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For The Record  

FTR #684 Interview with Daniel Hopsicker: Business as Usual in South Florida

MP3 Side 1 | Side 2

Intro­duc­tion: In a wel­come return to our air­waves, ground­break­ing inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Daniel Hop­sick­er high­lights the pow­er­ful crim­i­nal net­works through which Mohamed Atta and some of the 9/11 hijack­ers infil­trat­ed the U.S.

Michael Brass­ing­ton was a pilot for Wal­ly Hilliard’s oper­a­tions, includ­ing flights on a Lear­jet to Venezuela. (Hilliard was the prin­ci­pal behind Rudi Dekkers’ Huff­man Avi­a­tion–vehi­cle for the Atta & com­pa­ny infil­tra­tion). (Hilliard and Dekkers are among those pic­tured above.) It was on one of these flights that 43 pounds of hero­in were dis­cov­ered, one of the largest hero­in busts in South Flori­da his­to­ry. Brass­ing­ton (pic­tured at left) was the co-pilot on that flight. He also was on a flight that skid­ded into a ter­mi­nal at Teter­boro air­port in New Jer­sey.

A recent report links Brass­ing­ton, Wolf­gang Bohringer and Michael Mis­ick in a crim­i­nal con­cate­na­tion encom­pass­ing mul­ti­ple forms of cor­rup­tion on a mas­sive scale. (Mis­ick is the crim­i­nal leader of the Turks and Grand Caicos Islands, recent­ly re-pos­sessed by Great Britain. Bohringer is one of Mohamed Atta’s Ger­man asso­ciates, him­self the sub­ject of a recent FBI ter­ror alert.)

Pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of Bohringer has high­light­ed his involve­ment with a pow­er­ful East­ern Euro­pean crim­i­nal net­work, which includ­ed the “Pirate of Prague”, Vic­tor Kozeny. Prof­it­ing from pri­va­ti­za­tion in East­ern Europe and the for­mer Sovi­et Union fol­low­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of the U.S.S.R., Kozeny’s activ­i­ties involved, among oth­er ele­ments, insur­ance giant and bailout recip­i­ent AIG.

In addi­tion, this axis was deeply involved with pow­er­ful Russ­ian oligarchs/mobsters such as Mario Hoff­man, deeply involved with illic­it activ­i­ties in the Turks and Grand Caicos. Where­as Kozeny was known as “the Pirate of Prague,” Hoff­man’s yacht is called “the Bar­ricu­da of Prague.”

Much of the pro­gram focused on the ongo­ing crim­i­nal nature and far-reach­ing scope of the wrong­do­ing inex­tri­ca­bly linked to Huff­man Avi­a­tion and Wal­ly Hilliard’s oth­er busi­ness enter­pris­es. In our last vis­it with Daniel Hop­sick­er, we exam­ined Art Nadel, a Ponzi scheme archi­tect who suc­ceed­ed Rudi Dekkers as head of Huff­man Avi­a­tion, the flight school through which many of the 9/11 hijack­ers infil­trat­ed.

Huff­man Avi­a­tion king­pin Wal­ly Hil­iard has him­self been sued for $100 mil­lion by angry investors in Green Bay Wis­con­sin.

Hilliard was also a part­ner in an air­line called Flori­da Air. His busi­ness part­ner in that ven­ture financed the oper­a­tion in con­sid­er­able mea­sure through the loot­ing of an invest­ment oper­a­tion that was one of the big­ger invest­ment scams uncov­ered before the enor­mous deba­cles that began to sur­face in 2008.

Anoth­er crim­i­nal con­nec­tion to Huff­man con­cerns a jet that was bust­ed in Mex­i­co with 5.5 mil­lion tons of cocaine. It had pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied a hangar at Huff­man Avi­a­tion. One of the prin­ci­pals in this imbroglio was Iran-Con­tra scan­dal lumi­nary Adnan Khashog­gi. (Khashog­gi got his start in busi­ness with a $25 mil­lion truck pur­chase, financed by the father of Osama bin Laden.) Huff­man avi­a­tion prin­ci­pal Hilliard loaned Khashog­gi a lear jet in the lat­ter’s attempt to gain con­trol of a Caribbean Island with an airstrip ide­al­ly suit­ed for the smug­gling of con­tra­band.

Khashog­gi (pic­tured at right) had pre­vi­ous­ly been fin­gered for a mas­sive stock swin­dle, which pre­cip­i­tat­ed what a judge called the biggest fail­ure of a bro­ker­age in U.S. his­to­ry.

Daniel also fore­shad­owed an upcom­ing arti­cle, set­ting forth Huff­man Avi­a­tion king­pin Rudi Dekkers’ sta­tus as a dead­beat dad.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of Hilliard’s links to an enor­mous pen­sion fund-rip off in the Port­land (Ore­gon) area; the links of for­mer Mey­er Lan­sky asso­ciate Alvin Mal­nik to the pen­sion fund rip-off; Russ­ian oligarch/don Mario Hoff­man’s recruit­ment of for­mer Slo­vak intel­li­gence agents as “mus­cle”; review of the activ­i­ties of Vik­tor Kozeny.

1. In a wel­come return to our air­waves, ground­break­ing inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Daniel Hop­sick­er high­lights the pow­er­ful crim­i­nal net­works through which Mohamed Atta and some of the 9/11 hijack­ers infil­trat­ed the U.S.

