by Daniel Hopsicker
July 29—Venice, FL.
Just three nights before
President George W Bush arrived at the swank Colony Resort on Longboat
Key on the evening of Sept 10, 2001, Mohamed Atta was staying at a slightly-less
tony hotel just two miles down the beach, the Holiday Inn Hotel &
Suites—Longboat Key, according to eyewitnesses who contacted the FBI
in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
Predictably, the story went
nowhere. So too did early wire reports stating that on the day of the attack
Sarasota police said the Secret Service interrogated four Sudanese men
after getting a tip that the men intended to harm President Bush during
his visit to the city.
The incident was found to
be "unrelated" to the attacks, the AP reported, and ended in the release
of the men.
But these stories are now
being resurrected in the wake of recent reports of a possible Longboat
Key assassination attempt against Bush on the morning of the terrorist
attack, and they are provoking disturbing questions about how much, or
how little, Americans have been told about the events surrounding the attack
on their country.
In an exclusive interview
with the MadCowMorningNews, the bartender at Marty's Pub at the Holiday
Inn, Darlene Sieverts said, "Mohamed Atta sat right on that bar stool,
drinking rum and coke."
"I didn't have any real interaction
with him. A bartender can tell when a customer doesn't want to talk, and
he didn't."
"How do you say 'I'll
have what he's having?'"
"About fifteen minutes later
he was joined by a second man. When I approached (the second man) and asked
what he'd like to drink, he indicated that he didn't speak English, and
motioned for Atta to intercede. Instead of ordering something for him,
Atta asked for the bill," bartender Sieverts told us.
"He left a $20 bill to cover
a $4. tab."
Sieverts recollections of
spotting on Longboat Key the most cold-blooded killer of the still-young
21st Century—just a few short days before Bush's arrival—were confirmed
to the FBI by other hotel employees, several of whom also recalled seeing
Atta on another occasion, dining in the hotel's Gulfstream restaurant
with a man identified by the restaurant manager and a waiter as Marwan
Al-shehhi.
The two both dined on the
hotel’s featured 'Surf & Turf' buffet.
The revelation of Atta's
proximity to Bush, first reported in the local Longboat Observer,
deepens the mystery surrounding the pre-dawn warning received by the Secret
Service detail protecting the President on his Florida trip in the early
morning hours on Sept 11.
Alarmingly, The Colony, which
bills itself as "the nation's no. 1 tennis resort," is just two miles of
mostly-deserted white sand away from the Holiday Inn Hotel frequented by
Atta and Al-shehhi.
Longboat Key is located just
outside Sarasota, Fl., itself the home of such curious attractions as the
Ringling Bros. Circus, and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris,
now running for Congress, the local daughter of a citrus magnate who became
internationally-famous overnight in the aftermath of the Presidential election
of 2000.
Bush was in Florida to promote
his administration's new education bill. His first stop of the day was
to be at the Emma E Booker Elementary School in Sarasota—a 25-minute
drive from the Colony.
"Four Sudanese men? In
Sarasota?"
In the warning, Zainelabdeen
Omer, a Sudanese national who has since disappeared, told authorities of
an immediate threat of a possible assassination attempt and terror attack
on America from a friend of his, a man named "Ghandi" who had just arrived
in Sarasota to bail someone out of jail.
To bring the day's chronology
into focus, a little after 6am on September 11, 2001, according to an AP
report, "Bush awoke in the magnificent surroundings of the Colony Beach
Resort on Longboat Key, an upscale and relatively-pristine tropical island
enclave located directly on the Gulf of Mexico a spindly coral island in
the Gulf of Mexico, off Sarasota, Florida."
"The previous evening Mr
Bush had dined beachside with his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida,
the state that had controversially handed him the presidency. Now, on the
morning of his 234th day in office, a light, warm breeze was slipping in
from the ocean, and, after breakfast, Bush led his Secret Service crew
on a four-mile run around the nearby Serenoa golf links."
"On his return to the Colony,
the President showered, changed into a lightweight, dark blue suit, and,
still glowing from the morning's exertion, sat down for the first routine
intelligence briefing of the day. It was 8am."
"At the same time Atta, was
fourteen hundred miles away, making his way onto American Airlines Flight
11 taking off from Boston's Logan International Airport, followed 14 minutes
later from the same airport by Al-Shehhi, aboard United Airlines Flight
175."
"No van, no warning? No
problem."
The AP story neglects any
mention of a van filled with Middle Eastern men attempting to gain access
to the President at the same time as Bush is leaving for his morning jog.
And although the story was
reported on the local NBC affiliate, the AP also neglects any mention of
the pre-dawn warning of an attack.
Instead, the AP's account
of Bush briefing that morning states that "The President's briefing appears
to have included some reference to the heightened terrorist risk reported
throughout the summer, but contained nothing specific, severe or imminent
enough to necessitate a call to Condoleezza Rice, his 47-year-old National
Security Adviser.
The FBI, too, seemed unimpressed.
"Nationwide the FBI has received
over 200,00 such tips, stated FBI spokesman Sarah Oakes, "with more than
5000 of the tips coming into the Tampa office alone."
"Mum's the word in Florida"
Unlike whistleblowers who
have come forward in the FBI's Minneapolis and Phoenix offices, to name
just two, agents in the Tampa FBI office have maintained their silence.
So too have agents in the
Sarasota FBI office.
Does their silence signal
valid national security concerns? Or just embarrassment?
Atta and Al-Shehhi's presence
on Longboat Key just days before the President's arrival raise a number
of disturbing questions.
The most pressing is also
the most obvious. What were terrorists doing on Longboat Key?
Still, the Secret Service,
no doubt very aware of Atta's suspicious presence on Longboat Key,
has dismissed the pre-dawn warning they received as "just coincidence."
This must mean that when,
three days later, a van filled with Middle Eastern men attempted to gain
entry to Bush's hotel by posing as journalists, it has nothing at all to
do with "terrorist ringleader" Mohamed Atta's recent presence on Longboat
Key.
It is all just a coincidence.
Nothing to see here. Move
along.
|