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Intro­duc­tion: The first of Mr. Emory’s inter­views with the heroic inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Daniel Hop­sicker, this broad­cast explores aspects of the 9/11 con­spir­acy in Florida. Hopsicker’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Mohamed Atta’s activ­i­ties in the Sun­shine State, where—along with other 9/11 hijackers—Atta was “learn­ing to fly” yielded infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that Atta (already a very expe­ri­enced pilot) and his asso­ciates were part of a global crim­i­nal net­work. Fur­ther­more, it appears that the Florida avi­a­tion schools at which they trained were part of pro­tected, intel­li­gence com­mu­nity drug smug­gling operations.

Although Mr. Emory is not of the opin­ion that the CIA (which appears to have been run­ning some of the drug oper­a­tions with which Atta and com­pany were asso­ci­ated) was “behind” 9/11, it is appar­ent that some of the attack­ers gained immu­nity from arrest and inves­ti­ga­tion by func­tion­ing within these sacro­sanct net­works. These net­works were part of the Fifth Col­umn, referred to through­out these programs–a Fifth Col­umn that involves deci­sive ele­ments inside the GOP and Bush milieu.

In addi­tion to Atta’s “trainer” Rudi Dekkers of Huff­man Avi­a­tion, another Dutch national (Arne Kruithof) also oper­ated a school at which some of the 9/11 hijack­ers were trained. In turn, Dekkers’ oper­a­tions were basi­cally fronts for the activ­i­ties of Wally Hilliard, a man with what Mr. Emory refers to as “more con­nec­tions than a switch­board.” Dekkers was beyond the law. The milieu of which he was a part appears to be part of the Under­ground Reich. Atta’s milieu was Ger­man, and the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft spon­sored Atta’s activ­i­ties in Germany.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: News accounts of the train­ing of some of the 9/11 hijack­ers at secure U.S. mil­i­tary instal­la­tions; legal threats against the Ger­man pub­lisher of Wel­come to Ter­ror­land; Iran-Contra drug smug­gling net­works oper­at­ing in the Venice (Florida) area; links between these Iran-Contra net­works and the milieu of Atta in Florida; Dis­cus­sion of the relo­ca­tion of some of the Florida oper­a­tions to Lynch­burg; links between the Lynch­burg oper­a­tion and evan­ge­list Jerry Falwell.

1. The dis­cus­sion begins with a quote that sums up the net­work through which the hijack­ers infil­trated the United States. “ . . . Lurk­ing just beneath the sur­face of Amer­i­can life, it seemed, was mas­sive cor­rup­tion on an unheard of scale, presided over by modern-day Untouch­ables, mem­bers of an organization—a global network—operating well out­side the law. And get­ting away with it.”
(Wel­come to Ter­ror­land Mohamed Atta & the 9–11 Cover-Up in Florida; by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad­cow Press [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Daniel Hop­sicker; ISBN 0–9706591-6–4; p. 229.)

2. Among the fre­quently over­looked aspects of the 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tion is a group of media reports that emerged in the after­math of the attacks main­tain­ing that some of the hijack­ers (includ­ing Atta) had received train­ing at secure U.S. mil­i­tary bases. “ . . . Atta had learned at U.S. mil­i­tary facil­i­ties, we dis­cov­ered. As many as seven of the hijack­ers were in this coun­try at the invi­ta­tion of the U.S. Gov­ern­ment. Keep­ing this knowl­edge secret has been an objec­tive of the cover-up cur­rently in progress. On the Sat­ur­day fol­low­ing the Tues­day attack, the Los Ange­les Times broke the story in a long arti­cle on their front page . . . ‘A defense offi­cial said two of the hijack­ers were for­mer Saudi fighter pilots,’ reported the paper, ‘who had stud­ied in exchange pro­grams at the Defense Lan­guage School at Lack­land Air Force Base in Texas and the Air War Col­lege at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.’” (Ibid.; p. 135.)