Michael Brass­ing­ton was a pilot for Wal­ly Hilliard’s oper­a­tions, includ­ing flights on a Lear­jet to Venezuela. It was on one of these flights that 43 pounds of hero­in were dis­cov­ered, one of the largest hero­in busts in South Flori­da his­to­ry. Brass­ing­ton was the co-pilot on that flight. He also was on a flight that skid­ded into a ter­mi­nal at Teter­boro air­port in New Jer­sey.

A recent report links Brass­ing­ton, Wolf­gang Bohringer and Michael Mis­ick in a crim­i­nal con­cate­na­tion encom­pass­ing mul­ti­ple forms of cor­rup­tion on a mas­sive scale. (Mis­ick is the crim­i­nal leader of the Turks and Grand Caicos Islands, recent­ly re-pos­sessed by Great Britain. Bohringer is one of Mohamed Atta’s Ger­man asso­ciates, him­self the sub­ject of a recent FBI ter­ror alert.)

Pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of Bohringer has high­light­ed his involve­ment with a pow­er­ful East­ern Euro­pean crim­i­nal net­work, which includ­ed the “Pirate of Prague”, Vic­tor Kozeny. Prof­it­ing from pri­va­ti­za­tion in East­ern Europe and the for­mer Sovi­et Union fol­low­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of the U.S.S.R., Kozeny’s activ­i­ties involved, among oth­er ele­ments, insur­ance giant and bailout recip­i­ent AIG.

In addi­tion, this axis was deeply involved with pow­er­ful Russ­ian oligarchs/mobsters such as Mario Hoff­man, deeply involved with illic­it activ­i­ties in the Turks and Grand Caicos. Where­as Kozeny was known as “the Pirate of Prague,” Hoff­man’s yacht is called “the Bar­ricu­da of Prague.”

A bit­ter fight to redact por­tions of the explo­sive final report of an offi­cial British Inquiry into sys­temic cor­rup­tion in the Turks and Caicos Islands back­fired last week when news of the redac­tions caused a firestorm of protest and the full report was leaked to free­dom of infor­ma­tion web­site Wik­iLeaks.

Some of the most sen­si­tive redac­tions (pdf) in the British Com­mis­sion of Inquiry’s Final Report con­cern much-trav­eled pilot Michael Fran­cis Brass­ing­ton, who first rose to the lev­el of pub­lic scruti­ny as co-pilot on a Lear jet (N351WB) belong­ing to the own­er of a flight school that at the time had been teach­ing Mohamed Atta to fly was seized by DEA Agents who found 43 lbs. of hero­in onboard.

The con­tro­ver­sy over the redact­ed report has iron­i­cal­ly shed light on a pre­vi­ous­ly-unknown con­nec­tion between Brass­ing­ton and a sec­ond pilot, Wolf­gang Bohringer, whose name also sur­faces reg­u­lar­ly in the back­ground to the intrigue in Flori­da swirling around Mohamed Atta dur­ing the run-up to the 9/11 attack.

Brass­ing­ton and Bohringer were not pre­vi­ous­ly known to have been con­nect­ed.

The con­tro­ver­sy over the unredact­ed report changed that, when the result­ing pub­lic­i­ty illu­mi­nat­ed dark cor­ners in the back­ground of the man whose deep pock­ets were keep­ing secret the full extent of Michael Mis­ick and Michael Fran­cis Brassington’s crimes.

Michael Brassington—still a close asso­ciate of Wal­ly Hilliard’s, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. Cus­toms Agent who has seen his file—and Wolf­gang Bohringer, an “asso­ciate” of Mohamed Atta’s close enough for Atta to have fre­quent­ly referred to him as “my broth­er,” have both been pilots for the Russ­ian Mob.

The Tem­pest in a Turks & Caicos Teapot erupt­ed when the British Com­mis­sion of Inquiry into cor­rup­tion in Prime Min­is­ter Michael Misick’s gov­ern­ment backed down from releas­ing its full report in the face of an angry cam­paign threat­en­ing media out­lets with law­suits by lawyers for a shady East­ern Euro­pean bil­lion­aire who stands accused in U.S. Sen­ate doc­u­ments of involve­ment in mon­ey laun­der­ing, as well as ties to inter­na­tion­al orga­nized crime.

A weeks-long firestorm of neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty ensued, which end­ed when Wik­iLeaks pub­lished the full report. It was a rare vic­to­ry for a free press and the demo­c­ra­t­ic con­cept which Wal­ter Cronkite famous­ly called “the people’s right to know.”

Brass­ing­ton fig­ured promi­nent­ly in the British Commission’s report on Misick’s cor­rup­tion, as not only the per­son­al pilot but Misick’s part­ner-in-crime as well.

As we first report­ed ear­li­er this year, the Gulf­stream jet Mis­ick and Brass­ing­ton were jet­ting around the world on belonged to a for­mer White House Spe­cial Assis­tant to Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton named Jef­frey Wat­son, who was once called “Flori­da’s insid­er at the White House” by the Fort Laud­erdale Sun-Sen­tinel. Wat­son is cur­rent­ly a Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ist.

The report shows the two men con­spired to steal sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars from the cof­fers of the now-bank­rupt Turks & Caicos gov­ern­ment. Mis­ick­’s crimes includ­ed a high­ly-pub­li­cized rape, intim­i­da­tion and beat­ing of rivals, as well as his wife, with whom he had sev­er­al knock­down (lit­er­al­ly) fights which required both to seek emer­gency hos­pi­tal care.

