Update on the German Connections to 9/11
Recorded September 24, 2006
REALAUDIO
Introduction: Further exploring 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta’s German associates in Florida, this interview with Daniel Hopsicker sheds more light on the mysterious and sinister Wolfgang Bohringer, one of the Germans who Atta referred to as his “brother.” (For more on Bohringer, see FTR#542. For more about Atta’s German associates in Florida, see FTR#477.) Having relocated to remote Fanning Island (one of the Kiribati Islands, formerly known as the Gilberts), Bohringer is reportedly planning on opening a flight school for trainikng people to fly DC3’s, an excellent aircraft for smuggling contraband. This is a continuation of a career of shadowy and ostensibly illegal activities in which Bohringer has been involved. Formerly working as a pilot for Czech criminal kingpin Victor Kozeny, Bohringer keeps large amounts of cash and weapons on his yacht moored at Fanning Island. Bohringer’s former employer Kozeny has allegedly been involved with Bush family associates in a decades-long scheme to launder money to help corrupt U.S. elections. Acquaintances on Fanning Island describe Bohringer as rabidly anti-Semitic, lending credibility to some of Mr. Emory’s previous speculation that Bohringer, and perhaps other German associates of Atta’s, may well be of Nazi persuasion.
Program Highlights Include: Bohringer’s involvement in an Atlanta computer company allegedly involved in massive fraud; the involvement of Bohringer’s boss Kozeny in a scheme to gain control over the state-run oil company of Azerbaijan; Kozeny’s alleged involvement in massive drug smuggling; the alleged involvement of Kozeny with an executive of insurance AIG; Bohringer’s close association with the Flying Club of Munich; the Flying Club of Munich’s reported Nazi associations; attempts by law enforcement to cover-up the German connections of Atta and the 9/11 hijackers’ links to a global criminal network.
1. Introducing the subject of the broadcast, the discussion begins by highlighting features of the career of Wolfgang Bohringer, one of 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta’s closest friends–one of a number of Germans with whom Atta associated in Florida and a man with (as Mr. Emory likes to say) more connections than a switchboard. Currently operating out of a remote Pacific island, Bohringer appears to be part of the “global network” that Tony Blair identified as being behind the 9/11 attack. “One of Mohamed Atta’s closest associates in Florida before the 9/11 attack today carries a chest on his yacht filled with several million dollars in new bills, automatic weapons, passports from a half-dozen nations, and works for a major international mobster. Wolfgang Bohringer, a German pilot, identified by Atta’s one-time girlfriend Amanda Keller as one of Mohamed Atta’s closest associates in Florida during the run-up to the 9.11 attack, and one of the handful of people the terrorist ringleader called “my brother,” recently resurfaced on a tiny island in the South Pacific, in the Republic of Kiribati. There he announced his intention to set up a flight school on Fanning Island, almost a thousand miles south of Hawaii and one of the most remote places on Earth. Bohringer plans to teach pilots how to fly DC3’s, the 70-year old aviation workhorse frequently used in weapons and drug smuggling.”
(“ ‘Close Associate’ of Mohamed Atta Surfaces in South Pacific” by Daniel Hopsicker; Mad Cow Morning News; 9/15/2006.)
2. On Fanning Island, Bohringer is planning to open a flight school to teach pilots to fly DC3’s—an old but very serviceable aircraft that is ideal for the smuggling of contraband. Knowledgeable experts say the DC3 could also be adapted to aerial spraying. Biological warfare terrorism anyone? “The island has no electricity, and a population of barely one hundred souls. While it hardly seems an ideal place for a flight school, the remote location and lack of official scrutiny may make it ideal for something. Bohringer, accompanied by a woman he reportedly met over the Internet named Ana Maria Uhr, almost immediately aroused suspicion, after he announced plans for a flight school training what local citizens suspected would be an assortment of smugglers and mercenaries to fly DC3’s. Alarmed local residents contacted The MadCowMorningNews about the German pilot, offering new details which prompted us to take a closer look at him as a possible link to the elusive global network which British Prime Minister Tony Blair, two weeks after 9/11, said had assisted the terrorist hijackers.” (Idem.)