3. “The story went wide the next day, Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 15th. Newsweek, the Wash­ing­ton Post and the Miami Her­ald all reported as many as seven of the ter­ror­ist hijack­ers in the Sep­tem­ber 11th attacks received train­ing at secure U.S. mil­i­tary instal­la­tions. ‘Two of 19 sus­pects named by the FBI, Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi, have the same names as men listed at a hous­ing facil­ity for for­eign mil­i­tary trainees at Pen­sacola. Two oth­ers, Hamza Alghamdi and Ahmed Alnami, have names sim­i­lar to indi­vid­u­als listed in pub­lic records as using the same address inside the base,’ the Wash­ing­ton Post reported.” (Ibid.; pp. 135–136.)

4. “In addi­tion, a man named Saeed Alghamdi grad­u­ated from the Defense Lan­guage Insti­tute at Lack­land Air Force Base in San Anto­nio, while men with the same names as two other hijack­ers, Mohamed Atta and Abdu­laziz Alo­mari, appear as grad­u­ates of the U.S. Inter­na­tional Offi­cers School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and the Aero­space Med­ical School at Brooks Air Force Base in San Anto­nio, respec­tively,’ the Post said.” (Ibid.; p. 136.)

5. “Accord­ing to the Post, seven of the sus­pected hijack­ers had been in the U.S. receiv­ing mil­i­tary train­ing. Newsweek said U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cials gave the FBI infor­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that five of the alleged hijack­ers received train­ing in the 1990’s at secure U.S. mil­i­tary instal­la­tions. Three of them listed their address on dri­ver licenses and car reg­is­tra­tions as an address on the base of the Pen­sacola Naval Air Sta­tion which houses foreign-military flight trainees. ‘Pen­ta­gon Spokesman, Colonel Ken McClel­lan, said a man named Mohamed Atta had once attended the Inter­na­tional Offi­cers school at Maxwell Air Force Base in Mont­gomery, Alabama,’ reported USA Today.” (Idem.)

6. Next, the dis­cus­sion high­lights the fact that—according to Atta’s for­mer girl­friend Amanda Keller—Atta and many of his asso­ciates were already licensed pilots, some of them in more than one coun­try. “Amanda had noticed dis­crep­an­cies in Atta’s ‘flight stu­dent’ cover story. Mohamed wanted his com­mer­cial license really bad, she said. But that never made any sense to her. ‘It doesn’t make any sense because he was allowed to fly stu­dents at that air­port . . . He was allowed to fly new stu­dents. He flew to Tampa with Tim­o­thy. But Tim­o­thy was fly­ing and Mohamed was in the co-pilot’s seat, telling Tim­o­thy what to do, just like an instruc­tor.’” (Ibid.; pp. 281–282.)

7. “ ‘Tim­o­thy,’ we later dis­cov­ered, is Tim­o­thy Hupfeld, a Ger­man friend of Atta’s from Ham­burg, about whom we have heard noth­ing from the major media. Tim­o­thy had a sis­ter, Sab­rina, who was close to Atta as well. Amanda had a nick­name for Tim­o­thy Hupfeld. She called him the ‘Ice Man,’ she said. He reminded her of Val Kilmer in “Top Gun”. All of Atta’s friends already had pilot licenses from other coun­tries, she said. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Ibid.; p. 282.)

8. “ ‘This is what I don’t under­stand,’ she con­tin­ued. ‘He (Mohamed) said he was a stu­dent, yet he was allowed to fly other stu­dents, he was allowed to go off on his own, and he had the priv­i­leges of an instruc­tor, which is why Mohamed didn’t fly the plane when I went up (to Tampa) with him, he just sat there and told (Tim­o­thy) what to do.’ This is cru­cial infor­ma­tion. It clearly indi­cates that the gov­ern­ment and media have not come any­where close to clean about the sta­tus of Mohamed Atta in the United States.” (Idem.)

9. Tim­o­thy Hupfeld is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the major­ity of Atta’s asso­ciates in the United States—European, par­tic­u­larly Ger­man.

