Locked out of reward
WASHINGTON -- The two senators who honored flight instructors for alerting authorities to Zacarias Moussaoui before the Sept. 11 attacks are asking why the men were left off a $5 million government reward given to another tipster.
Clarence Prevost, 69, got the payout Thursday, when he was honored in a private ceremony as part of the State Department's "Rewards for Justice" program, which mainly seeks information about perpetrators or planners of terrorist acts against U.S. interests and citizens abroad.
But two of Prevost's former colleagues at the Pan Am International Flight Academy outside Minneapolis are questioning the reward, especially after a 2005 Senate resolution commended their "bravery" and "heroism" for alerting the FBI about a month before the attacks.
The Minnesota senators who sponsored that resolution, Republican Norm Coleman and now-retired Democrat Mark Dayton, want answers from the State Department.
"There is no question that both Tim Nelson and Hugh Sims are American heroes," Coleman said in a statement Friday, adding that any honor given by the government should go to those two men as well. "I have contacted the State Department to determine why these heroic men were not recognized for their roles, and see what can be done to ensure they receive the credit they are due."
In a telephone interview Friday from Minneapolis, Dayton said: "I don't know what Mr. Prevost did, but I know what the other two did, and if there's an award, it ought to be equitably distributed. This is typical of this administration. They do something in secret and don't discuss it. An explanation is warranted."
Dayton's successor in the Senate, Democrat Amy Klobuchar, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Friday asking why Prevost was selected while Nelson and Sims were not.
"Without diminishing the contributions of Mr. Prevost in any way, I believe it is clear that Mr. Nelson and Mr. Sims played a critical role in this case and are equally deserving of recognition," Klobuchar wrote.
State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters Friday that the Rewards for Justice program is based on nominations, and the recipient would have been nominated by a U.S. law enforcement agency. He said he didn't know if others were nominated for this award.
"If there's some reason to re-examine this issue, or facts that haven't come to light, I'm sure the appropriate people involved will do so," he added.
The State Department hasn't identified the recipient, in keeping with the policy of the program. But two Bush administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk publicly about the matter, said the reward went to Prevost.
A U.S. official told The Associated Press that the FBI nominated him for the award. The agency "considered the relevant information about the three before making their recommendation about the reward for one individual," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal process.
Prevost, a former Navy pilot who goes by the nickname "Clancy," became a key witness at Moussaoui's trial and eventual conviction as a Sept. 11 conspirator. Prevost testified that he urged his bosses at the Pan Am International Flight Academy outside Minneapolis to call the FBI in August 2001 because he was suspicious of Moussaoui, an inexperienced pilot seeking commercial jetliner training.
News of the reward came as a surprise to Nelson and Sims.
"It was never done for the reward, but when you give $5 million to a person who didn't call the FBI and didn't put his job on the line, are they rewarding someone for calling the FBI or for testifying?" asked Nelson, 47, of St. Paul, Minn. "And the only reason he was testifying was because he was the instructor."
Sims, in a phone interview from Fort Myers, Fla., recounted meeting Moussaoui at Pan Am on a Monday, and said that two days later he and Nelson each called the FBI separately.
"He was certainly there but he didn't call the FBI. I have no idea why he received the reward," said Sims, 68, who still spends his summers in Minnesota. "The two people who actually picked up the phone and called (the FBI) aren't included in this, that's what's really disappointing."
No one answered the phone or door at Prevost's apartment Thursday and Friday. A concierge at the residential hotel where he lives in the upscale Miami suburb of Coral Gables described him as an unassuming man who enjoys golf. The apartment manager, Ed Perez, said he had not seen Prevost since last week.
John Rosengren, who had been director of operations at the Minnesota flight school at the time Moussaoui was there, said Sims and Nelson were at least equally deserving of the reward, if not more so. While Prevost did alert school officials, Rosengren said, Nelson and Sims ran with it by calling the FBI.
"They were the ones who contacted the FBI; Prevost didn't," Rosengren said. "They were the ones honored in Washington as heroes (by the Senate). And all of a sudden, Prevost is the one who ends up getting the award. So if anything, it should have been split three ways."
After his arrest, Moussaoui sat in jail for 3½ weeks on an immigration violation, saying little to investigators before hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or crashed in a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11.
The Minneapolis FBI agents who responded to the tips were unable to persuade their superiors in Washington to seek a national security warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings and laptop computer.
Moussaoui later confessed to being the "20th hijacker" and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2006 after a trial marked by numerous outbursts, conflicts with his lawyers and questions about his status, if any, within Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
He told jurors he was to have piloted a fifth plane on Sept. 11 and fly it into the White House. But after the jury decided against sentencing him to death, Moussaoui recanted his testimony and denied any role in 9/11, saying he lied on the stand because he assumed he had no chance of getting a fair trial.
Rewards for Justice, which was created in 1984, has paid about $77 million in rewards to more than 50 people. The largest payment the program has made was $30 million to a person whose information led to Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein, according to its Web site.
The award to Prevost is the first to a U.S. citizen related to the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration officials said.
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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington, Doug Glass in Minneapolis and Laura Wides-Munoz in Coral Gables, Fla., contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
Rewards for Justice: http://www.rewardsforjustice.net