In front of the British inquiry, Mis­ick was por­trayed in vivid tes­ti­mo­ny by his for­mer wife (pdf), Amer­i­can TV-actress Lisa-Raye Mis­ick-McCoy, as being a drip­ping-in-gold-jew­el­ry gangs­ta in com­mand a small fleet of Gulf­stream lux­u­ry jets trav­el­ing all over the world.

Brass­ing­ton is a key fig­ure in sev­er­al recent scan­dals, fin­gered in a mil­i­tary pro­cure­ment scan­dal in his native Guyana recent­ly.

He also goes on tri­al in Fed­er­al Court (pdf) in Newark New Jer­sey lat­er this year, where he is charged with 23 felony counts accus­ing him of putting the lives of pas­sen­gers in dan­ger in the near-fatal crash of one of his char­ter company’s lux­u­ry jets at Teter­boro Air­port out­side New York City in 2005.

Most notably, as report­ed in this space and quot­ed exten­sive­ly in over­seas media, Brass­ing­ton’s “check­ered past” includ­ed a stint as co-pilot on 39 week­ly flights between Flori­da and Venezuela of the Lear jet (N351WB) which was owned by Huff­man Aviation’s own­er Wal­lace J. Hilliard, and was aboard the plane when it was final­ly bust­ed by DEA agents at Orlan­do Exec­u­tive Air­port in July of 2000 car­ry­ing 43 lbs. of hero­in.

At the same time, pilot Wolf­gang Bohringer, a close asso­ciate of Mohamed Atta’s in Flori­da, was fly­ing for noto­ri­ous financier Vik­tor Kozeny, accused of involve­ment in the Russ­ian Mob’s suc­cess­ful loot­ing of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in Czecho­slo­va­kia dur­ing the pri­va­ti­za­tion fren­zy which took place in the 199o’s after the fall of Com­mu­nism.

Kozeny is cur­rent­ly fight­ing extra­di­tion from the Bahamas to face charges of mas­sive fraud in Fed­er­al Court in New York.

His for­mer pilot Bohringer was him­self the sub­ject of a well-pub­li­cized man­hunt in the South Pacif­ic in 2006. The FBI issued a “ter­ror alert” seek­ing his arrest.

Kozeny at one point in the mid-90’s con­trolled one-third of the entire Czecho­slo­va­kian econ­o­my. With his ill-got­ten gains, Kozeny tried to buy off top offi­cials in the for­mer Sovi­et Repub­lic of Azer­bai­jan to gain con­trol of that coun­try’s state-owned oil com­pa­ny.

One man con­vict­ed in the scheme, Hans Bod­mer, belonged to a net­work of Russ­ian oli­garchs that includes Pyotr Aven, accused by a Russ­ian cor­rup­tion task force of drug traf­fick­ing.

These unsa­vory asso­ci­a­tions did not pre­vent Kozeny from part­ner­ing in the Azeri scheme with a man­ag­ing direc­tor of Hank Green­burg’s Amer­i­can Insur­ance Group (AIG), recent­ly bailed out by U.S. tax­pay­ers to the tune of $166 bil­lion.

Green­berg was forced to step down amid Eliot Spitzer’s probe while New York Attor­ney Gen­er­al, which was rumored to involve major inter­na­tion­al mon­ey-laun­der­ing oper­a­tions span­ning sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions. His firm was found­ed by Cor­nelius V. Starr, an Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS) oper­a­tive in South­east Asia dur­ing World War II whose nephew Ken­neth Starr lat­er became Pres­i­dent Bill Clinton’s White­wa­ter antag­o­nist.

Kozeny, who owns his own pri­vate island in the Bahamas, was trav­el­ing on an Irish pass­port before being arrest­ed. His lux­u­ry jets were used dur­ing the North­ern Ire­land peace talks by the talk’s chair­man, for­mer Sen­a­tor George Mitchell.

Although he today stands accused on two con­ti­nents of defraud­ing thou­sands of peo­ple around the world, he has so far successfully—and inex­plic­a­bly– fought extra­di­tion to the U.S. to face felony charges of mas­sive finan­cial fraud.

The man fund­ing efforts to keep Mis­ick and Brassington’s crime secret, Mario Hoff­man, is a full-fledged Russ­ian Mob oli­garch.

In writ­ten evi­dence pre­sent­ed to the UK Par­lia­ment as well as to the U.S. Senate’s For­eign Affairs Select Com­mit­tee, Hoff­man’s com­pa­ny Istrokap­i­tal was described as a con­duit for “Russ­ian mon­ey” and a front for mon­ey laun­der­ing,” described as hav­ing the “strongest ties to the under­world,” which report­ed­ly “draws its mus­cle from for­mer offi­cers of the Slo­vak intel­li­gence ser­vice.”

Hoff­man was the first reg­is­tered stock­bro­ker in Czecho­slo­va­kia. He grew fab­u­lous­ly rich in Vik­tor Kozeny’s “pri­va­ti­za­tion vouch­ers” scam.

Vik­tor Kozeny is known around the world as “The Pirate of Prague.”

Today Mario Hoffman’s sleek white yacht reg­u­lar­ly patrols off the coast of the Turks & Caicos.

Hoff­man’s yacht is named “The Bar­racu­da of Prague.”

Michael Brassington—still a close asso­ciate of Wal­ly Hilliard’s, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. Cus­toms Agent who has seen his file—and Wolf­gang Bohringer, for­mer­ly a close enough asso­ciate of Mohamed Atta’s for Atta to refer to him fre­quent­ly as “my broth­er,” have both been pilots for the Russ­ian Mob.

Stay tuned.

