Recorded June 26, 2005
REALAUDIO

Updat­ing the heroic 9/11 research done by Daniel Hop­sicker, the pro­gram sets forth details of a low-level cover-up oper­a­tion in Florida, as well as evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries con­nect­ing GOP lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff, the Sun­Cruz casino boats in Florida, the gang­land mur­der of Gus Boulis (SunCruz’s pre­vi­ous owner), and a visit to a Sun­Cruz ship made by Mohamed Atta and other 9/11 hijack­ers. Hopsicker’s ground-breaking research into the Florida activ­i­ties of Atta and other 9/11 hijack­ers is at vari­ance with the offi­cial ver­sion of events. Recently, a man claim­ing that eye­wit­nesses had mis­taken him for Atta has come for­ward, in order to impugn infor­ma­tion from Daniel’s book. The “sec­ond Mohamed” looks noth­ing like Mohamed Atta and is seven inches taller. Arti­cles with infor­ma­tion dif­fer­ing with the FBI’s ver­sion of events have been deleted from the Lexis-Nexis data­base relied on by jour­nal­ists and inves­ti­ga­tors. Both the Con­gres­sional and “inde­pen­dent” Kean Com­mis­sion relied on the FBI as its sole inves­tiga­tive resource. One of Atta’s Ger­man asso­ciates has filed a nui­sance law­suit against Daniel, in what is prob­a­bly another attempt at under­min­ing Daniel’s work. An asso­ciate of the elder George Bush, the late Gus Boulis’ gang­land style slay­ing was sim­i­lar to that of another Bush associate—the late Don Aronow. The visit by Atta and com­pany to a Sun­Cruz gam­bling ship just before 9/11 also sug­gests that Atta’s Florida activ­i­ties were con­ducted in con­junc­tion with a crim­i­nal milieu.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Refu­ta­tion of the “sec­ond Mohamed’s” claim that Amanda Keller delib­er­ately con­fused him with Atta when talk­ing with jour­nal­ists; attempts by other Ger­man asso­ciates of Atta at dis­cred­it­ing Hopsicker’s work; GOP lob­by­ist (and Sun­Cruz vice-president) Jack Abramoff’s links to the Chris­t­ian right; checks writ­ten by Abramoff’s part­ner to a mob enforcer in the run-up to Gus Boulis’ mur­der; Boulis’ fears for his life, expressed before his mur­der; fears of oth­ers around Boulis that they might be killed.

1. One of the cen­tral ele­ments of dis­cus­sion con­cerns a low-level dis­in­for­ma­tion oper­a­tion appar­ently directed against Daniel Hopsicker’s inves­ti­ga­tions into the milieu of Mohamed Atta and the mys­te­ri­ous flight schools in the Venice, Florida area. (For more about this, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#’s 482, 483, 484.) One ele­ment of this appar­ent dis­in­for­ma­tion effort is an attempt by a French-Arab man named Mohamed Ara­jaki to pass him­self off as the “Mohamed” that Amanda Keller knew in Florida. (Ms. Keller is Mohamed Atta’s for­mer girl­friend.) In addi­tion to the obvi­ous fact that this “sec­ond Mohamed” looks noth­ing like Atta, Mr. Ara­jaki is 6’ 2” tall—Atta is 5’ 7” tall. Be sure to con­sult the pic­tures of Ara­jaki in Daniel’s arti­cle. “More than three years after the 9/11 attack, intrigue con­tin­ues to swirl con­cern­ing knowl­edge of the ter­ror­ist hijack­ers move­ments, activ­i­ties, and asso­ciates while in the U.S. prepar­ing the assault. A mys­te­ri­ous French-Arab man resur­faced last week who author­i­ties had dubbed the ‘5th ter­ror­ist pilot’ and a ‘Sec­ond’ Mohamed in Venice, FL. In an email, he alleged that a num­ber of eye­wit­nesses, includ­ing the girl who had lived with him, had all mis­taken him . . . for Mohamed Atta.”
(“‘Dis­ap­pear­ing’ the News: The ‘Sec­ond’ Mohamed in Venice” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad Cow Morn­ing News; 5/3/2005; p. 1.)

2. In addi­tion to the sud­den appear­ance of the sec­ond Mohamed, news­pa­per arti­cles about Atta’s activ­i­ties in Venice are being removed from the Lexis-Nexis data­base used by jour­nal­ists world-wide. The arti­cles in ques­tion con­tra­dict the “offi­cial” ver­sion of Atta and company’s activ­i­ties in Florida. “It was HE they’d known in Venice, not the ter­ror­ist ring­leader, he asserted. And he sug­gested the con­fu­sion might owe some­thing to their com­mon name, ‘Mohamed.’ Before dis­miss­ing the claims of this sup­posed ‘Sec­ond Mohamed,’ we must first con­sider a curi­ous story from the Sara­sota Her­ald Tri­bune, which seems to back him up. It was while review­ing his alle­ga­tions that we dis­cov­ered that cru­cial early news reports filed in Venice dur­ing the week after the attack in the local Sara­sota Her­ald Tri­bune have been removed from the news­pa­per data­base Lexis-Nexis, relied on by jour­nal­ists and inves­ti­ga­tors world­wide.” (Idem.)

