17 months later, Rudi Dekkers gets taken
downtown
VENICE, FL—March 20
by Daniel Hopsicker
world exclusive
copyright 2003 MadCowMorningNews
may not be printed without
permission
A year-long MadCowMorningNews
investigation has uncovered evidence that at least seven of Mohamed Atta's
closest associates in Florida during the year leading up to the 9/11 attack
were not Arab, but German.
The names of the seven,
all pilots, have not surfaced in any press accounts of Atta's stay in the
U.S., nor has their existence been mentioned or alluded to in official
statements.
Traveling with Atta, or
meeting him around the state, Atta's German friends appeared to share a
relationship with him of long-standing, according to eyewitnesses, dating
back to his days in Hamburg.
The meetings, in places like
Key West and Miami, were apparently very serious business; when they returned,
said someone who was there, Atta and his German associates "always came
back glum."
Only one of the seven is
still in the U.S.; five live in Germany or Switzerland.
The seventh, with whom Atta
reportedly traveled extensively, has a criminal record in Germany, and
today lives in Saudi Arabia.
The identities of the seven
German nationals were pieced together from information gleaned in interviews
with Atta's one-time American girlfriend, corroborated by independent aviation
sources in Venice and Naples, FL.
From what has been learned
so far, the backgrounds of Atta's German associates seem strikingly similar
to that of another German national, Andreas Strassmeir, whose possible
relationship with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was in the news
a decade ago. Strassmeir was at one point named in a lawsuit by families
of the victims as a "US federal informant with material knowledge of the
Oklahoma City bombing."
Strassmeir's father was once
a top aide to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl; Atta's German friends are
all children of the German elite.
"Glum's the word"
But before delving further
into Atta's German connections, there were two other related developments
in Florida last week.
In the first, the former
owner of the terror flight school in Venice, FL., Rudi Dekkers, was arrested
last week on a single count of felony fraud, and booked into the Collier
County Jail in Naples FL.
As the MadCowMorningNews
has been reporting, suspicious and often illegal activities were commonplace
occurrences at Dekkers-owned flight schools at the same time the schools
were training a veritable "Who's Who" of Hamburg cadre terrorists.
Now the arrest of the controversial
Dutch national comes amid indications from authorities that Federal agencies
involved in the 9/11 investigation are taking a closer look at Dekker's
business activities in Florida during the past decade, fueling speculation
he might become the first non-Arab charged in a wider 9/11 conspiracy than
has so-far been revealed.
Despite settling his lawsuit
with former partner Wally Hilliard, Rudi Dekker's legal woes may be just
beginning, said State's Attorney Jonathon Greene.
Being forced to pose for
a new mug shot is just the latest in a series of reversals suffered recently
by the Venice "Magic Dutch Boy," so-called because he is one of two Dutch
nationals who owned flight schools at the Venice Airport which each--by
apparent freak coincidence--ended up training terrorists to fly.
Dekkers also recently lost
his battle for control of Huffman Aviation. Last week its sale to new owners
was ratified by the Venice City Council in a unanimous voice vote, amid
questions about who had been responsible for approving Dekker's lease at
the Venice airport in the first place.
Then, too, Dekker's helicopter
crashed recently, while he was en route to a showdown meeting with partner
Wally Hilliard over control of Huffman Aviation.
In another apparent 'freak
coincidence,' the owner of the second Dutch-owned flight school at the
Venice Airport, Arne Kruithof, has also recently suffered a near-fatal
aviation mishap. His happened last summer, when his plane fell from a hundred
feet in the air onto the runway of the Venice Airport.
It appears as if both Dekkers
and Kruithof would be well-advised to stay away from open windows.
Atta's German buddies
The German element arrived
in Florida with "Wolfgang" in 1996. Prior to arriving in Naples he was
associated with an organization called "The Flying Club of Munich."
"Wolfgang showed up from
Munich in the mid 1990s and immediately began operating a flight school
illegally," stated an aviation source in Naples. "He’s half Swiss, half
German."
Wolfgang was instrumental
in bringing another of Atta's German associates to Florida, a pilot named
"Stephan," who we were to learn has done jail time in Germany, was on parole
there when he came to the U.S., and recently spent a year in Gundogdu,
Turkey.
While regular German flight
students struggle to obtain the necessary visas, Wolfgang and Stephan had
inside connections which smoothed their progress.
“Sometimes it makes me
mad that a criminal gets preference," stated one German national flight
instructor in Naples with obvious bitterness.
"Wolfgang signed off on Stephan’s
books, and Stephan also got in on a fraudulent business investor’s visa."
"Wolfgang was in his thirties,"
says Amanda Keller, who lived with Atta during March and April of 2001.
"He and Wolfgang were very tight, they went everywhere together. When he
came into the picture they were together all the time."
"Him and Wolfgang drove around
in the red convertible," Keller remembers. "Their favorite place to eat
was Hooters in Sarasota. They got kicked out for grabbing a waitress's
boobs."
Keller also states that Atta
always spoke German with Wolfgang, directly contradicting the testimony
of Rudi Dekkers, who told a Congressional Committee that when he addressed
him in German, Atta had merely looked at him strangely.
What this is all about
Less than 24 hours after
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks the world's eyes were riveted on Florida’s
Gulf Coast, where FBI agents swarmed the peaceful retirement community
of Venice.
Authorities said the tiny
airport there had served as a secret terrorist training site, teaching
three of the four pilots involved in the Sept. 11attack to fly.
Since then, authorities have
had strikingly little to say about Venice.
The last related development
last week was the reported ‘outrage’ over 9/11 that Florida Sen. Bob
Graham said prompted to join the Democratic presidential sweepstakes last
week.
The 66-year-old Graham—who
recently had heart surgery—has toyed with the idea of running for years,
but says he always lacked “fire in the belly,” until, he says,
FBI and CIA failures inspired his White House run.
Graham told NEWSWEEK, his
experience last year overseeing a joint House-Senate inquiry into the events
of 9-11 left him outraged by the intelligence and law-enforcement failures
discovered by the inquiry—most of which, he charges, are still being
suppressed by the Bush administration.
The inquiry’s 400-page
report can’t be publicly released because the administration won’t
declassify key portions. Graham says the report documents far more miscues
by the FBI and CIA than have been publicly revealed, as well as leads that
remain unpursued which point to “facilitation” of the hijackers by
a “sovereign nation.” “There’s been a cover-up of this,” Graham
said.
NEWSWEEK says its sources
say the unnamed country is Saudi Arabia.
That may prove partly correct.
But there are few--if any--Saudis named "Wolfgang."
Newsweek should keep digging.
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