10. A fas­ci­nat­ing and impor­tant detail con­cern­ing the hijack­ers is the fact

that Yeslam bin Laden’s SICO sub­sidiary trained its pilots at Huff­man Avi­a­tion in Venice, Florida!! Huff­man is the school at which Atta and com­pany were “trained.” Although he denies it, there are pro­found indi­ca­tions that Yeslam and SICO are involved with the activ­i­ties of Al Qaeda. “ . . . Swiss police ques­tioned Yeslam [bin Laden] because one of his com­pa­nies, Avcon Air Char­ter, had offered flight train­ing to clients at the Venice flight school attended by some of the hijack­ers. As a result of what Le Monde called ‘a still unex­plained coin­ci­dence,’ the pilots of Yeslam bin Laden’s com­pany trained at Huff­man Avi­a­tion in Florida, the paper stated. ‘I didn’t chose that flight school,’ Yeslam protested. ‘I don’t have con­tact with my half-brother since over 20 years ago.’” (Ibid.; p. 178.)

11. “Swiss mag­a­zine L’Hebdo reported that Swiss fed­eral inspec­tors were seek­ing infor­ma­tion on the activ­i­ties of sev­eral bin Laden fam­ily com­pa­nies, includ­ing Geneva-based Saudi Invest­ment Com­pany, a finan­cial clear­ing­house for the family’s inter­na­tional invest­ments, and Avcon Busi­ness Jets SA, which owned a fleet of pri­vate jets which it leased to clients. . . .” (Idem.)

12. Next, the dis­cus­sion high­lights the “Magic Dutch Boys”—Rudi Dekkers and Arne Kruithof. It was at the Florida flight schools of these two Dutch­men (includ­ing Huff­man Avi­a­tion) that a num­ber of the hijack­ers, includ­ing Mohamed Atta, trained. These men were able to break vir­tu­ally every rule of busi­ness and avi­a­tion, and yet they appeared to be alto­gether untouch­able. For exam­ple, Dekkers was never able to pay his rent at the Venice air­port on time (until 9/11), and was able to con­tinue in busi­ness and even begin an air­line with Wally Hilliard (his appar­ent god­fa­ther and some­one we will deal with below.) Dekkers was able to vio­late FAA reg­u­la­tions on the main­te­nance of air­craft with appar­ent impunity. Kruithof enjoyed sim­i­lar blessings.

13. Rudi Dekkers (of Huff­man Avi­a­tion) worked for Wally Hilliard, the appar­ent God­fa­ther of Dekkers’ Venice oper­a­tions. The next topic of dis­cus­sion is the fact that a Lear Jet belong­ing to Hilliard was busted with 43 pounds of heroin on board. “Less than three weeks after Mohamed Atta and Mar­wan Al-Shehhi began fly­ing lessons on July 6, 2000, a Lear jet belong­ing to the true owner of Huff­man Avi­a­tion, financier Wal­lace J. Hilliard, 70, of Naples, Florida, was seized by Fed­eral Agents at the Orlando Exec­u­tive Air­port after they dis­cov­ered 43-pounds of heroin onboard. In the drug trade, 43-pounds of heroin is known as ‘heavy weight.’” (Ibid.; p. 245.)

14. The fol­low­ing pas­sage gives some indi­ca­tion of the extent to which Dekkers, Hilliard and com­pany were able to flaunt every con­ceiv­able busi­ness and FAA reg­u­la­tion with impunity. In addi­tion, this pas­sage fleshes out detail about the heroin bust of Hilliard’s Lear Jet. “We first learned of the heroin seizure dur­ing an inter­view with John Vil­lada, an avi­a­tion exec­u­tive in Naples who was inti­mately asso­ci­ated with Dekkers’ and Hilliard’s var­i­ous avi­a­tion busi­nesses. He man­aged the firm’s dozen or so jets, he told us, and he, too, had been shocked and amazed at the casual and arro­gant way the two men dealt with var­i­ous fed­eral offi­cials and agen­cies, like the FAA. Dekkers forged Villada’s sig­na­ture on a repair order, he told us, stat­ing required repair work on the heli­copter had been com­pleted. When he dis­cov­ered it, Vil­lada said, he was legally com­pelled to report the vio­la­tion to the FAA.” (Ibid.; pp. 245–246.)