3. Another ele­ment of the appar­ent attempt at sup­press­ing incon­ve­nient truths about Atta’s activ­i­ties in Florida is a law­suit filed against Daniel Hop­sicker by Stephen Ver­haaren, one of Atta’s numer­ous Ger­man asso­ciates in Florida. Ver­haaren claims he did not know Atta. Sig­nif­i­cantly, oth­ers of Atta’s Euro­pean asso­ciates have also con­tacted Hop­sicker to deny hav­ing asso­ci­ated with Atta in Florida. (For more about Atta’s Ger­man asso­ciates, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#477.) “Miss­ing are sto­ries report­ing that Mohamed Atta was liv­ing across from the Venice Air­port at the Sand­piper Apart­ments dur­ing the spring of 2001, with Amanda Keller, a pink-haired Amer­i­can strip­per. Also at this time, as if the air was not already filled with enough intrigue for sev­eral spy nov­els, two more alleged Euro­pean asso­ciates of Atta chose this pre­cise moment to step for­ward and deny hav­ing asso­ci­ated with the ter­ror­ist ring­leader, includ­ing a Ger­man pilot named Stephan Ver­haaren, who recently filed a law­suit against us in Kather­ine Harris’s home­town of Sara­sota, Florida. There’s noth­ing like hav­ing a home court advan­tage.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

4. “So . . . if the Sep­tem­ber 11th attack is a dead issue, as some allege, why the con­spic­u­ous flurry of activ­ity? Per­haps it’s a sig­nal that there remains some­thing of major value still hid­den and wait­ing to be found beneath the gar­bled offi­cial account of the chronol­ogy and move­ments of ter­ror­ist ring­leader Mohamed Ata.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

5. Arti­cles about Atta and company’s activ­i­ties in Florida have been deleted from the Lexis-Nexis data­base. “The series of events which led to the dis­cov­ery of ‘dis­ap­peared’ news about Atta in Venice began with notice that we were being sued—again—this time by Stephen Ver­haaren, who accord­ing to Amanda Keller was one of a hand­ful of Atta’s Euro­pean asso­ciates in Florida. Mr. Ver­haaren, appar­ently, begs to dif­fer. One clear mes­sage seems to be that the Mad Cow Morn­ing News will need to place the bud­get line for ‘Defense attor­ney’ under ‘re-occurring expenses.’ (See related story on how to get our new video free as a pre­mium for a con­tri­bu­tion to our free press fund.)” (Idem.)

6. “Today the miss­ing sto­ries can only be found in one place we’re aware of: the micro­fiche record kept of the paper-as-printed in the Sara­sota Library. What this means is that—unless you already knew about them—these sto­ries effec­tively no longer exist. Just to make sure they never go away, we are mak­ing them avail­able here. Both con­tain mostly unre­mark­able inter­views with numer­ous local eye­wit­nesses whose paths crossed with those of the ter­ror­ists. Their tes­ti­mony matter-of-factly con­tra­dicts the FBI’s offi­cial account, which states Atta moved to Venice soon after arriv­ing in the U.S., and left for good in Decem­ber of 2000.” (Idem.)

7. “ ‘FBI Links Third Ter­ror­ist to Venice’ was the head­line of the first, on Sept. 16, writ­ten by Her­ald Tri­bune staff writ­ers Robert Eck­hart and Michael Werner, in which law enforce­ment offi­cials matter-of-factly con­firm to reporters that before mov­ing to Venice, Mohamed Atta lived 30 miles to the south in rural Char­lotte County. ‘Atta lived for sev­eral months in rural Char­lotte County before mov­ing to Venice Sher­iff Bill Clement said at a news con­fer­ence Thurs­day. Clement said the Sheriff’s Office had for­warded sev­eral tips to the FBI about Atta, who used an alias in Char­lotte County.’” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

8. “Atta had gone to flight school at the Char­lotte Air­port, local author­i­ties dis­cov­ered, when a local busi­ness owner took advan­tage of one of Atta’s few slip-ups. . . The ter­ror­ist ring­leader had inad­ver­tently for­warded a five-page screed which included the pic­ture of a dead Mid­dle East­ern child to an avi­a­tion busi­ness at the Char­lotte Air­port. The hor­ri­fied owner imme­di­ately passed it on to the County Sher­iff. So local law enforce­ment got it before the FBI. Then the well-meaning Sher­iff released it to the media, much to the sub­se­quent dis­plea­sure of the FBI. He must have thought he still lived in a coun­try where there is some­thing called the ‘people’s right to know.’” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

9. Hop­sicker notes that the FBI account, at vari­ance with ver­i­fi­able facts about Atta’s Florida activ­i­ties, is the sole inves­tiga­tive source relied on by both the Joint Con­gres­sional Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee and the so-called “inde­pen­dent” Kean Com­mis­sion. “This infor­ma­tion con­tra­dicts the FBI’s account. But it also throws into ques­tion the entire chronol­ogy of the crime, from Atta’s arrival in the U.S. to his sub­se­quent move­ments, which is dis­turb­ing because the FBI’s inves­ti­ga­tion was the sole inves­tiga­tive source relied on by both the Joint Con­gres­sional Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee inquiry and the later ‘inde­pen­dent’ 9/11 Com­mis­sion. Both ‘inves­ti­ga­tions’ knew only what the FBI told them . . . a truly chill­ing prospect.” (Idem.)

