Flight School Warned F.B.I. of Suspicions
Instructor Said Airplane 'Can Be Used as a Bomb'
The New York Times
December 22, 2001
THE SUSPECT
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 - An instructor
at a Minnesota flight school warned the
F.B.I. in August of his suspicion that a student who
was later identified as a part of Osama bin Laden's
terror network might be planning to use a
commercial plane loaded with fuel as a weapon, a
member of Congress and other officials said today.
The officials, who were briefed by the school, said
the instructor warned the Federal Bureau of
Investigation in urgent tones about the terrorist
threat posed by the student, Zacarias Moussaoui.
Mr. Moussaoui, a French citizen of Morrocan descent, was indicted last week on charges of conspiring in the
Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Representative James L. Oberstar of Minnesota, who received the briefing and is the ranking Democrat on
the House Transportation Committee, said the instructor called the bureau several times to find someone in
authority who seemed willing to act on the information.
Mr. Oberstar said the instructor's warnings could not have been more blunt. The representative said, "He told
them, `Do you realize that a 747 loaded with fuel can be used as a bomb?' "
Mr. Oberstar described the instructor as "an American hero" whose actions resulted in Mr. Moussaoui's
arrest and might have prevented another suicide hijacking.
Congressional officials said the account by the school, the Pan Am
International Flight Academy in Eagan, outside Minneapolis, raised new
questions about why the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies
did not prevent the hijackings.
Officials said the Arizona branch of the school alerted the Federal Aviation
Administration earlier this year after finding that a student spoke little English.
The Saudi student, Hani Hanjour, has been described as being at the controls
of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
The instructor in Minnesota has not been identified. But Congressional
officials said he was a former military pilot who grew suspicious after
encounters in which Mr. Moussaoui was belligerent and evasive about his
background and because he was so adamant about learning to fly a 747
jumbo jet despite his clear incompetence as a pilot.
Mr. Moussaoui, 33, was arrested in August on immigration charges. But
despite the urging of the school and federal agents in Minnesota and despite a
warning from the French that Mr. Moussaoui was linked to Muslim
extremists, F.B.I. headquarters here resisted a broader investigation until
after Sept. 11. Last week, he became the first person indicted for involvement in the events of Sept. 11,
charged with conspiring with Mr. bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Mr. Moussaoui faces the death penalty.
Some federal law enforcement agents said they believed that Mr. Moussaoui was intended to be the 20th
hijacker.
Until now, the bureau and the flight school have been unwilling to provide details on what raised suspicions
about Mr. Moussaoui. But several weeks ago, the school offered to brief a handful of House members and
their aides who were involved in aviation. Two lawmakers were from Minnesota, Mr. Oberstar and Martin
Sabo, a fellow Democrat, and they first discussed the briefings today in The Star Tribune in Minneapolis.
In interviews today, Mr. Oberstar and a spokesman for Mr. Sabo said the lawmakers were alarmed by what
they heard. They withheld information from the public about the briefings until this week, they said, because
they did not want to interfere with the inquiry that led to Mr. Moussaoui's indictment.
Mr. Sabo, ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, was traveling today.
His chief of staff, Michael S. Erlandson, who was at the briefing, said the flight academy's account was scary.
"The Pan Am people," Mr. Erlandson said, "are heroes who worked very diligently to make themselves heard
at the F.B.I."
He said Mr. Moussaoui raised the suspicions in a first encounter, when he told the instructor that he was from
France but refused to converse in French with the instructor, who also spoke it. The suspicions grew, Mr.
Erlandson said, when Mr. Moussaoui repeatedly proved himself incapable of understanding basic flying
techniques but still insisted on learning how to fly a 747, the largest commercial jet.
Mr. Erlandson said the flight school had arranged the briefings. "They called up," he said, "and said that they
were constituents and that they had an almost unbelievable story they would like to share."
A spokeswoman for the academy did not return calls for comment. Spokesmen for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and Federal Aviation Administration also had no comment.
Mr. Oberstar said he was also troubled by the F.A.A. response to the Phoenix instructors' concerns about
Mr. Hanjour, who enrolled speaking little English, which is required for all commercial pilots. According to the
school, it contacted the F.A.A. this year to ask what it should to do with Mr. Hanjour. Mr. Oberstar said the
agency offered the services of one of its employees to help tutor Mr. Hanjour.
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