Recorded Sep­tem­ber 26, 2004
REALAUDIO
NB: This stream con­tains both FTR #s 477 and 478 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broadcast.

This pro­gram takes a longer look at the Ger­man milieu to which 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta belonged. In addi­tion to the fact that Atta’s pre­dom­i­nantly Ger­man set of asso­ci­a­tions appar­ently fol­lowed him to Florida (from Ger­many), Atta’s entrée into Ger­man (and quite pos­si­bly Amer­i­can) soci­ety came cour­tesy of a joint US and Ger­man gov­ern­ment pro­gram. This program—the Congress-Bundestag program—also spon­sored a fel­low­ship for John P. Schmitz, one of the for­mi­da­ble Schmitz broth­ers dis­cussed in FTR#476. As vet­eran lis­ten­ers may well deduce, the “$64,000 ques­tion” con­cerns whether or not Atta and asso­ciates were func­tion­ing as agents of the Under­ground Reich.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The crim­i­nal back­grounds of many of Atta’s Ger­man and Euro­pean asso­ciates; the fact that these indi­vid­u­als’ crim­i­nal back­grounds did not pre­vent them from pilot­ing in the United States; the Chicago Tribune’s curi­ous omis­sion of the name of the Ger­man cou­ple who spon­sored Atta dur­ing the time he was in Ger­many; the close rela­tion­ship between the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft (that spon­sored Atta) and the Robert Bosch Foun­da­tion (that spon­sored John P. Schmitz).

1. Sup­ple­ment­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sented in FTR#405, the pro­gram high­lights Daniel Hopsicker’s excel­lent research on 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta’s Ger­man friends. To all appear­ances, Atta con­tin­ued his pre­dom­i­nantly Ger­man asso­ci­a­tions long after he came to the U.S. Accord­ing to his for­mer girl­friend Amanda Keller, many of his Ger­man, Swiss and Aus­trian friends fol­lowed Atta to Florida. (To access Daniel Hopsicker’s mag­nif­i­cent research, check out: www.madcowprod.com.) When vis­it­ing Atta, some of his Ger­man friends had bags–the con­tents of which were suf­fi­ciently sen­si­tive to war­rant leav­ing the bags in a dif­fer­ent hotel room. “Before reach­ing Key West, they ren­dezvoused with Atta’s Ger­man friends. . . . Peter and Stephan were the two Ger­man men that Atta’s North Port land­lord said the girls met on the trip. ‘The two girls were intro­duced to two men from Ger­many that they said were Mohamed’s friends, Tony LaConca told the Sun. I thought it was strange because Mohamed didn’t appear to be French-Canadian or Ger­man.’ When the group checked into a hotel in Key West, there was also some­thing odd about the room assign­ments. ‘We rented 3 dif­fer­ent rooms in Key West,’ Amanda said. ‘In one room nobody slept. It was where they put their flight bags. Then they locked the room down. Peter and Stephan slept in one room. And me, Mohamed and Linda slept in the same room.’”
(Wel­come to Ter­ror­land; by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad Cow Press; Copy­right 2004 by Daniel Hop­sicker; ISBN 0–9706591-6–4; p. 94.)

2. Atta called his Ger­man asso­ciates “brother.” “ . . . More puz­zling was learn­ing of Atta’s deep ties with a num­ber of Ger­mans. ‘Mohamed called cer­tain people—Arabic people—‘my brother.’ And I was won­der­ing how he had so many fam­ily mem­bers. Like gang mem­bers do, ‘this is my brother,’’ she said. ‘But not all Arabs. So it wasn’t like any­one Mus­lim was his brother. He called Wolf­gang and Juer­gen ‘my brother,’ too. He and Wolf­gang were very tight, they went every­where together. When he came into the pic­ture they were together all the time.’” (Ibid.; p. 284.)