10. “The sec­ond account was pub­lished two days later with the head­line: ‘Fourth Ter­ror­ist Sus­pect May Have Ties to Venice.’ It too quoted cred­i­ble wit­nesses whose tes­ti­mony is almost laugh­ably at odds with the FBI’s ver­sion of events. Reporter Earle Kimel noted the dis­crep­an­cies: ‘Huff­man flight instruc­tors have said they believe Atta left the area shortly after receiv­ing his pilot’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion,’ he reported. How­ever, Atta may have been in Venice as recently as April. Charles Grapen­tine, the man­ager of Sand­piper Apart­ments on Air­port Avenue in Venice, said he remem­bers see­ing Atta at the com­plex for about three weeks in April. He said Atta was liv­ing in the apart­ment of Amanda Keller.’” (Idem.)

11. “Here’s a taste of what they are try­ing to hide. If these wit­nesses tes­ti­fied before cam­eras in front of some­thing like Sam Erwin’s Water­gate Com­mit­tee, we would live in a bet­ter world than we are appar­ently allowed. For exam­ple, the apart­ment manager’s wife Paula Grapen­tine, told the Char­lotte Sun that Atta had had ‘a lot of vis­i­tors.’ That could have opened what leg­endary Sen. William Ful­bright used to call, ‘an end­less can of worms.’ And the owner of the Sand­piper Apart­ments, Vicky Keyser, told author­i­ties the stu­dents smoked a strange tobacco, which smelled like mar­i­juana. This is far from only ref­er­ence we will hear con­cern­ing the ter­ror­ist hijack­ers and drugs.” (Idem.)

12. “And here’s an inter­est­ing find: One week after the attack, Brian Ross of NBC News reported a curi­ous dis­cov­ery with pos­si­ble sig­nif­i­cance to the story of Mohamed Atta’s sup­posed Ger­man asso­ciates: ‘And yet more evi­dence of the over­seas money trail had been found at a fly­ing school in Punta Gorda. The owner says FBI agents seized records relat­ing to at least 12 for­eign stu­dents whose tuition was paid with for­eign wire trans­fers. They were very inter­ested in the Ger­man trans­fers, and they were very inter­ested in the Mid­dle East­ern trans­fers,’ Byers told Ross. But. . . .the FBI says the hijack­ers received ‘no out­side help.’ So why were they inter­ested in ‘the Ger­man trans­fers?’ We’ll have to remem­ber to ask Ger­man pilot Stephan Ver­haaren when we dis­pose him dur­ing our law­suit.” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

13. “Any ordi­nary mor­tal who starts talk­ing about things like ‘A Sec­ond Oswald’ is labeled a con­spir­acy the­o­rist. But some­how when the FBI con­jures up a ‘Sec­ond Mohamed’ no one even blinked. The sole sur­viv­ing report men­tion­ing Atta at the Sand­piper in the Lexis-Nexis news­pa­per data­base is a Sept. 23, 2001 arti­cle in the Sara­sota Her­ald Tri­bune, in which author­i­ties take plans to refute the ear­lier reports. Iron­i­cally this only serves to call atten­tion to the fact that the ear­lier sto­ries are no longer there.” (Idem.)

14. “Under the head­line ‘Fifth Pilot Trainee Van­ishes’ on Sep­tem­ber 23, 2001 the Sara­sota Herald-Tribune pair reversed itself, and now reported author­i­ties were say­ing Amanda Keller had not lived with Mohamed Atta, but with another Mohamed. ‘He told the peo­ple he lived with in Venice ear­lier this year that he was mov­ing to Paris,’ read the report. ‘The man, known as Mohamed, stayed at Amanda Keller’s unit in the Sand­piper Apart­ment com­plex on Air­port Avenue in April.’” (Idem.)

15. “This ‘Sec­ond Mohamed,’ who had until then com­pletely escaped men­tion was a man about whom author­i­ties oth­er­wise knew lit­tle. . . . ‘Inves­ti­ga­tors have iden­ti­fied a fifth man of Mid­dle East­ern descent who trained to fly in Venice, but they don’t know if he was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks because they can’t find him.’” (Idem.)

16. “While they may not have known if he was involved with the 9/11 attack, author­i­ties were com­pletely sure about one thing . . . The numer­ous eye­wit­nesses told police, reporters and the FBI that ter­ror­ist ring­leader Atta had been liv­ing at the Sand­piper Apart­ments dur­ing the Spring of 2001 had not in fact seen the ter­ror­ist ring­leader. . . They had seen this man. He was the ‘sec­ond´ Mohamed. No snig­ger­ing was appar­ently allowed. Accord­ing to state­ments the FBI made to Amanda Keller while ques­tion­ing her, ‘Mohamed Ara­jaki’ was an alias of Atta’s. And the FBI Ter­ror­ist List—mistakenly released to the pub­lic a month after the attack by the Finnish Gov­ern­ment, to the Bureau’s consternation—also listed ‘Mohamed Ara­jaki’ as one of Atta’s numer­ous aliases.” (Idem.)