15. An indi­ca­tion of the extent to which Dekkers, Hilliard and com­pany were pro­tected in their crim­i­nal oper­a­tions: “ ‘When Rudi was reported to the FAA for vio­la­tions, an FAA guy came out and sat us down and said: ‘I sug­gest you back out of this.’ I couldn’t believe it. I called the FAA to report a vio­la­tion and was warned to leave him alone.’ Vil­lada dropped a bomb­shell. ‘After Wally’s plane was impounded with the heroin and his pilots had machine guns stuck in their faces, the DEA came to visit our main­te­nance facil­ity and Wally shouted out to me—right in front of the DEA guy—‘Make sure all the heroin and cocaine gets hid­den!’” (Ibid.; p. 246.)

16. The pilot of Hilliard’s jet when the heroin bust took place was a fel­low named Diego Levine-Texar, who appears to have high-level pro­tec­tion sim­i­lar to that enjoyed by Dekkers and Hilliard. “ . . . Like Dekkers and Wally, Diego Levine-Texar had a ‘hall pass’ from the FAA, which might explain his casual atti­tude while being busted. ‘One time in Miami, Diego got busted because he had no pilot’s license,’ related a Naples avi­a­tion insider. ‘He was a ter­rific pilot, but he just hadn’t ever both­ered to get his license. He should have been in trou­ble. But he said, ‘the FAA lost my file,’ and—as a cour­tesy!—the FAA admin­is­tered a 4-hour test on the spot and let him go on his way.’ Diego had some juice.” (Ibid.; p. 250.)

17. “What we heard about Diego: He flies a huge Gulf­stream jet that looks like the inte­rior of a Ritz Carl­ton Hotel . . . His father owns a big fur­ni­ture man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in Venezuela . . . Diego was try­ing to buy a Cheyenne (air­plane) for the Venezue­lan Air Force . . . Diego’s day job was chief pilot for Venezuela’s Air Force One. When he wasn’t arrested fly­ing Hilliard’s Lear jet, was it just dumb luck? That’s too absurd. No, what we are look­ing at is pro­tected drug traf­fick­ing. CIA-approved. Prob­a­bly dressed up as a ‘con­trolled deliv­ery.’ No won­der infor­ma­tion about him was con­sid­ered ‘sen­si­tive.’ Who­ever he was, Diego Levine was no ama­teur free-lancer. Diego’s calls to the FAA got promptly returned. Diego is ‘home team.’” (Ibid.; pp. 250–251.)

18. Next, the dis­cus­sion turns to this operation’s appar­ent branch­ing off to the Lynch­burg, Vir­ginia area. Bri­tan­nia Avi­a­tion (run by Paul Martens) had oper­ated out of Venice Air­port (home to Dekkers’ Huff­man Avi­a­tion.) Bri­tan­nia moved to Lynch­burg, where the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing its estab­lish­ment there raised ques­tions among the city’s res­i­dents. In the pas­sages that fol­low, there are some hints as to the nature of Hilliard’s and Dekkers’ pro­tec­tion: “ . . . Some­one behind the scenes had been pulling strings in Vir­ginia to win a gov­ern­ment con­tract for a com­pany housed in a hangar at Huff­man Avi­a­tion in Venice. Nobody in Vir­ginia could fig­ure out why. And that’s when the CIA’s links to Rudi Dekkers and Wally Hilliard finally began to come into focus. At a Lynch­burg City Coun­cil hear­ing on the dis­pute, we learned there had been vocal objec­tions from local avi­a­tion observers baf­fled at why a com­pany with no qual­i­fi­ca­tions was being awarded a con­tract over a much better-qualified local Lynch­burg avi­a­tion com­pany for a large regional main­te­nance facil­ity designed for major car­ri­ers.” (Ibid.; pp. 315–316.)