3. “ ‘Him and Juer­gen acted like they had known each other for­ever. He told me he went back and forth to Ger­many, but lived in France. Juer­gen was a per­vert, straight out,’ she said. ‘Every woman that walked by, he had some­thing to say to them, com­ment­ing on their butt or what­ever. He would go up to a woman, say I’m from Ger­many, and I want to touch an Amer­i­can woman’s butt. He was a lush, mid-1930’s.’ Who was this ‘Wolf­gang? Who was this ‘Juer­gen?’” (Ibid.; pp. 284–285.)

4. “ . . . From infor­ma­tion gleaned first in inter­views with Amanda Keller, Atta’s one-time Amer­i­can girl­friend, and cor­rob­o­rated by inde­pen­dent sources in Venice and Naples, we con­firmed that at least seven of Mohamed Atta’s close asso­ciates in Florida dur­ing the year lead­ing up to the 9/11 attack were Euro­pean: Ger­man, Swiss and French. Today we know at least something—but by no means enough—about the iden­ti­ties of each. Their names haven’t sur­faced in any press accounts about Atta’s stay in the U.S., nor has their exis­tence been men­tioned or alluded to in offi­cial state­ments. We know they were all pilots. . . .” (Ibid.p. 331.)

5. Many of those with whom Atta asso­ci­ated already had pilot’s licenses. Accord­ing to Amanda Keller, Atta and his Ger­man asso­ciates always came back from their meet­ings look­ing “glum.” “ . . . Accord­ing to Amanda, all of them already had pilot licenses from other coun­tries when they arrived in the U.S. Trav­el­ing with Atta, or meet­ing him around the state, Atta’s Euro­pean friends appeared to share rela­tion­ships with him of long-standing. Their meet­ings were seri­ous busi­ness; when they returned, said Amanda, Atta and his Ger­man asso­ciates; always came back glum.’ Only one of the seven still resides in the U.S.; five live in Ger­many or Switzer­land. The sev­enth has a crim­i­nal record in his native Ger­many, and today lives in Saudi Ara­bia.” (Ibid.; p. 332.)

6. Atta appar­ently always spoke Ger­man with his asso­ciates. This con­tra­dicts what his flight instruc­tor (Rudi Dekkers) told Con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tors. “Cab­driver Bob Simp­son referred to Rudi and Mohamed as ‘part­ners in crime.’ He thought the two men shared both social and busi­ness con­nec­tions. He said they were very close socially. As we’ve seen on one pickup dur­ing the sum­mer of 2001, Simp­son drove them to Sara­sota to a bar on Main Street. . . Keller said Atta always spoke Ger­man with Wolf­gang, which con­tra­dicts the tes­ti­mony of Rudi Dekkers to a Con­gres­sional Com­mit­tee that when he addressed Atta in Ger­man, Atta merely looked at him strangely.” (Idem.)

7. “Wolfgang’s story, accord­ing to peo­ple we spoke with who knew him, includes a life stud­ded with things like sail­ing around the world on a 47-foot yacht, on a trip where he met his wife Sujita, a native of Bom­bay. But when we went look­ing for Wolf­gang, we found him through records of his scrapes with author­i­ties in Florida. In air­port records in Naples he was ref­er­enced in Aero Jet/Ambassador cor­re­spon­dence. A let­ter was sent by a for­mer employee solic­it­ing to offer pri­vate flight instruc­tion with­out author­ity and in vio­la­tion of FAA rules.” (Ibid.; pp. 332–333.)

8. At least one of Atta’s asso­ciates appears to have had some spe­cial con­nec­tions. He (Wolf­gang) was appar­ently able to begin a flight school, despite a crim­i­nal record. “Wolf­gang Bohringer is a pilot in his thir­ties. In Spring of 2002, he became a nat­u­ral­ized U.S. cit­i­zen. He was one of the first of the ‘Ger­man ele­ment’ to arrive in Florida, in 1996, when he opened a flight school in Naples. Prior to arriv­ing in Naples he was asso­ci­ated with an orga­ni­za­tion called ‘The Fly­ing Club of Munich,’ in Augs­burg, Ger­many. Like Rudi and Wally, Wolf­gang was noto­ri­ous in avi­a­tion cir­cles for bad behav­ior. ‘Wolf­gang showed up from Munich in the mid-1990’s and imme­di­ately began oper­at­ing a flight school ille­gally,’ stated Mar­cus Huber, a flight instruc­tor in Naples. ‘He’s half Swiss, half Ger­man.’” (Ibid.; p. 333.)

