Recorded Octo­ber 2, 2005
REALAUDIO

Fea­tur­ing more of the land­mark research of Daniel Hop­sicker, this pro­gram fits another piece of infor­ma­tion into the jig­saw puz­zle of Mohamed Atta’s activ­i­ties in Florida in the run-up to the 9/11 attacks. A self-professed Navy Seal took a Venice (Florida) cab-driving job, pos­si­bly to spy on Atta and asso­ciates. In addi­tion, the pro­gram pro­vides crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the three sus­pects arrested for the mur­der of Florida gambling-boat czar Gus Boulis, whose com­pany was taken over by GOP king­pin Jack Abramoff after Boulis was killed. Among the evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning through the Boulis mur­der is one lead­ing toward the late Barry Seal, the sub­ject of Daniel Hopsicker’s first book Barry and the Boys.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the pro­found dis­crep­an­cies between the offi­cial ver­sion of Mohamed Atta’s acv­tiv­i­ties in Florida and the fac­tual record, as inves­ti­gated by Daniel Hop­sicker; review of the links between the Gus Boulis mur­der and the milieu of both George Bush Sr. and George Bush, Jr.; dis­cus­sion of the orga­nized crime back­grounds of the three Boulis sus­pects; dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­bil­ity that the self-professed Navy Seal who squired Atta around in Venice may have been one of the Israeli agents who were track­ing some of the 9/11 hijack­ers around in the United States.

1. Begin­ning with the sub­ject of Mohamed Atta’s com­ings and goings in the United States prior to 9/11, the pro­gram high­lights the pro­found dis­crep­an­cies between the “offi­cial” (and false) ver­sion of Atta’s activ­i­ties in Florida and the facts as they can been ver­i­fied. As Daniel has pointed out in his land­mark vol­ume Wel­come to Ter­ror­land: Mohamed Atta and the 9/11 Cover-Up in Florida, Atta was in many places with many peo­ple that have never been reported by the main­stream press. In—among other programs—FTR#’s 477, 482, 483, 484, 516, 523, we have exam­ined Daniel’s rev­e­la­tory work about the “real” Mohamed Atta and the extra­or­di­nary efforts by the powers-to-be to obscure the record of what Atta was really doing in the United States and with whom he was doing it. An alleged for­mer Navy Seal named Joe Gesell may well have beem sur­veilling Atta in the run-up to 9/11. Dri­ving a cab in Venice, this indi­vid­ual left the cab company’s employ shortly after 9/11. In the inter­view itself (not the arti­cle repro­duced here), Hop­sicker relates that the indi­vid­ual in ques­tion was described as hav­ing dark hair and being “buff.” Daniel spec­u­lates that he may have been one of a num­ber of appar­ent Israeli counter-intelligence agents fol­low­ing the 9/11 plot­ters. “Mohamed Atta may have been under U.S. mil­i­tary sur­veil­lance until just days before the 9.11 attack, long after the Tampa-based Able Dan­ger mil­i­tary intel­li­gence oper­a­tion cur­rently under scrutiny was dis­banded, in early 2001. On August 6, 2001, the same day Atta and Mar­wan Al-Shehhi returned to Venice after rent­ing a car at Warrick’s RentaCar in Pom­pano Beach, FL, and pick­ing up Siad Al-Jarrah at the air­port in Miami, the Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews has learned that a self-described for­mer NAVY SEAL named Joe Gesell applied for and was hired as the night dri­ver (they only need one) at Venice Yel­low Cab.”
(“Was Pen­ta­gon Track­ing Mohamed Atta Just Days Before 9.11 Attack?” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad Cow Morn­ing News; 9/19/05.)

2. “Gesell squired Atta around Venice and Sara­sota in his cab on a num­ber of occa­sions. What raises sus­pi­cions that he may have been work­ing for more than just tips is this: after start­ing his new job on the day of Atta’s return, Gesell quit a month later, just one day after Atta left town for the last time. On Fri­day, Sept. 14, three days after the Sept. 11 attack, cab dri­ver Bob Simp­son, the day dri­ver for Venice Yel­low Cab at the time, was con­tacted by the FBI. Accord­ing to Simp­son, the FBI was intent on find­ing and inter­view­ing Gesell. ‘I heard a voice say ‘this is Spe­cial Agent Joe Ander­son from the FBI call­ing,’ Simp­son recalled. “My heart sort of skipped a beat. Then he said, ‘don’t worry, you haven’t done any­thing wrong,’ and asked if I’d seen pic­tures of the ter­ror­ists, and if I had, wanted to know if I rec­og­nized any.’” (Idem.)

