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FTR #728 Interview with Daniel Hopsicker: Tricky Treats

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MP3 Side 1 [1] | Side 2 [2]

Intro­duc­tion: For many years, we’ve vis­it­ed with hero­ic inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Daniel Hop­sick­er. Long­time inves­ti­ga­tor of the abus­es of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, Hop­sick­er has pur­sued the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy and the pro­found involve­ment of the CIA and relat­ed agen­cies in the ille­gal nar­cotics traf­fic.

In par­tic­u­lar, Hop­sick­er fol­lowed up his work on Bar­ry and the Boys (about career CIA offi­cer and Iran-Con­tra drug smug­gler par excel­lence Bar­ry Seal) by exam­in­ing how Mohammed Atta and oth­er 9/11 hijack­ers infil­trat­ed the Unit­ed States through some of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s con­trolled drug net­works.

[3]

Wel­come to Ter­ror­land

Owned by Wal­ly Hilliard, Huff­man Avi­a­tion and a num­ber of over­lap­ping, shad­owy air­lines appear to have been deeply involved in nar­cotics traf­fick­ing, and oper­at­ing with appar­ent impuni­ty. (Atta enrolled for flight train­ing at Huff­man Avi­a­tion.)

Exem­pli­fy­ing the world of “Elite Deviants” that Hop­sick­er has inves­ti­gat­ed is Michael Brass­ing­ton [4]. A pilot for one of Hilliard’s avi­a­tion ven­tures, Brass­ing­ton appears to be “work­ing both sides of the street.”

Giv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny in con­nec­tion with a case in which a plane he was pilot­ing skid­ded off a run­way in New Jer­sey, Brass­ing­ton’s priv­i­leged sta­tus appears to have suc­cess­ful­ly exclud­ed infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force, among oth­er things.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Sum­ma­tion of some of Brass­ing­ton’s oth­er aero­nau­ti­cal under­tak­ings; dis­cus­sion of the fun­da­men­tal com­pro­mise of the judi­cial sys­tem, with regard to its abil­i­ty to pros­e­cute drug run­ners; review of the career of Bar­ry Seal, CIA offi­cer and drug smug­gler; dis­cus­sion of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy–an event that over­laps numer­ous peo­ple and insti­tu­tions involved with the South Flori­da avi­a­tion milieu Hop­sick­er is inves­ti­gat­ing; dis­cus­sion of some of the old OSS and orga­nized crime con­nec­tions of Wal­ly Hilliard’s spon­sors.

1. Exem­pli­fy­ing the world of “Elite Deviants” that Hop­sick­er has inves­ti­gat­ed is Michael Brass­ing­ton [4]. A pilot for one of Huff­man Avi­a­tion king­pin Wal­ly Hilliard’s avi­a­tion ven­tures, Brass­ing­ton appears to be “work­ing both sides of the street.”

Giv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny in con­nec­tion with a case in which a plane he was pilot­ing skid­ded off a run­way in New Jer­sey, Brass­ing­ton’s priv­i­leged sta­tus [5] appears to have suc­cess­ful­ly exclud­ed infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing the Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force, among oth­er things.

” . . . Since the dis­cov­ery that he was the co-pilot on 39 week­ly drug flights to South Amer­i­ca and back on a Lear­jet belong­ing to the own­er of the Flori­da flight school attend­ed by Mohamed Atta and Mar­wan Al-She­hhi, the ter­ror­ist pilots who crashed air­lin­ers into the two World Trade Cen­ter Tow­ers on Sept 11, Brassington’s exploits have been cov­ered in this space . . . .”

It turns out that Brass­ing­ton’s activ­i­ties are one of many tips of the South Flori­da ice­berg, and that Brass­ing­ton, Hilliard and oth­ers have inter­twin­ing resumes going back decades.

In Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M43 [6], we looked at the role of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty (CIA in par­tic­u­lar) and orga­nized crime in the S & L scan­dal of the 1980’s. One of the oper­a­tives we stud­ied in that program–Farhad Azima–partnered with Wal­ly Hilliard. Azi­ma was also active in the oper­a­tions of Edwin Wil­son and com­pa­ny [7].

