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Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram sets forth some of the “deep his­tory” of the Venice Air­port, which has long been a hotbed of intel­li­gence activ­ity. (It was through this air­port that Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijack­ers infil­trated the U.S. Heroic inves­tiga­tive reporter Daniel Hop­sicker has long fol­lowed the web of intrigue that has enveloped the Venice Air­port and the closely related Huff­man Aviation.)

After a review of some of the back­ground to the OSS-connected drug traf­fic that was ram­pant in the China the­ater dur­ing World War II (from AFA #11), the broad­cast sets forth the deep polit­i­cal his­tory of the Venice Air­port. The drug traf­fick­ing that was inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Kuom­intang national secu­rity appa­ra­tus under Chi­ang Kai Shek became a sta­ple of OSS vet­er­ans of the China the­ater, later trans­fer­ring to the fledg­ling CIA. (OSS was America’s wartime intel­li­gence agency.)

Among the ele­ments that coa­lesced into the post-World War II intelligence-connected drug traf­fic was the Amer­i­can Vol­un­teer Group, the name for Gen­eral Claire Chennault’s “Fly­ing Tiger” fighter squadron. Chennault’s group trained at the Venice Airport–home to Huff­man Avi­a­tion, through which Mohamed Atta and other 9/11 hijack­ers infil­trated the United States!

Fur­ther updat­ing the goings on at the Venice Air­port, Daniel notes the oper­a­tions of a pow­er­ful, drug-smuggling intel­li­gence net­work called “The Company”–a com­mon nick­name for the CIA. Avail­able evi­dence strongly sug­gests that the net­work over­lapped the agency. (The Com­pany is dis­cussed in AFA #26.) “The Company”–following in the foot­steps of Clair Chennault’s operation–also held forth at Venice Airport!

In his lat­est arti­cle, Daniel ties in a “Com­pany” oper­a­tive named Frank Guz­man with the JFK assas­si­na­tion, as well as activ­i­ties man­i­fested on behalf of “The Com­pany.” Owner of a high per­for­mance jet man­u­fac­tured by Temco, Guz­man appears to have been an alias for a Cuban asso­ciate of Jack Ruby. Guzman/Villamia was mur­dered in a gang­land style slay­ing in 1979. He had been run­ning a busi­ness that oper­ated through the Venice Air­port. Born in Cuba, Guzman/Villamia fled the Island when Cas­tro came to power and appears to have worked for the CIA proper after that.

In the con­text of “The Com­pany” and the evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing to the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion res­onate with the activ­i­ties of Stephen Ruth, another intelligence-connected drug smug­gler whose activ­i­ties over­lapped the Venice airport.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the death of John Birch, intel­li­gence offi­cer for Claire Chen­nault and the name­sake of the John Birch Soci­ety; review of the use by the U.S. of 90,000 Japan­ese troops in Manchuria as late as 1947!; review of Stephen Ruth’s links to the JFK assas­si­na­tion; review of “The Company’s” links to the JFK assas­si­na­tion; the use of Venice Air­port to smug­gle sur­plus WWII muni­tions to would-be coup­sters in Latin America.

1. After a review of some of the back­ground to the OSS-connected drug traf­fic that was ram­pant in the China the­ater dur­ing World War II (from AFA #11), the broad­cast sets forth the deep polit­i­cal his­tory of the Venice Air­port. The drug traf­fick­ing that was inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Kuom­intang national secu­rity appa­ra­tus under Chi­ang Kai Shek became a sta­ple of OSS vet­er­ans of the China the­ater, later trans­fer­ring to the fledg­ling CIA. (OSS was America’s wartime intel­li­gence agency.)

Among the ele­ments that coa­lesced into the post-World War II intelligence-connected drug traf­fic was the Amer­i­can Vol­un­teer Group, the name for Gen­eral Claire Chennault’s “Fly­ing Tiger” fighter squadron.

Chennault’s group trained at the Venice Airport–home to Huff­man Avi­a­tion, through which Mohamed Atta and other 9/11 hijack­ers infil­trated the United States!

An inves­ti­ga­tion into sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the sale of the for­mer Huff­man Avi­a­tion has unearthed an explo­sive secret at the heart of an oth­er­wise unre­mark­able avi­a­tion facility.

Almost since its incep­tion, the specter of heroin traf­fick­ing has hung over the air­field which would later become the Venice Munic­i­pal Airport.

