Was CIA Running Terrorist Flight School?
October 19--Your ‘legend’
is your cover story, in intelligence parlance; the lie that holds together
long enough to let you skip the country...
The legends of Rudi Dekkers
as ‘flight school owner’ and Mohamed Atta as ‘fanatic 'Islamic fundamentalist’
have been fraying at the edges since the collapse of the World Trade Center.
Still, they may have lasted
long enough to do the job for which they were intended. With a war on,
no one seems to be losing sleep over the fact that the version of events
currently being peddled about the September 11th disaster relies on what
one law enforcement source wryly calls 'the Magic Dutch Boy' theory.
In the Kennedy assassination
'the Magic Bullet' theory allowed the FBI to apply Lee Harvey Oswald’s
‘lone nut gunman’ tag. The current 'lone nut cadre theory' of the FBI
for the Sept 11 disaster, goes this latest reasoning, will only fly through
use of a similarly-twisted logic trail, one now being called 'the Magic
Dutch Boy theory.'
It goes like this:
Both of the pilots who guided
planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center had trained at Rudi
Dekkers’ Huffman Aviation when they first got to America. Dekkers, a
Dutch national, had only recently purchased the flight school located at
the small out of the way Venice Florida Airport.
The terrorist duo practicing
touch and go’s in the humid September air on Florida’s Gulf coast were
soon joined by a third student terrorist pilot, the one on UAL Flight 93.
He signed up at the Florida Flight Training Center almost next door to
Dekkers’ Huffman Aviation, making it a terrorist trifecta out at the
unsuspecting Venice Airport.
Just like Dekkers’ Huffman
Aviation, this second flight school had also just changed owners. And the
new owner of this flight school too turns out to be a Dutch national. His
name is Arne Kruithof, from Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
The magic Dutch boy theory
says that the appearance of these two foreign nationals, both Dutch, purchasing
flight schools at the same time at the same airport is merely a 'magical'
coincidence...
Because if the appearance
of a second Dutch national purchasing a flight school right as the terrorist
cadre show up isn't just the a strange coincidence belonging on Ripley’s
Believe it Or Not... then they're hiding what looks unmistakably like a
covert intelligence operation down in Venice Florida.
It being Florida, that means
the CIA, reputed to be active in the state.
"Two Dutch boys buying adjacent
flight schools which shortly thereafter get 'overrun’ by terrorists is
one damn Dutch boy too many," stated our law enforcement source. "Its untidy."
Was the CIA running a covert,
or black, operation out of the Venice, Florida Airport? Might they have
been training pilots for Bin Laden in an effort to penetrate his organization
that went horrifically awry?
Will we someday be adding
‘Magic Dutch Boy’ to the 'Magic Bullet' Wing of the Secret History
Museum?
The local Venice Gondolier
two days after the disaster ran a huge black headline reading: "Evil in
our own backyard."
Underneath it they had placed
a picture of Rudi Dekkers facing a phalanx of TV cameras out at the Venice
Airport. The irony of the juxtaposition did not go unnoticed.
"At first everyone just thought
it was kind of amusing," an aviation employee at the airport said, "because
it made Dekkers look like he was the ‘evil’ in our backyard, which
the newspaper probably didn’t mean."
Pause. "And then it hit me.
Dekkers had purchased his aviation school at just about the time the terrorist
pilots moved into town and began their lessons."
Is Rudi Dekkers just an innocent
aviation executive whose flight school received the most unfortunate business
publicity since Ryder Trucks at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing?
Or is there a darker reality lurking behind his widely promoted public
persona?
Reporters swarmed the Venice
airport in the days after the identity of the terrorist pilots and their
relationship with the local flight schools became known. An analysis of
their stories reveals that there were two different versions of events
being given by flight school representatives, that were in disagreement
even on basic chronology, like which of their schools the terrorists attended
first.
A flight instructor at Jones
Aviation Flying Service Inc. which operates from the Venice-adjacent Sarasota
Bradenton International Airport, told the Associated Press that Atta and
Al-Shehhi arrived in "September or October" and asked to be given flight
training.
Jones Instructor Ivan Chirivella
said the two came to Jones Aviation from Huffman Aviation in Venice. Chirivella
said he spent four hours almost every morning from September to October
last year instructing Mohamed Atta, 33, and Marwan Yousef Alshehhi, 23.
