Posted on 04/29/2005 12:54:59 PM PDT by quidnunc
Zacarias Moussaoui, 36, a French national of Algerian origins, pleaded guilty on April 22, 2005, to six counts of conspiracy to commit terrorism. He says he intended to take part in a post-9/11 air attack on the White House. “I came to the United States of America to be part, O.K., of a conspiracy to use airplane as a weapon of mass destruction, a statement of fact to strike the White House, but this conspiracy was a different conspiracy than 9/11.”
He never got to hijack a plane because two of the staff at the flight school where Moussaoui was enrolled, Tim Nelson and Hugh Sims, smelled something fishy and alerted law enforcement. In their first public interview, with Greg Gordon of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the two men tell a fascinating, sinister, and instructive tale.
Moussaoui initially wrote to Matthew Tierney at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in May 2001, using a Hotmail account with the name “zulu mantangotango.” His English left something to be desired:
Hello, Mrs. Matt, I am Mrs. Zacarias. Basically I need to know if you can help to achieve my “goal” my dream. I would like to fly in a “professional” like manners one of the big airliners. The level I would like to achieve is to be able to takeoff and land, to handle communication with ATC [air-traffic control]. … In a sense, to be able to pilot one of these Big Bird, even if I am not a real professional pilot.
-snip-
Tim Nelson stood puzzled in an office at the Eagan flight school when he learned about the new student — a guy who had plunked down $8,300, most of it in hundred-dollar bills, for lessons in flying a 747 jumbo jet.
"A guy?" Nelson asked. That's odd, he thought. Most customers of the Pan Am International Flight Academy come in groups — clusters of pilots from the same airline.
Nelson, who oversaw flight engineering classes for 727s and 747s, became even more suspicious when he learned the student didn't even have a pilot's license.
Veteran pilot Hugh Sims' eyebrows shot up, too, as he learned separately about the student, Zacarias Moussaoui.
It was early August 2001, a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.
For years, operatives of the Al-Qaida terrorist group had slipped in and out of the country, several enrolling in flight schools, training under the noses of U.S. aviation experts to carry out the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.
At only one of those schools — Pan Am's Eagan facility — did employees sniff out an Al-Qaida operative's suspicious behavior and tip off the FBI. To do so, Nelson, a flight engineer, and Sims, a Texas-born pilot with a slight drawl and wry smile, say they had to buck resistance from company headquarters.
Now, in their first public interviews, they recount how they set into motion the only U.S. criminal prosecution to stem from the Sept. 11 attacks — a case that led to Moussaoui's guilty plea Friday to six counts of conspiracy to commit terrorism. Their actions also may have preempted an attack on the White House.
-snip-
(Greg Gordon in the Minneapolis/St Paul Star Tribune, April 24, 2005)
To Read This Article Click Here
And,of course, the FBI has suggested it was THEIR alertness that resulted in this wannabee's grounding.
Amazing.
that was great. i know those mid-west people to be keen.
This is called al-taqiyyah.
What's more, by allowing their real names to be used, they've put themselves in the line of fire. Despite their low-key modesty, they deserve to be commended for the thousands of lives they probably saved.
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