Letter: Flight school alerted FBI to suspect

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Letter: Flight school alerted FBI to suspect

By Dan Eggen, The Washington Post, Posted January 2 2002

Link WASHINGTON · Before the Sept. 11 attacks, an FBI agent and a Minnesota flight-school official discussed the possibility that Zacarias Moussaoui may have been part of a hijacking plot, according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post.

The official with the Pan Am Flight Academy in Eagan, Minn., talked about the threat in a conversation with a Minneapolis FBI agent on Aug. 15, one day before Moussaoui was detained for immigration violations, according to a Dec. 26 letter from the flight-school official to the FBI.

"Through our conversation and [the agent's] questioning, I was able to give a detailed account of the suspicious behavior I witnessed and the worst possible scenario as to what this training could be used for, a hijacking," he wrote.

The Pan Am official also praised the FBI for its "swift and diligent" response to concerns about Moussaoui, whose behavior had raised suspicions at Pan Am. "I called one day and Zacarias Moussaoui was being interviewed by the FBI the next day and we never saw him again," he wrote.

But the correspondence raises new questions about the FBI's handling of the case of Moussaoui, 33, a French national of Moroccan descent who is the only person indicted by U.S. authorities in the attacks. He is scheduled to be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. today on terrorism conspiracy charges.

Moussaoui was apprehended weeks before 19 hijackers commandeered four domestic jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside, killing more than 3,100 people. U.S. authorities think Moussaoui may have been intended as a 20th member of the hijacking teams, but was scratched after his arrest in Minnesota.

"It's understandable to some degree how the FBI might not have understood the seriousness of this case at the time," said Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., who was briefed on the case by Pan Am officials. "But we knew there was a danger of terrorism, which makes this case very troubling."

FBI officials, including Director Robert Mueller III, have repeatedly said that agents in Minneapolis and officials in Washington pursued the Moussaoui case as aggressively as possible, but that a lack of evidence prohibited them from searching a laptop computer that contained information about jetliners, cropdusters and wind currents.

Authorities were suspicious enough, however, that they immediately considered Moussaoui a potential terrorist hijacker, and moved to have him deported while continuing attempts to search his belongings, Justice Department officials said.

Also on Tuesday:

The poisonous gas pumped into the Hart Senate Office Building last weekend appears to have killed any remaining anthrax spores, Environmental Protection Agency officials said.

The agency must await lab tests to confirm the preliminary results, but monitoring equipment suggested the fumigation worked on the second try.

Information from The Associated Press supplemented this report.

Copyright © 2001, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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