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2 Moussaoui Tipsters Merit Cut Of Cash, Senators Say

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By FREDERIC J. FROMMER, The Associated Press

Published: January 26, 2008

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 man.

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, sources say.

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 Moussaoui 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. "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."

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."

Dayton's successor in the Senate, Democrat Amy Klobuchar, wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday asking why Prevost was selected and Nelson and Sims were not.

State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said 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 whether 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.

Prevost, a former Navy pilot, was a key witness at Moussaoui's trial and conviction as a Sept. 11 conspirator. Prevost testified that he urged his bosses at the Pan Am International Flight Academy to call the FBI in August 2001 because he was suspicious of Moussaoui, an inexperienced pilot seeking commercial jetliner training.

Prevost said during the trial that he urged flight school officials to call the FBI and one day an agent showed up to ask questions about Moussaoui.

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, 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," said Sims, 68, who still spends 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."

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