Dialing For Dollars

Touted on the State Department's Web site as "one of the most valuable U.S. government assets in the fight against international terrorism," the Rewards for Justice program is designed to encourage tipsters around the world to furnish officials with information that "prevents" terror attacks or leads to the arrest and conviction of wanted terrorists. The program's highest advertised rewards, $25 million each, are for information about Al Qaeda chiefs Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Rewards for Justice Web site invites people to "Submit a Tip" about the two men.

The effort hasn't yet produced solid leads about the two Al Qaeda leaders. But the program has quietly doled out tens of millions of dollars in other cases. In 2003, an Iraqi informant was awarded $30 million for information that led authorities to Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein. Another $3 million was paid out in 2004 for information about three other figures in the Iraqi regime who were being hunted by the U.S. military. The program also paid $10 million last year to informants who gave details about leaders of the Abu Sayyaf Group in the Philippines. In each case, officials said, the rewards were based on the recommendations of law-enforcement, military and intelligence agencies to an interagency committee that ultimately decides who gets the cash.

In the case of Moussaoui, who ultimately pleaded guilty to six terrorism-conspiracy charges related to the 9/11 attacks, the FBI office in Minneapolis recommended Prevost for the reward because he had worked the most closely with FBI agents in the case. He was the flight instructor who dealt most directly with Moussaoui and testified at his trial. Prevost "worked very closely with investigators for a period of time," said Mike Kortan, an FBI spokesman. "It wasn't just the tip. He [Prevost] pushed everybody else to act based on his suspicions."

But others at the flight school remember matters differently. Moussaoui, an Arabic speaker of French-Moroccan descent, first aroused suspicions at the school when he plunked down nearly $10,000 in cash to learn how to fly a 747 jumbo jet but seemed to know nothing about airplanes and asked odd questions, such as how the doors to the airplane worked. Those and other oddities came up at a critical staff meeting of flight instructors and managers at the school on the morning of Aug. 14, 2001. But some of those present say they don't recall Prevost sounding any alarms. "I never saw Clancy do anything," said Gary Anderson, one of the program managers who attended the meeting. "Tim and Hugh were the ones pushing to contact the FBI."

The reward has clearly rankled Nelson and Sims--both former Air Force pilots. "I'm pissed," Nelson told NEWSWEEK, adding that he's particularly embarrassed because for years he has been telling friends and colleagues that he was the first to call the FBI about Moussaoui. As Nelson recalled it, his supervisor discouraged him from calling the Feds, telling him that the school did not believe in informing on its customers. When he called the FBI anyway the next morning, he told the agent, "I'm sticking my neck out here," Nelson said.

Sims, who made a separate call to the FBI that same morning, said neither he nor Nelson had given any consideration to a possible reward. Now, he added, "we're in a difficult position. If we start whining too much, people will say, 'you're just a bunch of whiners.' What can you do? We're caught in a bureaucratic trap right now."