“Pilots in 9/11Intrigue Flew for Russ­ian Mob” by Daniel Hop­sick­er; Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews; 8/6/2009.

2. Much of the pro­gram focused on the ongo­ing crim­i­nal nature and far-reach­ing scope of the wrong­do­ing inex­tri­ca­bly linked to Huff­man Avi­a­tion and Wal­ly Hilliard’s oth­er busi­ness enter­pris­es. In our last vis­it with Daniel Hop­sick­er, we exam­ined Art Nadel, a Ponzi scheme archi­tect who suc­ceed­ed Rudi Dekkers as head of Huff­man Avi­a­tion, the flight school through which many of the 9/11 hijack­ers infil­trat­ed.

Huff­man Avi­a­tion king­pin Wal­ly Hil­iard has him­self been sued for $100 mil­lion by angry investors in Green Bay wis­con­sin.

Hilliard was also a part­ner in an air­line called Flori­da Air. His busi­ness part­ner in that ven­ture financed the oper­a­tion in con­sid­er­able mea­sure through the loot­ing of an invest­ment oper­a­tion that was one of the big­ger invest­ment scams uncov­ered before the enor­mous deba­cles that began to sur­face in 2008.

Anoth­er crim­i­nal con­nec­tion to Huff­man con­cerns a jet that was bust­ed in Mex­i­co with 5.5 mil­lion tons of cocaine. It had pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied a hangar at Huff­man Avi­a­tion. One of the prin­ci­pals in this imbroglio was Iran-Con­tra scan­dal lumi­nary Adnan Khashog­gi. (Khashog­gi got his start in busi­ness with a $25 mil­lion truck pur­chase, financed by the father of Osama bin Laden.) Huff­man avi­a­tion prin­ci­pal Hilliard loaned Khashog­gi a lear jet in the lat­ter’s attempt to gain con­trol of a Caribbean Island with an airstrip ide­al­ly suit­ed for the smug­gling of con­tra­band.

Khashog­gi had pre­vi­ous­ly been fin­gered for a mas­sive stock swin­dle, which pre­cip­i­tat­ed what a judge called the biggest fail­ure of a bro­ker­age in U.S. his­to­ry.

Art Nadel, the recent own­er of Huff­man Avi­a­tion accused of run­ning a Ponzi scheme which alleged­ly stole almost $400 mil­lion from investors, is the only per­son so far charged with a crime.

How­ev­er if author­i­ties per­sist in claim­ing Nadel was a “lone-nut finan­cial gun­slinger” they will be ignor­ing the rich­ly-doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of crim­i­nal fraud involv­ing the own­ers of Huff­man Avi­a­tion that goes back for more than a decade.

At least four finan­cial scams, each loot­ing more than $100 mil­lion, have crim­i­nal roots in the fer­tile soil— the “Octo-Mom” fer­tile soil—of the Venice Munic­i­pal Air­port.

Almost imme­di­ate­ly after its pur­chase in the sum­mer of 1999 by Wal­lace J. Hilliard and Rudi Dekkers, the avi­a­tion facil­i­ty became the cen­ter of a series of finan­cial scams that includ­ed Ponzi schemes, pen­sion fraud, inter­na­tion­al stock swin­dles, and fraud­u­lent bank­rupt­cies which have alto­geth­er loot­ed more than $1 bil­lion from the Amer­i­can econ­o­my.

Huff­man Avi­a­tion, the flight train­ing facil­i­ty which housed both of the ter­ror­ist pilots who crashed pas­sen­ger jets into the Twin Tow­ers of the World Trade Cen­ter, has been oper­at­ing as a con­tin­u­ing crim­i­nal enter­prise, as defined by the Fed­er­al RICO (Rack­e­teer Influ­enced and Cor­rupt Orga­ni­za­tion) Act.

The Huff­man Avi­a­tion Ponzi All-Stars

Far from being alone, Art Nadel isn’t even the first own­er of Huff­man Avi­a­tion to ben­e­fit from a huge Ponzi scheme...

He’s just the most recent.

Huff­man Aviation’s first Ponzi All-Star was Wal­lace J. Hilliard, the own­er while Mohamed Atta prac­ticed touch-and-go’s on the airport’s run­way. Yet, some­how, this eas­i­ly-ver­i­fi­able fact sur­faced nowhere in South­west Florida’s ane­mic main­stream media. More­over Hilliard is cur­rent­ly being sued by dis­grun­tled investors in Green Bay Wis­con­sin for $100 mil­lion.

In addi­tion, Hilliard was also a part­ner in an air­line called Flori­da Air. Hilliard’s busi­ness part­ner in that ven­ture financed the oper­a­tion with pro­ceeds from a mas­sive stock swin­dle.

Crim­i­nal ven­tures involv­ing Huff­man Avi­a­tion will each be con­sid­ered sep­a­rate­ly, and at length, in a com­ing series of sto­ries. They have often been so spec­tac­u­lar as to earn “biggest ever” des­ig­na­tions from author­i­ties and the press.

Huff­man’s crim­i­nal high­light reel con­tains a num­ber of crim­i­nal firsts:

*

The Sara­so­ta Her­ald Tri­bune called Art Nadel’s $390 mil­lion swin­dle the biggest fraud in South­west Flori­da his­to­ry.”

*

When Wal­ly Hilliard’s Lear­jet was bust­ed car­ry­ing 43 lbs. of hero­in at Orlan­do Exec­u­tive Air­port on July 25, 2000, the Orlan­do Sen­tinel called it the “biggest bust of its kind in Cen­tral Flori­da his­to­ry.”