17. Incred­i­bly, the “sec­ond Mohamed” claims Amanda Keller sim­ply fab­ri­cated her story about asso­ci­at­ing with Atta in order to gain pub­lic­ity. In fact, she was fright­ened and actu­ally shunned pub­lic­ity, until Daniel Hop­sicker tracked her down! “But Amanda Keller was far from alone in iden­ti­fy­ing Mohamed Atta as the man she had lived with for sev­eral months. In the days after the attack every one of the local news­pa­pers in the area—the Sarasota-Herald Tri­bune, Chrlotte Sun, and Venice Gon­do­lier—ran eye­wit­ness accounts of Atta at the Sand­piper, across the street from the Venice Air­port. ‘Charles Grapen­tine, the man­ager of Sand­piper Apart­ments on Air­port Avenue in Venice, said he remem­bers see­ing Atta at the com­plex for about three weeks in April. He said Atta was liv­ing in the apart­ment of Amanda Keller. In a tele­phone inter­view late Fri­day, Keller said she met Atta through a friend and let him stay in the apart­ment with her and her then-boyfriend, Gar­rett Metts, because she felt sorry for him. She said author­i­ties told her not to say any­thing at all about Atta,’ the paper reported. ‘I can’t really dis­cuss any­thing,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I’ll get in trou­ble.’” (Ibid.; pp. 4–5.)

18. “Another story just three days after the attack reported: ‘Flight School May Have Charged Sus­pected Ter­ror­ists Extra Rent.’ The local Venice Gon­do­lier reported Huff­man Avi­a­tion rented an apart­ment for $550 a month at the Sand­piper, and then turned around and sub­let it to stu­dents at an out­ra­geously high markup. Rudi Dekkers had been goug­ing the ter­ror­ists. We couldn’t muster any indig­na­tion over it.” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

19. “The secret his­tory of 9/11 con­tains items like the one from the Char­lotte Sun stat­ing Amanda had been intro­duced in Key West to two men from Ger­many who said they were Mohamed’s friends. ‘FBI agents seized records from a finan­cially trou­bled flight school at the Char­lotte County Air­port, Pro­fes­sional Avi­a­tion, that recruited stu­dents from Tunisia and went out of busi­ness in the spring of 2001, after tip­sters said they saw Atta there late last year or early this year,’ the Char­lotte Sun-Herald reported. The FBI in Tampa would nei­ther con­firm nor deny that any agents were inter­view­ing peo­ple in the North Port area,’ Char­lotte Sun reporter Elaine Allen-Emrich wrote. Asked for more infor­ma­tion about Atta’s wild week­end, an FBI spokesper­son iden­ti­fied only as Pam stated ‘We rec­om­mend that you check in with CNN for cur­rent infor­ma­tion. Any press state­ments can be found on tele­vised sta­tions like CNN.’” (Idem.)

20. “Yet ‘Mohamed Arajaki’s’ email naively assumes he has only Amanda Keller to ‘dis­credit’ to make the story go away. ‘The only com­mon points between Atta and myself are that I am from an Ara­bic back­ground, I was in Venice at the wrong time at the wrong school . . . (And) I for­got, my fam­ily name starts with an ‘A’ as well,’ the email stated. ‘It is true that she met a cer­tain Mohamed but it was not Mohamed Atta, but myself. The only per­son to blame is Amanda as she knew she was lying. Do a lit­tle bit of inves­ti­ga­tion and you will find things about Mohamed Arakji, because I am the Mohamed she knew, not the other one.’” (Idem.)

21. Note also, that the sec­ond Mohamed claims Keller fab­ri­cated her Atta story in order to sell it to Hop­sicker. But Hop­sicker paid her noth­ing, and she actu­ally was afraid for her safety. “Upset about what he termed ‘the enor­mous lies you have been pub­lish­ing about Amanda and Mohamed Atta,’ he wrote, ‘Unfor­tu­nately for you and myself, we had to deal with this ser­ial liar psy­cho.’ She took facts and turned them to sell a story. I hope it did not cost you too much to buy noth­ing but lies.’ In point of fact, we paid Amanda noth­ing. We’d been puz­zled about why her story hadn’t already been told in the tabloids. . . ‘Terrorist’s Girl­friend Bares All’ would sell a lot of papers in the check-out line.” (Idem.)

22. “Amanda Keller never went look­ing for pub­lic­ity. We went look­ing for her. We didn’t feel like ‘check­ing with CNN.’ The accu­sa­tion that Keller was a gold-digger look­ing for a pay­day in the deaths of 3000 peo­ple is a lie. As if antic­i­pat­ing it might not fly, the email offered a sec­ond expla­na­tion for how a half dozen ordi­nary cit­i­zens had mis­taken him for Mohamed Atta. . . . ‘Also you must know that it is very easy to mis­take one Arab guy for another.’ We were glad we hadn’t said that.” (Ibid.; p. 6.)

