Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #482 Interview with Daniel Hopsicker

Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
RealAu­dio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discussion

2 comments for “FTR #482 Interview with Daniel Hopsicker”

  1. Com­ment: Lim­it­ed hang­out, or back­lash engi­neer­ing? Both?

    http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/08/richard-clarke-makes-new-911-coverup-allegations/41143/

    Richard Clarke Makes New 9/11 Coverup Alle­ga­tions

    REBECCA GREENFIELD AUG 11, 2011

    Richard Clarke, for­mer White House coun­tert­er­ror­ism czar, believes that for­mer CIA direc­tor, George Tenet and oth­er top aides hid intel­li­gence that could have pre­vent the 9/11 attacks, reports The Dai­ly Beast, which got its infor­ma­tion from inter­views tak­en for a radio doc­u­men­tary timed to the 10th anniver­sary of the attacks.

    Clarke speculates–and read­i­ly admits he can­not prove–that the CIA with­held the infor­ma­tion because the agency had been try­ing to recruit the ter­ror­ists, while they were liv­ing in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia under their own names, to work as CIA agents inside Al Qae­da. After the recruit­ment effort went sour, senior CIA offi­cers con­tin­ued to with­hold the infor­ma­tion from the White House for fear they would be accused of “malfea­sance and mis­fea­sance,” Clarke sug­gests.

    The 9/11 Com­mis­sion has looked into alle­ga­tions that top CIA offi­cials knew about this case, and have con­clud­ed that no top lev­el employ­ees were aware of it. In this joint state­ment, George Tenet along with top aides, Cofer Black and Richard Blee, calls Clarke’s spec­u­la­tion a fig­ment of his imag­i­na­tion, deny­ing his charges:

    “This, like much of what Mr. Clarke said in his inter­view, is utter­ly with­out foun­da­tion. Many years after tes­ti­fy­ing him­self at length before the 9/11 Com­mis­sion but mak­ing no men­tion of his wild the­o­ry, Mr. Clarke has sud­den­ly invent­ed base­less alle­ga­tions which are belied by the record andun­wor­thy of seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion. We tes­ti­fied under oath about what we did, what we knew and what we did­n’t know. We stand by that tes­ti­mo­ny.”

    Posted by R. Wilson | August 12, 2011, 10:55 pm
  2. Rudi Dekkers pub­lish­es his AUTOBIOGRAPHY, gets a hero’s treat­ment

    http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2011/aug/14/flight-school-instructor-911-rudi-dekkers-book-lee/

    Flight school own­er tied to 9/11 hijack­ers has book sign­ing Mon­day in Lee
    By KRISTINE GILL
    Post­ed August 14, 2011 at 3:30 p.m.

    CAPE CORAL — After learn­ing he had unwit­ting­ly trained two of the 9/11 hijack­ers at his Venice flight school, Rudi Dekkers went against an FBI agent’s advice.

    He began talk­ing to the media to set the record straight, feel­ing his rep­u­ta­tion was at stake.

    Dekkers, 55, has giv­en more than 2,000 inter­views but want­ed to tell his sto­ry in its entire­ty. His auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “Guilty by Asso­ci­a­tion: The Untold Sto­ry of Rudi Dekkers,” goes on sale Mon­day.

    He said he’s been approached about a pos­si­ble movie deal based on the book.

    “There’s a lot of con­tro­ver­sial stuff online. Peo­ple like to spread bad news,” said Dekkers, a Hol­land native and then a Naples res­i­dent.

    The book tells Dekker’s sto­ry lead­ing up to Sept. 12, 2001, when he first learned his for­mer Huff­man Avi­a­tion stu­dents Mohamed Atta and Mar­wan al-She­hhi had been iden­ti­fied as hijack­ers.

    “I felt like I left my body,” Dekkers said. “It was such a shock. I can’t explain it.”

    After the attacks, Dekkers said he made it known he did not want to train oth­er Mus­lim stu­dents at his school. He received threats and believes his 2003 heli­copter acci­dent, which he said result­ed from a cut fuel line, was a direct attack.

    When Dekkers crashed in the Caloosa­hatch­ee Riv­er in Fort Myers, he decid­ed to let him­self die.

    “I knew I was insured for $5 mil­lion, and my fam­i­ly need­ed that,” said Dekkers, who said he lost his home, was forced to sell his busi­ness and strug­gled to find employ­ment as oth­ers shunned him.

    Dekkers, who still resides in South­west Flori­da, sur­vived and went on to write his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, first pub­lished in Hol­land in 2008. Brio Press, a self-pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny in Min­neapo­lis, print­ed the newest ver­sion.

    Embry-Rid­dle Aero­nau­ti­cal Uni­ver­si­ty in Day­tona Beach received sim­i­lar atten­tion in the 9/11 after­math when it was at one time sus­pect­ed that an alum­nus of the school also was a hijack­er. A sec­ond alum­nus, David Charlebois, died on 9/11. He was part of the flight crew on Amer­i­can Air­lines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pen­ta­gon.

    Bob Ross, direc­tor for media rela­tions at Embry-Rid­dle, han­dled count­less calls from media for 11 days after the attack.

    “We believe we didn’t train that ter­ror­ist and that we were also vic­tim­ized,” he said. “There’s a long process and dis­cov­ery of the truth and that can hurt any busi­ness in the inter­im.”

    Ross said there was talk for some time after about clos­ing the school to for­eign stu­dents, but Embry-Rid­dle remains open to inter­na­tion­al appli­cants. Still, the hype fol­lowed the uni­ver­si­ty for a time.

    “Let’s play ‘what if,’” Ross said. “What if (the ter­ror­ist) was one of our grad­u­ates? Are we respon­si­ble for his behav­ior? The Unabomber went to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan. Tim­o­thy McVeigh was in the U.S. Army — are they respon­si­ble for the Okla­homa City Bomb­ings? There was a guilt by asso­ci­a­tion that was real­ly bizarre.”

    Posted by R. Wilson | August 14, 2011, 11:06 pm

Post a comment