3. Bohringer is also associated with a major Czech organized figure named Victor Kozeny. One question that suggests itself is whether or not Mohamed Atta’s presence in Prague may have had something to do with the Bohringer/Kozeny relationship. Note that the milieu of Atta and the 9/11 hijackers also overlaps the milieu of the Alfa group (see FTR#530). As is the case with Kozeny, Alfa overlaps the milieux of drug smuggling and petroleum intrigue in the former Soviet Union. Are Kozeny’s activities in Azerbaijan related to the activities of Alfa? “During the same period Wolfgang Bohringer was hanging out with Mohamed Atta, Bohringer was the personal pilot of a notorious Czech Mobster named Victor Kozeny, who is known as the ‘Pirate of Prague.’ Kozeny owns a private island in the Bahamas, travels on an Irish passport, and is currently fighting extradition to the U.S. on charges of massive financial fraud and allegedly paying multi-million dollar bribes to government officials in the Republic of Azerbaijan in an effort to take-over that oil-rich country’s State Oil Company. After defrauding thousands of people around the world while traveling on an Irish passport, including the chairman of the Northern Ireland peace talks, Senator George Mitchell, Kozeny sought refuge in the Bahamas. Bohringer had opened a flight school in Naples, Florida in 1996, illegal for a foreigner. But he hadn’t gotten in any trouble with the FAA.” (Idem.)
4. “Perhaps his association as the personal pilot for a major Eastern European Mafia figure named Victor Kozeny had helped. Kozeny is the subject of investigations by the FBI and US Customs, and was recently charged in the U.S. with stealing $182 million dollars by the Manhattan District Attorney. Bohringer moved to Atlanta to began a position as corporate pilot in February 1, 2001, according to his online bio, for a software company called HBOC. No doubt it is just a coincidence, or dashed bad luck, but Bohringer’s new employer was involved in a major accounting scandal that cost shareholders $9 billion of lost value in a single day. ‘HBOC was found to be a mob bust-out,’ a financial analyst emailed us. Kozeny, we were shocked to discover, had at some point in the mid-90’s controlled one-third of the entire Czechoslovakian economy. ‘Kozeny bought factories and ‘rides’ on pipelines, meaning they crossed land he owned and paid big for the privilege.’” (Idem.)
5. Kozeny’s questionable activities may overlap an international money-laundering scandal involving associates of the Bush family and involving the illegal funding of U.S. elections. “With his ill-gotten gains, Kozeny tried to buy off top officials in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan to gain control of that country’s state-owned oil company. One man already convicted in the scheme, Hans Bodmer, belonged to a network of Russian oligarchs, one of whom, Pyotr Aven, has been accused by a Russian corruption task force of being engaged in drug trafficking. Kozeny’s partners in the Azeri scheme included a managing director of Hank Greenberg’s American Insurance Group (AIG). Greenberg was forced to step down amid the Eliot Spitzer probe, a scandal, it is rumored, which involved a major Bush family and associates’ international money-laundering operation that has spanned more than a generation and has been used to illegally fund US elections since the Nixon era.” (Idem.)
6. The fact that one of Kozeny’s alleged collaborators in the above conspiracy is an executive with AIG is interesting, and possibly significant. AIG has an interesting pedigree, overlapping both the intelligence community and the world of GOP rightwing politics. Note Atta’s movements in February of 2001. Was he visiting potential targets with Bohringer? (For more about the shady doings of AIG, see FTR#531.) “AIG was founded from Asia Life/CV Starr, a Shanghai-based international import/export and insurance firm founded in 1919 by Cornelius V. Starr, an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative in Southeast Asia during World War II. Clinton antagonist Kenneth Starr is his nephew. Currently, Kozeny is awaiting extradition to the U.S. from the Bahamas. A prosecutor there revealed in court that Kozeny possesses an astonishing number of passports, including six from Ireland alone. ‘He appears to be able to produce foreign passports at will,’ stated the prosecutor. Atta and Al Shehhi flew or drove to Atlanta on several occasions during the month of February 2001. To meet with Wolfgang? On two of those visits, Atta rented a plane, the first with a pilot, the second unescorted, and visited an area of Tennessee where he observed a dam, and several nuclear fuel production facilities.” (Idem.)
7. The cargo on Bohringer’s yacht is more than a little interesting: “On his yacht, the ‘Argos,’ Bohringer was carrying a chest filled with ‘stacks of brand new hundred dollar bills, more money that I have ever seen in my life,’ wrote one local resident. Like his former boss, Bohringer is no slouch in the passport department... Aboard Wolfgang’s yacht were passports from a half-dozen nations, and a cache of firearms, including a Glock. He claimed to be an arms dealer, and acknowledged his involvement with Eastern European Mobsters. Bohringer also reportedly admitted knowing Mohamed Atta, but stating to several islanders that another German pilot in Naples, Rex Gasteiger, was to blame for linking him to 9/11. Soon several residents quietly reported surprisingly deep suspicions to local authorities. ‘To me Wolfgang is carrying dirty money, lots of it,’ wrote one. ‘If he can gets a flight school going it does not take a stretch of the imagination to see he would sell it to some else who sells it to someone else and Honolulu gets vaporized. He seems to know the money tree and could be working to set things up for others to do so and so has been funded to do so.’” (Idem.)