23. “ ‘Amanda men­tions trans­ves­tites in Key West, my friend got grabbed by a group of them in the street, as it was funny, I took a pic­ture as well,’ stated the email. We dug out Amanda’s com­ments about the trip to Key West: ‘So we went by Diva’s (in Key West) and it was the first time I ever saw a drag queen,’ she told us. ‘And I was stand­ing there talk­ing to them, so they had their pic­tures taken with a drag queen. Peter, Mohamed and Stephen were all stand­ing next to the drag queen, who stuffed his hand down all their pants in the pic­tures, and Peter and Stephan both laughed it off, but Mohamed got really angry,’ said Amanda.” (Idem.)

24. “Some­where there are pho­tographs of ter­ror­ist ring­leader Mohamed Atta being groped by a drag queen in Key West. The truth is always stranger than fic­tion. Still, given the numer­ous reports of Atta’s un-Islamic pro­cliv­i­ties, it’s not at all unbe­liev­able. Mr. ‘Mohamed Ara­jaki’ sent along sev­eral pho­tos of him­self . . . Some­times a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words. We never believed any cred­i­ble wit­ness would mis­take ter­ror­ist ring­leader Atta for any­one else, and see­ing this man’s photo only rein­forced the con­vic­tion. . . Could you mis­take this man for Mohamed Atta? We couldn’t either.” (Idem.)

25. Turn­ing to another of Daniel Hopsicker’s ground-breaking sto­ries, the pro­gram high­lights the links between GOP lob­by­ist and king-maker jack Abramoff and a casino boat oper­a­tion in Florida. In addi­tion to the fact that the pre­vi­ous owner of the casino boat oper­a­tion was mur­dered in Feb­ru­ary of 2001, the broad­cast notes that almost six months to the day later (Sep­tem­ber 5th of 2001), Mohamed Atta and some asso­ciates appar­ently vis­ited one of the Sun­Cruz ships. “The Mad Cow Morn­ing News has learned exclu­sive new details about the gangland-style hit in Florida of Gus Boulis, whose mur­der fig­ures promi­nently in lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff’s rise to power. The ‘secret world’ of Jack Abramoff being probed by inves­ti­ga­tors today has def­i­nite con­nec­tions and unmis­tak­able links to the one inhab­ited dur­ing their final year in the U.S. by Mohamed Atta and the other hijack­ers. So as the scan­dal embroil­ing House Major Domo Tom Delay and Repub­li­can lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff grows hot­ter, there may be new rev­e­la­tions about the 9/11 attack”
(“The Secret World of Jack Abramoff: Ter­ror­ists, Tor­pe­does, & Repub­li­can ‘Mus­cle’” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad Cow Morn­ing News; 6/21/2005; p. 1.)

26. The pur­pose of Atta’s appar­ent visit to the Sun­Cruz casino boat is unclear. It may have been to obtain or laun­der funds. “One of the most amaz­ing things about this most amaz­ing scandal—hundreds of mil­lions in slush funds beats Oval Office blowjobs by a mile—is that some of the same names in the Abramoff scan­dal also sur­face in con­nec­tion with Mohamed Atta’s. Less than a week before the 9/11 attack, for exam­ple, Atta and sev­eral other hijack­ers made a still-unexplained visit onboard one of Abramoff’s casino boats. What were they doing there? No one knows. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Idem.)

27. “There remains a strong sus­pi­cion that Atta’s ter­ror­ist cadre-supposedly unknown and friend­less and bur­row­ing into the woodwork—was able to call on the assis­tance, when nec­es­sary, of a friendly global net­work. Could it be that this net­work is the same one being probed so gin­gerly today by inves­ti­ga­tors look­ing into Jack Abramoff? What could a scan­dal involv­ing Indian casi­nos and gam­bling boat ‘cruises to nowhere’ & pay-for-play gov­ern­ment offi­cials have to do with the story of 19 hijack­ers plan­ning a mass mur­der in sup­posed iso­la­tion in Florida? Let’s take a look. While Abramoff’s Indian gam­ing trou­bles may be get­ting the most pub­lic­ity, his other major ‘area of con­cern’ is where the real scan­dal resides. Involve­ment with Mob-run casino boats may turn out to be a faux pas, even for Repub­li­cans. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

28. “ . . . What the Abramoff scan­dal is about at the core can be sim­ply stated as: Vegas with­out rules. And what the politi­cians are argu­ing over is the biggest slush fund in the his­tory of the world. Democ­rats don’t want to elim­i­nate it. They just want in on the action. Who owns Florida’s gam­bling boats? No one is cer­tain. There is vir­tu­ally no state or fed­eral over­sight. No one licenses the oper­a­tors. No one ensures that the games aren’t rigged. No one ensures that the boats aren’t used to laun­der money. No one inves­ti­gates whether orga­nized crime is involved.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

29. “And while ex-felons can’t vote in Florida-as many became aware dur­ing the mem­o­rable pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in 2000-this dis­ad­van­tage is more than off­set, for some, by the fact that an ex-felon can run a gam­bling boat in the state with no fear at all of flunk­ing the back­ground check. The rea­son? There is none. This sit­u­a­tion clearly suits some peo­ple just fine. . . While Gov­er­nor Jeb Bush may be minutely con­cerned with what hap­pened to Terry Schi­avo fif­teen years ago, on this issue of real interest—massive corruption—he phones in his regrets. Just why might that be? . . .” (Idem.)

