Recorded November 8, 2004
Introduction: Fleshing out discussion in FTR#’s 482, 483, this program features more information from Daniel Hopsicker, the author of Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta and the 9/11 Cover-up in Florida. Mr. Emory considers this volume to be one of the most important books about 9/11. Be sure to check out Daniel’s website. In addition to further discussion about the numerous evidentiary tributaries running between the Iran/Contra scandal and the milieu in which the 9/11 hijackers operated in Florida, the program details the extraordinary background of the associates of Wally Hilliard, Rudi Dekkers and Arne Kruithof. Hilliard’s associate Mark Shubin has, as Mr. Emory says, more connections than a switchboard, including connections to Kenneth Good, an associate of Neil Bush (the President’s brother) in the criminal activities surrounding the Silverado Savings and Loan in Colorado. Much of the program centers on the profound German links to the hijacker milieu in Florida, including Arne Kruithof’s association with Pascal Schreier. Daniel notes that some of Atta’s German associates in Florida were the sons and daughters of prominent German industrialists.
Program Highlights Include: The links of Kruithof’s partner Glenn Goodman to air units apparently involved in the Iran/Contra-related drug traffic; Jeb Bush’s endorsement of Discover Air, one of Hilliard’s bogus airlines; Pascal Schreier’s wife’s purchase of another of the strange aviation schools through which the 9/11 hijackers transited; Jeb Bush’s role in the spiriting away(to Washington, D.C.) of the Venice Police Department’s files on Rudi Dekkers; the remarkable story of Hilliard pilot P.J. Kahn—licensed to fly regularly into Havana, Cuba; allegations that Rudi Dekkers is German, not Dutch; Dekkers associate Rick Boehlke’s work for a wealthy German industrialist named Folker, who was buying up large amounts of property in the Pacific Northwes; Iran/Contra operative Dietrich Reinhardt’s business association with Rudi Dekkers; the unusual circumstances surrounding the crash of Arne Kruithof’s plane—it was compacted before the FAA could determine the cause of the crash!.
1. The program begins by reviewing some of Wally Hilliard’s background and, in particular, his stewardship of Huffman Aviation, the flight school through which several of the 9/11 hijackers infiltrated the United States. (The descriptions for FTR#’s 482, 483 contain material about some of Hilliard’s background and activities.)
2. Further developing the extraordinary, cloak-and-dagger milieu in which Hilliard operated, the program sets forth the colorful espionage background of Hilliard associate Mark Shubin. “Mark Shubin was Hilliard’s business partner in a number of airplanes, including a $35 million Gulfstream. Shubin lived in Miami. We had heard a number of different stories about him, each more lurid than the next. . . . The true story was that Shubin’s father was indeed a KGB Colonel imprisoned after being caught by his own government spying for the United States. He and his family, including young Mark, had been ‘traded out’ of Russia in the spy exchange involving Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of a U‑2 shot down over Russia in a famous incident in 1960.”
(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; pp. 262–264)
3. “After settling in America, the KGB Colonel’s son grew up to become a CIA pilot flying U‑2’s over Russia, where his native Russian language skills proved useful. We were already well into spy lore, and we’d barely sat down. ‘Wally was manipulated by somebody with a lot of power,’ said Mark Shubin. ‘He was blackmailed. Rudi was the one person who knew what was going on.’” (Ibid.; p. 264.)
4. “Shubin had quite a bit of business with Wally Hilliard, we learned. He had a company, Sky Bus, Inc., whose planes were shared in common with Hilliard’s Plane 1 Leasing to Sky Bus between March and August 2000. Plane 1 Leasing remained an ‘owner of sorts.’ Two of the planes that flowed from Hilliard’s Plane 1 Leasing, tail numbers N11UN and N111UN, were listed as being owned by both Plane 1 Leasing and Sky Bus. We thought the ‘UN’ designation on the tail number might be a clue. We were right. We discovered Shubin had established a company called ‘International Diplomatic Courier Services,’ on August 28, 2001.” (Idem.)
5. “We asked an aviation business owner about the planes with ‘UN’ numbers. Coy Jacob said the last letters in an ‘N’ number are picked by the individual plane owner. So Shubin and Hilliard’s two planes either flew for the UN or were trying to look like they did. Then we recognized the name of another business partner of Shubin’s, a man who gained a bit of fame during the Savings and Loan Scandal of a decade ago. Mark Shubin was in business with the notorious Ken Good.” (Idem.)
