Bounties a Bust in Hunt for Al-Qaeda

More than $700 million worth of bounties remain available for scores of terrorist suspects who are still on the loose.

In most cases, the State Department does not divulge how much it pays out, or to whom, citing security concerns. Annual reports are sent to Congress but are classified.

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security declined interview requests, and the State Department would not answer a list of questions submitted for this article. Such information "might compromise the integrity of this program," Raphael L. Cook, a State Department spokesman, said in an e-mail.

Most of the money distributed under the program, however, has gone for the capture of suspects unrelated to al-Qaeda, cases that have been publicized by the government show.

In addition to the $30 million given for the information about Hussein's sons, the U.S. government has paid at least $3 million for tips leading to the capture of three of the deposed president's former commanders in Iraq. It has also given more than $11 million in rewards to tipsters who turned in members of the Abu Sayyaf network, a radical Islamist group in the Philippines.

The only publicly confirmed award connected to al-Qaeda was granted in January. A Minnesota flight instructor, Clarence Prevost, received $5 million from Rewards for Justice for serving as a witness in the 2006 trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.

Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison for training to hijack airplanes in the United States. The reward to the flight instructor was granted over the objections of some federal agents involved in the Moussaoui investigation, who noted that no reward had been posted in advance of his arrest in August 2001.

State Department officials said people whose actions help prevent terrorist attacks are also eligible for rewards. Since then, two other flight instructors who warned the FBI about Moussaoui have each pressed a claim for $5 million, as well.

Other branches of the U.S. government have separate programs to disburse awards. Last October, the U.S. military announced that it would offer as much as $200,000 for information leading to the capture of 12 al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders operating in Afghanistan. None of those named is included on the Rewards for Justice's most-wanted list.

According to a 2006 book by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, his country "earned bounties totaling millions of dollars" from the CIA for handing over hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda militants after the Sept. 11 hijackings. Many were sent to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Former CIA director George J. Tenet confirmed the practice in his memoir, published last year, describing how the agency has doled out millions in "prize money" to informants and bounty hunters, including a "foreign agent" whose tip led to the capture of Sept. 11 organizer Khalid Sheik Mohammed in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in 2003.

An Invisible Program

In 2004, Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) visited Pakistan to assess why Rewards for Justice had generated so little information regarding al-Qaeda's leadership. He discovered that the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad had effectively shut down the program. There was no radio or television advertising. The embassy had even stopped giving away matchbooks adorned with photos of al-Qaeda chiefs such as bin Laden.