30. “ ‘There is a weird report just a day or two after 9/11 that some­one reported to the FBI that three of four of the hijack­ers were seen gam­bling on a Sun­Cruz boat,’ wrote a source in Miami. ‘The FBI inter­viewed every­one who might have seen them, that very day by all reports.’ Sure enough. We found an Asso­ci­ated Press story on Sept. 26, 2001 head­lined ‘Sun­Cruz Casi­nos Turns Over Doc­u­ments in Ter­ror­ist Probe.’” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

31. “ ‘Sun­Cruz Casi­nos has turned over pho­tographs and other doc­u­ments to FBI inves­ti­ga­tors after employ­ees said they rec­og­nized some of the men sus­pected in the ter­ror­ist attacks as cus­tomers. . . . Names on the pas­sen­ger list from a Sept. 5 cruise matched those of some of the hijack­ers. . . . Two or three men linked to the Sept. 11 hijack­ings may have been cus­tomers on a ship that sailed from Madeira Beach on Florida’s Gulf Coast.’” (Ibid.; p. 4.)

32. In addi­tion to their visit to the Sun­Cruz casino boat, Atta and other hijack­ers also vis­ited Las Vegas. Were they laun­der­ing money dur­ing these vis­its? (Another pos­si­bil­ity con­cerns the pos­si­bil­ity that neo-fascist ele­ments involved with anthrax were active in the Hen­der­son, Nevada area. Hen­der­son is out­side of Las Vegas. For more about the anthrax con­nec­tion, see FTR#419.) “Less than a week before the 9/11 attack, Atta and sev­eral other hijack­ers were aboard one of Abramoff’s casino boats. What no one seems able to answer is this: What pos­si­ble thrill could gam­bling offer men get­ting ready to die in less than a week? To this date, their Sept. 5 visit to a gam­bling ves­sel over­run with retirees remains unex­plained. The gam­bling motif in the terrorist’s time­line doesn’t end there. The hijack­ers had no appar­ent rea­son to visit Las Vegas. . . so why did they?” (Idem.)

33. “On June 28 at Boston’s Logan Air­port, Mohamed Atta boarded a United Air­lines flight and flew first class non­stop to San Fran­cisco. He bypassed the bohemian North Beach dis­trict, and didn’t take the cruise to Alca­traz. . . . Atta headed for Vegas. On Aug. 10, Hani Han­jour and Nawaf Alhazmi used first-class tick­ets for a United flight from Dulles Air­port near Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to Los Ange­les Air­port near Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to Los Ange­les Inter­na­tional Air­port, then on to Las Vegas. The story of the ter­ror­ists’ Las Vegas con­nec­tion may never be known, admit­ted the Las Vegas FBI.” (Idem.)

34. “ ‘Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ist’ Atta may have felt right at home in the world of fast cash and unli­censed gam­bling boat ‘cruises to nowhere’ of Repub­li­can lob­by­ist (and obser­vant Jew) Jack Abramoff. He would almost cer­tainly have been com­fort­able with the ‘gangland-style hit straight out of Good­fel­las’ that cemented Abramoff’s promi­nent posi­tion in that indus­try. At the time of the Sept. 11 attack one of Abramoff’s chief claims to fame was as the proud owner of the Sun­Cruz line: a dozen unli­censed gam­bling boats ply­ing the waters off the Florida coast in a fash­ion which in any other state would have been con­sid­ered crim­i­nal.” (Idem.)

35. “How did Jack Abramoff get lucky enough to be the guy pass­ing out all that long green? Where did Jack Abramoff get his ‘juice?’ Short answer: Not every­one is savvy to oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sented by rid­ers in obscure leg­is­la­tion. Not so the con­nected, the covert, the—dare we say ‘blessed?’ ‘Elite deviance’ is a soci­o­log­i­cal term for a con­di­tion in a soci­ety in which the elite in the soci­ety come to believe that the rules no longer apply to them. Casino boats turned out to be a elite deviant’s dream. One time-honored way to get rich is to marry money. Another is to kill some­one that has it . . . In Abramoff’s case, it appears that Gus Boulis, the owner of the lion’s share of the casino boats in Florida, had to die first.” (Idem.)

36. The three-man con­sor­tium of which Abramoff was part secured Sun­Cruz from Gus Boulis, who was mur­dered gangland-style. There is more about Boulis’ mur­der below. “Three men formed an own­er­ship group that appar­ently made Boulis the prover­bial offer he couldn’t refuse. They bought Sun­Cruz from him, even though it wasn’t for sale. When Greek tycoon Gus Boulis was gunned down in his BMW on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2001 Fort Laun­derdale police inves­ti­ga­tors imme­di­ately began scru­ti­niz­ing Sun­Cruz Casi­nos. Sus­pi­cion focused on the recent sale of the fleet. Boulis and one of the three men had been car­ry­ing on a very pub­lic feud. ‘We cer­tainly aren’t lack­ing in sus­pects,’ said a homi­cide detec­tive drolly.” (Ibid.; pp. 4–5.)