Note­wor­thy as well is the fact that Brass­ing­ton’s “mishap” on the run­way did not appear to inter­fere in any way with his oper­a­tion of Platinum–a char­ter jet com­pa­ny with a celebri­ty clien­tele list.

It’s hard to imag­ine a cov­er-up in a case where some­one has been charged with a 27-count Fed­er­al indict­ment.

But that’s what’s hap­pen­ing in U.S. Dis­trict Court in New Jer­sey, where the tri­al of con­tro­ver­sial Guyanese pilot Michael Brass­ing­ton com­plet­ed its third week of tes­ti­mo­ny last Fri­day, in what can be viewed as a case study about just how much of the truth can—and cannot—be spo­ken in Amer­i­ca today.

It’s as if “Son of Sam” ser­i­al killer David Berkowitz were on tri­al for dou­ble-park­ing his car while com­mit­ting his string of vio­lent homi­cides… but wasn’t being charged with the mur­ders.

We’re not sug­gest­ing that “the boys” at Plat­inum Jet share any­thing in com­mon with the Son of Sam. Still, take a look at them. What sort of work would you recruit them for?

The news the jurors won’t get to hear includes:

Just three days before the sched­uled start of Brassington’s tri­al, his attor­ney filed a pre-tri­al motion ask­ing U.S. Dis­trict Judge Den­nis Cavanaugh to exclude tes­ti­mo­ny men­tion­ing ter­ror­ism or the Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force.

Dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion into the crash of the Chal­lenger CL-600 lux­u­ry jet flown by Brassington’s Plat­inum Jet Man­age­ment, the motion revealed, the FAA’s lead inves­ti­ga­tor had an Agent from the Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force (JTTF) “assigned” to be with him when he inter­viewed wit­ness­es.

Michael Sal­nick of West Palm Beach, Brass­ing­ton’s attor­ney, request­ed that this be con­cealed from the jury.

Of course, this is not the first time Brass­ing­ton’s name has been men­tioned in con­nec­tion with covert activ­i­ties, drug smug­gling, ter­ror­ism, and mat­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty. More on this short­ly.

But first, let’s re-vis­it the scene of the (lat­est) crime.

“Its always the ‘lit­tle peo­ple’ that get hurt.”

It start­ed with a Bom­bardier Chal­lenger­CL-600 jet run­ning off a run­way and then through an air­port fence before hurtling, dur­ing morn­ing rush hour, across a busy 6‑lane highway,clipping the tops off two cars stopped at a red light,then final­ly embed­ding itself into the side of a ware­house.

“The last thing I saw was the wing com­ing toward me,” Rohan Fos­ter, a 36-year-old father of four, said as he sat in a wheel­chair at a hos­pi­tal in Tea­neck, N.J., his bro­ken nose fit­ted with an oxy­gen tube.

He was sit­ting at a stop­light, Fos­ter said, when his pas­sen­ger yelled “Look out! Look out! A plane is com­ing!”

A 10-ton lux­u­ry jet had shot off a run­way right in front of them.

Frozen with fear, the two men car­pool­ing to near­by jobs in a met­al fin­ish­ing plant watched in hor­ror as the out-of-con­trol jet skid­ded off the run­way, bar­reled through the air­port fence at 100 MPH, and hur­tled toward them across 6‑lane Route 46 in New Jer­sey.

At the hos­pi­tal, Fos­ter’s father, Lloyd, said, “They ducked. If not, their heads would be gone. The plane took the top of the car off.”

A moment lat­er, the twin-engine Chal­lenger CL-600 smashed into a ware­house- its wings snap­ping off like twigs- and burst into flames.

“One pas­sen­ger in the car remains in a coma,” report­ed a local New Jer­sey news­pa­per the next day, “while lawyers wait in the wings.”

“Mum’s the word ’bout Wal­ly Hilliard”

Plat­inum was a “rogue” char­ter jet com­pa­ny that catered to the ultra-rich and A‑List celebri­ties, every­one from rap­per Jay‑Z to foot­ball leg­end Joe Mon­tana; from Bon Jovi to Pavarot­ti to Celine Dion.