Dur­ing World War II, when it was known as the Venice Army Air Field, it was home to the State­side oper­a­tions of a man widely and cred­i­bly accused of using pro­ceeds from inter­na­tional heroin traf­fick­ing to prop up the war machine of a cor­rupt Chi­nese war­lord whose army, even after its defeat, hung on to a lion’s share of South­east Asian real estate which became known as the Golden Triangle.

Con­tem­po­rary news­pa­per clips from the time show that the Venice Air­port has had an extra­or­di­nary six-decade long his­tory, and been the scene of covert activ­i­ties includ­ing gun­run­ning, inter­na­tional heroin and cocaine traf­fick­ing, and being used as a launch pad for coups in the Caribbean and Cen­tral America.

These activ­i­ties required, avail­able evi­dence will show, the reg­u­lar and sys­tem­atic cor­rup­tion of offi­cials in Venice and Sara­sota County.

The recent infa­mous and still-painful his­tory of the Venice Air­port, home base for Mohamed Atta and his crew of ter­ror­ist hijack­ers, it turns out, is just the most recent in an extra­or­di­nary his­tory of elite deviance, crim­i­nal mis­chief, and inter­na­tional intrigue.

In an ironic twist, with­out the FAA’s remark­able cam­paign of arm-twisting and bul­ly­ing of hap­less local offi­cials to secure their approval of the new own­ers of what used to be Huff­man Avi­a­tion, hand-picked by a fed­eral receiver who a U. S. Dis­trict Court Judge in Tampa had appointed to unravel the finan­cial affairs of Art Nadel six days before Nadel had even turned him­self in... we might never have sifted through decades of news­pa­per clip­pings, and the remark­able story of the Venice Munic­i­pal Air­port, which is the very def­i­n­i­tion of America’s secret his­tory, might never have come to light.

Since the early days of the Sec­ond World War, when it was still known as Venice Army Air Field, the pat­tern of covert activ­ity at the Venice Air­port has remained remark­ably con­sis­tent over six decades.

Iron­i­cally, it was an attempt to con­tinue to con­ceal the airport’s orig­i­nal mis­sion, an elab­o­rate cover-up in 1992 seem­ingly designed to pre­vent the airport’s clan­des­tine role from ever becom­ing pub­lic knowl­edge, which first piqued our inter­est in the story of the man whose oper­a­tions shaped the Venice Airport’s early history.

But the cover-up back­fired, and became vis­i­ble, where it remains to this day, in an unlikely location:

Directly across from the Venice Air­port sits an his­tor­i­cal plaque ded­i­cated in a cer­e­mony in 1992 to com­mem­o­rate the airport’s begin­nings as a U.S. Army Air Base dur­ing World War II.

The Venice Air­port, states the plaque, has its ori­gins in the early days of WW2, when it was known as the “337th Army Air Field Base.”

How­ever there is no such entity: there is not, and never has been, any­thing called the 337th Army Air Field Base. At the incep­tion of what became the Venice Air­port, as is fairly widely known, it was known as the Venice Army Air Force Base.

So, what is going on?

The Venice His­tor­i­cal Archives explains:

“The plaque com­mem­o­rates the 337th Army Air Field Base and was erected by the Venice Avi­a­tion Soci­ety Inc. in Octo­ber 1992.”

The des­ig­na­tion is meant as “a joke:”

“The plaque has numer­ous errors includ­ing refer­ring to the Base as the 337th and the entire sec­ond sen­tence. The car­i­ca­tured mos­quito, sym­bolic of the strik­ing power of the P-51 and of the blood­thirsty pests of the area, was designed by Capt. James H. Archibald as the ”offi­cial” insignia of the ”337th AAF Base Unit”, the VAAF’s per­ma­nent ”Party” out­fit. Both the insignia and unit des­ig­na­tion were intended as a joke!”

We’ve never heard of an offi­cial his­tor­i­cal plaque “intended as a joke,” and doubt any­one at the Venice Archives and Area His­tor­i­cal Col­lec­tion has, either.

More­over the point of the “joke,” and/or why it should be con­sid­ered funny, remains unexplained.

But while there was no 337th Army Air Base, we have heard of the 337th, we seemed to remem­ber dimly... There was a 337th Fighter Group.