37. “Less than two months later, Sun­Cruz announced plans to move a 150-foot, $10-million float­ing casino to the North­ern Mar­i­anas. Almost every arti­cle we’d read cites Abramoff & Delay’s inter­est in the Mar­i­anas being sweat-shop related. Mean­ing they’re in favor of them. Their pri­mary focus wasn’t sweat­shops. It was gam­bling.” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

38. “ ‘Read about Sun­Cruz and it sounds like a South Florida ver­sion of ‘The Sopra­nos,’ reported the South Florida Busi­ness Jour­nal. ‘Feds go after owner Gus Boulis. For­mer Miami Subs king­pin forced to sell. New Sun­Cruz chair­man says Boulis threat­ened him. Boulis whacked.’ As if to con­firm the account, other news­pa­per reports men­tioned a cli­mate of fear after the Boulis mur­der. ‘The shoot­ing death. . . cast a pall of fear over the peo­ple who knew him, with some of his clos­est asso­ciates admit­ting con­cern at being con­nected with a man tar­geted by a hit man,’ the local Sun-Sentinel reported the day after the hit.” (Idem.)

39. Note that peo­ple famil­iar with details about the Sun­Cruz case declined to dis­cuss it, out of fear. In FTR#’s 482, 483, 484, we noted that the same cli­mate of fear sur­rounded many who had known details of the bogus flight schools used by Atta and com­pany to infil­trate the United States. “ ‘There are a lot of peo­ple who aren’t talk­ing for rea­sons of per­sonal safety,’ said Fort Laud­erdale Police Detec­tive Mike Reed. Another asso­ciate declined to dis­cus any­thing about Boulis with the paper. . . ‘I’ve got my fam­ily to worry about,’ he said, on con­di­tion of anonymity. Even a cur­sory look at the exec­u­tive man­age­ment of the cruise-to-nowhere com­pany that Boulis founded turns up vio­lent thugs and orga­nized crime fig­ures. But that’s pretty typ­i­cal of South Florida. . . What is unusual are that in with SunCruz’s mobbed-up crew are promi­nent Repub­li­can Party mem­bers with long-standing, deep ties to the reli­gious right.” (Idem.)

40. In addi­tion to Abramoff’s ties to the GOP, he has strong ties to the Chris­t­ian right. Abramoff’s links to both organized-crime related ele­ments and to the Chris­t­ian right is rem­i­nis­cent of Jerry Falwell’s finan­cial links to Wally Hilliard, who co-owned Huff­man Avi­a­tion with Ruki Dekkers. (For more about the Falwell/Hilliard rela­tion­ship, see FTR#’s 482, 483, 484.) “Two Sun­Cruz exec­u­tives, Jack Abramoff and Ben Wald­man, are walk­ing exam­ples of the strange alliance between the family-values party and the gam­bling indus­try. Both men have strong ties to Pat Robertson’s Chris­t­ian Coali­tion, which is adamantly opposed to gam­bling; Wald­man was Robertson’s top aide in the televangelist’s run for the pres­i­dency. Abramoff, who per­haps wisely only took the title of vice pres­i­dent (less heat) has been con­nected to the Chris­t­ian right since a stu­dent at Bran­deis Uni­ver­sity, where as head of the Col­lege Repub­li­cans he enlisted Top Chris­t­ian Ralph Reed as his top deputy. The two have remained close friends ever since.” (Idem.)

41. The pro­gram notes that Abramoff’s part­ner in the Sun­Cruz oper­a­tion was no stranger to the world of gang­land vio­lence. His mother was mur­dered in a gangland-style hit. A for­mer boyfriend of Madonna’s was con­victed in that case. “A man named Adam Kidan became SunCruz’s new chair­man. Kidan’s mother had been mur­dered in a gangland-style hit in New York. Madonna’s one-time boyfriend and South Beach restau­ra­teur Chris Paciello, was even­tu­ally con­victed in the case. Today he is in Fed­eral Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion, and word is there are sev­eral movies about him in devel­op­ment. Just another Amer­i­can suc­cess story.” (Idem.)

42. “The Semi­nole Tribe of Florida led the way in par­lay­ing mom-and-pop bingo par­lors into today’s $19 bil­lion a year Indian casino indus­try. Along with leg­endary chief James Bil­lie (Wres­tles with Alli­ga­tors), Rob Tiller was sem­i­nal fig­ure in this growth. Tiller is also a South Florida avi­a­tion insider and for­mer busi­ness part­ner of ter­ror flight school owner and secre­tive financier Wally Hilliard. He even met Atta and Mar­wan one day after a meet­ing with Hilliard, he says, with whom he was work­ing on an air­line start-up called Havana Air. Small world.” (Ibid.; p. 6.)