8. Among his many endearing qualities, Bohringer is apparently viciously anti-Semitic. In the discussion with Daniel Hopsicker in the actual broadcast, Daniel mentions that the Flying Club of Munich, closely connected to Bohringer and his father, appears to have Nazi connections, as Mr. Emory had surmised in previous discussion in FTR#542. “Locals on Fanning Island sent us the pictures of Wolfgang in this story. ‘A month before Wolfgang left with his boat he met Ana on the internet. He sent tickets and credit card for her to meet him in Paris. He would take her as crew on a round the world trip. First stop Hawaii. But when they were a day out of Hawaii he informed her they were sailing to another island and not stopping at Hawaii.’ ‘My friend crewed with them to Samoa, and on the trip he found Wolfgang liked having his picture taken,’ one local resident wrote us. On the trip Ana confided she was really worried about Wolfgang. He seemed to running from something. So she told him what she’d read about him on the Internet about the 9/11 thing.’ ‘Wolfgang alleviated my concerns with simple explanations about an unhappy business partnership with the guy who bought his flight school,’ the resident wrote. ‘But, it was clear he hated Jews. He told some very bad jokes about ovens, Jews, bread, and blacks.’ We compared the new pictures with what Amanda Keller had told us about Wolfgang. She called Bohringer ‘The Iceman,’ she said, because of his resemblance to a character in the movie ‘Top Gun,’ the rival to Tom Cruise played by Val Kilmer. And indeed, the resemblance is remarkably close.” (Idem.)
9. Residents of Fanning Island heard Bohringer discussing having won his Green Card in a lottery, confirming what Atta’s girlfriend Amanda Keller had learned. “Keller also said Wolfgang won a lottery to get his green card. The locals on Fanning Island report that Bohringer told them that story too. So clearly Amanda Keller had known Bohringer. Her testimony has once again proven correct, as it also was when she told of helping Atta move from Deep Creek, part of the recently-incorporated town of North Port. Documents made public after the Moussaoui trial show Atta was sending faxes from a Postal Express in Deep Creek on March 11, 2001, at exactly the time Amanda Keller says he was there. The Moussaoui trial produced the largest trove of government documents about the hijackers’ South Florida movements. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press was instrumental in the release of many of those court documents. The FBI fought them every step of the way. Now we know why. The documents prove they’ve been lying. ‘Him (Atta ) and Wolfgang drove around in the red convertible a lot,’ she said. ‘Their favorite place to eat was Hooters in Sarasota. They got kicked out of Hooters for grabbing their boobs.’” (Idem.)
10. Wolfgang’s activities are definitely out of the ordinary. Note that he was one of the first of what Hopsicker calls “the German element” to arrive in Naples, Florida. “‘He spoke German with Wolfgang, who was in his thirties. Wolfgang was with Mohamed when he came by the nursing home to see me one time. Mohamed called certain people—Arabic people—‘my brother.’ And I was wondering how he had so many family members. Like gang members do, ‘this is my brother,’’ she said. ‘But not all Arabs. So it wasn’t like just anyone Muslim was his brother. He called Wolfgang and Juergen ‘my brother,’ too. He and Wolfgang were very tight, they went everywhere together. When he came into the picture they were together all the time.’ The story of Wolfgang’s life to date is studded, according to people we spoke with who knew him, with activities considerably out of the ordinary. While sailing around the world on a 47-foot yacht, for example, instead of crossing the Indian Ocean from the coast of Africa on a direct line, he took a ‘detour’ to Bombay, where he met his wife Sujita. He was one of the first of the ‘German element’ to arrive in Florida, in 1996, when he opened a flight school in Naples. Prior to arriving in Naples he was associated with an organization called ‘The Flying Club of Munich,’ in Augsburg, Germany. In Spring 2002, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen.” (Idem.)
11. Note that Bohringer, like Rudi Dekkers (the head of Huffman Aviation, the flight school through which Atta and other 9/11 hijackers infiltrated the U.S.), appears to have been immune to arrest and prosecution by law enforcement authorities, despite enormous wrongdoing. “Like Rudi Dekkers, Wolfgang was notorious in aviation circles for bad behavior. We found records of his scrapes in the files of airport authorities in Florida, including a letter sent by a former employee soliciting to offer private flight instruction at his Wolf Aero, Bohringer’s flight school, without authority and in violation of FAA rules was in the airport records in Naples. ‘Wolfgang showed up from Munich in the mid-1990’s and immediately began operating a flight school illegally,’ stated Naples flight instructor Marcus Huber, a flight instructor in Naples. ‘He’s half Swiss, half German.’ Like Rudi Dekkers, Wolfgang also seems to have had a ‘hall pass’ from federal authorities, which embittered other foreign flight trainers not similarly well-connected. ‘When Wolfgang applied for an E‑2 Visa, he made up a fake company, a cleaning service,’ Huber told us. ‘Sometimes it makes me mad that a criminal gets preference.’ In the wake of the Sept 11 disaster, U.S. officials repeatedly promised explanations. But it was left to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to sketch out the Cliff notes version of the case against Bin Laden. He said, ‘Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization with ties to a global network.’” (Idem.)