*

Wal­ly Hilliard’s part­ner in Flori­da Air, an air­line with high vis­i­bil­i­ty at the Venice air­port, paid for the pas­sen­ger planes the two used in their “air­line” with loot from what the Secu­ri­ties & Exchange Com­mis­sion lat­er called “the biggest fraud by an invest­ment man­ag­er in U.S. his­to­ry.”

*

When a DC9 reg­is­tered to a com­pa­ny which used as its address a hang­er at Huff­man Avi­a­tion was caught in Campeche, Mex­i­co car­ry­ing 5.5 tons of cocaine, Mex­i­can author­i­ties called it the biggest drug seizure in an air­plane in Yucatan his­to­ry.”

*

Par­tic­i­pants in that escapade includ­ed Adnan Khashog­gi. Hilliard sent a Lear jet to sup­port Khashog­gi’s plan to gain con­trol of Rum Cay, a remote island in the Bahamas with a recent­ly-length­ened 5000 foot run­way, as well as a Khashog­gi lieu­tenant from Sau­di Ara­bia named Ramy el-Batrawi, both of whom were indict­ed three years ago in an inter­na­tion­al stock swin­dle known as Stock­walk, which Fed­er­al Bank­rupt­cy Court Judge Vic­tor B. Ken­ton said was respon­si­ble for “the largest fail­ure of a U.S. bro­ker­age in at least 30 years.”

Lady in Red

The first fact imme­di­ate­ly and painful­ly obvi­ous about accused Ponzi fraud­ster Art Nadel is that he’s clear­ly nobody’s idea of a finan­cial “lone gun­man.”

Nadel is a meek-look­ing Woody Allen look-alike who is over­shad­owed in local Sara­so­ta soci­ety by his tall for­mer mod­el wife Peg.

In a pricey sta­tus-con­scious city redo­lent with with the sweaty scent of social climb­ing ‘yachts­men’ boast­ing water­front man­sions, Nadel lived in a $300,000 tract house, and drove around town in a Sub­aru.

Two oth­er fac­tors about Nadel may have some bear­ing on his case.

When Art and Peg Nadel first sur­faced as finan­cial gurus in 1998 for a black-box stock-pick­ing “com­put­er-based invest­ment and trad­ing sys­tem” called MicroStar Research, wife Peg was strong­ly front and cen­ter in inter­views.

Yet anoth­er un unex­am­ined his­to­ry

A Sara­so­ta Her­ald-Tri­bune com­pa­ny pro­file on Nov 18, 1997 head­lined “INVESTORS STOCK UP ON DATA AT SARASOTA’S INSIDE SCOOP” quot­ed Peg Nadel:

“We feel we are real­ly fill­ing a void,” (Peg) Quisen­ber­ry said, ”for peo­ple who just want to become more informed about the finan­cial part of their lives.”

And a com­pa­ny Peg Nadel incor­po­rat­ed a decade ear­li­er, well before meet­ing Piano & Ponzi Man Art, has a name which rings sim­i­lar to Peg & Art’s lat­er joint ven­tures:

As Mar­guerite Quisen­ber­ry, Peg incor­po­rat­ed a Flori­da com­pa­ny called BUSINESS AND COMPUTER STRATEGIES, INC. Her fel­low direc­tor in that ven­ture was then-hus­band Clement Blake Quisen­ber­ry.

In mid-Decem­ber of last year, just a few weeks before Art Nadel went on the lam in mid-Jan­u­ary, Peg Nadel’s for­mer hus­band, Clement Blake Quisen­ber­ry, filed for bank­rupt­cy in Mul­ber­ry Flori­da.

We have no knowl­edge of any rela­tion­ship Quisen­ber­ry may have had with his for­mer wife and her cur­rent hus­band Nadel, but it is at the very least an inter­est­ing coin­ci­dence.

License to steal at the Venice Air­port

Why dis­barred New York lawyer Art Nadel, a man recent­ly engaged play­ing show tunes in local lounges, found it so imper­a­tive that he used some of the ear­li­est pro­ceeds from the Ponzi scheme to buy both Huff­man Avi­a­tion and a sec­ond avi­a­tion com­pa­ny in Geor­gia, is one of the endur­ing mys­ter­ies of the case.

Locat­ed at a tiny and out-of-the-way air­port in a sleepy retire­ment com­mu­ni­ty with the sec­ond old­est pop­u­la­tion in the entire Unit­ed States, Huff­man Aviation—save for its remark­able recent his­to­ry of crim­i­nal activity—is an oth­er­wise-insignif­i­cant avi­a­tion busi­ness, gross­ing just sev­er­al mil­lion dol­lars annu­al­ly.

Although the flight school was at the cen­ter of a firestorm of pub­lic­i­ty after the 9/11 attack, no hint of the con­tin­u­ing crim­i­nal enter­prise under­way there made it into any main­stream media.

How­ev­er dozens of sto­ries pub­lished in this space have cat­a­logued the vari­ety of ille­gal activ­i­ties which author­i­ties and their avi­a­tion peers accuse Rudi Dekkers and Wal­ly Hilliard of engag­ing in at the Venice and Naples Air­ports, both before and after the 9/11 attack.

After the first shock of the 9/11 attack fad­ed, a cer­tain offi­cial­ly-encour­aged amne­sia struggled—perhaps understandably—to take hold at the Venice Air­port.

Huff­man Avi­a­tion was re-named the Venice Jet Cen­ter. The facil­i­ty received a com­plete face-lift and a new façade, clear­ly designed to obscure its iden­ti­ty as the Amer­i­can home of Mohamed Atta.