But Rudi Dekkers at Huffman
Aviation, who has been getting all the national face-time, had been telling
a different tale.They signed up at Huffman in late July, he stated in innumerable
interviews, and stayed until December or January. The two cadre principals
paid $20,000 apiece at the rate of $1000 a week.
Dekkers says the terrorist
were at his school, located a half an hour south of Sarasota down the Tammiami
Trail, an old Indian path that wends through the mangrove swamps of Florida’s
Gulf Coast, at the same time the two Jones' Aviation instructors say the
terrorist duo were flying four hours every morning...with them.
Dekkers told his new buddy
Larry King, and anyone else with a microphone who would listen, that when
Atta & co. showed up at his school they were already grumbling about
a bad experience at another school. This directly contradicts the story
the two Jones instructors gave reporters.
Why can't the flight instructors
at the two schools get their stories straight? Did Atta and his sidekick
attend both flight schools at once?
Here's another journalistic
'snapshot' which gets a little 'blurry' when you look at it a little closer:
In their inimitable British
tabloid style, London's Mirror TV filmed a segment at the Venice Airport
two days after the disaster, which they slugged: "IN THE COCKPIT WHERE
A HIJACKER LEARNED TO FLY!"
"THIS is the cockpit of the
light aircraft in which hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi learned
to fly," the Mirror’s American correspondent told British viewers.
"Under the guidance of instructor
Mark Mickart I went through the same pre-flight checks and maneuvers on
the white single-engine Cessna 172, terrorists Atta and Al-Shehhi had done
on July 9."
"The same preflight checklists!"
Wow. Kitsch history. What
is of interest is the flight instructor, Mark Mikarts, busily showing the
audience How the Terrorists Checked Off.
Mark Mikarts used to be somebody
else.
His given name is Mark Wierdak.
The only relative of his we were able to locate is a half-sister. She works
in the British consulate in Venezuela. When we got in touch with her to
ask about her 'flight instructor' brother's new name all she would say
was, "We use to share the same father."
Pilot Mikarts also flies
out of the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport for a Christian missionary group
called Agape Flights, which describe themselves as an independent ministry
fighting disease, poverty and illiteracy by serving missionaries in the
Western hemisphere and beyond. They have been running a weekly flight down
and back to the Dominican Republic for over twenty years.
How many guys using aliases
fly American missionary flights servicing the Caribbean Basin? Mikarts
is a perfect example of why things seem a little out of skew, at the the
flight schools at the Venice Florida Airport.
"Rudi’s greedy, and when
you’re greedy you can be used for something," a Special Operations Commando
leader from the nearby McDill Air Force Base told us.
"I've always had some suspicions
about the way he breezed into town out of nowhere," said one observer at
the Venice Airport. "Just too many odd little things. For example, he has
absolutely no aviation background as far as anyone can tell. And he evidently
had no use for, nor knowledge of, FAA rules and regs."
These statements struck us
as strange. "Breezed into town out of nowhere" and "no aviation background"
doesn’t square with the portrayal of Dekkers in newspaper clippings announcing
his purchase of the flight school two years ago, which stressed his broad
business aviation experience in neighboring Naples.
"Ambassador Airways owners
Rudi Dekkers, 42, Naples, president, and Wally Hilliard, 67, also from
Naples, were both said to be experienced pilots." Their Ambassador Airways
was said to "own several jet aircraft including Lear jets." New owners
of Huffman Aviation have global presence
The friends of Rudi Dekkers
Lack of proper aviation background
was also a comment heard about Dekkers in an interview this week with Richard
Boehlke, a partner of Dekkers in a recent airline venture called Florida
Air. Boehlke accuses Dekkers of not having enough experience to run a commuter
airline and training facilities. Portland Native's Brush with Terror
"He (Dekkers) was an oxymoron
the day I met him," Boehlke told Portland reporter Eric Mason. "I can’t
believe anyone handed him millions of dollars to run a business he had
no experience in."
Boehlke leveled another charge
in his interview, stating Dekkers had suggested that his students hone
their skills by acting as co-pilots on commuter routes in Florida and elsewhere.
Boehlke said Dekkers urged him to allow students to ride-along as co-pilots
on scheduled airline flights, which is illegal.
"They could have been terrorists
on a ride-along!" Boehlke told reporter Eric Mason of Portland Oregon radio
station K-Pam. He said a 'chill' runs through him when he thinks about
it.
Said a FAA spokesman, about
Dekkers’ proposed scheme, "Having a student without enough hours or that
type rating as a co-pilot is not legal."
