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The arrival
en masse of Mohamed Atta’s terrorist cadre at the Venice Municipal Airport
was happenstance, goes the official story, and the terrorist’s
presence there an accident of history, unrelated to any
pre-existing climate of crime or corruption.
Nothing could be
further from the truth.
This was illustrated again recently
when decades of old newspaper clippings became
available online, revealing
the full range of the
extraordinary history of criminal mischief and international
intrigue
at the
Venice Airport.
For example: our recent story headlined
"60 year history of drug trafficking at Venice Airport"
was off by fifteen years, according to a “Looking Back” feature
from the Aug 28 1964 Sarasota Herald
Tribune, which reveals that the oldest report of drug trafficking at what will
become the Venice Airport occurred
thirty years earlier.
On that date in 1934, “A
dope-smuggling plane was captured by Federal Agents near Venice,”
the paper
reported.
In unbroken
succession in the decades since, the Venice Municipal Airport—
decade-in and decade-out—has
played host to drug smuggling, gun running, the launching of coups
in the Caribbean, mercenary training, even murder...
It is a
remarkable history of international intrigue with a distinctly ‘spooky’ flavor.
"The Company" gets its money's worth in Sarasota
In
most cases, as we will see, it wasn't amateurs or free-lancers who were
responsible for the criminal mischief, but people belonging to, or with close ties, to the
political elite.
Mayors, County
Sheriffs, the Florida State’s Attorney, and Governors of at least two Southern
states have been "compromised" by the shadowy forces operating out of the Venice
Airport, whose common
denominator appears to be the sense of having been given a green light to engage
in what sociologists today call “State-Sponsored Organized Crime.”
And the one
newspaper which knew this, the local Sarasota Herald Tribune, kept it secret
from its own readership, and the rest of the country.
How could
information
about the Venice
Airport, so
critical
to our understanding of the 9/11 attack, have been successfully hidden from the
American people?

One clue lies
in the suppression of reporting by authors Roger Morris and Sally
Denton (in their book “Partners in Power” as well as Denton’s earlier “The
Bluegrass Conspiracy”) about events at the Mena airport—a landing strip too
insignificant to show on most road atlases – which became a hub of international
drug and arms smuggling during the 1980’s.
(In
our next story, we will present evidence that the mammoth drug smuggling
organization called The Company, described in the Bluegrass Conspiracy, was
operating at the Venice Airport during the late 1970's and early 1980's.)
Another clue
lies in the suppressed history of both the airfield Mohamed Atta called
“home,” as well as
that
of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
The Coup That Got Away
Two
years after the end of WWII there was a textbook example of how inconvenient
events at the Venice Airport get "hushed-up," at least
locally...
"Two P-38 planes
reportedly consigned for Cuba to aid in a revolution are
safely impounded at Venice," reported the March 16,1947 Sarasota Herald
Tribune, paraphrasing an earlier article in the Miami Herald.
“Another two
P-38's were impounded in New Orleans, along with cache of rifles, revolvers,
machine guns... even
several tanks and amphibious landing craft.”
“Officials
declined to comment on reports prevalent in Miami and Havana that the planes
were a part of a plot to attempt a revolt against the Cuban government.”
“The two planes
seized in Venice were gassed up and ready to take off for a destination which
customs officials refused to reveal.”
“But,” said
Stuart Morrison, HERALD staff writer, “the two planes were for the account of a
Cuban revolutionary attempt, I am reliably informed.”
“The MIAMI
HERALD stated flatly that the planes were part of a plot to start a revolution
in Cuba.”
The planes,
tanks, and weapons belonged to a certain William I. Margolis from Gulfport Ms.,
identified as “the
president of a company which carried on mahogany operations in Central
America.
In
addition to the
two P-38’s busted in Venice, another two had been seized in New Orleans. The two amphibious landing craft
were reportedly loaded
with tanks and ready to go when Customs officials swooped in. They'd also found
what they called “a huge weapons cache” at
Marsalis’ home in Gulfport.
It was, it
seemed obvious, a well-funded coup, or revolution. No hiding in the hills
building revolutionary consciousness, like the Fidelistas.
Not when you've
got tanks. Still,
company
officials tried to brazen it out...
They said the guns were for a hunting trip.”
The Sarasota Herald Tribune offers full service media cover-up
Bald-faced lies don't get much balder than this. Well, actually they do...
The weapons
weren’t headed for a revolution in Cuba, the Sarasota Herald
Tribune reported.
This
is when the paper began tap-dancing in earnest.
“Seized Venice
Planes Seen Headed for Honduras Farm,”
read the headline.
“The possibility
developed today that the two P-38 planes seized in Venice may have been designed
for an agricultural project in British Honduras.”
“A U.S. firm had
considered a project for the agricultural development of British Honduras,
encouraging former U.S. soldiers with farming backgrounds to bring such surplus
war equipment as amphibious craft and tanks to carry out the program."
"'The
machine guns rifles revolvers and shotguns seized in Gulfport were meant
to protect company workers on a farm in Honduras,' stated a Marsalis company
official in Honduras."
"The tanks
and amphibious landing craft could be converted to peacetime use in clearing and
plowing land and removing stumps."
"When first we practice to deceive, we eventually get pretty good at it."
However, the
paper's explanation of the big mix-up was mum on
the four P-38 fighters.
Maybe they
were to be use to strafe crows.
We also couldn't help noticing that the
Sarasota Herald Tribune
was alone in reporting
what seems clearly to be an utterly lame explanation.
