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Pilot receives reward in arrest of Sept. 11 plotter

His co-workers ask why they got no part of the $5-million payout.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration paid a $5-million reward to a former Minnesota flight instructor who provided authorities with information that led to the arrest and conviction of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. Two colleagues question why he got the money.

The recipient, Clarence Prevost, was honored Thursday at a closed-door ceremony at the State Department, although the payout was secretly authorized last fall by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Justice Department, officials said.

The reward from the State Department's "Rewards for Justice" program is the first to a U.S. citizen related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the officials said.

It is also unusual because Moussaoui, who was imprisoned at the time of the attacks, was never named as a wanted suspect by the program. The program mainly seeks information about perpetrators or planners of terrorist acts against U.S. interests and citizens abroad.

Prevost, 69, is a former Navy pilot who later flew for Northwest Airlines and goes by his nickname "Clancy." He was one of several people who worked at the flight school Moussaoui attended in August 2001 and who alerted the FBI to his suspicious desire to pilot jumbo jets.

News of the reward came as a surprise to two other Pan Am flight instructors, Tim Nelson and Hugh Sims, who also have been credited with tipping the FBI to Moussaoui and were honored by the Senate in 2005.

Sims, in a phone interview from Fort Myers, said he didn't want to comment "till we get a few things straightened out."

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

Sims recounted meeting Moussaoui at Pan Am on a Monday, and said that two days later he and Nelson each called the FBI separately. "Clancy had a part of it. Whether he continued to expand on his portion of this, that's fine," Sims said. "Today has been a very large surprise for me."

Nelson's wife, Jodie Quinn-Nelson, said the reward "was given out to the wrong person."

Moussaoui confessed to being the "20th hijacker" and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2006 after a trial marked by numerous outbursts. He later recanted his testimony and denied any role in the terror attacks.

[Last modified January 25, 2008, 00:25:06]