But all to naught. It was, to quote our cur­rent pres­i­dent, “like putting lip­stick on a pig.”

Hap­py Sec­re­tary’s Day!

Wal­ly Hilliard was a grate­ful ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a huge Ponzi scheme run out of Port­land Ore­gon which loot­ed an esti­mat­ed $300 mil­lion dol­lars, accord­ing to the Port­land Ore­gon­ian. The mon­ey was looted—in a high­ly-orga­nized and sys­tem­at­ic fashion—from the pen­sion funds of most­ly-Mob-led unions.

Hard­est hit ($60 mil­lion) by the pen­sion loot­ing were sec­re­taries and labor­ers from the Labor­ers Union, called the biggest Mob-run union in Amer­i­ca.

Ana­lysts said that to receive the same retire­ment ben­e­fits they would have before their pen­sion fund was loot­ed, the unfor­tu­nate sec­re­taries would have to spend an extra decade work­ing.

A Gig-Har­bor WA man named Richard Boehlke was part of the pen­sion fraud.

Boehlke shov­eled trunk-loads of cash—more than $12 million—into the back of whichev­er of his fleet of lux­u­ry cars he hap­pened to be dri­ving that day, and used the cash from the Ponzi scheme to pur­chase a half-dozen British-made Jet­stream region­al jets for a new “air­line” he was start­ing up with his good pal Wal­lace J Hilliard.

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.”

Alvin of Ara­bia

Anoth­er grate­ful ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the Port­land Ponzi scheme mon­ey which dis­ap­peared from the retire­ment pen­sion funds of labor­er’s and sec­re­tary’s was a Mia­mi Flori­da man whose com­plex web of inter­na­tion­al con­nec­tions is leg­endary.

Alvin Mal­nik was first called “Mey­er Lansky’s heir” in Read­ers’ Digest, of all places, back in 1983. But it’s not Malnick’s gang­ster ties that make your jaw drop: its his con­nec­tion with the Sau­di Roy­al Fam­i­ly.

Jew­ish lawyer and alleged ‘gang­ster’ Malnick’s son mar­ried the daugh­ter of a lead­ing Prince of Sau­di Ara­bi­a’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.”

Mr. Mal­nik, under­stand­ably, begs to dif­fer.

“Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, I (Al Mal­nik) nev­er worked for Mey­er Lanksy. I knew him, and he was a good friend who I spent a lot of time with, but I nev­er rep­re­sent­ed him in legal mat­ters. To me, Mey­er was quite the grand­fa­ther type. If you knew him and talked to him, you could nev­er imag­ine that any of the sto­ries you heard about him had any verac­i­ty. You could nev­er imag­ine that he was respon­si­ble for doing the things peo­ple said he did. He was not a per­son to give in to rage.”

“Phan­tom air­line” had real planes, pilots

Although it flew vir­tu­al­ly no sched­uled flights, the sus­pi­cious­ly short-lived Flori­da Air thus was able to have a fleet of 19-pas­sen­ger region­al planes as well as a half-dozen pilots on stand-by at the Venice Air­port, dur­ing the same time Mohamed Atta was sup­pos­ed­ly tak­ing flight lessons there.

The air­line lost $800,000 in two months,” said Stu­art Burchill, Hilliard’s for­mer accoun­tant. “All togeth­er, the air­line end­ed up cost­ing Wal­ly almost $8 mil­lion.”

Flori­da Air itself became anoth­er scam, run con­cur­rent­ly with the pen­sion loot­ing in Ore­gon, steal­ing mon­ey from the airline’s investors, who are cur­rent­ly suing Hilliard for $100 mil­lion.

Hilliard was a “health insur­ance” exec­u­tive from Green Bay, Wis­con­sin who “retired” to Flori­da, where he soon bought—not the usu­al set of golf clubs and match­ing sans-a-belt slacks and golf sweater com­bos in canary yel­low & lime green—but two dozen lux­u­ry jets, and flight schools in Venice and Naples, FL.

Both of Hilliard’s flight schools (he also owned one in Naples, FL) enrolled an unknown but sub­stan­tial num­ber of Arab men who lat­er were sus­pect­ed of being ter­ror­ists.

“La plus ca change.”

A Port­land ABC News Reporter Eric Mason, who inter­viewed Boehlke, said, “The financ­ing that had gone between Mr. Boehlke and Flori­da Air, which was a sis­ter oper­a­tion to the flight train­ing cen­ter which trained Mohamed Atta, was murky.”

Murky’ is not a word you want to see applied to the busi­ness affairs of the peo­ple who were doing busi­ness with Mohamed Atta.

Curi­ous­ly, the same word was used to describe Sky­Way Air­craft by Fed­er­al Judge Paul M. Glenn. While pre­sid­ing over SkyWay’s bank­rupt­cy pro­ceed­ings, Judge Glen called the case “murky.”

“I have a great deal of con­cern about this case,” Judge Glenn said. “There’s a great deal we don’t know

Since then, very lit­tle appears to have changed.

While it may be small con­so­la­tion to incar­cer­at­ed (and report­ed­ly for­lorn) Art Nadel as he awaits tri­al, own­ing Huff­man Avi­a­tion might be a lot like being head of the Team­sters Union:

“Going away for a while” may just be part of the job.

“Huff­man Avi­a­tion “Con­tin­u­ing Crim­i­nal Enter­prise” by Daniel Hop­sick­er; Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews; 7/27/2009.

