In the episode, retired agent Harry Samit reviews his investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent. Harry was assigned to the case after the FBI’s Minneapolis Division had been contacted by an instructor at the Pan Am International Flying Academy who reported his suspicions about Moussaoui, who had paid $8,000 in cash for a flight simulator course to fly a commercial Boeing 747 aircraft even though he had no background in aviation.
Harry’s investigation of Moussaoui as a potential threat to commit a terrorist act was stymied by program managers at FBI Headquarters. Moussaoui was later charged, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison as a co-conspirator of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Harry provides his thoughts on whether Moussaoui was going to be al-Qaeda’s “20th hijacker,” assigned to crash a plane into the White House.
Every adult alive on 9/11/2001 recalls how they felt when the planes struck the towers. Harry’s story is like no other you’ve heard.
Harry is the author of The Zacarias Moussaoui Matter: The Arrest and Trial of a 9/11 Al Qaeda Operative, a first-person account of the FBI investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only individual tried in a civilian courtroom for his involvement in the 9/11 attack plot. While the case made headlines in the past, much of the sensitive information this story contains has never been publicly available—until Harry was forced to sue the FBI to be allowed to publish this book.
“To answer your question, Jerri, what was our theory? Well, I’ve been asked that question quite a bit, and how we knew that there was a hijacking plot and how we knew it might include a suicide mission. At the end of it, the answer is we were thinking from the beginning that this was a plot to seize control of an airliner, right? That was nothing new. We looked it up on the squad and the first hijacking of a commercial aircraft happened in the 1920s. In all of that time, between 1920s and 2001, we had never seen an example where a hijacker needed to learn how to fly the plane themselves.”—Retired Agent Harry Samit
Special Agent (Retired)
Harry Samit
1/1999 – 4/2020
Harry Samit served in the FBI for 21-years. During his career, he was assigned to the Minneapolis Division.
As a founding member of the Minneapolis Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), he specialized in working high-stakes international terrorism investigations of members of Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and other violent extremist groups as a case agent, and human source handler.
While working these assignments, he also performed collateral duties as a SWAT team operator and observer/sniper for ten years and as a Special Agent Aviator (Fixed Wing) for seven years, flying FBI surveillance missions.
Before joining the FBI, Harry was an officer in the U.S. Navy for nine years. He was commissioned through the Naval Reserve Officers Training Course (NROTC) at the Pennsylvania State University as a Special Duty (Intelligence) Officer.
The following are links to news articles about the investigation of 9/11 Al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui and the publication of Harry Samit’s book:
U.S. District Court Eastern District of VA – 12/2001: Indictment of ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI
U.S. vs. Zacarias Moussaoui – Statement of Facts 4-22-2005
CNN Editorial Research – 5/7 /2025: Zacarias Moussaoui Fast Facts
NBC News – 3/20/2006: Agent who arrested Moussaoui blasts FBI
PBS News – 5/3/2006: Moussaoui Gets Life Sentence for Role in 9/11 Attacks
Aviation International News – 10/8/2007: Hijackers trained at U.S. flight schools
To learn more about the FBI investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, listen to the following episodes:
192: Ken Williams – Phoenix Memo, Phoenix Mountain Arsonist
260: John Anticev – 1993 World Trade Center Bombing
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Best episode ever although it is heartbreaking to know so many lives were destroyed that day and could have been avoided if it hadn’t been for pride.
Harry presented a passionate case review.
This may be a dumb question, but if you are investigating this guy doing the flight training, and you are getting blocked at the FBI from doing anything, why not do nothing and just follow the guy? If you think he is gonna hijack an airplane or buy an airplane or whatever, why not just follow him and maybe he buys a plane ticket and you stop the flight? I have to say I don’t see how arresting the guy helps the situation. Wouldn’t the other terrorists get wind that they are starting to get some heat and maybe they plan to move up the date of the attack? Or maybe they double down on their own security measures? Plus say he gets deported or put in jail or whatever, he gets out eventually and wouldn’t he be even more determined to complete an attack? At that point he gained the experience of what not to do and how better to avoid the FBI or CIA what have you. Also on another note, they weren’t allowed to search the guys documents and what not, but why not just do it anyway? If you beleive he is going to execute a terrorist attack at some point in the future, and you are looking at arresting him and letting him go or deporting him, why not just say to hell with it and search the items and just don’t report it? Yeah maybe it is against the law but who cares at that point? I know it is a slippery slope and there is no way they could have known an attack was imminent and all of that. But if you are suspicious of the guy and assume that he is 100% gonna try to attack at some point, it seems to me like the only thing accomplished was perhaps making the attack happen faster or making the terrorists more motivated to attack or at least just alerting them that they need to be more careful which of course doesn’t help the situation. I can’t help but notice in the US it seems like all the work gets done after an attack happens, which seems to be the worst time to do it since the attack happened and they probably aren’t planning on doing another one any time soon, while everyone is doubling down on protecting the airlines the terrorists move to another vector that isn’t being watched so closely. I was wondering did they ever figure out any hard evidence for anything? Like the one guy who wrote the thing to refute the terrorists testimony. We know terrorists claim attacks that they have no involvement in, and so the guy refuting might have no weight to the arguement but who cares what either of them say about it? What evidence was there? Did they figure out how the guy was linked to a terrorist organization or figure out any hard evidence? I always get the feeling so much work is being done for little benifit other than commenting on the past. If someone doesn’t call the FBI about a weird guy doing flight training in the future, how will you stop him? If I sign up for flight training, pay in cash, and then act extremely suspiciously will I be arrested? As a funny aside after hearing about the documents that the guy had on his laptop and was reading I immediately thought that there is absolutely no way that I am not on some watch list somewhere.
They did arrest him almost immediately. Remember, they had him in custody for an immigration violation before he could actually start the flight simulator training. But because he wasn’t talking, Harry and his partners had no idea what he was planning and who else was involved.
Just listened to episode. 383: Harry Samit – Arresting Zacarias Moussaoui, The “20th Hijacker”. All I can say is WOW, WOW, WOW! Thank you Harry Samit and thank you Jerri for bringing this to us. Loved that Harry pulled no punches and 100% agree with him that leaders are in the field not behind desks in their DC ivory towers. I am definitely buying Harry’s book. Thanks again.
Thank you for listening. I agree. I re-listened to my own podcast after it was released and I was once again moved by Harry’s passionate story.