At the Clear­wa­ter St. Peters­burg Inter­na­tional Air­port, home of the infa­mous DC9 “Cocaine One” caught with 5.5 tons of cocaine aboard in Mexico’s Yucatan in 2007, we first saw a shrine to an avi­a­tion out­fit from World War II which used to train there:

The famous Fly­ing Tigers.

They were first known as the Amer­i­can Vol­un­teer Group, states an infor­ma­tional wall of pho­tos on the sec­ond floor of the nearly empty airport.

They were a “band of Amer­i­can pilots who lit­er­ally built a fight­ing air force from scratch to stop the Japan­ese from gob­bling up all of Asia.”

One of their units, the wall indi­cates, is the 337th Fighter Group.

Was the 337th Army Air Field plaque in Venice some kind of cryp­tic ref­er­ence to the Fly­ing Tigers?

Syn­ony­mous with the Fly­ing Tigers is the name of Gen­eral Claire Chen­nault. While he lived, Chen­nault was one of the most con­tro­ver­sial Amer­i­can mil­i­tary fig­ures in this nation’s his­tory. He was widely dis­liked by his peers, though not, it must be said, by those who flew for him.

His mil­i­tary career, accord­ing to news­pa­per reports at the time, was side­tracked by his supe­ri­ors, who may have heard hints of things ordi­nary Amer­i­cans would begin to hear whis­pers about only many decades later.

Gen­eral Claire Chennault’s Fly­ing Tigers had a strong pres­ence in Venice.

We found numer­ous ref­er­ences in local news­pa­pers from the time indi­cat­ing that the Venice Army Air Field train­ing pilots for Gen­eral Claire Chennault’s Fly­ing Tigers and later for his 14th Air Force, which took over from the Fly­ing Tigers when they were disbanded.

In fact, Venice seemed to spe­cial­ize in Chi­nese fly­ers, even train­ing an all-Chinese squadron for Chen­nault, sup­pos­edly at the express request of Madame Chi­ang Kai-Shek.

More­over one of Chennault’s aces, Pappy Herb’s, left China to became the Deputy Base Com­man­der at the Venice Army Air Field.

Accord­ing to Amer­i­can was cor­re­spon­dent Clyde Farnsworth, Chen­nault even cre­ated a com­pos­ite Chi­nese and Amer­i­can Air Wing in which Chi­nese and Amer­i­can avi­a­tors “live together, work together, and enter com­bat together.”

These avi­a­tors came together, received their train­ing, and learned to fly at the Venice Air­port. Chennault’s pres­ence in Venice is well-established.

So why are there so few ref­er­ences to the role played by the Venice Army Air Field in the CBI (China-Burma-India) Theater?

Let’s take a look.

Claire Chen­nault, accord­ing to numer­ous reporters and cred­i­ble news sources, was there at the start when the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence ser­vices began their use of nar­cotics to fund their anti-communist endeavors.

Chen­nault helped Chi­nese war­lord Chi­ang Kai-Shek fund his civil war against the Com­mu­nist Red Army through heroin traf­fick­ing, both dur­ing, and after World War II.

Accord­ing to Joseph Trento in “The Secret His­tory of the CIA:

“Gen­eral Claire Chen­nault orga­nizer of the Fly­ing Tigers dur­ing World War II, was put in charge of Civil Air Trans­port as well as Taiwan’s other air ser­vice while his wife Anna spent her time lob­by­ing in Wash­ing­ton for more aid to help her husband’s effort against the Com­mu­nist Chinese.”

“Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s men, funded by the CIA, became the foot sol­diers of Asia’s drug armies... Hun­dreds of tons of opium and heroin... were car­ried on these CIA flights.”

From Dou­glas Valen­tines “Strength of the Wolf: The Secret His­tory of America’s War on Drugs:”

“Despite the July 1949 seizure in Hong Kong reported by the New York Times of 22 pounds of heroin ema­nat­ing from a CIA-supplied out­post in Kun­ming... the China Lobby launched a mas­sive pro­pa­ganda cam­paign based on the alle­ga­tion by the head of the Fed­eral Bureau of Nar­cotics that the Red Chi­nese were the source of all the illicit dope reach­ing Japan.”

“The China Lobby raised $5 mil­lion which the CIA used to pur­chase Gen­eral Claire Chennault’s fleet of planes and con­vert them into the CIA’s first pro­pri­etary Air Force.”