3. Daniel also fore­shad­owed an upcom­ing arti­cle, set­ting forth Huff­man Avi­a­tion king­pin Rudi Dekkers’ sta­tus as a dead­beat dad.

The rep­u­ta­tion of Huff­man Avi­a­tion prin­ci­pal Rudi Dekkers, whose dozens of tele­vi­sion appear­ances in the after­math of the 9/11 attack shaped the pub­lic per­cep­tion of Mohamed Atta and Mar­wan Al-She­hhi, took anoth­er big hit recent­ly when a Dutch tele­vi­sion pro­file of him came to light.

Since the 9/11 attack Dekkers has been charged with crim­i­nal fraud in Sara­so­ta, been accused of fer­ry­ing Sau­di princes on ille­gal unsu­per­vised flights by the U.S. gov­ern­ment , and even had an attempt made on his life—which he blamed, to uni­ver­sal amaze­ment, on Al-Qaeda—after the heli­copter he was pilot­ing went down enroute to a show-down meet­ing sched­uled with Huff­man Avi­a­tion own­er Wal­lace J Hilliard.

None of these blem­ish­es on an already-tar­nished char­ac­ter, how­ev­er, has dealt Dekkers’ as griev­ous a blow as his appear­ance on a pop­u­lar real­i­ty TV show in the Nether­lands, “Spoor­loos,” or “Van­ished,” which trav­els the world locat­ing miss­ing rel­a­tives and reunit­ing them with wor­ried fam­i­ly and friends back in Hol­land.

Rudi Dekkers aban­doned his young wife in the Nether­lands while she was three months preg­nant, the show reveals, and then emi­grat­ed to Amer­i­ca, nev­er to be heard from again.

Months lat­er his wife bore him a son, who today is known as Patrick Scheur.

Patrick stat­ed on the show that he dis­cov­ered in the late 90’s through the inter­net that Dekkers’ was run­ning a flight school in Flori­da, and attempt­ed to con­tact him on numer­ous occa­sions to arrange a meet­ing.

“Dead­beat Dad” & an inter­na­tion­al web of intrigue

Patrick’s attempts to estab­lish con­tact with Dekkers, the father he nev­er knew, were repeat­ed­ly rebuffed. Dekkers nev­er replied.

“The curios­i­ty about my father start­ed when I was around six­teen, I also told the par­ents of a boy I was see­ing at that time and they were so touched that they were pre­pared to pay for a trip for their son and me, so that we could look for him.”

“When I told my moth­er, she replied, “Do you real­ize that if you do this, Rudi might slam the door in your face and you’ll left stand­ing there?”

“So instead I just sent him an email, stat­ing who I am, who my moth­er is, where I am and how old I am. Then I sent anoth­er email. I tried to more or less force him to get in con­tact. But I nev­er got a response.”

The show’s host sounds shocked. “He nev­er react­ed to the emails?”

“No, he nev­er answered.”

About this time he also dis­cov­ered, Patrick said, that his father had a far-from-ster­ling rep­u­ta­tion in his native Hol­land.

“I read sev­er­al very neg­a­tive sto­ries about him in the Dutch press about things he’d done in Hol­land before leav­ing. His name was close­ly con­nect­ed to cer­tain fraud­sters on the inter­net, for exam­ple. And he had stolen mon­ey from a soc­cer team, and owed mon­ey to busi­ness part­ners, and was want­ed by the Dutch gov­ern­ment for back tax­es.”

“Not exact­ly boil­ing over with enthu­si­asm”

Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments filed in cas­es against him in his native Hol­land, Dekkers was at the cen­ter of “a web of intrigue.”

Since then not much appears to have changed.

Then sev­er­al days after the 9/11 attack, Patrick said he got a shock­ing phone call from his moth­er. She had unex­pect­ed news.

“Turn on the TV,” she told him. “ Your father is on.”

Patrick looked with aston­ish­ment at the dra­ma unfold­ing live on tele­vi­sion.

“I had nev­er before seen my father. Now I was about to see him for the first time. It was a shock. And it felt like I was watch­ing a movie. The image of those planes, that skyscraper…And the Dutch­man that gave train­ing to the hijack­ers that flew into the World Trade Cen­ter was my father.”

After arriv­ing in Flori­da to track down Dekkers’, the show con­tact­ed him by phone.

“Dekkers isn’t exact­ly boil­ing over from enthu­si­asm about his son Patrick,” states the show’s host. “Maybe it’s because of his young Cuban wife. The two just got mar­ried and she does­n’t know any­thing about a son in the Nether­lands.”

At least he’s not in prison... yet.

Dekker’s was appar­ent­ly every bit as cal­lous, neg­li­gent, and unfeeling–the very embod­i­ment of a “dead­beat dad–” as we have heard he was. But we were not alone in report­ing this about him. From the St. Peters­burg Times”

“Even before 9/11, Dekkers had a long his­to­ry of trou­bled busi­ness­es, run-ins with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion and numer­ous law­suits, includ­ing one in which he paid $15,000 to a female employ­ee who accused him of “severe” sex­u­al harass­ment.

It is the kind of check­ered his­to­ry, experts say, that should have raised ques­tions both before and after the 9/11 attacks about Dekkers’ fit­ness to run a school that trained pilots.”

“You would think that every­one sur­round­ing that should have been scru­ti­nized,” says Steven Camaro­ta of the Cen­ter for Immi­gra­tion Stud­ies, a Wash­ing­ton, D.C., think tank. “A flight school, unlike a beau­ti­cian, rep­re­sents a prob­lem in that you have tech­ni­cal train­ing that facil­i­tates ter­ror­ism. You want to make sure that it is well run, so you look into the back­grounds of peo­ple.”