6. Next, the program highlights the activities of one of Hilliard associate Mark Shubin’s partners—Ken Good. Good had been one of Neil Bush’s cronies in the Silverado Savings and Loan debacle. (For more about the Silverado case, see—among other programs—Miscellaneous Archive Show M43—available from Spitfire, as well as FTR#249.) “Kenneth Good was a big part of the Silverado Savings and Loan collapse. He was in business with Neil Bush. In fact, Ken Good had been so clearly a Bush family retainer that it strained credulity to think that Shubin—and Wally Hilliard—now were not similarly connected. In 1983, Neil Bush, President George H.W. Bush’s son, and our current president’s brother, became partners in an oil venture with Ken Good and William Walters, a Denver developer.” (Ibid.; pp. 264–265.)
7. “Two years later, Bush joined the board of Silverado, a Denver S&L to which Walters and Good already owed more than $100 million that was never to see the light of day again. Neil Bush received a $100,000 ‘gift’ from Good, as well as other major financial assistance. Yet he was pressing Silverado’s management—without mentioning these favors—to let Good off the hook on his debts. There was no conflict of interest. It was all just a coincidence.” (Ibid.; p. 265.)
8. “By the late summer of 1988, examiners made ready to seize the company. But then they got a phone call from the White House, according to TIME magazine. The election was too close; Silverado’s collapse would inevitably have spotlighted the Republican candidate’s son, whose conduct had certainly been unethical and possibly illegal. So the bank board’s seizure of Silverado was delayed. When Silverado finally collapsed, it cost U.S. taxpayers over $1 billion. But it hadn’t been anybody’s fault. . .” (Idem.)
9. “The Houston Post’s Peter Brewton, who broke the CIA-Mob connection to the Savings and Loan Scandal, said Neil Bush’s Silverado partners ‘all had connections to individuals or S&L’s in Texas that did business with organized crime figures or CIA operatives. Good is one Silverado borrower who got a large loan at a Texas S&L connected to (Herman) Beebe, allegedly connected to the underworld.’ Herman Beebe was an intimate, as they say, of New Orleans ‘Mafia Kingfish,’ Carlos Marcello. So Ken Good hung with both the Bushes and the Mob. Ken Good cost Americans over $132 million, just from loans from Silverado.” (Idem.)
10. More about Good’s operations with Shubin
and the extraordinary irregularities that characterized the businesses through which Atta and associates infiltrated the United States. Again, note the numerous evidentiary tributaries running in the direction of the Iran-Contra affair. “ . . . Shubin and Good’s partnership seemed to share a lot in common with Hilliard-Dekkers and Richard Boehlke’s. Good’s airline, Express One International, supplied both aircraft and crews to Sky Bus, the way Boehlke had for Dekkers and Hilliard. And Shubin’s Fort Lauderdale based carrier was soon-to-be-bankrupt, a fate which Atta’s Florida associates seem to face with an awful regularity. Good’s Express One—drat the luck—will itself soon be bankrupt, and in bankruptcy proceedings the company’s leading lessor will be revealed to be Finova Capital, A Canadian company ‘linked’ top the CIA, and which also financed Iran Contra-era proprietary airlines like Richard Secord’s Southern Air Transport.” (Ibid.; p. 266.)
11. The aura of international intrigue surrounding Hilliard, Dekkers and company is heightened by discussion of one of Hilliard’s pilots—Pakistani P.J. Kahn. “ . . . P.J. Kahn, we knew, had crashed one of Wally’s Lear jets in September of 2002, with eight doctors on board. All eight needed treatment. Other than that, he was a mystery, a Pakistani national who had somehow ingratiated himself with southern Florida’s movers and shakers. ‘Hilliard signed a contract with P.J. Kahn, who bought the old Air Florida Certificate,’ said an aviation observer. ‘P.J. Kahn moved in with Mr. Hilliard’s backing. He’s an Arab operator with a license to fly (an airline). Kahn’s got a contract with the U.S. Treasury Foreign Assets Control to fly directly to Havana. He has special permission as an authorized carrier to fly direct to Havana.’ We were puzzled. Foreign nationals aren’t allowed to own U.S. air carriers. Also, U.S. air carriers aren’t supposed to be flying to Havana. Puzzlement turned to incredulity when we heard from several people that P.J. Kahn had disappeared. ‘I heard he has to flee the country for some reason,’ shrugged an aviation insider in Naples, who would say no more.” (Ibid.; p. 267.)
