WOULD-BE PILOT

Jailed suspect had sought jet training

By Ralph Ranalli, Globe Staff, 9/15/2001

suspected Algerian-French terrorist with reported ties to alleged terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was in federal custody for several weeks before Tuesday's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon after trying to get training on jumbo-jet simulators, according to officials and published reports.

Zacarias Moussaoui was detained several weeks ago in St. Paul after a flight instructor became suspicious of his attempt to buy lesson time in a Boeing 747 simulator owned by Northwest Airlines.

He had entered the United States from London in February on an apparently fake Moroccan passport and a visa arranged by a flight training school in Norman, Okla.

What is still unclear is whether the FBI or other US agencies knew of Moussaoui's reported terrorist ties before Tuesday's attacks and whether his presence and activities in the United States should have raised alarms.

Moussaoui's activities during his six months in this country bear a striking resemblance to those of others identified yesterday by the FBI as suspects in the hijackings, including entering the United States from Europe, paying cash for flying lessons, and showing particular interest in large Boeing jets.

One difference, however, may have been that the stocky, bearded man was a poor pilot, who raised suspicions by trying to buy simulator time for a complicated aircraft he had no business training for with his student pilot's license.

One flight training official yesterday likened his attempt to buy 747 time to ''a 16-year-old without a driver's license applying for truck-driving school.''

Media outlets in Paris have quoted French intelligence sources as identifying Moussaoui as a 31-year-old Islamic militant who was born in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in southwestern France and holds both French and Algerian nationalities.

The newspaper Liberation quoted intelligence sources as saying that Moussaoui was believed to have made several recent trips to Afghanistan - bin Laden's base of operations - and was ''possibly working for the jihad,'' or Muslim holy war.

US officials, including the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, have refused to talk about Moussaoui, who reportedly is being detained in the Sherburne County Jail in Minnesota on an immigration charge.

FBI agents who questioned Moussaoui's flight instructors, however, said that ''he did something very bad,'' according to Dale Davis, vice president of the Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla.

The school arranged a flight-training visa for Moussaoui through the INS and the Moroccan Embassay in February without any apparent problems, Davis said.

Davis described Moussaoui as a short, powerfully built man - ''he had some arms on him,'' he said - with a thick French accent who had trouble picking up even the basics of flying.

After nearly 60 hours of lesson time in a single-engine Cessna 152, Moussaoui still had not soloed, a feat that takes the average student less than 40 hours. He left the school in May with just a student pilot's license.

The St. Paul Pioneer-Press reported yesterday that Moussaoui then contracted with the Florida-based Pan Am International Flight Academy for lessons in a jet simulator. The Pan Am school contracts with a Northwest Airlines training facility in Eagan, Minn., where several sophisticated jumbo jet simulators are based.

Davis said he was told that Moussaoui's desire to pay large sums of money for Boeing 747 training raised the suspicions of Northwest Airlines officials, who called authorities.

Moussaoui was detained after officials discovered that his Moroccan passport was a fake, law enforcement sources said. The FBI was trying to trace Moussaoui's activities when 19 Middle Eastern terrorists crashed four hijacked Boeing jets into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

Shelley Murphy of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.

This story ran on page A5 of the Boston Globe on 9/15/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.