19. “ ‘It was as if some­one with a learner’s per­mit from the DMV got picked to drive Richard Petty’s car at Day­tona,’ explained one Lynch­burg avi­a­tion exec­u­tive. ‘It made absolutely no busi­ness sense that any­one could see.’ Ah, we thought. Maybe we can help here. We had begun to feel com­fort­able in the mys­te­ri­ous but increas­ingly famil­iar realm of things which make ‘absolutely no busi­ness sense.’” (Ibid.; p. 316.)

20. “When Bri­tan­nia was cho­sen for the con­tract in Lynch­burg, local Lynch­burg news reports on the con­tro­versy ques­tioned why the tiny unknown firm from Venice [Paul Martens’ Bri­tan­nia Avi­a­tion] was being shoe-horned in at the Lynch­burg Air­port. ‘Some com­mis­sion mem­bers were con­cerned that they hadn’t seen details of Britannia’s bid until this past Wednes­day, and that the company’s un-audited finances weren’t given to commission

ers until some had asked for it,’ the Lynch­burg News and Advance reported. . .” (Idem.)

21. “ . . . If ever there was a trans­par­ent dummy ‘front’ com­pany Bri­tan­nia Avi­a­tion was it. It didn’t even pos­sess the nec­es­sary FAA license to per­form the air­craft main­te­nance ser­vices for which it had just been con­tracted. Yet it had been cho­sen over a respected and suc­cess­ful local Lynch­burg com­pany which boasted a multi-million dol­lar bal­ance sheet and more than 40 employ­ees. No one knew any­thing about Bri­tan­nia Avi­a­tion, other than that it had been housed at Huff­man Avi­a­tion. Still, the air­port man­ager, who had recently moved over from the FAA, greased the way for the com­pany, and the City Fathers of Lynch­burg agreed. Out at the Lynch­burg Air­port, every­one wanted to know what gave Bri­tan­nia its ‘stroke’ with gov­ern­ment offi­cials.” (Ibid.; pp. 316–317.)

22. Among the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Wally Hilliard’s oper­a­tions in Lynch­burg was the Rev­erend Jerry Fal­well. Fal­well later estab­lished a mis­sion­ary orga­ni­za­tion that flew around the world. One won­ders if that oper­a­tion might have had some other pur­poses. “ . . . Our sus­pi­cions grew when we dis­cov­ered one rea­son Bri­tan­nia was able to move so smoothly from Venice to Lynch­burg, Huff­man Aviation’s shad­owy financier, Wally Hilliard, loaned Jerry Fal­well a mil­lion bucks which the tel­e­van­ge­list has shown no indi­ca­tion of repay­ing. Only a cynic would sug­gest Fal­well may have spread some of the money around town. But then, a mil­lion bucks does buy a lot of ‘look­ing the other way.’” (Ibid.; p. 322.)

23. “ . . . So one day, we wan­dered in to see Paul Martens—unannounced of course, as he would never have spo­ken to us otherwise—at his office in a Huff­man Avi­a­tion hangar at the Venice Air­port. Martens refused to com­ment on the reports of covert influ­ences hav­ing been respon­si­ble for win­ning the Lynch­burg con­tract. He was just an hon­est British busi­ness­man, he protested. He had ties to Lynch­burg, Vir­ginia. He met his wife there, while she was a stu­dent at Jerry Falwell’s Lib­erty Uni­ver­sity, he said. Her father had been a pas­tor for the Rev­erend Fal­well. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 320.)

24. In the after­math of 9/11, there were a num­ber of flights evac­u­at­ing Saudi nation­als (includ­ing some who were impli­cated in Al Qaeda-related activ­ity.) Avail­able evi­dence sug­gests that one of Hilliard’s Lear Jets was used in their evac­u­a­tion. “The Tampa Tri­bune report offered tan­ta­liz­ing glimpses of priv­i­lege accorded Saudi nation­als denied to Amer­i­can cit­i­zens. We fig­ured the evac­u­a­tion of the Saudis to have been accom­plished through the CIA, and tried to track down the owner of the Lear in ques­tion. Since the plane took off from a pri­vate hanger at Raytheon Air­port Ser­vices in Tampa, we con­tacted them first.” (Ibid.; p. 154.)