3. “‘I said yes, I rec­og­nized Mohamed Atta,’’ Simp­son con­tin­ued. ‘I told him, ‘I’m the day dri­ver for Yel­low Cab in Venice, and he was in my cab a bunch of times in August, 2001. The night dri­ver had him even more than I did.’’ The Yel­low Cab office man­ager in Sara­sota con­firmed that the FBI expressed a keen inter­est in cab rides Atta took with Gesell. If Ges­sell is shown to have taken part in unac­knowl­edged U.S. mil­i­tary sur­veil­lance of Atta con­tin­u­ing until just before the attack, it would not be unchar­ac­ter­is­tic...” (Idem.)

4. Hop­sicker points out that ele­ments of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence had been inves­ti­gat­ing the Hamburg-based activ­i­ties of Al Qaeda oper­a­tives for a long time before 9/11. “U.S. mil­i­tary sur­veil­lance of Al Qaeda ter­ror­ists like Mohamed Atta has been far more exten­sive than has been so far revealed. The Able Dan­ger unit, for exam­ple, was by no means the first mil­i­tary intel­li­gence inves­ti­ga­tion into the activ­i­ties of the Ham­burg cadre. Accord­ing to one Army C.I.D. offi­cer there at the time, mil­i­tary inves­ti­ga­tors were being detailed to Ham­burg, Ger­many, track­ing ‘Al Qaeda heroin flows’ from Afghanistan to the West as far back as 1991. Yet, in a dis­crep­ancy of mon­u­men­tal pro­por­tions, the 9/11 Commission’s final report—which now may not be the final report—concluded that U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies were not aware of Atta until the attacks.” (Idem.)

5. Among the offi­cial insti­tu­tions that have obscured Atta’s trail is the NSA, which destroyed sur­veil­lance tapes of some of the 9/11 con­spir­a­tors shortly after the attacks. “Lit­tle won­der the Pen­ta­gon is pres­sur­ing the Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee to close to the pub­lic Wednesday’s hear­ings on the Able Dan­ger mil­i­tary intel­li­gence unit, as Con­gres­sional sources con­firmed over the week­end. Also last week Pen­ta­gon offi­cials told a hastily arranged brief­ing for reporters that much data gen­er­ated by the project has already been destroyed in accor­dance with stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure for han­dling mate­r­ial that might con­tain the names of Amer­i­cans. Oddly enough, this is the same excuse used by the secre­tive National Secu­rity Agency—the NSA—in reveal­ing that they had destroyed tapes with 9.11 evi­dence, includ­ing con­ver­sa­tions between Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Mohamed Atta, just weeks after the 9.11 attack.” (Idem.)

6. “‘Ana­lysts at the super-secret National Secu­rity Agency, act­ing on advice from the organization’s lawyers, have been destroy­ing data col­lected on Amer­i­cans or US com­pa­nies since the Sept. 11 attacks — anger­ing other intel­li­gence agen­cies seek­ing leads in the antiter­ror­ist probe, accord­ing to two peo­ple with close intel­li­gence ties,’ reported the Boston Globe on Oct 27, 2001. ‘In heated dis­cus­sions with the CIA and con­gres­sional staff, NSA lawyers have turned down requests to pre­serve the intel­li­gence because the agency’s reg­u­la­tions pro­hibit the col­lec­tion of any infor­ma­tion on US cit­i­zens. The lawyers said that pre­serv­ing the infor­ma­tion would invite law­suits from peo­ple whose names appear in the sur­veil­lance reports.’” (Idem.)

7. Daniel presents some of the dis­crep­an­cies between the offi­cial story of Atta and com­pany and the ver­i­fi­able facts. “The ‘offi­cial story’ about Mohamed Atta’s time­line, activ­i­ties, and asso­ciates while in the U.S. is rid­dled with lies, mis­di­rec­tion and delib­er­ate decep­tion. Doc­u­ments being destroyed by the Pen­ta­gon prob­a­bly include at least a ter­abyte on Atta & company’s activ­i­ties in Venice, Florida. On at least three occa­sions dur­ing the last six weeks of his life, for exam­ple, ter­ror­ist ring­leader Mohamed Atta left the jazz­ier precincts of Miami to travel across the state to the more tran­quil pace of life in the retire­ment com­mu­nity of Venice. The FBI has said noth­ing about this. The FBI says Atta didn’t live there any­more. The FBI says Atta was already nine months gone. The FBI is lying.” (Idem.)