From Mod­ern China: An Ency­clo­pe­dia, by Ke-Wen Wang:

“No one could have fore­seen that one legacy of the Fly­ing Tigers would become Air Amer­ica. Claire Chen­nault and the Fly­ing Tigers sym­bol­ize the... fail­ure of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­icy in the region.”

From “Under the Influ­ence” by Pre­ston Peet:

“The prac­ti­cal effect of all of this was to turn Claire Chennault’s Fly­ing Tigers into fly­ing dope peddlers.

There are dozens of exam­ples. A clear con­sen­sus of inves­tiga­tive reporters, authors, and schol­ars have reached the same conclusion...

Some­thing is rot­ten in the state of Denmark.

But don’t tell that to the Sara­sota Her­ald Tribune.

It was clear that the plaque at the Venice Air­port had not just made a bad joke, or a sim­ple mis­take. It was inten­tion­ally misleading.

They have a word for the type of com­mu­ni­ca­tion dis­played on the his­tor­i­cal plaque com­mem­o­rat­ing the Venice Army Air Field.

That word is disinformation.

Sev­enty years after ele­ments of the U.S. mil­i­tary con­nected with the “China Lobby” began a long flir­ta­tion with heroin traf­fick­ing, it still serves that purpose.

More­over, its source, the Venice Avi­a­tion Soci­ety, was a bel­liger­ent (sup­port­ing the “Dark Side of the Force) dur­ing the recent war for con­trol of the Venice Air­port waged between elected city offi­cials and the FAA.

The story of Claire Chen­nault proves that U.S. Major Gen­er­als can be excused if they have a sec­ond job as an inter­na­tional drug king­pin... as long as they’re anti-communist.

What makes the story of Gen­eral Claire Chen­nault at the Venice Air­port ger­mane to the present sit­u­a­tion? As we reported sev­eral weeks ago, (and we’ll have more about it later), the new own­ers of the for­mer Huff­man Avi­a­tion are in busi­ness with a pri­vate mil­i­tary con­trac­tor in Geor­gia who was involved in extra­or­di­nary ren­di­tions for the CIA.

Curi­ously, for­mer Huff­man owner Wally Hilliard was in busi­ness with the same man.

But then, recent own­ers of Huff­man Avi­a­tion share a lot in common.

Just like prior owner Wally Hilliard (but even more inex­plic­a­bly, since at least Hilliard was a pilot, even if a nar­colep­tic one), Art Nadel, for exam­ple, used sub­stan­tial por­tions of his ill-gotten gains to pur­chase dozens of air­planes and avi­a­tion facilities...

One of America’s ground­break­ing muck­rak­ers, author Upton Sin­clair, once said “It is dif­fi­cult to get a man to under­stand some­thing, when his salary depends on his not under­stand­ing it.”

“The Ulti­mate Hedge: Venice Air­port Has a 60-Year His­tory of Drug-Smuggling” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad Cow Morn­ing News; 3/8/2010.

2. Updat­ing the goings on at the Venice Air­port, Daniel notes the oper­a­tions of a pow­er­ful, drug-smuggling intel­li­gence net­work called “The Company”–a com­mon nick­name for the CIA. Avail­able evi­dence strongly sug­gests that the net­work over­lapped the agency. (The Com­pany is dis­cussed in AFA #26.) “The Company”–following in the foot­steps (“tracks”?!) of Clair Chennault’s operation–also held forth at Venice Airport!

As noted in AFA #26, evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run between “The Com­pany” and the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. In his lat­est arti­cle, Daniel ties in a “Com­pany” oper­a­tive named Frank Guz­man with the JFK assas­si­na­tion, as well as activ­i­ties man­i­fested on behalf of “The Com­pany.” Owner of a high per­for­mance jet man­u­fac­tured by Temco, Guz­man appears to have been an alias for a Cuban asso­ciate of Jack Ruby. Guzman/Villamia was mur­dered in a gang­land style slay­ing in 1979. He had been run­ning a busi­ness that oper­ated through the Venice Airport.

Born in Cuba, Guzman/Villamia fled the Island when Cas­tro came to power and appears to have worked for the CIA proper after that.