9. “Also like Rudi and Wally, Wolf­gang seemed to have a ‘hall pass’ from fed­eral author­i­ties. This embit­tered other for­eign flight traine

rs not sim­i­larly well-connected. ‘When Wolf­gang applied for an E-2 Visa, he made up a fake com­pany, a clean­ing ser­vice,’ Huber told us. ‘Some­times it makes me mad that a crim­i­nal gets pref­er­ence.’ Wel­come to Ter­ror­land.” (Idem.)

10. “Wolf­gang” wasn’t the only one of Atta’s asso­ciates with a crim­i­nal record: “Wolf­gang was instru­men­tal in bring­ing another of Atta’s Ger­man asso­ciates to Florida, a pilot named ‘Stephan,’ who has done jail time in Ger­many and was on parole when he came to the U.S., and thus not sup­posed to be fly­ing. But ‘being con­nected means never hav­ing to say you’re sorry,’ and while reg­u­lar Ger­man flight stu­dents strug­gle to obtain the nec­es­sary visas, Wolf­gang and Stephan had inside con­nec­tions which smoothed their progress. Stephan pur­chased Wolfgang’s flight train­ing busi­ness.” (Idem.)

11. Two other asso­ciates of Atta also appear to have had “get out of jail free” cards. “Two other close Ger­man asso­ciates of Mohamed Atta’s in Florida were broth­ers, Peter and Stephan Ver­haaren. ‘Stephan did eight months of jail time,’ Huber told us. ‘He was con­victed Octo­ber 1, 1997 and released from parole in Nov. 2000. Wolf­gang signed off on Stephan’s books, and so Stephan also got in on a fraud­u­lent busi­ness investor’s visa.’ Yet Stephan was run­ning a Florida flight school, although there are more than a few laws that say he shouldn’t have been. Pre­sum­ably the FAA was ‘look­ing the other way.’” (Ibid.; pp. 333–334.)

12. “Stephan today report­edly flies in Saudi Ara­bia for a Swiss car­rier, Far­nair. Atta also was often seen with Rudi’s head flight instruc­tor, Fran­cois Nico­lai. ‘He’s another guy with no papers,’ an avi­a­tion source told us, ‘but at least he’s an excel­lent pilot. He’s French and Swiss.’” (Ibid.; p. 334.)

13. Appar­ently, Arabs were in the minor­ity among Atta’s asso­ciates: “From what she saw, Amanda said that all of Atta’s friends, with the excep­tion of Mar­wan Al-Shehhi, were either Ger­man and Dutch, includ­ing Dutch­men Rudi Dekkers and Arne Kruithof, and another man from the Nether­lands named ‘Paul.’ There was also Arne Kruithof’s ‘agent’ from Munich, as well as his busi­ness part­ner in Avi­a­tion Aspi­ra­tions, Pas­cal Schreier. Pas­cal was close to Bohringer, Atta’s clos­est friend among the Ger­man nation­als.” (Idem.)

14. “Pas­cal Schreier is mar­ried to a woman named San­dra Hamouda, French Tunisian, who as we have seen bought the bank­rupt flight school in Punta Gorda where Atta hung out early in 2001. She is an exec­u­tive with a Florida flight school called Pel­i­can Flight Train­ing Cen­ter, a fact we might have over­looked except for a curi­ous ‘coin­ci­dence’ . . . When the New York Times did a two year anniver­sary story on 9/11 called ‘Hard Times Are Plagu­ing Flight Schools in Florida’ (Sep­tem­ber 14, 2003) focus­ing on the fact that pilot-training schools in Florida have been strug­gling since 9/11, the two schools pro­filed in their story are Magic Dutch Boy Arne Kruithof’s . . . and Pel­i­can Flight Train­ing Cen­ter, where Pas­cal Schreirer’s wife works.” (Idem.)

