Two Other CFIs Seek Recognition, Money For Their Actions

The US State Department recently rewarded a flight instructor for tipping off the FBI to Al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Clarence (Clancy) Prevost, a former US Navy pilot, was given his $5 million dollar reward at a closed ceremony in Washington, DC with Justice Department and FBI officials present.

The reward surprised fellow CFIs Hugh Sims and Tim Nelson, who also contacted the FBI in August 2001. Both are questioning why they weren't recognized along with Prevost.

"I'm just totally dumbfounded," said Tim Nelson.

In interviews with CNN, the men emphasized they acted not because they were looking for a reward, but because they wanted to do the right thing. "But to hear that a reward was made and the level of the reward being so significant," Nelson said. "It is just kind of stunning that Hugh or I were not mentioned or included in any sort of thing like that..."

As ANN reported in 2005, Prevost, 69, a retired Northwest Airlines pilot, was an instructor at Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, MN when Moussaoui sought lessons there in mid-August 2001.

Prevost said Moussaoui (above, right) showed up at the flight school exactly one month before the attacks, bent on learning how to fly a 747, and paying for his lessons with 68, $100 bills.

The man's inability to grasp the principles of flight immediately caught the flight instructor's attention. Prevost approached his managers, saying "We don't know anything about this guy, and we're teaching him how to throw the switches on a 747."

After the FBI was alerted, they arrested Moussaoui on an immigration violation. He later confessed to being the "20th hijacker" and told jurors he was to have piloted a fifth plane into the White House.

Prevost testified at Moussaoui's trial in the spring of 2006 in which Moussaoui was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. He has since left flight instruction.

In a statement Friday, Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman criticized the exclusion of Sims and Nelson and said any honor bestowed regarding Moussaoui's arrest should also include them. Both were previously been recognized by the Senate in 2005 with a resolution honoring their "bravery and heroism."

A US official said the FBI nominated Prevost to reward program officials, who then decided whether to grant the award. The FBI "considered relevant information about the two others before making the nomination for the award and determined that the one individual was the one deserving of it," the official said.

Sims said "Either nobody or all of us" should have gotten part of the reward, if one was going to be offered.

Moussaoui is the only person so far tried and convicted in connection with the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Prevost could not be reached for comment on the award or the controversy surrounding it.

FMI: www.usdoj.com