Dialing For Dollars

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

Newsweek

A little-known State Department program that pays rewards for tips about terrorism is facing new scrutiny on Capitol Hill amid allegations that it forked over $5 million to the wrong tipster.
 
In a private ceremony attended by top U.S. counterterrorism officials last Friday, Clarence Prevost, a former flight instructor at the Pan American International Flight Academy in Minnesota, was given a $5 million check for his help in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui--the convicted Al Qaeda operative who was arrested just three weeks before the September 11 attacks. Moussaoui aroused suspicion at the flight school when he signed up to learn to fly 747 jumbo jets, even though he'd had no previous flight experience. It was the first-ever payment in a domestic-terrorism case under the State Department program called Rewards for Justice.

Prevost, who was Moussaoui's original flight instructor, worked with the FBI in developing the case against the Al Qaeda terrorist and testified during the sentencing phase of his trial. But court testimony also shows that two of Prevost's colleagues at the flight school, Tim Nelson and Hugh Sims, were actually the first to call the FBI and alert agents to Moussaoui's odd behavior. Their two phone calls, made separately on the morning of Aug. 15, 2001, led the bureau to launch an investigation of Moussaoui within 30 minutes and arrest the French-born Islamic militant on immigration charges the next day, according to testimony from an FBI agent in the trial.