WASHINGTON (AP) – 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.

It is also unusual because Moussaoui, who was imprisoned at the time of the attacks, was never named as a wanted suspect by the program. The program mainly seeks information about perpetrators or planners of terrorist acts against U.S. interests and citizens abroad.

The State Department, citing security and privacy concerns, would not identify the recipient.

“To ensure the safety of the individuals involved and the viability of the program, we do not discuss the identities of those who cooperate with Rewards for Justice,” Gonzalo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman, 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 31/2 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.

Moussaoui later confessed to being the “20th hijacker” and was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2006 after a trial marked by numerous outbursts, conflicts with his lawyers and questions about his status, if any, within Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.

He told jurors he was to have piloted a fifth plane on Sept. 11 and fly it into the White House.

But after the jury decided against sentencing him to death, Moussaoui recanted his testimony and denied any role in 9/11, saying he lied on the stand because he assumed he had no chance of getting a fair trial.

Rewards for Justice, which was created in 1984, has paid about $77 million in rewards to more than 50 people.

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Associated Press writer Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.

AP-ES-01-24-08 1940EST