by Daniel Hopsicker
March 8--Venice Florida
New developments raise troubling
questions about "Pied Piper" of terrorist pilots.
Mohamed Atta had connections
with the Saudi Royal Family, according to his flight instructor at Huffman
Aviation in Venice Florida, who told another student pilot Atta's status
as a member of the Saudi elite warranted him having a full-time bodyguard
at all times during his U.S. flight training.
The bombshell revelation,
buried in news reports immediately after 9/11, re-surfaced recently
in an Australian television documentary interview with Anne Greaves, a
London osteopath whose passion for aviation led her to take flight training
at Huffman Aviation at the same time as Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi.
From Hamburg Germany to Venice
Florida...
More on Greave's startling
testimony in a moment. But there were also several other developments challenging
what we've been told about Mohamed Atta's true identity.
Suspicion is growing in Hamburg,
Germany that Atta maintained ties with Western intelligence agencies while
in Technical School, says one former German intelligence official, pointing
to Atta's participation in an elite program sponsored by the German equivalent
of the Agency for International Development, an arm of the government which
often harbors intelligence operatives in the U.S.
Even the Hamburg electronics
company which employed three members of the core cadre—Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi,
and Ramzi Binalshibh—for more than two years while they were students
is beginning to appear to be not quite what it seemed at first glance.
Hay Computing Service GmbH
is suspected of being what is known in German as a "briefkastenfirma,"
literally a "mailbox firm," commonly referred to in the U.S. as a
"dummy front company."
A cover story begins to break
down
New evidence also calls into
question the chronology of Mohamed Atta’s final days. The MadCowMorningNews
has learned exclusively that an eyewitness who has never been contacted
by the FBI spotted Atta, Marwan and Siad Al-Jarrah together in Venice barely
a week before the terrorist attack, long after authorities say they had
moved on from this tiny retirement community on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
All three terrorist pilots
ordered subs from her in the deli at the local Publix supermarket, states
Brenda Covey. She had served them all before on numerous occasions, she
continued, a statement confirmed by news accounts, and so she has no doubt
at all about who the three were.
What were they doing-or who
were they meeting with--in tiny Venice Florida? At the very least this
raises more suspicion about why the FBI has insisted Atta's terrorist cadre's
arrival enmasse in Venice was nothing but sheer happenstance.
Eyewitness testimony doesn't
make the papers--again.
Englishwoman Anne Greaves
met Mohamed Atta while pursuing her lifelong dream of learning to fly.
As fate would have it she ended up taking flying lessons with Mohamed Atta
at Huffman Aviation in Venice Florida.
"I certainly found it strange
to find two Arabs in such a quiet location," she told the Australian Broadcasting
Corp.’s investigative program 4Corners.
"When I checked with my instructor
on one occasion about their (strange) habits, I was informed that the men
we now know as Mohamed Atta and al-Shehhi actually had royal connections
with a Saudi House and al-Shehhi was his bodyguard."
Correspondent Liz Jackson
attempted to pin down details of Greaves’ stunning allegation…
"This story about Mohamed
Atta being royalty and al-Shehhi being his bodyguard, was that something
just that Huffman's told you? I mean do you think that was something that
they even believed or…"
"It was my impression that
it was generally believed," Greaves states. "Because it was my instructor
who told me this at the time so I had the impression that that was generally
believed, yes.
"That Mohamed Atta was royalty?"
"That he had some connection
of the Royal House of Saudi, yes."
"And al-Shehhi was his bodyguard?"
"That is what I was given
to understand so in a way it made sense to me that there were always two
because I never saw al-Shehhi take the controls of the aircraft. It was
always Mohamed Atta but nevertheless al-Shehhi always accompanied him on
his flying lessons."
"A soft-shoe shuffle at 30000
feet."
Was Mohamed Atta a student
pilot with a bodyguard who flew along with him during flight training?
This is not a detail that would have been missed by the flight school's
owner, who was queried about it on-camera.
Dekkers was asked, "Now there
have been stories that he presented himself as an Arab prince, is that
correct?"
"Well, no," Dekkers replied.
"If he was a prince, yes or no, I can't state that because we never heard
them talking about that, we never heard anything, we have heard that one
of my students who was here in the same time that Atta and al-Shehhi was
here, and I think it was Miss Greaves, that she stated in the London newspaper
that he was a prince, that their clothing was expensive and that al-Shehhi
was his guard."
"Nothing of that we have
seen here in the five months they were here," continued Dekkers in broken
English. "They were absolutely low profile, they clothed themselves like
we all do, jeans and sneakers, there was nothing else."
Someone is lying.. Atta either
did or did not take his bodyguard up with him on training flights. And
since there is indisputable evidence that eyewitnesses in numerous
interviews mentioned Mohamed Atta's fussy-by-Florida-standards dress code,
it is Anne Greaves who appears to be telling the truth.
Where does that leave Rudi
Dekkers?
If Rudi Dekkers lied in an
improvised on camera attempt to discredit Anne Greaves' account it raises
red flags about whether he was telling the truth during his innumerable
television appearances in the wake of the disaster.
And it raises the question
of what he might be trying to hide.
"High test or regular?"
Evidence suggesting that
Dekkers is an inveterate liar surfaced last week in the local Venice Gondolier,
which caught him telling an obvious whopper.
In a front page story about
heightened security concerns at the Venice Airport the paper reported that
five aviation fuel trucks belonging to Dekkers had been discovered parked
at the Venice Airport with keys in their ignitions, unlocked, unattended,
and loaded with over 6000 gallons of highly flammable aviation fuel.
Already burdened with a bad
case of nerves over their Airport’s involvement in 9/11, city officials
were not amused.
Defensively, Dekkers told
reporters that leaving the keys in the ignition had not been standard procedure,
but just a mistake.
"That is not normal," he
said.
A Huffman employee, however,
had already gone on record with the police stating "that's the way they
always leave them."
A newspaper editorial then
suggested, for the first time, that it might be time for Rudi to go.
"If he won’t be more helpful,
the city should re-examine whether it wants Dekkers’ business to remain
at the airport," said the Gondolier editorial.
In truth, slipping quietly
out of town may be exactly the outcome the Dutch national is desperately
seeking. When your cover is blown you've outlived your usefulness.
No one enjoys being left
hanging, twisting slowly, slowly, in the wind.
"What are they hiding down
in Venice Florida?"
Today Dekkers’ presence
at the Venice Airport is a continual reminder that the FBI has unfinished
business in its investigation into the global network which aided the terrorists.
Their work was halted, despite vocal protests by FBI agents on the case,
by Pres. George W. Bush, in what he said was an effort to free more manpower
for the anthrax investigation.
But after the disclosure
last week that Vice Pres. Dick Cheney "strongly" urged Senate Majority
leader Tom Daschle to rein in the scope of the upcoming Hearings, Bush's
halting of the FBI investigation can be seen in a somewhat different light.
Down in tiny Venice Florida,
the biggest 9/11 crime scene that wasn't reduced to rubble, a knowledgeable
airport observer pointed out to us something he found curious.
Since September 11 general
aviation has been in serious downturn, he told us. At the Venice Airport
its been, understandably, even worse.
"Remember the stories about
how Rudi Dekkers had so much trouble coming up with his rent at the Airport?"
(Flight School Owner has Shady Ties).
Dekkers had been late paying
his rent last February, March, April, May, June and July.
"Rudi Dekkers isn't having
trouble paying his rent anymore," stated this observer, in a slow soft
voice that sounded more than a little in awe of the implications of the
statement.
This is all no doubt just
sheer coincidence.
NEXT: Character is still
destiny: "The Rudi Dekkers No One Knows."
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