25. “Raytheon is a major defense-intelligence indus­try player which spent the past decade expand­ing, pur­chas­ing noto­ri­ous E-Systems and then merg­ing with Hughes Elec­tron­ics’ defense oper­a­tions (Hughes Air­craft). When we asked who had owned the Lear that took off from their facil­ity that morn­ing, we learned that Catch-22 is still alive and well. Raytheon said we would have to ask the owner of the plane to tell Raytheon they could tell us who owned the plane. . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 154–155.)

26. “ . . . Later a knowl­edge­able avi­a­tion source told us that the Lear jet in ques­tion had come from a Naples, Florida char­ter ser­vice. ‘Wally Hilliard owns the only char­ter Lear ser­vice in south­west Florida,’ said the source. ‘If a Lear was fly­ing that day, it would have been his.’ Hilliard is the financier who pur­chased Huff­man Avi­a­tion for Rudi Dekkers, and it had been the terrorist’s Amer­i­can beach­head. So not only had Hilliard financed the oper­a­tion which trained Mohamed Atta and assorted other mem­bers of his ter­ror­ist cadre to fly, but he appar­ently also owned a Lear jet used to extri­cate Saudis from the Raytheon facil­ity in Tampa. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 155.)

27. The envi­ron­ment in which the Magic Dutch Boys and their God­fa­ther Hilliard oper­ated (and through which the 9/11 hijack­ers were infil­trated into the United States) was the same Florida intel­li­gence envi­ron­ment so famil­iar to vet­eran lis­ten­ers from dis­cus­sion of the Iran-Contra scan­dal. This same Florida/Caribbean/Central Amer­ica envi­ron­ment had been a hotbed of covert action since the Bay of Pigs and the anti-Castro activ­i­ties of the early 1960’s. The activ­i­ties high­lighted in Daniel Hopsicker’s mar­velous book are part of the exten­sion of that envi­ron­ment. A pas­sage about Frank Moss—one of the Iran-Contra related drug smug­glers who oper­ated in the Char­lotte County area—should serve to under­score the extent to which the activ­i­ties chron­i­cled in Wel­come to Ter­ror­land are, as Yogi Berra said “Déjà vu all over again.” “ . . . Moss had been under inves­ti­ga­tion for nar­cotics offenses since 1979, it turned out, by no less than ten dif­fer­ent law enforce­ment agen­cies. But Amer­ica is the land of the sec­ond chance, and thus Moss was one of the first pilots cho­sen to fly Con­tra sup­ply mis­sions. He was there at the incep­tion of the ‘con­tra cocaine’ busi­ness run with the tacit approval of shad­owy gov­ern­ment fig­ures like then-CIA Direc­tor Bill Casey.” (Ibid.; p. 124.)

28. “Moss also reg­u­larly dropped duf­fel bags—military issue, natch—filled with con­tra cocaine onto the Louisiana ‘farm’ of Barry Seal, the biggest drug smug­gler in Amer­i­can his­tory, accord­ing to the U.S. Gov­ern­ment. Besides being big in the drug busi­ness, Seal was a life-long CIA oper­a­tive, some­thing which quickly became ‘incon­ve­nient knowl­edge’ dur­ing Iran Con­tra. . . .” (Idem.)

29. “ . . . Both Char­lotte County Air­port, and Venice 40 miles to the north were unlikely hotbeds of covert activ­ity, and it is no doubt just another ‘freak coin­ci­dence’ that Barry Seal’s Iran Con­tra bud­dies have their fin­ger­prints all over oper­a­tions at two tiny air­ports fre­quented by the ter­ror­ists. Still, Atta had hung out in both places. . . What was up with that?” (Idem.)

30. The broad­cast con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of the sus­pi­cious air crashes that almost claimed the lives of both of the “Magic Dutch Boys” some time after the 9/11 attacks, con­ducted by some of the pilots from their school.