Florida sees heroes paid and more terrists locked up - anyone notice ?

Clarence ''Clancy'' Prevost, 69, a former Navy and Northwest Airlines pilot is an American hero and US$5 Mn. richer today. The Rewards for Justice program created in 1984, has paid about $77 million to more than 50 people. The largest payment the program has made was $30 million to a person (unknown) whose information led to Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein, according to its website.

Prevost,was a key witness at French citizen , and schizophrenic Zacharias Moussaoui's trial and his eventual conviction as a 9/11 conspirator.

Prevost testified that he urged his bosses at the Pan Am International Flight Academy outside Minneapolis to call the FBI in August 2001 because he was suspicious of Moussaoui, an inexperienced and incompetent pilot seeking commercial jetliner training. A few days after Prevost warned his supervisors, an FBI agent came to ask him questions about Moussaoui.

All this leaves two of Prevost's previous colleagues Tim Nelson and Hugh Sims a bit sore. They also have been credited with tipping the FBI to Moussaoui and were honored by the Senate in 2005 with a resolution that commended their "bravery" and "heroism."

Senate Resolutions don't buy many groceries.

Moussaoui's trial, was of course, a farce, but it did give the opportunity to present as evidence all sorts of bits of information to back up the fictions of the official conspiracy theory of what happened on 9/11 - Bad photocopies of even worse printouts of Passenger Manifests of indeterminate origin for all 4 flights. Bits and pieces of an aeroplane "found" at Shanksville .. er... photographs of bits and pieces etc.,

Elswhere in Florida U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke (A Bush appointee) sentenced Jose "Dirty Bomber" Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun, and Kifah Wael Jayyousi on charges of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim individuals in a foreign country, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, and providing material support to terrorists. Padilla to a term of 208 months imprisonment; Hassoun to a term of 188 months imprisonment; and Jayyousi to a term of 152 months imprisonment.

Cooke said that as serious as the conspiracy was, there was no evidence linking the men to specific acts of terrorism anywhere.

"There is no evidence that these defendants personally maimed, kidnapped or killed anyone in the United States or elsewhere," she said.

Padilla was added in 2005 to an existing Miami terrorism support case just as the U.S. Supreme Court was considering his challenge to President Bush's decision to hold him in custody indefinitely without charge. The "dirty bomb" charges were quietly forgotten and never figured thereafter.

Adham Amin Hassoun was supposed to have recruited Padilla and 46-year-old Kifah Wael Jayyousi a financier and propagandist for the cell that assisted Islamic extremists in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere, according to trial testimony.

The convictions follow a 3 month trial based on tens of thousands of FBI telephone intercepts collected over an eight-year investigation and a form Padilla filled out in 2000 to attend an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan (magically discovered recovered by the CIA shortly after the U.S. invasion in late 2001 ). Padilla, a former Chicago gang member with a long criminal record, converted to Islam in prison and was recruited by Hassoun while attending a mosque in suburban Sunrise.

It was a patriotic jury that appeared in court on the last day of trial before the Fourth of July holiday with one row of jurors dressed in red, one in white, and one in blue (Peter Whoriskey, Washington Post, Aug. 17, 2007).

Perhaps they will join Clarence ''Clancy'' Prevost, as an American hero and collect a handsome reward from The Rewards for Justice program ?