35-year old Guyanese pilot Michael Francis Brassington was
indicted in New Jersey federal court this week, as the result of an
investigation into the spectacular crash of a airplane outside New York
City in February of 2005, which injured 20 people and provoked widespread
outrage in New York.
Brassington, the principal
owner of defunct air charter company Platinum Jet Management, was indicted
Wednesday along with four other company executives, charged with
recklessly endangering the lives of passengers.
Brassington has survived
previous scrapes with American law enforcement, each time emerging curiously
unscathed.
Unlike
the current imbroglio, Brassington's earlier controversies were not
celebrity-enhanced.
Platinum
Jet Management's glittering
roster of clients, many of whom were said to have suffered actual celebrity
endangerment, included everyone “from Beyonce
to Bill Clinton,” according to FOX, ensuring that the arrests of
the air charter execs made the news worldwide. Even so, an FBI spokeswoman
in Miami declined to release pilot Michael Brassington’s mug shot.
“Charged With
Endangering Celebrity Clients!" read a Fox News' headline.
Celebrity endangerment may be no more serious a crime than endangering the lives
of those unfortunate enough to be without immediate prospects for achieving
celebrity status... but it gets a lot more publicity.
Air charter 'mishap' threatens cultural life of
nation
In addition to
Bill & Beyonce ( who in fairness weren't explicitly linked as a
couple in news reports) Platinum clients and passengers included another former
U.S. President, George H.
Bush, basketball great Shaquille O'Neal, rappers Jay Z, Sean "Diddy" Combs, and
Snoop Dogg, Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana, actor Burt Reynolds & movie
producer Harvey Weinstein, to name a few.
The 21-count indictment,
which could send him to prison for more than 20 years, charges Brassington with
offenses, lying to federal investigators and endangering the safety of aircraft.
It alleges that the
defendants, including four other Platinum execs and a pilot, joined "a conspiracy to defraud charter flight customers, jet charter
brokers and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) through interstate wire
communications, and to defraud the United States by impeding and obstructing the
FAA’s regulation of commercial aircraft in the United States."
Like the current Wall Street
debacle, the lucrative aviation industry operates with almost no oversight from
anyone in government. "There's been absolute no adult supervision, just like
with the banks, explained one aviation executive.
FAA requirements for
companies running air charter flights are so minimal, and the field so
poorly-policed, one wag told us, "All anyone needs to get into the air
charter business is a cell phone
and a pair of sunglasses.”
High priorities, high hopes, & secret high signs
Authorities
said they believe Platinum jets routinely cut corners and endangered lives.
“It is astounding—and
criminal—that owners and operators of jet aircraft would repeatedly engage in
such a dangerous game with passengers and airplanes loaded to the brim with jet
fuel,” said Asst. U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra in Newark, New Jersey.
“This case demonstrates that
ensuring the safety of the nation’s air transportation system remains a high
priority for the Office of Inspector General and the Department of
Transportation,” said Ned Schwartz, DOT OIG Special Agent in Charge in New
York.
“Working with the United
States Attorney’s Office and our other law enforcement colleagues, we will
continue our efforts to uncover fraudulent activities that could compromise the
integrity of DOT’s safety programs.”
On the
Cabinet-level an Inspector General, or IG, is usually only involved in
internal investigations, indicating that an agency of the Dept. of
Transportation is being investigated, in all likelihood the FAA. So the involvement of the
Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General is a big red flag...
When we called Ned Schwartz,
looking for a quote as pithy as that attributed to him in the U.S. Attorney’s
press release, he would not answer any questions. And the question he
clearly didn't want to answer most was whether his investigation had been aware,
while investigating Brassington criminally-
negligent
air charter operations, that the Guyanese pilot was involved in a huge heroin
bust during the run-up to the 9/11 attack.
Had the Inspector General's
office known that Michael Brassington was deeply involved in the intrigue
swirling around Mohamed Atta and the terrorist hijackers during their time in
Florida?
Schwartz 'a response was to
give us the name of the Dept of Transportations Media Spokeswoman, who,
perhaps predictably, has been unable to find the time to respond to our phone
queries.
"A grave threat to national security, but a helluva
drug pilot."
As
readers of the MadCowMorningNews are aware, Michael Brassington first achieved
notoriety when he became a footnote to the story of the 9.11 attack as the
co-pilot of a Lear jet(N351WB) which was busted carrying 43 lbs of heroin in
Orlando on July 22, 2000.
The Lear jet’s owner was
Wallace J. Hilliard, the secretive 75-year old Naples FL financier whose Huffman
Aviation flight school in Venice just three weeks earlier had enrolled
soon-to-be-famous terrorist pilot trainees Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi.
Both
men had
spent recent time in the world’s biggest heroin-producing country, Afghanistan,
then being run by their presumed boss, Osama bin Laden.
But even though the Orlando Sentinel called
the incident “the biggest heroin bust in Central Florida history,"
the
incident has never been
investigated for clues to the 9/11 hijackers' associates and activities in the
U.S. before the attack.
Brassington was never
charged in the heroin case. He continued to operate with seeming
official impunity, according to aviation observers, right up until his
arrest by the FBI this week in Miami.
Another blue day for truth: Operation Blue Lightning
Less well-known
about Brassington's history of brushes with U.S. law enforcement is that several
years ago he was the subject of a Multi-Agency Federal
Task Force, Operation Blue Lightning; Brassington was suspected of trafficking drugs,
passports, people, currency, and diamonds into the U.S. through two airports in
Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Tasked with tracking Brassington's
movements during Operation Blue Lightning, a Customs Supervisor in Miami had
even warned Customs Agents at Fort Lauderdale International Airport to treat
Brassington as a "grave threat to national security.”
According to a Customs Agent
in Fort Lauderdale who examined Brassington regularly as he passed through
U. S. Customs entering or leaving the U.S., the investigation went nowhere
after the lead FAA
investigator on the case was called off and reassigned, under extremely
suspicious circumstances.
Later on, an internal investigation by
the Homeland Security Dept.’s Office of Inspector General was
also thwarted, and the special agent in charge re-assigned.
CIA Drug Plane scandal blows Brassington's cover
However
the publicity from two recent cases of American-registered airplanes busted in
Mexico carrying an astonish four tons of cocaine, in one case, and 5.5 tons of
cocaine in the other, have forced a re-examination.
Aviation executives and
Customs officials in Fort Lauderdale said that Pervez Khan, a Pakistani
national who is also one of Wally Hilliard’s “business partners,” is engaged in
the same activities as Brassington.
There has been a certain
amount of discreet passing-the-buck at the DEA in the form of denials by
officials there of either any DEA investigation or involvement in the case.
A top DEA official in Miami
stated there is no DEA investigation ongoing because the case involves
corruption in a U.S. Custom’s “rogue operation,” which is properly investigated
internally by the Inspector General’s Office in the Dept. of Homeland Security.

However, the
MadCowMorningNews has learned that the existence of any federal investigation in
the scandal remains a matter of speculation. An official in the Dept. of
Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s office, Tamara Faulkner, told the
MadCowMorningNews in a phone call last week that the Department’s practice is to
neither confirm nor deny the existence of any internal investigation conducted
by the Inspector General’s office.
Two American planes got
caught red-handed carrying a total of almost ten tons of cocaine, easily worth a half-billion
dollars. No Americans were ever charged with any crime.
Maybe that’s why the DEA says
there are no American Drug Lords.