The severe sex­u­al harass­ment, as we report­ed back in 2003, involved stick­ing a broom han­dle up the back of the dress of an 18-year old recep­tion­ist.

What a guy.

Mak­ing it up as he went along

“Dekkers got ‘tarred and feath­ered’ after 9/11,” stat­ed the show’s host.

“There were wild sto­ries about his involve­ment with the ter­ror­ists, accord­ing to him it was com­plete non­sense. But it did cost him every­thing he had. The flight schools were sold, on top of that came a divorce and start­ing a new busi­ness was­n’t going well.”

“It obvi­ous­ly gave me a tremen­dous stress lev­el,” said Dekkers, of the after­math of the 9/11 attack. “And I still have some of it. I became a dia­bet­ic. Nine months after 9/11 I got high blood sug­ar and I still have it. You can’t get rid of it. It’s pure stress.”

Dekker’s descrip­tion of events lead­ing up to the 9/11 attack were uncrit­i­cal­ly received on net­work and cable news shows in Amer­i­ca and around the world after the 9/11 attack.

Except for the fact that Dekker’s tes­ti­mo­ny was received so uncrit­i­cal­ly on net­work and cable news shows after the 9/11 attack, the dis­cov­ery of yet-anoth­er unflat­ter­ing por­trait of Rudi Dekkers—which cer­tain­ly comes as no sur­prise— might be of noth­ing more than pruri­ent inter­est.

Only lat­er did it became painful­ly obvi­ous that Dekkers, dur­ing his fre­quent tele­vi­sion appear­ances, had been mak­ing it up as he went along.

In one inter­view, for exam­ple, Dekker’s explained his lack of knowl­edge of the par­tic­u­lars of Atta’s arrival at Huff­man Avi­a­tion, say­ing Atta and al-She­hhi showed up from a flight school in Tam­pa.

Lat­er that same morn­ing Dekkers stat­ed Atta and al-She­hhi arrived from a still-unnamed flight school, which Dekkers now stat­ed was some­where “out of Flori­da.”

By the sec­ond day Dekkers’ mem­o­ry had def­i­nite­ly improved. Now he remembered…he hadn’t much cared for Mohamed Atta.

It wasn’t exact­ly time to stop the press­es. Yet the media accept­ed every­thing Dekkers said at face val­ue.

And to this date, he has nev­er been forced to face crit­i­cal ques­tion­ing under oath before the Amer­i­can peo­ple.

How many peo­ple would place any cre­dence in the tes­ti­mo­ny of a man who walked out on his wife when she was three months preg­nant with his child, and even 20 years lat­er refus­es to meet his own son? Why did the Unit­ed States Con­gress?

The main­stream press, and the Amer­i­can Con­gress tossed him noth­ing but marsh­mal­lows dur­ing their lack­lus­ter “ques­tion­ing.”

Why? Because he’s such a lik­able fel­low? Hard­ly. But the orga­ni­za­tion he worked for has a stran­gle­hold on what pass­es for pub­lic dis­course in this coun­try.

An Oliv­er North for our times

The tiny Venice Flori­da air­port was a nexus between the Estab­lish­ment, orga­nized crime, and inter­na­tion­al drug traf­fick­ing, and played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the sto­ry of how the hijack­ers came to be in the U.S. in the first place. And it also laid bare, more stark­ly than ever before, the rea­son we haven’t long ago read about these con­nec­tions on the front pages of the New York times and the Wash­ing­ton Post.

Accord­ing to the var­i­ous indif­fer­ent­ly-moti­vat­ed fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tions, none of this has any­thing to do with 9/11.

Even though the two men were doing land office busi­ness with Osama bin Laden’s orga­ni­za­tion before the 9/11 attack, the busi­ness asso­ciates of Rudi Dekkers and Wal­ly Hilliard, were of no inter­est to their inves­ti­ga­tion.

The FAA went out of its way to pro­tect ter­ror flight school hon­cho Rudi Dekkers, for exam­ple. An avi­a­tion mechan­ic who worked for Dekkers said he’d been forced by law to report crim­i­nal acts which he wit­nessed Dekkers com­mit.

“Dekkers did an import of an air­plane,” the mechan­ic explained. “We found dents on the front of a wing and replaced sheet met­al, and then we found ribs that were crushed, which ren­ders an air­plane un-air­wor­thy. Yet Dekkers still sold the plane!”

“And when I turned him in to the FAA, they didn’t do a damn thing.”

A sec­ond exam­ple also involves Rudi Dekkers. Dekkers’ forged anoth­er avi­a­tion executive’s sig­na­ture on a repair order to indi­cate required repair work on a heli­copter had been com­plet­ed. When that exec­u­tive dis­cov­ered it, he told us, he too was legal­ly com­pelled to report it to the FAA.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said the Naples FL avi­a­tion exec­u­tive indig­nant­ly. “I called the FAA to report a vio­la­tion and was warned to leave Dekkers alone. An FAA guy came out and sat me down and said: ‘I sug­gest you back out of this.’ ”

“Nation­al secu­ri­ty” has always been the excuse used to keep safe the cadre of “elite deviants” at the top.

Stay tuned.

“9/11 Flight School Fig­ure a ‘Dead­beat Dad’ ” by Daniel Hop­sick­er; Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews; 8/20/2009.

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