12. In his article, Daniel Hopsicker links the network to which Bohringer, Dekkers and Atta belonged to a network identified by Sibel Edmonds, a relatively well-known whistle blower. “Almost five years after Tony Blair first told the world that a ‘global network’ provided assistance to the terrorist hijackers while they were in the U.S., what is happening on a tiny island in the South Pacific may point towards the international organization in question. ‘You have a network of people who obtain certain information and... sell it to whomever would be the highest bidder,’ explained Sibel Edmonds, former FBI translator, who was muzzled by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who went to the Supreme Court to ensure her silence about... something. ‘There are certain points where you have your drug-related activities combined with money laundering and information laundering, converging with your terrorist activities... Post‑9/11 intelligence ‘failures’ include the willful quashing by the Government of investigations tracing these criminal networks.’ Atta’s German buddy Bohringer works for a global network. Did it assist Atta and the terrorist hijackers? Was there a connection between the larger organization, or network, behind gangster financier Victor Kozeny, and that of the terrorists in Florida plotting to kill Americans on the 11th of September in 2001?” (Idem.)
13. “Amanda Keller was not the only eyewitness quoted mentioning Atta’s German associates. Atta’s landlord for a brief week told reporters about a wild 3‑day weekend Amanda and Atta spent in Key West, along with another girl named Linda. ‘The two girls were introduced to two men from Germany that they said were Mohamed’s friends,’ Tony LaConca told the Charlotte Sun-Herald. When we first learned that all of Atta’s associates in Florida had not been Arab, we were understandably eager to learn more about the terrorist ringleaders’ two German friends. Sun-Herald reporter Elaine Allen-Emrich had apparently felt the same way... ‘The FBI in Tampa would neither confirm nor deny that any agents were interviewing people in the North Port area,’ she reported. ‘Asked for more information about Atta’s wild weekend, an FBI spokesperson identified only as ‘Pam’ said, ‘We recommend that you check in with CNN for current information. Any press statements can be found on televised stations like CNN.’ We went looking for ourselves. The results are in Welcome to TERRORLAND. We didn’t feel like ‘checking in with CNN.’” (Idem.)
14. Daniel also discussed the 9/11 B.S. movement, and the conscious attempt to deceive people about the events of 9/11—attributing the attacks to “controlled demolitions”, a “cruise missile” hitting the Pentagon or “the Mossad.” For more about this, see some of Daniel’s Mad Cow Morning News articles, including:
“Cointelpro 9/11: Peak Oil and the Level Above Saudi” By Daniel Hopsicker; Mad Cow Morning News; 9/28/2004;
“Cointelpro 9/11: John Gray and Saudi Genesis” By Daniel Hopsicker; Mad Cow Morning News; 10/6/2004;
“Khashoggi, Cults, Cover-Ups & Mars & Venus Doing Lunch” by Daniel Hopsicker; Mad Cow Morning News; 10/13/2004;
“The 9/11 Heroin Connection” By Daniel Hopsicker; Mad Cow Morning News; 9/6/2006.
Banking with Bin Laden
Well look at that: one of the sons of Osama bin Laden, Hamza bin Laden, married the daughter of 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. Hamza is also believed to be a member of al Qaeda and planning new terror attacks in part to avenge the death of his father. This is according to Osama’s half-brothers, who claim that they believe Hamza is possibly living in Afghanistan, but they aren’t sure.
Interestingly, Mohammed Atta wasn’t actually known to have a daughter before. As the article notes, his will made no mention of children and Atta was previously thought to have been a prude with no known marriages, or children, before the 9/11 attack. Some accounts of his adult life had portrayed him as an avowed virgin which, of course, ignores the extensive work Daniel Hopsicker did in exploring Atta’s time in Florida while he dated a stripper, Amanda Keller, drank heavily, snorted cocaine, and allegedly palled around with figures like Wolfgang Bohringer. And yes, Amanda Keller did eventual recant her claims of knowing Atta, but it was a recanting that was problematic on numerous levels and no explanation for all the other corroborating testimonies. So now we are learning that Mohammed Atta apparently had a daughter. A daughter who tragically appears to be following her father’s footsteps:
“The union was mentioned by Osama bin Laden’s half-brothers during an interview with the Guardian. Ahmad and Hassan al-Attas said they believed Hamza had taken a senior position within al-Qaida and was aiming to avenge the death of his father, shot dead during a US military raid in Pakistan seven years ago.”