15. “There are over 220 flight schools in Florida. That the New York Times pro­filed these two ‘well-connected schools’ is no doubt just a freak coin­ci­dence. . . We may have found [Atta’s Ger­man friend] ‘Juer­gen,’ work­ing as a real­tor in nearby Sara­sota. Amanda rec­og­nized him from the pic­ture in a YAHOO swinger’s pro­file. Kur­gus Juer­gen is the owner of Europe One, a com­pany whose Florida incor­po­ra­tion papers lists the phone num­ber of The Con­ti­nen­tal Café in Sara­sota, a fic­ti­tious busi­ness name of Casablanca Rose Inc., whose two direc­tors are Abeltif Mam­douh and Mustafa Ettaki.” (Ibid.; pp. 334–335.)

16. “Although he did tell us, unprompted, that he knew many peo­ple in the FBI, Juer­gen denied know­ing Atta. And because we don’t have a sec­ond source for the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, we have to leave open the pos­si­bil­ity that Amanda’s photo con­fir­ma­tion was in error. But not every­one has busi­ness part­ners named Abeltif and Mustafa.” (Ibid.; p. 335.)

17. Another of Atta’s inter­est­ing asso­ci­a­tions con­cerns his affil­i­a­tion with the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft—named for a key offi­cial with I.G. Farben—the World War II-era Nazi chem­i­cal com­pany. The “CDS” appears to have spon­sored Atta’s years’-long sojourn in Ger­many and may have helped spon­sor him in the U.S. as well. (For more about the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft, see FTR#408.) “The fact that Atta was being sub­si­dized by U.S. tax­pay­ers while he was in Ham­burg hasn’t been played up any­where that we know about. But its true . . . For at least four of Atta’s seven years liv­ing in Ham­burg he was part of a ‘joint ven­ture’ between the U.S. and Ger­man Gov­ern­ments, an elite inter­na­tional ‘exchange’ pro­gram run by a little-known pri­vate orga­ni­za­tion which has close ties to pow­er­ful Amer­i­can polit­i­cal fig­ures like David Rock­e­feller and for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Henry Kissinger.” (Idem.)

18. The CDS is part of the Congress-Bundestag program—an insti­tu­tion we will revisit in con­nec­tion with John P. Schmitz (FTR#’s 469, 476.) “This fact has escaped notice as well. Before becom­ing a ter­ror­ist ring­leader, Atta enjoyed the patron­age of a gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive known as the ‘Congress-Bundestag Pro­gram,’ over­seen by the U.S. State Depart­ment and the Ger­man Min­istry of Eco­nomic of Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment, the Ger­man equiv­a­lent of the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment. The jointly-funded U.S.-German gov­ern­ment effort picked up the tab for Atta on sojourns in Cairo, Istan­bul, and Aleppo in Syria dur­ing the years 1994 and 1995, as well as employ­ing him as a ‘tutor’ and ‘sem­i­nar par­tic­i­pant’ dur­ing 1996 and 1997.” (Idem.)

19. “Atta’s finan­cial rela­tion­ship with the U.S.-Government pro­gram prob­a­bly extends back to his ini­tial move from Egypt to Ger­many in 1992. The news that Mohamed Atta had been on the pay­roll of the elite inter­na­tional pro­gram only sur­faced in a whis­per, just as qui­etly as news that Venice flight schools had trained a third ter­ror­ist pilot. It was in a brief seven-line report by Ger­man news­pa­per Frank­furter All­ge­meine Zeitung on Oct. 18, 2001, under the head­line ‘ATTA WAS TUTOR FOR SCHOLARSHIP HOLDERS.’” (Ibid.; p. 336.)