8. “So, just what was Atta doing in Venice? It’s a secret.... But the one thing the FBI seems most eager to hide—and it is hor­ri­ble to have to con­tem­plate that your own gov­ern­ment is cov­er­ing up mass murder—is the iden­tity of who Mohamed Atta was doing it with. Why? Because this dis­cov­ery would inex­orably lead to the orga­ni­za­tion, or global net­work that was so clearly smooth­ing the way for Atta’s Ham­burg cadre in Amer­ica. And then... Then we would know just who in the United States had been doing busi­ness, on Sep­tem­ber 10, 2001, with Osama bin Laden’s thugs—on this end, the U.S. end, where this until-now uniden­ti­fied enemy is still inside the gates.” (Idem.)

9. “Here’s a big clue: Mohamed Atta was seen in Venice with ‘flight school owner’ and inter­na­tional con-man Rudi Dekkers, who swore in tes­ti­mony before Con­gress that he never saw Atta after he ‘left’ his flight school in Decem­ber, 2000. For exam­ple, accord­ing to Bob Simp­son and other Venice Yel­low Cab employ­ees inter­viewed by the FBI, Atta took numer­ous cab rides to and from Huff­man Avi­a­tion as well as sev­eral other loca­tions in Venice dur­ing August 2001. On at least two of these occa­sions Atta was trav­el­ing with Rudi Dekkers, a man who tes­ti­fied under oath before Con­gress that his rela­tion­ship with the ter­ror­ist ring­leader ended almost nine months ear­lier.” (Idem.)

10. “‘They knew each other well, really well,’ stated cab­bie Simp­son. ‘They were friends. They were going to a night­club in Sara­sota, talk­ing and very socia­ble with each other. He and Atta were friends, you could tell.’ Simp­son said he first took Atta and Dekkers from Huff­man Avi­a­tion to James’ Place, a restau­rant in down­town Venice. On another occa­sion he picked the two up at the Pom­pano Road res­i­dence of for­mer Huff­man employee Char­lie Voss, and took them to a Sara­sota night­club, the Gator Club, which Atta is known to have fre­quented. (It was Voss, recall, whose home was made avail­able to Atta and Mar­wan when they arrived in Venice.)” (Idem.)

11. “The Yel­low Cab office man­ager in Sara­sota con­firmed that the trips were recorded in the firm’s cab logs. Yet in sworn tes­ti­mony in front of the House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee in March 2002, Dekkers insisted his rela­tion­ship with the ter­ror­ist ring­leader had been dis­tant, and ended the pre­vi­ous Decem­ber, nine months before the attack. Dekkers told the hear­ing about com­plaints from his staff that Atta and Al-Shehhi had behav­ioral prob­lems, that they were not fol­low­ing instruc­tions, and that they also had bad atti­tudes. ‘On Decem­ber 24th, 2000, Atta and Al-Shehhi rented a War­rior (N555HA) from Huff­man Avi­a­tion for a flight,’ the Dutch national stated, telling of his last encounter with Atta.” (Idem.)

12. “‘Atta and Al-Shehhi returned to Huff­man Avi­a­tion to make final pay­ments on their out­stand­ing bills. Because they were not tak­ing any more fly­ing lessons, they were asked to leave the facil­ity due to their bad atti­tudes and not being liked by staff and clients alike. Huff­man never heard about or from them again until Sep­tem­ber 11th, 2001.’ Speak­ing with reporters, he had been more col­lo­quial. ‘They did not social­ize with any­one,’ Dekkers said three days after the attack. ‘They did not go to the bar with us. That Atta guy was an ass­hole.’ Dekkers is guilty of a lot more than per­jury... but its a start. Is Bob Simp­son a cred­i­ble wit­ness? Could he some­how be mis­taken in his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of Dekkers? Not likely... He knew Rudi Dekkers well, he said, from numer­ous trips to Huff­man Avi­a­tion to pick up arriv­ing flight stu­dents.” (Idem.)

13. “And Simp­son is a retired Navy vet­eran who saw duty off the coast of Libya, and other Mediter­ranean hot spots dur­ing the 1980’s, and he comes from a law enforce­ment back­ground: his father was Asst. Chief of Police in Pleas­ant Hill, Cal­i­for­nia, his brother is a cop, and he has an uncle in the DEA. More­over, author­i­ties deported three young Saudi stu­dents who had just arrived in Venice in early Sep­tem­ber, just before the attack, based pri­mar­ily on Bob Simpson’s tes­ti­mony that they were asso­ciates of Atta. So they had no trou­ble believ­ing he was telling the truth.... Were he to be faced in court with con­flict­ing tes­ti­mony from Rudi Dekkers, we have no doubt who the jury would believe.” (Idem.)