So it wasn’t just any son that Atta’s daughter married. It was Hamza, the son who has apparently taken a senior position with al Qaeda and is aiming to get revenge for his father’s death:
It’s also interesting to note that Hamza bin Laden was apparently sheltered by the government of Iran, along with dozens of other family members of the 9/11 plotters. Considering that al Qaeda isn’t exactly a Shia-friendly organization that’s a pretty remarkable fun fact if true:
Also note that the claims that Iran was sheltering Hamza was made in March of this year by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman as part of a larger claim that Iran is sheltering al Qaeda. The Iranian government no surprisingly denies this. It would be interesting to learn if there’s any truth to these claims or if it’s a Saudi-driven deflection for the extensive support the Saudi government has given to these groups over the years.
And, finally, we have to note that the discovery of a daughter isn’t in keeping with the official narrative that Atta was a prude religious zealot. It’s especially surprising since his will mentioned no dependents:
And, at this point, there’s no evidence that Atta’s daughter actually exists. It’s based on the word of Osama bin Laden’s half-brothers. But if it turns out to be true that’s just one more piece of evidence suggesting that the official narrative about Mohammed Atta leaves much to be desired.
It’s kind of sad that one of the best signs of top notch investigative journalism in the modern era is the degree to which that journalism was ignored and cover up it. But this is our world, and as such, it’s hard to accept the reality that we don’t have Daniel Hopsicker to go turning over any more rocks for us. R.I.P. Daniel.
So with Hopsicker having shucked off his mortal coil, it’s worth taking at one of the more groundbreaking — and therefore widely ignored — stories he wrote. It was a followup to a story that Hopsicker almost single-handedly delivered to the world, which itself is kind of a collective indictment about the rest of us. That would, of course, be the story of Amanda Keller and her time as Mohammed Atta’s girlfriend in the early months of 2001. As we’ve seen, it’s a story that goes off into all sorts of sordid intelligence-related areas like Rudi Dekkers heroin trafficking operation out of Huffman Aviation and Atta’s relationship to the mysterious Wolfgang Bohringer.
And as we also saw, it was a story that was ‘covered up’ in the most preposterous way possible. All of a sudden, Amanda Keller declared that she had made it all up. And that was that. And that was the case by the end of 2003, just a little over two years into the investigation. Even more absurd was how Keller wasn’t even hiding that she was being intimidated by the FBI when Hopsicker followed up with her at the time. Nor was were the many other eyewitnesses included Keller’s landlord, Charlie Grapentine, who opening spoke with Hopsicker at the time about FBI harassment and intimidation. Specifically, intimidation NOT to talk with anyone about what they saw regarding Atta and Keller. They were all willing to talk to Hopsicker about this back in 2003.
And that brings us to the following October 2006 article. It’s a followup on the coverup. As Hopsicker describes, the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui turned out to contain quite a few doozies in terms of the information released in the documents. Doozies like the fact that it contains call records for Mohammed Atta in early 2001. Call records that the FBI had previous said didn’t exist. Records that just happen to overlap with the period of time when Keller and Atta were living together for four months in the Venice. A period that the FBI asserted Atta had actually relocated to the Miami area. Yes, the FBI was apparently running cover for Atta’s whereabouts in early 2001, asserting he was in Miami when evidence suggests he was very much in the Venice area living with Keller. Evidence that included a Venice-area cell phone number that was somehow left out of evidence the FBI chose to release earlier.
But as Hopsicker also points out in the article, it was a joint FBI-media coverup, with the NY Times-owned Sarasota Herald Tribune — which has previously been one of the only mainstream media publications to cover the Keller/Atta relationship — writing a puff peace pushing the narrative that Keller made it all up and had never actually lived with Atta. A puff piece that ignores the fact that the Sarasota area was filled with eyewitnesses who saw the odd couple together and instead relies on a single unnamed FBI agent who assures readers that the government checked Atta’s phone records and found that the two had never called each other. As the unnamed FBI agent states, “There’s nothing there to corroborate the relationship between the two.”