In the con­text of “The Com­pany,” the evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing to the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion res­onate with the activ­i­ties of Stephen Ruth, another intelligence-connected drug smug­gler whose activ­i­ties over­lapped the Venice airport

“Venice was a kind of quiet Mena (Arkansas),” stated a for­mer drug pilot for The Com­pany. “Jack­son Stephens built this huge head­quar­ters next to the air­port. And he was in charge. But I do remem­ber see­ing Porter Goss around the air­port a lot.”

The air­port where three of the four ter­ror­ist pilots in the 9/11 attack learned to fly was a hub of oper­a­tions in the 1970’s and early ‘80’s for “The Com­pany,” an inter­na­tional drug smug­gling orga­ni­za­tion head­quar­tered in Lex­ing­ton, Ken­tucky and Mena, Arkansas.

Led by a mys­te­ri­ous Cuban exile, who used the alias “Frank Guz­man,” The Company’s con­tin­gent at the Venice Air­port num­bered as many as a dozen pilots and asso­ciates. The Com­pany began receiv­ing national atten­tion in the early 1980’s.

“The Com­pany,” whose name is a commonly-used euphemism for the CIA, was pro­filed in Sally Denton’s best-selling book “The Blue-Grass Con­spir­acy,” which raised pointed ques­tions about the involve­ment of the CIA with the group.

The 60-year secret his­tory of covert CIA and mil­i­tary oper­a­tions at the Venice Munic­i­pal Air­port now com­ing to light goes well beyond any­thing pre­vi­ously known to have taken place there.

A report in the April 28, 1982 San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle head­lined “Story of Spies, Stolen Arms and Drugs,” stated The Com­pany con­sisted of “about 300 mem­bers, many of them for­mer mil­i­tary men or ex-police offi­cers with nearly $30 mil­lion worth of assets, includ­ing planes, ships and real estate.”

Fed­eral Agents tes­ti­fied that “The Com­pany” smug­gled bil­lions of dol­lars worth of nar­cotics into the U.S. from Latin Amer­ica, as well as being involved in gun­run­ning and mer­ce­nary operations.

At the Venice Air­port, in addi­tion to Frank Guz­man their num­ber included: Stephen Ruth, who we reported on ear­lier in Con­fes­sions of a Drug Smug­gling CIA Hit Man,” Lee Crow­ell, Joseph Brea, Richard Curry, George Quar­les, and sev­eral oth­ers, includ­ing a local attor­ney, who have been miss­ing in action for more than 20 years.

Guz­man first sur­faced at the Venice Air­port in 1974. He became an instant celebrity, as well as some­thing of a nov­elty, because he was the owner of the first jet to ever be based at the Venice Airport.

A now-defunct Sara­sota news­pa­per called the Sara­sota Jour­nal did a pro­file of him soon after he arrived under the head­line “Venice Jet Flier Cre­ates a Stir.”

It was a pro­to­type Navy jet fighter called the Super Pinto, one of only 14 ever made, which could climb from the ground to 10,000 feet in just 55 seconds.

He ingra­ti­ated him­self with the local polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment by vol­un­teer­ing to fly it as a stunt plane in local air shows for charity.

Despite the reporter’s efforts, exactly how Guz­man how come to pos­sess a rare Navy jet fighter plane remained a lit­tle hazy. So, too, did Guzman’s for­mer career. He was iden­ti­fied, with­out fur­ther expla­na­tion, as a “manufacturer.”

The story did reveal Guzman’s dif­fi­culty in obtain­ing spare parts for his jet, with neces­si­tated trips to the planes’ man­u­fac­turer, Temco Co, in Dallas.

Strangely, Temco had a his­tory in Venice which the reporter failed to note.
The founder of Temco (later LTV), was D.H. Byrd, who owned the Texas School Book Depos­i­tory where Pres­i­dent Kennedy was killed. And as we’ve seen in pre­vi­ous sto­ries like Big Safari, the Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion, & the war for con­trol of the Venice Air­port, the air­port was the site where Byrd’s Reg­u­lus mis­siles for the Air Force were tested.

For the next five years Guz­man ran a busi­ness at the Venice Airport.

Then on May 3, 1979, dis­as­ter struck. “For­mer Venice Busi­ness­man, Pilot found shot to death” read next day’s head­line in the Sara­sota Her­ald Tribune.

“A for­mer Venice busi­ness­man and pilot was found shot to death in an East coast motel room in what police there the­o­rize was a drug-related exe­cu­tion,” the paper reported.