14. “Dur­ing final prepa­ra­tions for the Sept 11 attack, Mohamed Atta’s father was ‘vis­it­ing’ his ter­ror­ist ring­leader son in Venice, Florida. After see­ing him on tele­vi­sion deny­ing that his son had any­thing to do with the ter­ror­ist hijack­ings, a num­ber of cred­i­ble wit­nesses called the Sara­sota office of the FBI to report they had seen Atta’s father in Venice with his son ten days to two weeks before the attack. Closed cir­cuit video­tape pro­vided to the FBI as evi­dence of Atta Senior’s pres­ence appears to have been inten­tion­ally erased. The FBI knew about the U.S. visit of Atta’s father, Cairo attor­ney Mohammed El-Amir, in Venice. So why has some­one with clear fore­knowl­edge of an attack which mur­dered almost 3000 civil­ians not been brought to jus­tice? . . . .” (Idem.)

15. Much of the pro­gram con­sists of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of the arrest of three sus­pected orga­nized crime fig­ures in the mur­der of casino boat owner (and George H.W. Bush crony) Gus Boulis. After Boulis’ mur­der in Feb­ru­ary of 2001, Boulis’ Sun­Cruz casino boat enter­prise was taken over by a con­sor­tium fea­tur­ing Jack Abramoff, a lead­ing GOP lob­by­ist and close asso­ciate of indicted House GOP Whip Tom De Lay. For more about the Boulis mur­der and its links to the Bush fam­ily polit­i­cal milieu, see FTR#516. It is interesting—and pos­si­bly very significant—that Mohamed Atta and some of the other 9/11 hijack­ers vis­ited one of SunCruz’s ships just a few days before 9/11/2001, pos­si­bly to laun­der money. “The inves­ti­ga­tion into the 4-year old mur­der of Sun Cruz Casino boat founder Kon­stan­ti­nos ‘Gus’ Boulis in Fort Laud­erdale has begun to reveal hid­den con­nec­tions between Repub­li­can lob­by­ist Jack Abramoff’s gar­gan­tuan fund-raising machine, essen­tial to vic­tory in the past two Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, and a cast of under­world char­ac­ters not pre­vi­ously thought of as exem­pli­fy­ing what have come to be known as ‘Repub­li­can fam­ily val­ues.’”
(“Ham­mer to the Slam­mer, Cruisegate: Cur­tains for the GOPMOB?” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad Cow Morn­ing News; 9/30/05.)

16. “The indict­ment of three men Tues­day in the Boulis ‘hit’ exposes an unholy alliance in Florida between the national Repub­li­can party and the Mob, details of which were first reported in the Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews three months ago (“The Secret World of Jack Abramoff: Ter­ror­ists, Tor­pe­does and Repub­li­can ‘Mus­cle’”). More indict­ments are expected soon. The trail of sus­pi­cion leads directly to Abramoff’s doorstep: the three names already released clearly impli­cate Adam Kidan, the Casino line’s erst­while Pres­i­dent, in the crime, who wrote checks—duh-uh!—for over $250,000 to one of the indicted men, Gam­bino goom­bah Anthony ‘Big Tony’ Moscatiello, 67, of Howard Beach, N.Y, for no eas­ily dis­cernible rea­son.” (Idem.)

17. “Although lawyers for Abramoff and Kidan, who face trial Jan. 9 on fraud charges, have repeat­edly said nei­ther man knows any­thing about Boulis’ mur­der, since Kidan was hand-picked by Abramoff to run the unreg­u­lated col­lec­tion of a dozen ships oper­at­ing off the coast of Florida, Abramoff may even now be won­der­ing who it might be safe to ‘roll on’ if and when he’s indicted for mur­der. Abramoff, of course, is best known as the tar­get of a fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tion in Wash­ing­ton into the tens of mil­lions in fees he col­lected from casino-owning Indian tribes. But the wreck­age from his brief and tumul­tuous time as owner of the gam­bling fleet threat­ens to over­take his Wash­ing­ton legal trou­bles. The breath­tak­ing scope of ‘Cruisegate’ could make it the biggest Amer­i­can polit­i­cal scan­dal since Iran Con­tra. Should its tawdry details fully come to light, it might eclipse even the Water­gate Scan­dal.” (Idem.)

18. Moscatiello (indicted for the Boulis mur­der) was con­victed on a heroin traf­fick­ing charge because of the inter­ces­sion of drug dealer and CIA offi­cer Barry Seal. (For more about Seal, see FTR#’s 503, 512.) “Already, the drama­tis per­sonae includes a famil­iar name from pre­vi­ous scan­dals: Barry Seal . . . who was him­self mur­dered on orders, accord­ing to his own lawyer’s tes­ti­mony, of then-Vice Pres­i­dent George Bush. . . .” (Idem.)