The day before the plane crashed, in fact, Jay‑Z and R&B singer Bey­once, who were appar­ent­ly an item at the time, were aboard the plane as it flew from Las Vegas to Teter­boro.

A fact not like­ly to be empha­sized is that both for­mer Pres­i­dents George Bush Sr. and Bill Clin­ton were also Plat­inum char­ter cus­tomers.

Like­ly to be left out entire­ly is the fact that–even after the crash!– Brass­ing­ton con­tin­ued fly­ing ille­gal char­ters, as the per­son­al pilot of the wild­ly-cor­rupt (even by Caribbean stan­dards) Pre­mier of the Turks and Caicos Islands, Mike Mis­ick, aboard a Gulf­stream II lux­u­ry jet owned by a for­mer Clin­ton White House aide, Jef­frey Wat­son, who was once called Clin­tons’ “go-to guy” in Mia­mi.

Assis­tant U.S. Attor­ney Scott B. McBride pre­sent­ed a care­ful­ly-san­i­tized ver­sion of Brassington’s iden­ti­ty, activ­i­ties, and motives to jurors to explain why he (alleged­ly) rou­tine­ly vio­lat­ing FAA safe­ty rules, and then lied about it to Fed­er­al offi­cials.

Brassington’s sta­tus as a long-time employ­ee of ter­ror flight school own­er Wal­lace J. Hilliard will almost cer­tain­ly go unmen­tioned.

Evi­dence will not be pre­sent­ed to show how Brassington’s char­ter jet com­pa­ny was his “cov­er” for a decade-long stint fly­ing drug and mon­ey-laun­der­ing flights on lux­u­ry jets into and out of the U.S. for a drug traf­fick­ing oper­a­tion which has been led— since at least the mid-1980’s—by a cor­rupt ele­ment of America’s polit­i­cal elite which was first exposed in the Iran Con­tra Scan­dal.

Yet that fact is cru­cial to under­stand­ing why—and how—Brassington was able to thumb his nose to fed­er­al author­i­ties for so long.

“A bit of a sticky wick­et, that.”

Also not being addressed is the curi­ous tim­ing of the indict­ment.

The plane crash which is the cen­ter­piece of the prosecution’s case occurred in Feb­ru­ary of 2005. Yet Brass­ing­ton wasn’t charged until three years later…two short weeks after the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion left office.

It is high­ly unlike­ly that pros­e­cu­tors learned any­thing about the Teter­boro crash in 2009 that they did­n’t already know by the end of 2005.

So the ques­tion becomes: Why was the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion pro­tect­ing from pros­e­cu­tion a for­eign nation­al pilot who had flown char­ter flights into the U.S. in 2000 car­ry­ing hero­in?

As Asst. U.S. Atty McBride is no doubt aware, he is tread­ing through a mine field.

This explains his mis­lead­ing open­ing state­ment to the jury:

“This is a tri­al about a com­pa­ny that inten­tion­al­ly jeop­ar­dized human lives to save mon­ey on jet fuel, cul­mi­nat­ing in the 2005 crash of one of its jets at Teter­boro Air­port,” McBride told jurors.

“You will hear about a shock­ing­ly reck­less game of Russ­ian roulette on the run­way … with obliv­i­ous pas­sen­gers act­ing as test dum­mies to increase [the company’s] bot­tom line,” the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor said at the start of the tri­al.

“They did it because they were greedy.”

Well, no, not exact­ly… The world is filled with greedy peo­ple. Some of them no doubt run char­ter air­craft com­pa­nies.

Yet the fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor would be hard-pressed to cite any oth­er air char­ter com­pa­ny which has dis­played any­thing remote­ly like the utter con­tempt for the rule of law shown by “the boys” at Plat­inum Jet Man­age­ment.

Meet Farhad Azi­ma from Iran–and Iran Con­tra

So if they didn’t do it because—or just because—they were greedy…what then?

They did it because they could. They were pro­tect­ed.

Among “The Friends of Wal­ly Hilliard,” there are oth­er cas­es offer­ing an exact par­al­lel.

