Mohamed Atta snorted coke;
Seized Learjet came from same source as Barry Seal's.
November 14—world exclusive
by Daniel Hopsicker
copyright MadCowMorningNews
may not be reprinted without
permission
Mounting evidence in the
investigation into the terror flight schools in Venice FL is raising questions
of whether an officially-sanctioned drug trafficking operation there discouraged
the FBI from taking action against the terrorists that might have averted
the World Trade Center disaster.
The dark specter of the drug
trade is throwing an increasingly long shadow across the terrorist conspiracy's
activities in Venice, where Mohamed Atta and his close associates, many
of whom were German, frequently used cocaine. According to a credible eyewitness,
when their supplies ran low they would procure more from a flight school
at the Venice Airport.
In an exclusive 3-hour videotaped
interview at a secret location, 21-year old Amanda Keller, Mohamed Atta's
former live-in girlfriend, revealed that supposed "Islamic fundamentalist"
Mohamed Atta and his closest associates in Venice were habitual cocaine
users.
"They were always drinking,"
Keller told us. "Always. Beer or wine, or sometimes rum. Once I had met
everyone there (at a ' safe house' located in an condominium owned by Rudi
Dekkers across the street from the Venice Airport) they felt comfortable
with me and pulled out the coke."
"You saw Mohamed Atta do
coke?"
"Yeah. The first time I saw
him use it he borrowed a dollar from me to roll up as a straw, and then
asked me if I wanted to do a line laid out on a glass table in the living
room they used to cut it on. I said no. To me it was like something you'd
see in a movie. It was the first time I’d ever even seen cocaine."
Numerous eyewitnesses, including
their apartment manager, their next-door neighbors, and a former Huffman
Aviation insider, who vividly remembers her then-hot pink hair, have verified
Amanda Keller's relationship with Mohamed Atta. The two shared an apartment
together for two months across the street from the Venice Airport.
"These guys had money flowing
out their ass," Keller stated. "They never seemed to run out of money.
They had massive supplies of cocaine. Whenever they’d run out, they’d
go over to the flight school. I followed them one day with Sabrina (a German
friend of Atta's) to see where they were going, and saw them go into Florida
Flight Training."
The Florida Flight Training
Center is owned by Arne Kruithof, one of the two 'Magic Dutch Boys' who
run flight schools at the Venice Airport.
"Being 'Connected' Means
Never Having to Say You're Sorry."
In an incredible development,
Federal court documents obtained by the MadCowMorningNews reveal
that the Learjet belonging to Huffman Aviation owner Wallace J. Hilliard,
confiscated with 45 pounds of heroin onboard on July 25, 2000 at Orlando
Executive Airport, was procured by Hilliard from the same source which—two
decades earlier—provided the Learjet used by famous drug smuggler and
CIA agent Barry Seal.
Moreover, affidavits filed
by machine-gun toting DEA agents who surrounded the Learjet also indicate
that Wally Hilliard's involvement in the operation was much deeper than
has so far been reported.
The Federal court records
show that Hilliard got his Learjet from World Jet, Inc., owned by the notorious
drug smuggling Whittington brothers of Fort Lauderdale, FL., who in their
heyday in the early 1980’s commanded fleets of fishing trawlers, sailboats,
power boats, and jets. After being indicted for smuggling and tax evasion,
their prized Learjet had gone to a man soon to become the biggest drug
smuggler in American history, Barry Seal.
Small world.
The new revelations heighten
concern that the true reason for the FBI’s failure to take action against
terrorists which the Bureau has acknowledged knowing were training in Venice
may have been their historical reluctance to meddle on another Federal
Agency's turf.
Nor was the FBI the only
Federal Agency protecting the drug trafficking operation, court documents
reveal.
Though the Justice Department,
through the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Orlando, declined to prosecute,
the affidavits filed by DEA agents after the heroin trafficking arrests
make clear their belief that the pilot of the plane, who worked directly
for the Lear's owner Wally Hilliard, was also involved and should have
been charged along with the five Venezuelan and Colombian nationals who
eventually pled guilty in the case, called "the largest-ever seizure of
heroin in Central Florida" by the Orlando Sentinel.
"Reach out and touch someone."
While machine-gun toting
DEA agents swarmed around the plane, states the affidavit, "the pilot of
the aircraft frantically attempted to make a telephone
call using a cellular phone, and ignored agents and police officers
who repeatedly ordered him to drop the telephone."
"Agents had to physically remove
the telephone from his hands," the affidavit goes on.
"Based on my experience I know that narcotics traffickers maintain frequent
contact with one another while transporting narcotics and currency. I believe
he attempted to contact other accomplices as to the presence
of agents and other law enforcement officials."
