A top FBI expert on the al-Qaeda terrorist network testified in court today that the agency knew before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the group's leader, Osama bin Laden, had sent followers to an Oklahoma flight school to train as pilots and was interested in hijacking airplanes.
Advertisement
In 1998, FBI agents questioned officials from Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla, about a graduate later identified as a pilot for bin Laden, the Post reported. Ihab Ali Nawawi, a bin Laden associate whose name surfaced during a trial for the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa, obtained a commercial pilot's license from Airman in the early 1990s before going to another school in Oklahoma City to take another course.