Wal­ly Hilliard’s Iran Con­tra con­nec­tions begin, of course, with Adnan Khashog­gi and his hench­man Ramy El-Batrawi.

But there is anoth­er for­mer Iran Con­tra oper­a­tive, and busi­ness part­ner of Hilliard’s, whose his­to­ry of being con­sid­ered above the law is ger­mane here.

Farhad Azi­ma has an illus­tri­ous, or infa­mous, CIA pedi­gree. He and Hilliard were busi­ness part­ners in a com­pa­ny called SPATIALIGHT, INC, which had some­thing to do with HD-TV chips. In any event, it no longer does, because, like lit­er­al­ly dozens of com­pa­nies asso­ci­at­ed with this oper­a­tion, it has gone bank­rupt, its stock is now worth 3/10,oooth of a cent per share.

Azi­ma, an Iran­ian whose fam­i­ly was close to the Shah, owns a car­go air­line in Mia­mi and Kansas City, Glob­al Inter­na­tion­al Air, which was part of Oliv­er North’s logis­ti­cal net­work, ship­ping arms—including 23 tons of TOW mis­siles to Iran—to the Aya­tol­lah, as well as oth­er Iran Con­tra swag left behind by El-Batrawi’s car­go air­line.

Azi­ma’s rela­tion­ship with the CIA goes back to the 1970’s. He sup­plied air and logis­ti­cal sup­port to EATSCO (Egypt­ian Amer­i­can Trans­port and Ser­vices Cor­po­ra­tion) a com­pa­ny owned by for­mer CIA agents Thomas Clines, Theodore Shack­ley, and Richard Sec­ord, which was promi­nent­ly involved in the activ­i­ties of for­mer CIA agent Edwin Wil­son.

Drugs, finan­cial fraud, the CIA, and “seem­ing impuni­ty”

Azi­ma’s com­pa­ny was even cit­ed for hav­ing char­tered a Boe­ing 707 for the PLO, who used it to ship a load of weapons to the San­din­istas. There were, pre­sum­ably, red faces all around. But then... who knows?

What does Friend-of-Wal­ly-Hilliard-Azi­ma has in com­mon with Friend-of-Wal­ly-Hilliard-Brass­ing­ton?

Both had “Get Out of Jail Free” cards.

The sto­ry was bro­ken by ace reporter Pete Brew­ton in the Hous­ton Post.

Dur­ing the Sav­ings & Loan Cri­sis, a failed Kansas City bank gave mil­lions of dol­lars in loans to Farhad Azi­ma. The IRS asked the Jus­tice Depart­ment to probe Azi­ma’s role in the bank’s fail­ure.

But, accord­ing to for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor Lloyd Mon­roe, the inves­ti­ga­tion of Azi­ma’s role in the col­lapse of Indi­an Springs S & L was thwart­ed because of his alleged ties to the CIA.

Mon­roe said the CIA told the FBI that Azi­ma was “off lim­its” because he had “CIA con­nec­tions.”

“U.S. author­i­ties prob­ing the col­lapse of a small Kansas bank in the mid-1980s had been told by the Fed­er­al Bureau Of Inves­ti­ga­tion to lay off a key fig­ure because he “had a get-out-of-jail-free card” from the CIA.”

“I was told that Azi­ma had a get-out-of-jail-free card,” an FBI source in the inves­ti­ga­tion told The Hous­ton Post in a copy­right­ed sto­ry.

For his pains, Brew­ton should have won a Pulitzer Prize. Instead, like Gary Webb, he was run out of jour­nal­ism. Today he teach­es at a small col­lege in Texas.

“A grave threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty.”

Brassington’s tri­al in Fed­er­al Court is a ring-side seat to the spec­ta­cle of hear­ing eye­wit­ness­es tes­ti­fy under oath about an elite group of peo­ple who have been run­ning amok for decades.

And its always the “lit­tle peo­ple” who pay the price...

Like for­mer U.S. Cus­toms Agent James Sanders, who had a life-chang­ing encounter with Brass­ing­ton on the evening of April 6, 2004, at Fort Laud­erdale Exec­u­tive Air­port.