The affidavit confirms information
the MadCowMorningNews had learned from sources at the Naples, FL Airport
about the frequency of the plane's trips to South America. (Flight School
Owner's Plane Seized for Heroin Trafficking) It states the pilot
"stated he had known (Venezuelan) VALLES-DIAZ for approximately nine months.
He has flown VALLES-DIAZ to New York and Fort Lauderdale approximately
30 times during that time."
The affidavit continues,
"(The pilot) said that he and his company were paid a total of $600,000
for those trips, and that he was going to be paid $80,000 for the current
trip after arriving in Orlando."
Numerous aviation observers
indicated that thirty flights in nine months—a weekly ‘milk run’
down and back to Venezuela—would ignite grave suspicions from any legitimate
charter jet company.
The discovery that Hilliard’s
operation was paid cash for each of the flights, in the unanimous opinion
of aviation observers in Southwest Florida, removes any question about
the legitimacy of the enterprise.
"It’s just blatant," said
one. "They obviously weren’t even bothering to hide what they were doing."
FBI inactivity explained?
As early as one week after
September 11, the FBI was pointedly stating that they knew about terrorists
rotating through Rudi Dekkers’ flight school in Venice, Florida.
"The FBI Knew Terrorists
Were Using Flight Schools," read a Washington Post headline one week after
the attack. "Federal authorities have been aware for years that suspected
terrorists with ties to Osama bin Laden were receiving flight training
at schools in the United States," the article stated.
What they left unanswered
was why they did nothing to shut it down.
Indications of the FBI's
"guilty knowledge" were widespread in the aftermath of the attack, including
the widely-reported fact that the FBI was at Huffman Aviation with search
warrants at 2.30 a.m. the night after the attack.
Now we have uncovered evidence
indicating that the FBI was on the scene even earlier...
"How do you think the FBI
got here (Huffman Aviation) so fast after the attack?" asked one Huffman
Aviation insider. "They knew what was going on here. Hell, they were parked
in a white van outside my house less than four hours after the buildings
collapsed."
"We heard that 16 of the
19 terrorists had been on Interpol's Most Wanted list," this aviation executive
continued. "But early on I gleaned that these guys had Government protection.
They were let into this country for a specific purpose. It was a business
deal."
A "Green Light" from the
DEA
The new information adds
to long-standing suspicions of drug trafficking held by aviation observers
at the Venice Airport, who more than six months ago told us the Hilliard/Dekkers
operation had a 'green light' from the DEA at the Venice Airport.
"The local Venice Police
Department (which mounted round-the-clock patrols at the Airport after
Sept.11) were warned to leave them alone," said one aviation executive
at the time.
Further evidence of sinister
currents swirling around the Venice Airport includes testimony from eyewitnesses
indicating that Rudi Dekkers was in trouble with the DEA while still located
at the Naples Airport in the mid-1990's.
The notion of a Federal "hands-off"
policy towards the Venice operation also helps explain a suspicious circumstance
which has provoked much speculation in the local aviation community...
How did ' Magic Dutch Boy'
Rudi Dekkers, whose various businesses have all been utter and abject failures,
manage to live in a $2.5 million mansion in a private gated community?
The rumor has long been that
Dekkers has other sources of income.
A more important question
is whether—were it not for the drug trafficking—the World Trade Center
attack could have been prevented through the simple expedient of arresting
known terrorist Mohamed Atta.
"Welcome to Casablanca."
Far from merely being negligent
or asleep at the switch—the thrust of allegations expected to be aired
in hearings by an Independent Commission currently being thwarted by the
Bush Administration—the evidence indicates the CIA was not only aware
of the thousands of Arab student pilots who began pouring into the U.S.
to attend flight training beginning in 1999, but was in truth running the
operation.
"The American people must
know the full story has yet to be told," Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican
member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said at a hearing last month.
And U.S. Senate Intelligence
Committee Chairman Bob Graham said on Sunday he is seeking to declassify
'the most important information' obtained in a congressional probe of the
Sept. 11 attacks.
'Frankly, there is a piece
of information which is still classified which I consider to be the most
important information that's come to the attention of the joint committee,'
Graham said on CBS's 'Face the Nation.'
'We hope that it will be
declassified,' Graham said. 'I think it is an important part of our judgments
as to where our greatest threats are and what steps we need to do to protect
the American people here at home.'
Suspicions expressed by an
unexpected source, Republican Senator Shelby, indicate bipartisan
unease with the continuing cover-up.
"Time is not on our side,"
Shelby said. "You know, we were told that there would be cooperation in
this investigation, and I question that. I think that most of the information
that our staff has been able to get that is real meaningful has had to
be extracted piece by piece."
The Republican Senator, quoted
in the New York Times on September 10, 2002, stated "there is explosive
information that has not been publicly released. I think there are some
more bombs out there ... I know that."
Here here. |