12. In FTR#483, we examined Hilliard’s and Dekkers’ Florida Air, an airline that was stillborn from a business standpoint. Despite the fact that it was apparently little more than a dummy company, it received the endorsement of then Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who presided over the theft of the 2000 Florida vote. Another of Hilliard’s bogus airlines—Discover Air—also received a celebrity endorsement from a big-name Florida politician, Governor Jeb Bush (another of the President’s brothers). “ . . . Hilliard’s latest ill-starred aviation enterprise also offered commuter service under the name Discover Air. After not one ticket was sold on its inaugural route, it went—almost immediately—out of business. Notwithstanding this uniquely dismal record, for reasons unknown, Florida political luminary Gov. Jeb Bush stepped forward to tour its facilities and praise its completely un-praiseworthy management.” (Ibid.; p. 328.)
13. Jeb Bush also was present when the FBI carted-off all of the Venice (Florida) police department’s files on Huffman Aviation. “ . . . We wanted to know if Dekkers had any local ‘priors.’ But it made Sergeant Marty Treanor sigh. Then he started to say something, thought better of it, and sighed again. He said he couldn’t tell us if Dekkers had been in any trouble in Venice, because all of his files were gone. ‘Gone?’ ‘The FBI took all our files, everything. They loaded the files right outside this window,’ said Treanor, indicating a parking lot outside the station, ‘into two Ryder trucks, then drove them right onto a C‑130 military cargo plane at the Sarasota airport, which took off for Washington with Jeb Bush aboard.’ We will come back to visit the question of the Governor of Florida’s national security responsibilities. The important point was that taking files was a lot different than copying them. The FBI wasn’t taking any chances.” (Ibid.; p. 31.)
14. Returning to a subject covered in—among other programs—FTR#477, the broadcast fleshes out Atta and company’s German connections. Throughout the milieu through which the 9/11 hijackers infiltrated, one finds Germans. Hilliard’s and Dekkers’ partner (in Florida Air) Rick Boehlke worked for a wealthy German industrialist who was buying large amounts of property in the Pacific Northwest. (It is worth noting in this regard that White Supremacists have long focused on the Pacific Northwest as an area that could be turned into “an Aryan homeland.” Is it possible that Boehlke’s German benefactor was involved with such a scheme? Note, also, that an acquaintance of Dekkers alleged that he told her he was German, not Dutch. “Who had Rudi Dekkers and co. been working for? We didn’t know anyone you could just walk up to and ask. We maybe got a clue from Mike Pickett, the aviation executive who had watched Rick Boehlke with the same amazement with which aviation professionals in Florida watched Dekkers. ‘When Boehlke came in he was just a restaurateur at the Gig Harbor airport,’ he said. ‘Then he became the General Manager for a German named Folker, a German industrialist buying up all the land in that area.’ [Emphasis added.] More Germans. Jessica Daley, an attractive airline professional in her late twenties, worked for Rick Boehlke at Harbor Air and later transferred and worked for Rudi Dekkers at Florida Air. While Harbor Air was going under, Boehlke told Jessica to fly down to Florida and see Rudi. ‘When I walked into his (Rudi’s) office he was yelling and screaming at people,’ she recalled. ‘He said, ‘People call me a bastard Nazi because I’m loud and I’m German. And I’m very demanding.’ Dekkers told her he was German, not Dutch, Jessica said.” (Ibid.; pp. 233–234.)
15. Arne Kruithof—the other “Magic Dutch Boy” at whose schools many of the 9/11 hijackers trained—also had a German connection. The program focuses on Kruithof’s German associate Pascal Schreier. Schreier and Kruithof had a business in Germany called “Aviation Aspirations.” Author Hopsicker speculates about the possible role of Aviation Aspirations in getting trainees from Europe to the U.S. “Speculation about [Arne] Kruithof centered on his relationship with Rudi Dekkers, and also to another partner, Pascal Schreier. A German national living in Munich, Schreier and Kruithof had a co-venture, called Aviation Aspirations. According to its literature the company provided financial assistance and a ‘Mentor Programme.’ About their ‘mentoring programme,’ the company’s literature said: ‘The help is both financial and practical. We now provide one-to-one practical assistance from experienced Professional Pilots (our Mentors) whom we have established throughout the world.’ ‘Mentor’ sounded a lot like ‘handler’ to us. Were we being too cynical? French Newspaper Le Monde had reported that Osama bin Laden’s brother Yeslam sent student pilots to Venice for training. Nothing more about this mechanism has surfaced. Was Aviation Aspirations the vehicle that had been used to insert Yeslam bin Laden’s pilots into the Venice flight schools?” (Ibid.; pp. 294–295.)
