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March 3, 2006
Other Than That, He Seemed All Right

CNN published an interview with the managers of a flight school here in Eagan, MN -- CQ's home port -- that tipped the FBI to Zacarias Moussaoui and his bizarre behavior. Tim Nelson and Hugh Sims describe Moussaoui's behavior in terms that hardly paints the al-Qaeda operative as a James Bond type:

He spoke fluent Arabic but rusty English. He had plenty of cash, but didn't seem like the playboy type. He said he wanted to learn to fly a jumbo jet simply to impress his pals.

But when al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui asked a flight instructor how to turn off the oxygen and transponder on a jet, two managers at the flight school had a hunch something was up.

That hunch may be the reason that Moussaoui -- the only person indicted in the U.S. in connection with the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- is awaiting a death penalty trial next week.

The managers -- Hugh Sims, 65, and Tim Nelson, 45 -- said they saw red flags before Moussaoui even showed up at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, 29 days before the attacks that toppled the World Trade Center and left a smoldering hole in the Pentagon.

Red flags? Moussaoui acted more like Inspector Clouseau on an undercover operation. He set himself up as a British businessman when he first contacted the flight school, but his e-mail messages were filled with grammatical errors. When Syrian flight students came in contact with Moussaoui, he spoke with them in fluent and obviously native Arabic -- hardly a smart idea for someone traveling with a French passport and a cover as a Brit. (The Syrians told Sims and Nelson that Arabic was definitely Moussaoui's first language.) He paid in cash and attempted to pass himself off as a rich dilettante, but showed up to the school in cheap clothing. Finally, before Moussaoui had spent much time training on the simulator, he started asking about the procedures for cutting off the oxygen to the passenger cabin and disabling the transponder system.

These red flags bothered both managers enough to the point where they made separate calls to the FBI on the same day, at the time unbeknownst to one another. The next day, the FBI arrested Moussaoui, but thanks to the FISA laws and the reluctance to challenge the "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence work, the FBI didn't impound and inspect Moussaoui's computer until after 9/11.

In the end, one has to wonder how Moussaoui managed to keep from getting caught as long as he did. Had we understood the kind of threat we faced prior to 9/11, his capture could have -- and should have -- rolled up the entire AQ operation. On one hand, it's comforting to know that this represented the best personnel AQ could muster even before we started fighting back. On the other hand, it's dispiriting to know that we had this strong of an indication of trouble and we had handicapped ourselves to the point where we could not connect the rest of the dots.

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Posted by Ed Morrissey at March 3, 2006 11:10 AM

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