20. By virtue of his spon­sor­ship by the CDS, Atta was under the juris­dic­tion of a joint U.S./German gov­ern­ment pro­gram! “The story quoted spokes­men for ‘Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft,’ described as a ‘Ger­man inter­na­tional fur­ther edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tion,’ as hav­ing admit­ted pay­ing Ham­burg cadre prin­ci­pal Atta as a ‘schol­ar­ship holder’ and ‘tutor,’ between 1995 and 1997. When we found it, what seemed to make this story espe­cially curi­ous is that the Ger­man paper con­cealed the truly shock­ing impli­ca­tion of their story: that Mohammed Atta had been on the pay­roll of a joint U.S.-German gov­ern­ment pro­gram. They did this through the sim­ple expe­di­ent of neglect­ing to men­tion in the arti­cle that the ‘Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft’ was a pri­vate entity admin­is­ter­ing the ‘exchange’ ini­tia­tive of the two gov­ern­ments. . . .” (Idem.)

21. “CDS Inter­na­tional, states the organization’s lit­er­a­ture, pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for young Ger­man engi­neers. Mohamed Atta wasn’t, strictly speak­ing, a ‘young Ger­man engi­neer;’ but appar­ently Kissinger’s praise for ‘career devel­op­ment pro­grams for par­tic­i­pants from other coun­tries as well’ had been taken to heart. ‘These young Ger­man engi­neers earn real world expe­ri­ence and are given assign­ments to con­tribute from the start,’ a pro­gram spokesman enthused in a news­pa­per inter­view.” (Ibid.; p. 337.)

22. “The orga­ni­za­tion is today under­stand­ably shy about men­tion­ing that their most famous recent graduate’s ??

?real world expe­ri­ence’ included mur­der­ing almost 3,000 peo­ple in New York City in slightly less than two hours. A finan­cial rela­tion­ship between the ter­ror­ist ring­leader and the U.S. and Ger­man Gov­ern­ments has not pre­vi­ously even been hinted at in America’s major media. The conspiracy-minded might con­clude that this may owe some­thing to the program’s raft of politically-powerful boost­ers, giv­ing it ‘big juice.’ We pre­fer to think of it as an over­sight.” (Idem.)

23. The fact that pow­er­ful inter­ests backed the CDS—the spon­sor orga­ni­za­tion for Mohamed Atta in Ger­many and (pos­si­bly) the US—seems to have atten­u­ated the jour­nal­is­tic cov­er­age of the CDS/Atta con­nec­tion. “Hav­ing ‘big juice’ may also explain omis­sions in the story about Mohamed Atta’s time in Ger­many in the March 7, 2003 Chicago Tri­bune. Under the head­line ‘9/11 haunts hijacker’s spon­sors; Ger­man cou­ple talks of liv­ing with pilot Atta,’ the arti­cle described the 1992 meet­ing in Cairo between Atta and a Ger­man cou­ple run­ning an ‘inter­na­tional stu­dent exchange pro­gram.’ Atta was recruited in Cairo by this mys­te­ri­ous Ger­man cou­ple, dubbed the ‘hijacker’s spon­sors.’ It was this meet­ing, said the Tri­bune, which led Atta to move to Ham­burg.” (Ibid.; pp. 337–338.)

24. Among the ele­ments of the Atta/CDS story that is glar­ing in its absence is the name of the Ger­man cou­ple who recruited Atta into the CDS and spon­sored Atta in Ger­many. “But although Tri­bune cor­re­spon­dent Steven­son Swan­son cites this Ger­man cou­ple for ‘hav­ing played such an impor­tant role in Atta’s move to Ger­many,’ he never gives their names, nor that of the orga­ni­za­tion they worked for. We thought good jour­nal­ism was all about . . . you know. Who. What. When. Where. Why. The Chicago Tri­bune got unac­count­ably stuck on ‘Who.’ Dur­ing a visit to the Egypt­ian cap­i­tal in fall 1991, the Tri­bune reported, the Ger­man cou­ple stayed with friends who knew Atta’s father, a Cairo lawyer, and his father’s friends had then intro­duced the Ger­man cou­ple to Atta.” (Ibid.; p. 338.)