This gross blatant coverup all played out almost 17 years ago. And for all practical purposes, the coverup is still in full effect. The story of Amanda Keller, Mohammed Atta, the Rudi Dekkers heroin trafficking operation and the mysterious Wolfgang Bohringer remain almost entirely off of everyone’s radar and likely to remain that way forever. One might suspect a self-respecting society would want to get to the bottom of these kinds of questions. Especially in light of all the recent revelations (thanks to ongoing court cases) about the FBI and CIA running cover for the 9/11 hijackers in the months leading up to the attack. But, alas, this is modern America, a land that can’t be bothered to meaningfully care about the past, present, or future. A land where blatant coverups live on forever. It’s how we roll:
“Released over government objection through the efforts of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the documents illustrate the pattern of omission and selective editing through which the Bureau has deflected attention from the terrorist’s conspiracy’s base of operations in Venice FL.”
As we’ve seen with so much of the 9/11 investigation, it’s the documents released during judicial hearings that are often the most elucidating, as was the case with the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui. And as Daniel Hopsicker lays out in this October 2006 piece, not only had the FBI been engaging in a coverup of much of this information, but it was a blatant coverup that involved the aggressive silencing of numerous eyewitnesses. In particular, the eyewitnesses who could corroborate the fact that Amanda Keller really had been Mohammed Atta’s girlfriend, with the two living together for months in 2001. Eyewitnesses who had become especially inconvenient following Keller’s eventually, and utterly preposterous, recanting of all of her stories about having ever lived with Atta at all.
But this isn’t just an FBI coverup. It was a media coverup too, with the NY Times-owned Sarasota Herald-Tribune casually accepting Keller’s absurd recanting and just dropping the story entirely. A joint FBI/media coverup in action. A blatant one at that, just five years after 9/11:
It’s a coverup that was so blatant you almost had to wonder if being this blatant was intentional. Like a kind of intimidation play. Because as we’ll see, the eyewitnesses were clearly intimidated when Hopsicker came to talk to them. Intimidated and pissed. And then there’s the phone records, which directly contradict the FBI’s timeline on Atta’s whereabouts. Why would the FBI want to obscure Atta’s presence in the Venice area from January to May of 2001 and instead claim he was in Miami? The timeframe that just happens to overlap with the time Amanda Keller and Atta were living together. The phone records proving this lie were released as part of the Moussaoui trial. The evidence is right there. And here the FBI, and the media, stuck with this blatant lie. A lie that is maintained to this day. A self-respecting society would want answers on stuff like this. But this is modern America. We’re fine with the gross blatant lie and fine letting it linger and putrefy for decades. It’s how we roll:
And it’s note just phone records. A fax dated March 11, 2001, was sent from a Postal Express store a mile from the home they allegedly left three months earlier:
Then there’s the fact that the original Sarasota-Herald Tribune report who first broke the story of Keller and Atta’s relationship, Earle Kimel, recounted how the manager of the Sandpiper Apartments, where Atta and Keller lived together under Keller’s name, claimed he saw Atta there several times in April of 2001. And as Kimel also noted, Keller told him directly that authorities had warned her about talking to anyone about the case. It was witness intimidation, as reported by the original Sarasota-Herald Tribune reporter. Again, a self-respecting society would want answers. Instead, we’re all just expected to forget this ever happened:
And despite all this gross intimidation, it was very clear that plenty of these eyewitnesses were still very willing to talk, including the landlord of the Sandpiper Apartments, Charles Grapentine. And his wife Paula. They both had detailed stories to share, like stories about all the visitors they had. Stories that all point towards a giant FBI coverup of something very significant when it comes to understanding the nature of the network behind this terrorist operation. Atta’s relationship with Keller was being treated like some sort of national security crisis. Why? And why so little curiosity from the American society at large about this? It’s not like Keller’s relationship with Atta wasn’t major news at one point. And yet this absurd recanting, coupled with a blatant FBI coverup that emerged as a consequence of the Moussaoui trial, was just glossed over with a giant collective yawn:
And it’s like Grapentine was just ignored. He was directly called a liar by an FBI agent who told him to keep him mouth shut. Again, Keller’s relationship with Atta was being treated like a major national security crisis. Agencies don’t engage in behavior like this unless they have no better option. Intimidating these witnesses was apparently the FBI’s best option at the time:
And then there’s Stephanie Frederickson, the next door neighbor to Keller’s apartment confirmed both Atta’s relationship to Keller during this period AND the FBI intimidation. But also note Frederickson’s lament when faced with FBI questions over whether she was planning on talking to anyone about what she saw: “Who was I going to tell? Most everyone around here already knew”:
Also note how Keller wasn’t hiding the fact that she was being silenced by the FBI. At least not hiding it to Daniel Hopsicker, one of the few reporters in the world apparently who took the initiative to actually interview one of the central eye witnesses in the 9/11 investigation. As was the case with the rest of these eye witnesses. It underscores how this really was a joint coverup between the investigating authorities AND the press. Because you can’t have a blatant coverup with like this with so much contradictory evidence already out there without the media acting as a willing accomplice:
And that brings us to the farce of an article written by a Sarasota Herald-Tribune article that appeared to be designed to somehow obfuscate the paper’s own earlier reporting on Keller and Atta. All of a sudden, it was turned into Keller and the mysterious ‘Mohammed’, an unnamed fifth pilot trainee who never appear again in any reporting or investigating. In other words, it was a coverup for very lazy or incurious people:
Again, most of this FBI intimidation had occurred by the fall of 2003. As Hopsicker reported at the time. Two decades ago. And as we can see, the coverup outlived Hopsicker and appears poised to outlive us all. Because while American democracy may have had its brains blown out on November 22, 1963, the fantasy version can live on forever. A fantasy version that isn’t above threats and intimidation when it comes to maintaining appearances. And a fantasy version that has no place for real journalism.