Soon,
however, the paper went even further.
The headline read:
Doubt Is Seen Venice Planes Part of Plot
(sic).
Ambassadors from
Nicaragua Honduras and Costa Rica were all reassuring the U.S. State Dept
the Sarasota Herald Tribune reported: They
knew of no plots to overthrow their governments.
"The tanks were
meant for clearing land, the guns for protection, and the planes for
transportation," a Marsalis company official in Honduras explained.
They
were now neglecting to mention the amphibious landing craft. But as a famous
American (Ralph Waldo Emerson) once wrote, "A foolish consistency is
the hobgoblin of little minds."
In any event the story deserved an 'A'
for effort... There were, after all, quite a number and variety of
weapons systems to explain away.
A former bomber pilot & a "construction company"
Thankfully a
report in the St Petersburg Times under the headline
Three Convicted of Gun-Running Conspiracy put things into perspective:
“A former bomber
pilot and two partners in a “construction company” pleaded guilty in Federal
Court yesterday to conspiring to ship war equipment including tanks and aerial
bombs, to British Honduras.”
Our take on all
this is that—just as a rule of thumb—if your cover story as a “construction
company” gets placed in quotes by reporters, its probably not going to fly.
But then, 50
years ago, cover stories were considerably less sophisticated.
Marsalis, the
story related, had explained the landing ships, the tanks, the P-38 fighters and
the munitions dump this way:
“Marsalis
explained at the time that he was thinking of opening logging operations in
British Honduras and needed the arms to keep the natives and wild beasts from
attacking his workers in the jungle.”
This would be
pretty Monty Python-esque, except it was before their time.
It was a
disaster for the hapless Lieutenant Colonel
Marsalis, who we may assume today, with the benefit of hindsight,
had been acting under orders from “unnamed superiors” in positions of authority
in the brand-new national security state that was just then (in 1947) being
born.
The other two men convicted
were both executives of the famous Higgins Boat Company in New Orleans, which
had made thousands of landing craft that GI’s used to hit the beaches during the
Second World War.
Marsalis, the
judge stated, had had a “splendid war record.” Apparently he just wanted to keep
the good times rolling.
It was left to TIME MAGAZINE, in a
story called "Guns Across the Caribbean," to put the story
into perspective. In waterfront cafes in Miami and New Orleans, coups were being
plotted against a half-dozen governments. Ideology mattered little: the plots
were against governments on both the right (Nicaragua, Honduras, the
Dominican Republic) and the Left (Cuba, Guatemala, Venezuela.) What mattered was
that:
"At hand in the U.S. were stacks of
surplus guns, as well as plenty of adventurers, fighter pilots, aerial gunners
and combat infantrymen who would fight at the drop of a dollar.
In others words,
winning World War II was not without its negative consequences.
Shillin' for the Man
What
makes this important is the role played by the local
Sarasota Herald Tribune.
Not yet content that it had covered
itself with glory, the paper
fired off (on Jun 15, 1957)
one last story on the
aborted coup:
“VENICE PLANE
BUYER
SAYS HE IS BROKE.
The story
conveyed the plaintive ruminations and sad thoughts that Lt. Col Marsalis had
been having about the sorry state of the American free enterprise system.
Federal agents
had treated him “worse than the Gestapo,” stated William Marsalis, the
ringleader of the plot.
“'They’ve taken
my living away from me,' said Marsalis, a former Army Colonel, in New Orleans
briefly on his way to Hot Springs Arkansas, to seek retirement before an Army
Retirement Board.”
If you’re
wondering how someone on his way to seek retirement before an Army Retirement
board can be described as “a former Army Colonel,” rest assured:
so were we.
Alas, David
Lindsay Jr., the Sarasota Herald Tribune’s Owner and Publisher at the time
has passed away, and cannot be reached for comment.
But this
anecdote will assume significance in our next story, which is about the
Sarasota Herald Tribune, and its longtime Owner and Publisher David Lindsay, Jr.
A unique dual track career: Publisher & Merchant of Death
Publisher
David Lindsay Junior's family owned the Sarasota Herald Tribune for more than 50
years. When he sold it to the New York Times in 1982, its unique "culture" was
already firmly in place.
In fact, the paper's current publisher
was originally hired by Lindsay.
And David
Lindsay Jr.'s
particular “take” continues to inform that newspaper’s
editorial stance on matters involving aviation and "national defense."
Case in point:
the newspaper's
coverage of
the recent sale
of the former Huffman Aviation betrayed a willful amnesia about the more unpleasant aspects of having a
local airport in its coverage area associated with an enterprise which murdered
almost 3000 people on Sept 11, 2001.
Sarasota Herald
Tribune Owner and Publisher David Lindsay Jr. was not,
it will seem fair to venture, after we have presented the evidence against him, the sort of man to spend much time quibbling over moral distinctions.
He was, instead, unique about newspapermen in seeing nothing wrong about
combining two separate, and very different careers.
In addition to
owning and publishing the Sarasota Herald Tribune, Lindsay, as we will see, was
also a
weapons
manufacturer. A
merchant of
death.
He made money
making machines that kill people. But not just any people.
David Lindsay's
product, we will
see, was aimed at one specific type of person: It was used to
efficiently mow down and kill peasants in Central America.
You know... the little people.
Whether they were actual Communists, or
just
campesinos trying to persuade United Fruit to pay them a living wage so they
could feed their families, is pretty difficult to say.
Mostly, today, they're just dead.
NEXT: MEET "THE
COMPANY" IN VENICE FL.
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