25. “ ‘Atta, who had recently grad­u­ated with a degree in archi­tec­tural engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of Cairo, told the cou­ple he wanted to study archi­tec­ture in Ger­many, but he had no par­tic­u­lar idea where he should go,’ the paper reported. Though the arti­cle neglects to men­tion it, the rea­son Atta found him­self with ‘no par­tic­u­lar idea where he should go’ was that although he’d stud­ied engi­neer­ing at pres­ti­gious Cairo Uni­ver­sity, he hadn’t done well enough to gain admis­sion to its grad­u­ate school.” (Idem.)

26. “The paper quotes the Ger­man wife telling inves­ti­ga­tors: ‘In this first con­ver­sa­tion, we sug­gested he con­tinue his stud­ies in Ham­burg and offered him a place to live at our house.’ Atta, she states, accepted their offer right away. This mag­nan­i­mous ges­ture by the Ger­man cou­ple to an undis­tin­guished young man they have just met may be nor­mal behav­ior for this cou­ple. Per­haps their ges­ture was just the very milk of human kind­ness.” (Idem.)

27. The unnamed cou­ple went very far out of their way for this stranger: “Then again, per­haps it is some­thing else. Why did this Ger­man cou­ple leap at the oppor­tu­nity to help a young man not con­sid­ered promis­ing enough to gain entrance to grad­u­ate school in Cairo? Offer­ing him a place to live at their own home? The Tri­bune doesn’t say. It also fails to iden­tify either the cou­ple of the ‘inter­na­tional’ pro­gram they ran. The story is 1,200 words in length. So its not as if they didn’t report the names for space rea­sons. ‘Jane and John Doe from Help-A-Student Inter­na­tional’ would have suf­ficed. Just an extra ten words and they would have had it. You know: Who, What, When, Where and Why. Either the Tri­bune just for­got the ‘Who.’ Or some­thing more sin­is­ter occurred.” (Ibid.; pp. 338–339.)

28. “After study­ing Ger­man in Cairo, Atta arrived in Ger­many on July 24, 1992, accord­ing to investigator’s records, and then lived rent-free for at least the next six months in the couple’s home in a quiet, middle-class neigh­bor­hood. Since just three years later Atta was on the pay­roll of the ‘Congress-Bundestag Pro­gram’ it is rea­son­able to conclude—no thanks to the Chicago Tri­bune—that this was the ‘exchange pro­gram’ respon­si­ble for bring­ing him to Ger­many in the first place. CDS International’s elite spon­sors are appar­ently influ­en­tial enough to have kept their organization’s name out of news­pa­pers. Or, at any rate, out of the Chicago Tri­bune. . .” (Ibid.; p. 339.)

29. In FTR#’s 469, 476 we exam­ined the influ­ence of the Schmitz fam­ily in var­i­ous aspects of the 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tions. John P. Schmitz—former Deputy Coun­sel to the elder George Bush both when he was Vice-President and when he was President—is a part­ner in a Ger­man law firm that is involved with a num­ber of 9/11 cases. He was a ben­e­fi­ciary of a Robert Bosch Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship. That pro­gram is on the web site of the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft!! (See below.) “ . . . Robert Bosch Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship, Office of Bun­destag Mem­ber Matthias Wiss­mann . . . .”
(Cur­ricu­lum Vitae of John P. Schmitz, partner—Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP.)

30. The web­site of the CDS fea­tures the Robert Bosch Foundation’s page: “Robert Bosch Foun­da­tion Fel­low­ship Pro­gram.”
(Archived web­site of Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft.)