16. Schreier’s wife took over another of the highly unusual “flight schools” through which many of the hijackers passed. That school—Professional Aviation—was another of the schools at which Atta had enrolled. “Schreier’s job was recruiting flight students from his Munich base. Had he recruited in Hamburg? We didn’t know. We did know that the company’s motto was ‘Better training because we care.’ Who was Pascal Schreier, and why did he care? ‘Pascal Schreier has an inferiority complex.’ Venice Airport insider Max Burge told us. ‘He’s 6’2” blond, good-looking, German, and you could see it in him. Rudi And Arne, too.’ We didn’t get to meet him, but we learned a few interesting tidbits to share. ‘Pascal Schreier is married to a lady who took over the 135 School at Port Charlotte,’ said one aviation source.” (Ibid.; p. 295.)
17. “Pascal’s wife, Sandra K. Hamouda, who was half-French and half-Tunisian, now owned the flight school in Punta Gorda once known as Professional Aviation, the one which went bankrupt in February 2001, while Mohamed Atta and all those Tunisians were there. Now it appeared that they’d kept the school in the family.” (Idem.)
18. It appears that Schreier, Hilliard and Dekkers were also in business together. “Later, we learned that the new owners of Huffman Aviation were from the largest flight school in the Netherlands, which used to train up in Lakeland, Florida. It was near Rotterdam, the city from which Arne Kruithof hailed. Pascal Schreier was also apparently involved with Wally and Rudi’s failed aviation ventures. The true name of their flop airline, which flew as Florida Air, was Sunrise Airlines. And Pascal Schreier owned a company called Florida Sunrise with an address at the Venice Airport. It was too close for coincidence.” (Idem.)
19. DANIEL REPEATS A POINT OF INFORMATION COVERED IN FTR#483—THAT DEKKERS, AN EGYPTIAN AND A NUMBER OF GERMANS WERE CONTINUING TO INFILTRATE THE UNITED STATES ILLEGALLY, THROUGH THE BAHAMAS. THEY ARE APPARENTLY TAKING JET AIRCRAFT TRAINING IN TENNESSEE.
20. DANIEL ALSO NOTES THAT SOME OF ATTA’S GERMAN ASSOCIATES IN FLORIDA WERE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF PROMINENT GERMAN INDUSTRIALISTS. THIS WILL RING FAMILIAR TO THOSE MEMBERS OF THE AUDIENCE WHO ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE PARTICULARS OF THE BORMANN ORGANIZATION.
21. Supplementing discussion in FTR#483, the program sets forth the unusual circumstances surrounding the crash of Kruithof’s plane. Recall that Dekkers was also in a near-fatal air crash at around the same time. Dekkers’ helicopter went down when he was en route to a confrontation with Wally Hilliard over their business partnerships. The wreckage of Kruithof’s plane was compacted before the FAA could examine it—a highly irregular set of circumstances. “ . . . There were suspicious irregularities in the official investigation into Kruithof’s plane crash that observers at the airport said had never before happened. Without any finding on the cause of the crash. . . before investigators were even able to get a look at the downed the plane, the wreckage was gone. Things like that weren’t supposed to happen. ‘Even though the FAA hadn’t yet determined the cause for the crash,’ said one shocked observer, ‘the plane was almost immediately dragged off to be compacted.’ He looked stunned. ‘That’s not just irregular. It’s highly irregular. We’re all kind of wondering just what the hell’s going on.’” (Ibid.; pp. 293–294.)
22. Kruithof’s business partner Glenn Goodman was another of the highly interesting people in the Venice/Naples area. “ . . . Kruithof’s plane crash also threw a spotlight on the pilot of the downed plane, Glenn Goodman, the pilot at the controls of the downed Beech D‑18. Goodman and Kruithof were partners in Arne’s flight school at the Venice Airport, just like Rudi and Wally were in theirs. . .” (Ibid.; p. 295.)
23. “ . . . Kruithof and Goodman formed ‘Florida Flight Maintenance,’ in July of 2000, just as Mohamed Atta and Marwan began training at the Venice Airport. Goodman also owned a DC‑3 that sat at the Venice Airport for two years before being donated to an air museum in July, 2000, called the ‘Florida Military Aviation Museum.’ This was a major red flag. Donating planes and then getting them back from air museums is a ruse which has been used to provide planes over the years to a rich and colorful crop of elite deviants with intelligence connections.” (Idem.)