“The Dania FL Police Dept iden­ti­fied the 49-year old dead man as Frank Guz­man, the for­mer owner of Sunair Enter­prises, a fly­ing ser­vice based at the Venice Munic­i­pal Airport.”

Guz­man had been found by a maid on the floor of his fifth floor room at the Howard Johnson’s across from the Fort Laud­erdale Air­port. Some­one (the killer was never iden­ti­fied) had put a 32 against the back of Guzman’s head and pulled the trigger.

The motel would later achieve infamy dur­ing Iran con­tra as the site of meet­ings between Oliver North and mer­ce­nar­ies fly­ing to Hon­duras to work with the contras.

An “asso­ciate” of Guzman’s in Venice and Fort Laud­erdale, Joseph Brea, was miss­ing and pre­sumed dead, police said.

The story con­tained a great quote from a cop on the scene:

“Guz­man was def­i­nitely into the big bucks,” said Lt. James Serpe of the Dania Police Dept. “This guy’s shoes cost more than my car.”
The slay­ing bore all the ear­marks of a pro­fes­sional hit, a later story indi­cated, in which police spec­u­lated that Guz­man may have been asso­ci­ated with the “Black Tuna” smug­gling group.

The truth would come out almost a year later, in a story in the April 30 1980 Sara­sota Her­ald Tribune.

“Tes­ti­mony at a fed­eral trial in Indi­anapo­lis has linked a mur­dered Venice busi­ness­man and a miss­ing Sara­sota air­craft dealer with an inter­na­tional drug traf­fick­ing ring.”

“On Mon­day wit­nesses tes­ti­fied that Frank Guz­man, the for­mer owner of SunAir Enter­prises of Venice, and Lee Crow­ell, owner of Lemac Inc of Sara­sota, were mem­bers of the drug ring known as The Company.”

We uncov­ered evi­dence indi­cat­ing that Guzman’s real name was Mario Sil­ve­rio Vil­lamia in tes­ti­mony to the War­ren Com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the assas­si­na­tion of JFK about the under­world ties of Jack Ruby, the slayer of Lee Har­vey Oswald.

Ruby had approached Texas gun­run­ner Robert McK­e­own about sell­ing jeeps to Castro.

McK­e­own had been con­victed of the same offense in 1958, said a Com­mis­sion exhibit dated April 17, 1964. “the com­pany AND “the blue­grass conspiracy”

Also con­victed with McK­e­own had been the for­mer Pres­i­dent of Cuba, Car­los Prio, and four other men, one of whom was one Mario Sil­ve­rio Vil­lamia, aged 34, also known as Frank Guzman.

We did the math.

The War­ren Com­mis­sion “Frank Guz­man” had been 34 in 1964. Ten years later, in 1974, the Sara­sota news­pa­per pro­file of “Frank Guz­man” reported:

“For the 44-year old Guz­man, the jet is a par­tial answer to the search for find­ing excite­ment in life.”

We received fur­ther con­fir­ma­tion after we tracked down a for­mer drug pilot for The Com­pany who spoke with us on con­di­tion of anonymity.

He had flown with Guz­man, he said, “at least a hun­dred” flights to Colom­bia from the Venice Air­port. We had no trou­ble believ­ing him. His name and involve­ment with the group is well-chronicled in news reports from the time.

After a con­vic­tion for drug traf­fick­ing 30 years ago, his life has returned to nor­mal, he said. Today he is a respected busi­ness­man in a city not far from Venice.

“Frank came from Cuba when Cas­tro came to power,” he con­firmed. “He had ties to a for­mer Cuban Pres­i­dent Car­los Prio. Along with other Cuban exiles he par­tic­i­pated in the Bay of Pigs, then worked with the CIA dur­ing the 1960’s.”

“Venice was a kind of quiet Mena (Arkansas),” said our pilot informant.

“Jack­son Stephens had built this huge head­quar­ters next to the air­port. And he was in charge. But I do remem­ber see­ing Porter Goss around the air­port a lot.”

At that time, Goss was a CIA Agent assigned to Latin Amer­ica. He later became a Florida Con­gress­man from Char­lotte County, where he even­tu­ally became head of the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee. In 2002 he was named Direc­tor of the CIA under George W. Bush.

“Venice was a sweet deal. The Coast Guard had radar sites in Tampa and Key West, but noth­ing in between. So we’d fly in and out totally unnoticed.”

