"Our duty agent received a call..."

• From : Harry Samit

• To : W. Jay Abbot

• Date : 8/15/01 08:53PM

• Subject : Short Notice Legat Checks

Jay,
Minneapolis has a short notice check request for info on a French citizen. We don’t really know what we have here, but here’s the (weird) story.

Our duty agent received a call from a company that does flight simulator training for Boeing 747 Series 400 pilots. They are now training a student who just showed up to learn to fly the 747. He has no pilot’s license and minimal previous flight experience (in any aircraft type). He paid between $6000 and $8000 dollars to essentially learn to take off and land the 747-400. His excuse is weak : he just wants to learn how to do it ! That’s pretty ominous and obviously suggests some sort of a hijacking plan.

He’s in the U.S. since 02/2001 on a visa waiver from the UK, where he claims to reside. He’s traveling on a French passport, although the flight instructor who has been with him for the last few days believes he’s Middle Eastern. Indices show that his last name is Lebanese, –––––––––––––––––––––––––.

I’m not even sure if you can run checks on French citizens, but if so, here he is :

• Zacarias Moussaoui, DOB 05/30/1969

• French Passport 00AE27016

Can you determine if he is known to ––––––––– or other –––––––––. I will do an EC to follow up if you need one, but we’re working on fairly short notice since his training is only scheduled to go for a few more days and we don’t want him to depart this area. Our INS guy on the JTTF is pretty sure we can arrest him on a visa overstay, but we want to get all we can on him first.

Thanks in advance for anything you can do.

Harry Samit (612) 376-3365 (612) 490-5192 (Cell)