In emotional testimony in the death penalty trial of Zacarias Moussaoui today, the former manager of an Arizona flight school that trained one of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers told a federal jury that she had expressed alarm about her student to the Federal Aviation Administration and cried when she learned he had flown an airliner into the Pentagon.
Margaret Chevrette said she helped train hijacker Hani Hanjour at Pan Am International Flight Academy in Mesa, Ariz., near Phoenix, from late December 2000 until March 2001. She said Hanjour, a Saudi who is believed to have piloted the American Airlines plane that crashed into the Pentagon, was a poor pilot who spoke limited English.
She said she had been "worried that he was going to hurt himself or hurt someone else because he didn't have the skills" to fly an airliner and risked causing an accident.
Chevrette said she reported her concerns to the FAA during Hanjour's training at the flight school but that the agency did little in response. She said an FAA official who oversaw her school suggested she obtain an English interpreter for Hanjour, which was against the agency's own regulations.
"I reminded him it is required to be able to speak and write English on your own" to be permitted to fly a plane in the United States, Chevrette testified.
When she heard about the Sept. 11 hijackings, "I already knew in my heart that Hani was a part of it," Chevrette said. She recalled driving to work when she learned that a plane had hit the Pentagon after two planes had already struck the World Trade Center in New York.
"I think that's the thing that just snapped," she said, recalling her realization that it was a terrorist attack. "I remember crying all the way to work, knowing that our company helped do this." The academy closed in December 2001.
Continue Reading this story at The Washington Post
Comment Preview