On a typ­i­cal­ly balmy night, with a light breeze com­ing in off the Atlantic Ocean, the inbound traf­fic at the US Cus­toms sta­tion at the Gen­er­al Avi­a­tion Ter­mi­nal, bustling dur­ing day­time, was light.

There was noth­ing to alert rook­ie Cus­toms Agent Sanders to what was about to occur.

“It was a Tues­day, the slow­est day of the week,” Sanders remem­bered, “when Mike Brass­ing­ton came in. He went through immi­gra­tion first. And the immi­gra­tion inspec­tor had ‘top-stamped’ his Cus­toms Dec­la­ra­tion, which meant he need­ed to be ‘sec­ondary-ed,’ mean­ing giv­en a close inspec­tion.”

A drug smug­gling pilot for the own­er of a 9/11 flight school... with clout.

“I was con­fused. Even the tail num­ber of the Gulf­stream he flew in on, N60S, had a record in the sys­tem. Yet Brass­ing­ton was wav­ing a let­ter from a Cus­toms offi­cial in Wash­ing­ton in my face, to con­vince me to expe­dite his entry.”

“So I called the ICE Agent in Mia­mi who was list­ed as the ‘point of con­tact” in Brassington’s file, which means he was basi­cal­ly the lead agent track­ing his move­ments,” stat­ed for­mer U.S. Cus­toms Agent James Sanders in an inter­view for a new doc­u­men­tary, “The New Amer­i­can Druglo­rds.”

“His name was Norm Bright. And Norm Bright said I was to treat him, Brass­ing­ton, as a grave threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty. He told me that I need­ed to check him (BRASSINGTON) search him, and search all his pas­sen­gers. And that’s what I did.”

“I did­n’t think of him as a ter­ror­ist sus­pect,” said Sanders. “I just thought he was real­ly into drugs, and I need­ed to check him real­ly close.

Brass­ing­ton com­plained about his treat­ment to Jason Ahearn, a top Cus­toms offi­cial in Wash­ing­ton.

And for his dili­gence, Sanders was fired.

The entire episode is cov­ered in “The New Amer­i­can Drug Lords.)

Since the dis­cov­ery that he was the co-pilot on 39 week­ly drug flights to South Amer­i­ca and back on a Lear­jet belong­ing to the own­er of the Flori­da flight school attend­ed by Mohamed Atta and Mar­wan Al-She­hhi, the ter­ror­ist pilots who crashed air­lin­ers into the two World Trade Cen­ter Tow­ers on Sept 11, Brassington’s exploits have been cov­ered in this space (see box for pre­vi­ous sto­ries).

And in just the past year, his name has fig­ured promi­nent­ly in gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tions in three dif­fer­ent coun­tries: the U.S., the Turks & Caicos, and his native Guyana.

“Teter­boro Crash Tri­al Coverup” by Daniel Hop­sick­er; Mad­Cow­Morn­ingNews; 11/02/2010. [4]

2. Note­wor­thy is the fact that Brass­ing­ton was­n’t indict­ed until after the Bush admin­is­tra­tion left office, a hia­tus of three years.

. . . . Also not being addressed is the curi­ous tim­ing of the indict­ment.

The plane crash which is the cen­ter­piece of the prosecution’s case occurred in Feb­ru­ary of 2005. Yet Brass­ing­ton wasn’t charged until three years later…two short weeks after the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion left office.

It is high­ly unlike­ly that pros­e­cu­tors learned any­thing about the Teter­boro crash in 2009 that they did­n’t already know by the end of 2005.

So the ques­tion becomes: Why was the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion pro­tect­ing from pros­e­cu­tion a for­eign nation­al pilot who had flown char­ter flights into the U.S. in 2000 car­ry­ing hero­in? . . .

Idem. [4]

3. In the inter­view, Daniel notes the oper­a­tions of “The Com­pa­ny” at the Venice Air­port [8]. Using a nick­name com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the CIA, the orga­ni­za­tion appears to have been an intel­li­gence front, doing many of the same things as CIA. (The orga­ni­za­tion is dis­cussed in AFA #26 [9].)