Minnesotan paid $5mil for Moussaoui tip.

Good.

The Bush administration paid a $5 million reward to a former Minnesota flight instructor who provided authorities with information that led to the arrest and conviction of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

The recipient was honored Thursday at a closed-door ceremony at the State Department, although the payout was secretly authorized last fall by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Justice Department, U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

The reward from the State Department's "Rewards for Justice" program is the first and only one to date to a U.S. citizen related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the officials said.

Several people who worked at the flight school Moussaoui attended in August 2001 are known to have alerted the FBI to his suspicious desire to pilot jumbo jets, including some who later testified at his trial.

They said they thought it was strange Moussaoui wanted to learn to fly a Boeing 747 at the Pan Am International Flight Academy outside Minneapolis, although he had little flying background. They then phoned the FBI about Moussaoui and agents soon after arrested him.

After his arrest, Moussaoui sat in jail for 3.5 weeks on an immigration violation, saying little to investigators before hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or crashed in a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11.

The Minneapolis FBI agents who responded to the tips were unable to persuade their superiors in Washington to seek a national security warrant to search Moussaoui's belongings and laptop computer.