Boehlke said, "I was amazed
knowing how close we’d been to that training environment. It would have
given them legal access to cockpits and other secure areas in airports
across the country."
Richard Boehlke's claim to
be "amazed" is like Capt. Renaud telling Bogie in Casablanca that he’s
shocked—shocked!—to find gambling going on, while pocketing his winnings
at the same time.
For the 53-year-old Boehlke,
the sun-drenched parties aboard his personal Grumman Albatross with friends
in the San Juan Islands are supposed to be over. His huge flying boat sits
for sale at the Tacoma Narrows Airport in Gig Harbor, along with other
assets from his troubled aviation company. He is not however running noticeably
short of cash, observers note.
Boehlke was hot news because
of his proximity to terrorist flight school owner Dekkers and his concurrent
participation in what the Securities & Exchange Commission has called
"the biggest fraud by an investment manager in U.S. history."
"Ex-money manager charged
with fraud" was the headline in an October 6th AP story. A federal grand
jury indicted Jeffrey Grayson whose firm 'collapsed' losing hundreds of
millions of pension investments. Grayson was charged with mail fraud,
conspiracy, money laundering, witness tampering and paying a former union
chief union trust funds in a scheme that cost Grayson's clients over $355
million in failed and fraudulent investments.
Might the two stories have
a connection?
Might the same "international
network" responsible for stealing almost a half billion dollars have been
simultaneously training terrorist air corps in Florida?
Boehlke got $25 million to
build a condominium project which court documents reveal cost only half
that amount.
Before Dekker’s airline
partner Richard Boehlke ever broke ground on his failed project, someone
had already pocketed 13 million dollars.
"I’ve known Jeff Grayson
(Capital Consultants’ former CEO) for 12 years," Boehlke said. "I have
never known him to have any shady or, you know, some have asked me about...
Mafia affiliations."
There. He said the "M" word.
"Boehlke would do anything
for money, he was so desperate," an aviation
executive who had witnessed Boehlke's descent told us. "I’m surprised he hasn’t skipped the country
by now, what with all the trouble he’s gotten himself into farting around
with those Mafia boys down in Portland."
Another grateful beneficiary
of the money they were giving away in Portland, Or. from the retirement
pension funds of the little people--laborer's and secretary's--was a Miami
Florida man whose complex web of international
connections connections is legendary.
Alvin Malnik has been called
"Meyer Lansky’s heir" as the head of organized crime so often in print
that he should put it on his
business cards . But it is not Malnick’s
gangster ties that make your jaw drop: its his connection with the Saudi
Royal Family.
Jewish 'gangster' Alvin Malnick’s
son is married to the daughter of a leading Prince of the Middle Eastern
kingdom's founding family.
"The Saudi Prince not only
blessed the marriage, but regularly works with
the US organized crime
associates ,"
states one report on the connection. "The Saudi King would frequently send
his private 747 to Florida to pick up Malnik and his associates, so they
could conduct business on the plane away from prying eyes."
A Saudi King, A Mob Boss,
and a Terrorist Drug Kingpin
"Frankly, we can't differentiate
between terrorism and organized crime and drug dealing," Assistant Attorney
General Michael Chertoff told the Senate Banking Committee hearings about
the terrorists’ money trail in the aftermath of the Sept 11 disaster.
Terrorist groups have been
implicated in the $360 billion a year international narcotics trade,
directed by organized crime, says judge Thierry Cretin of the European
Anti-Fraud Office.
As recently as six weeks
ago, crime families were being seen as particularly important for terrorist
groups involved in the acquisition and transport of arms, like in the case
of a Jersey City man accused of attempting to smuggle Stinger missiles
out of the country to Osama bin Laden who is now reportedly helping federal
agents investigating the Sept 11 terrorist attacks.
If the deal he got caught
doing was typical, insiders say, it was oil and heroin up front for guns
and training.
Oil and heroin upfront for
arms and training. Now there's a story we haven't heard about yet in the
roiling skies above the terrorist flight schools on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
And no one is saying anything
about the proximity to the terrorist's training sites of nearby Tampa,
Florida, long the domain of Mob Boss and heroin kingpin Santo Trafficante.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Suzanne
E. Spaulding, executive director of the National Commission on Terrorism,
a congressionally appointed task force. "In hindsight, we can see how all
these things [flight school connections] might be relevant and important."
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