Through­out the decade of the 1980’s, while drug traf­fick­ing exploded, there were two com­pletely dif­fer­ent per­cep­tions about its role at the Venice Airport.

Call them the min­i­mal­ists and the maximalists...

“Only a few late night flights use the uncon­trolled air­field in Venice,” Venice Police Sgt. Jim Hanks told local reporters. “We’ve only caught two or three smug­glers. But there have been sev­eral who keep their planes here and have been caught in other areas.”

Local reporters, on the other hand, begged to disagree.

“In the past year the Venice Air­port has been the scene of sev­eral drug raids,” the Her­ald Tri­bune reported on Sept 29, 1983. “In recent years the Venice Air­port has been rocked by van­dals thieves and drug smugglers.”

“The air­port is attrac­tive to drug deal­ers and thieve because it is uncon­trolled,” the paper reported. “Thieves use the uncon­trolled air­port to drop stolen air­planes, includ­ing stolen pri­vate jets.”

The city’s response was to hire a pri­vate secu­rity guard to “pro­tect the air­port grounds dur­ing non– busi­ness hours.” Avi­a­tion exec­u­tives at the Air­port were unimpressed.

“We have planes come in here late at night, drop a load and leave,” said Harold Haggen, owner of the Venice Fly­ing Service.

“And nobody knows they’ve ever been here.”

“Police pro­tec­tion?” asked Harold Haggen, rhetor­i­cally. “The police don’t hardly come around here.”

Even Sgt. Hanks was hedg­ing his bet a little.

“Point­ing to past drug smug­gling inci­dents dis­cov­ered at the air­port, Hanks said unreg­u­lated plane usage there pro­vides an oppor­tu­nity for planes to come and go as they please, usu­ally with­out scrutiny from anyone.”

Almost two decades later, when Mohamed Atta first cast his malev­o­lent eye down the run­way in Venice, not much had changed. For some peo­ple, that was just fine...

The offi­cial story of the 9/11 attack goes like this:

“The arrival of Atta’s ter­ror­ist cadre at the Venice Munic­i­pal Air­port was hap­pen­stance, and the terrorist’s pres­ence there an acci­dent of his­tory, unre­lated to any pre-existing cli­mate of crime or corruption.”

Once again, and emphat­i­cally: Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth.

“It Didn’t Start with 9/11: ‘Venice Was a Quiet Mena’: For­mer Drug Pilot” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad Cow Morn­ing News; 4/16/2010.

3. Daniel also touched on events pub­lished in an arti­cle that he fin­ished after the inter­view. Venice’s long involve­ment with intelligence-connected mat­ters includes its use as a ship­ping point for WWII-era weapons to Latin Amer­ica for the pur­pose of affect­ing coups.

The arrival en masse of Mohamed Atta’s ter­ror­ist cadre at the Venice Munic­i­pal Air­port was hap­pen­stance, goes the offi­cial story, and the terrorist’s pres­ence there an acci­dent of his­tory, unre­lated to any pre-existing cli­mate of crime or corruption.

Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth.

This was illus­trated again recently when decades of old news­pa­per clip­pings became avail­able online, reveal­ing the full range of the extra­or­di­nary his­tory of crim­i­nal mis­chief and inter­na­tional intrigue at the Venice Airport.

For exam­ple: our recent story head­lined “60 year his­tory of drug traf­fick­ing at Venice Air­port” was off by fif­teen years, accord­ing to a “Look­ing Back” fea­ture from the Aug 28 1964 Sara­sota Her­ald Tri­bune, which reveals that the old­est report of drug traf­fick­ing at what will become the Venice Air­port occurred thirty years earlier.

On that date in 1934, “A dope-smuggling plane was cap­tured by Fed­eral Agents near Venice,” the paper reported.

In unbro­ken suc­ces­sion in the decades since, the Venice Munic­i­pal Air­port— decade-in and decade-out—has played host to drug smug­gling, gun run­ning, the launch­ing of coups in the Caribbean, mer­ce­nary train­ing, even murder...

It is a remark­able his­tory of inter­na­tional intrigue with a dis­tinctly ‘spooky’ flavor. . . .

“It Didn’t Start with 9/11: Caught Red-Handed at the Venice Air­port” by Daniel Hop­sicker; Mad Cow Morn­ing News; 4/11/2010.