43. Boulis feared for his life in the run-up to his mur­der. “A week before Gus Boulis was mur­dered, Tiller was called to take a meet­ing with him. Tiller says Boulis was scared. Boulis hadn’t wanted to sell. Now he was wor­ried he’d be whacked. ‘He called me to a meet­ing at the Ocean Reef Club. Very Snooty. You can’t even land there with­out per­mis­sion. I flew my air­plane down to meet him,’ Tiller recalled. ‘He said, ‘I want out. Peo­ple think I make a lot more money than I really do. I don’t need the headache any­more. I want to sell my casino boats to the Semi­noles.’” (Idem.)

44. Boulis’s sub­ma­rine sand­which shops were appar­ently fronts for money-laundering. “What was Tiller’s response? ‘I said, ‘Gus, you’re sure rock­ing a lot of people’s boats here.’ A cou­ple days later, I hear he’s been blown apart dead. See, Gus wanted to mus­cle his way into the casino busi­ness in a real bad way. His Miami Subs were every­where. He was using them to laun­der money, big-time, for some­body.’ Who might that be? Even ask­ing the ques­tion brings a shiver. At the time Boulis was mur­dered, sus­pi­cion focused on com­pany chair­man Adam Kidan, also an active Repub­li­can and cam­paign con­trib­u­tor. He had been in Israel at the time of the mur­der. His alibi held.” (Idem.)

45. Before Boulis’ mur­der, Abramoff’s part­ner Adam Kidan had writ­ten $30,000 in checks to a Mob enforcer who had worked for John Gotti. “But then news sur­faced that just before Boulis’s death Kidan had writ­ten at least $30,000 in checks to a reputed Mob enforcer named Anthony Moscatiello, a one-time asso­ciate of crime boss John Gotti. Moscatiello is appar­ently what is known in crim­i­nal par­lance as a ‘tor­pedo.’ (We’re not quite sure what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.) This is a paper trail some U.S. Attor­ney (in Man­hat­tan, per­haps) would describe as ‘to die for.’ But things work dif­fer­ently in South Florida. To date no one has been charged in the mur­der of Gus Boulis.” (Idem.)

46. “The offi­cial back-story on Boulis is he left his native Greece as a teenager and came to North Amer­ica, bought a Toronto sand­wich shop and turned it into a suc­cess­ful com­pany with fran­chises all across Canada. After his Cana­dian suc­cess, he moved to Florida in the early 1980’s (to retire to the Keys, he said). But Florida’s money-making oppor­tu­ni­ties over­rode his desire for shuf­fle­board, and soon he was build­ing another suc­cess­ful fast-food chain, Miami Subs, and then build­ing and deploy­ing the crown jew­els in his empire, his Sun­Cruz Casino fleet.” (Idem.)

47. “What explained Boulis’ suc­cess in a restau­rant busi­ness where fail­ure is far more com­mon? The ques­tion strikes some as naïve. ‘Miami Subs was the first take out place ever to serve Dom Perignon through the take­out win­dow,’ snick­ered Tiller. ‘Word was he had made his money in Canada in the sub busi­ness. But I learned later it was noth­ing but a Laun­dro­mat.’ We were once more back in the precincts of money laun­der­ing, which seems more and more like one of Florida’s major indus­tries. We pic­tured dol­lar bills dry­ing in the sun all over the state, after being washed through the Ever­glades.” (Ibid.; p. 7.)

48. Boulis’ mur­der was rem­i­nis­cent of the gangland-style mur­der of Don Aronow. Like Aronow, Boulis was an asso­ciate of the elder George Bush (accord­ing to Rob Tiller). (For more about Aronow, see FTR#512.) “No doubt this is all just freak coin­ci­dence. Still, even with our sus­pi­cious minds, when we learned who Tiller thought was respon­si­ble for Boulis’ death, we were shocked. Tiller referred us to the man­ner of the Boulis hit. . . A man in a BMW was dri­ving down a quiet side street after an evening meet­ing at his Fort Laun­derdale office when a car slowed to a stop in front of him. A sec­ond car boxed the BMW in from behind, then a dark Mus­tang appeared from the oppo­site direc­tion. The Mustang’s dri­ver pulled along­side and pumped three hollow-point bul­lets into the BMW driver’s chest. ‘Boulis was mur­dered in the exact same way as Don Aronow, Bush’s other part­ner,’ he stated. Bush’s other part­ner? The ques­tion hung in the air. Some­thing is really going down bad here,’ Tiller stated. ‘Don Aronow. Gus. Jim Shore . . . All tied in to Bush.’” (Idem.)

49. As noted in FTR#512, the world of ter­ror­ism and Al Qaeda sig­nif­i­cantly over­laps that of orga­nized crime.“When NBC’s Date­line did a story recently about sources of ter­ror­ist fund­ing right here in the U.S., they made bold to announce ‘the emerg­ing threat of a new alliance between al Qaeda and com­mon crim­i­nals.’ But it was hardly time to stop the presses. . . .” (Idem.)

50. At the begin­ning of the pro­gram, Daniel informed the audi­ence about a death threat that had allegedly been made by Sam Koutch­es­fa­hani against Joe Chic­ch­ese, a for­mer busi­ness asso­ciate. (Koutch­es­fa­hani is dis­cussed in FTR#507.) More can be found about this in a Mad Cow Morn­ing News arti­cle pub­lished after this pro­gram was recorded.