With the passing of Daniel Hopsicker and, in turn, the effective closure of so much of what he started to uncover about the 9/11 investigation (or lack thereof), it’s worth taking another look back at the mystery of the ‘Second Mohamed’. That would be the alleged ‘real boyfriend’ of Amanda Keller, who definitely WASN’T dating Mohammed Atta in the Spring of 2001, according to the prevailing narrative. No, instead, Keller made it all up, and revealed that she made it all up to a Sarasota Herald-Tribune reporter on September 23, 2001, just 12 days after the attack. Notably, that’s also 14 months before Keller did her December 2002 interview with Hopsicker where she discussed her time with Atta in far more detail.
The ‘Second Mohamed’ has long been one of the more remarkable, and absurd, details about the whole investigation into the South Florida terror nexus. And it remains part of the official explanation to this day. According to US investigators at the time, Keller did indeed date a “Mohamed” in the Spring of 2001 and they had indeed stayed at the Sandpiper Apartments in Venice, Florida, in April of 2001. But this was a completely different Mohamed who had returned to Paris by the time of attacks and was no where to be found. And at that point, the investigation into the second Mohamed apparently ended, along with the investigation into all of the other South Florida associates of Atta we learned about from Keller.
Beyond that, as Hopsicker points out, the crucial local South Florida news articles where Keller described her time with Atta had all been expunged from news databases like LexisNexis by the time ‘Mohamed Arajak’ reached out to him in 2005. The only reference we can find in those databases is that September 23, 2001, Sarasota Herald-Tribune article, where Keller recants. The only copies that remain are in microfiche archives, if at all. It’s quite a nail in the coffin.
And let’s not forget the recent revelation about the ‘Alec Station’ joint FBI and CIA fusion center running cover for the 9/11 hijackers against US law enforcement in the period leading up to the attacks. And as we saw in that reporting, one of the biggest revelations of all was just how much evidence regarding the South Florida terror cell remains classified and hidden from the public to this day.
But, of course, the early claims of a ‘second Mohamed’ wasn’t really the end of it. As we saw, this second Mohamed allegedly reached out to Daniel Hopsicker in 2005, identifying himself as “Mohamed Arajaki”. He even sent photos of himself with Keller, one of which Hopsicker posted. Let’s just say you would have to have a serious vision problem to mistake this guy with Atta.
Interestingly, this second Mohamed is wearing sunglasses in the photo, which is too bad. Because as we’re also going to see, it turns out that the eyes of this second Mohamed could be a very revealing piece of physical evidence. Why? Because that September 22, 2001, article where Keller recants her whole story about dating Atta includes some comments by her mother and sister, who both met this second Mohamed. According to her sister Tammy, Mohamed has very creepy eyes and would just leer at her. Which, of course, was the key physical characteristic that so many people had reported about Atta. The dude simply had very creepy eyes. So it wasn’t just a ‘second Mohamed’. It was a second Mohamed who shared Atta’s characteristic creepy eyes. That was a narrative that emerged less than two weeks after the attacks. A narrative even Keller obviously didn’t stick to since she was willing to talk with Hopsicker at all, despite all of the official pressure she was clearly under, which might explain why this “Mohamed Arajaki” felt the need to reach out to Hopsicker years later:
“A mysterious French-Arab man resurfaced last week who authorities had dubbed the ‘5th terrorist pilot’ and a ‘Second’ Mohamed in Venice, FL. In an email, he alleged that a number of eyewitnesses, including the girl who had lived with him, had all mistaken him… for Mohamed Atta.”
