ignored, Pilot Testifies

Zacarias Moussaoui's plan to learn to fly a Boeing 747 began to unravel the day he met Clarence Prevost, a retired Northwest Airlines and Navy pilot who once flew hurricane hunters. Prevost, 68, took the stand yesterday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria and described how he quickly became suspicious of Moussaoui after he began one-on-one classroom instruction in August 2001.

He testified that he urged the flight executives at the Minnesota school to request an FBI background check on Moussaoui at the end of the first day of classes because he was from the Middle East, had paid his $6,800 tuition with $100 bills and, unlike every other student at the school, he wasn't a pilot.

This is the response he got from his boss, he testified: "He paid his money. We don't care." Prevost said he told the executive, "We'll care when he hijacks an airplane, and he's throwing all the switches and then there are all these lawsuits." The next day, Aug. 14, 2001, after Prevost kept pushing, school officials called the FBI. The following day, Moussaoui was arrested by immigration officials and held on charges that his 90-day visa had expired.

The testimony came on the fourth day of the trial that will determine whether Moussaoui is put to death for his role in the plot that led to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. An admitted al-Qaeda operative, Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty in April to conspiring with al-Qaeda in the worst terrorist attack in American history. He has said that Osama bin Laden instructed him to fly an airplane into the White House at another time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/09/AR2006030901143.html