24. Once again, we find evidentiary tributaries running in the direction of the Iran/Contra scandal. “A military flight museum was the same venue used by the CIA in the past to ‘liberate’ military planes and helicopters in various sordid paramilitary schemes. It was being used right next door in Charlotte County, we remembered, to ‘re-assign’ 23 helicopters to new billets. Also troubling was the fact that as Goodman’s company was closed involuntarily by the State of Florida on September 21, 2001. Was it’s closure 9/11-related? [Emphasis added.]” (Idem.)
25. “Known as N90079, Inc., the company was named for the ‘N‑Number’ of the business’s sole asset, the aging DC‑3. Because the company never filed an annual report, much about it remains a mystery. When we ran the plane’s registration, or ‘N’ number, we discovered that the plane’s colorful history has included long stints in exotic locales. It spent quite a bit of time, for example, back in the 80’s, in Manuel Noriega’s Panama. The DC‑3 could be traced back to an infamous South Florida Customs airplane ‘bone yard,’ where ‘planes with checkered pasts’ sit in a fenced storage yard, like the sister ship to the famous C‑123 shot down over Nicaragua in 1986 with Eugene Hasenfus aboard. Probably just a coincidence.” (Ibid.; p. 296.)
26. In FTR#’s 482, 483, we examined the highly irregular operations out of Charlotte County airport. This program highlights still more irregularities around the Charlotte airport. Again, note that the milieu in which Jamie Hill and company operated is also connected to the milieu of the Iran-Contra affair. “ . . . Jamie Hill had been a target of the Charlotte County Sheriff’s investigation, we’d learned. ‘He’s got seven helicopters sitting on his property today that don’t belong to him,’ one local law enforcement source stated. ‘He’s got millions of dollars of aircraft parts with the numbers filed out.’ Jamie Hill’s partner in the company strongly suspected of having been a conduit for the disappearance of 23 helicopters from the County Sheriff’s Air Wing turns out to be another notorious covert operative with a significant presence at the Charlotte County Airport. Dietrich Reinhardt’s name, which could have been lifted straight out of transcripts of the Iran Contra Hearings, had also been linked with Barry Seal’s infamous Mena, Arkansas cocaine smuggling.” (Ibid.; p. 126.)
27. “We discovered that one of Reinhardt’s companies active at the Charlotte County Airport, Caribe Air, had been doing business with Rudi Dekkers’ Huffman Aviation. Caribe Air was an especially notorious CIA proprietary whose past included ‘blemishes’ like having all its aircraft seized at Mena, Arkansas after government prosecutors accused the company of using its planes to transport cocaine worth billions of collars into the U.S.” (Ibid.; pp. 126–127.)
28. “It was beginning to feel like Old Home Week in Charlotte County. Reinhardt—apparently not content with the distinction of being business partners with a man suspected of making helicopters disappear—was linked to the man who trained both pilots who crashed airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Dekkers had had a ‘maintenance contract’ with Reinhardt’s company. This is no doubt just another freak coincidence. Why would Dietrich Reinhardt know Rudi Dekkers? . . .” (Ibid.; p. 127.)
29. “Reinhardt had also operated the now-defunct St. Lucia Airways, referred to as a CIA proprietary company in a Senate intelligence committee report. Reports in The Washington Post linked St. Lucia planes to the delivery of Hawk and TOW missiles to Tehran, Iran in
1985 and 1986 as part of the covert arms-for-hostages deal between the United States and Iran. But busy guys like Dietrich are hard to get on the phone. The Post reported, ‘Attempts to reach Reinhardt by telephone in Frankfurt, Germany, were unsuccessful. His telephone had been disconnected.’ Was Dietrich Reinhardt German?” (Idem.)
Shubin Mark..Mark Shubin he is a con man, the most bigest and i would say talanted LIAR ! His father NEVER been a colonel i KGB,...and Mark never been in israeli air force, he never been in any army at all..! He is a sick man........
[...] FTR #484 [...]
[...] also recapitulate an item from FTR #484. Heroic journalist Daniel Hopsicker was told by agents of the German BKA (the [...]
“Sandra Hamouda’s half-Tunisian, we learned, and she has an extended family in Florida. Hamoudas are listed as officers of a number of apparently family-led firms in Punta Gorda, with names like Universal Technologies and Airex Enterprises. Globex Enterprises.”
Address for Globex was the gated community of Cedar Bend, Orlando.
Interesting then that Ziyad Khaleel lived on Cedar Bend