That’s right, A French-Arab man decided to reach out to Daniel Hopsicker back in 2005 to insist that he was the real ‘Mohamed’ that Amanda Keller had been dating back in 2001. Not Mohamed Atta. Amanda Keller was making it all up, according to this second Mohamed. And yet, as we’ve seen, it was far from just Amanda Keller who was making these claims. You had landlords like Charlie Grapentine and next-door neighbors identifying Atta too. Local media was on the story. At least in the days following 9/11. But we’re expected to ignore all of that, and accept this ‘second Mohamed’ narrative. Even with a provided pic of this second Mohamed that looks nothing like Atta:
This ‘second Mohamed’ story was remarkable, if widely ignored, at the time when this story was breaking in 2005. But let’s not forget all the revelations we’ve had since. Like the recent revelation about the ‘Alec Station’ joint FBI and CIA fusion center running cover for the 9/11 hijackers against US law enforcement in the period leading up to the attacks. In other words, it’s not obvious that the hijackers were on the US intelligence’s radar in the pre‑9/11 period. Which makes questions about mysterious German affiliates or a ‘second Mohamed’ all the more intriguing. It would be a massive mystery if this was a self-respecting society that actually cared about itself. Instead, we get this blatant coverup that no one seems to care about. A coverup that includes the purging of news databases of any of those local news articles from the days immediately following 9/11 laying out all the other eyewitnesses who saw Amanda Keller with Mohamed Atta in the Spring of 2001. Microfiche archives are the only places these stories exist, if at all anymore:
Two disappeared articles in particular are very intriguing. One, published in the Sarasota Herald Tribune on September 16, 2001, reveals that local law enforcement had actually warned the FBI about Atta’s extremism after Atta apparently accidentally forwarded a screed to an aviation business at the Charlotte Airport when he was living in Charlotte County before moving to Venice. Two days later, the same paper published an article where Charles Grapentine, the manager of the Sandpiper Apartments where Keller and Atta stayed in the Spring of 2001, mentioned seeing Atta at the complex for about three weeks in April. That single statement basically backs up the entire story Keller first told. But, alas, that article has been purged from LexisNexis and other news databases too. It only exists in microfiche at this point. If at all:
And note how this second Mohamed seemed to confirm that, yes, Keller was indeed hanging out with the other Germans she’s mentioned at this time, Peter and Stephan. So, in theory, there’s another pair of people who could confirm this ‘second Mohamed’ story. But they didn’t decide to come forward to help their alleged friend Mohamed clear all this up:
Finally, there was one article from this period immediately after the attacks that can still be found in news databases like LexisNexis: a September 23, 2001, article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune where Keller appears to recant everything she had said about dating Atta. Instead, she insists that she had actually dated a second Mohamed who was taking flight training classes in Venice at the time. Recall how Keller openly told Hopsicker that the reporter who authored this report, Chris Grier, was seemingly trying to trip her up and arguing with her, which, itself is another very curious part of this whole story. Because Keller’s recanting took place before she did her December 2002 interview with Hopsicker. So she recanted to the news less than two weeks after 9/11, but was openly talking with Hopsicker for his Welcome To Terrorland book a year later. It’s another wrinkle in this case pointing towards Keller being pressured to keep quiet:
Now let’s take a closer look at that September 23, 2001, article, which is still available in news archives. And note that, while Amanda Keller doesn’t give much information other than to state that it was actually this second Mohamed, and not Mohamed Atta, who she was living with April of 2001 at the Sandpiper Apartment complex, they did apparently interview her mom and sister. And according to Amanda’s sister Tammy, the thing she remembers most about this second Mohamed was his creepy eyes and how he was leer. Which, of course, was Mohamed Atta’s signature physical characteristic:
“Keller said comments attributed to her in the Herald-Tribune on Saturday, saying that Atta lived in her apartment, were wrong. She said that it was this unidentified fifth man, also named Mohammed, that stayed in her home.”
“Whoops! I was wrong! Different Mohamed!” That was more or less how this story was officially killed, just 12 days after the 9/11 attacks. And note how the Florida Department of Law Enforcement was apparently the agency instructing Keller not to divulge the full name of this Mohamed. Beyond that, the sole investigator who spoke to the reporter, Chris Grier, only did so on a condition of anonymity. Thus ensuring no follow up questions could ever be meaningfully asked:
Also note how, while Amanda Keller wouldn’t talk more about this mystery man, her mother and sister did talk. And it’s hard not to notice how they describe someone with one of Mohamed Atta’s chief personal characteristics: very scary eyes:
So here’s a quick reminder that Atta’s scary eyes were indeed one of his primary physical features: According to the loan officer who met with Atta as he was trying to get a $650,000 loan to buy a crop-duster, Atta’s “very scary” black eyes left a deep impression:
““His eyes, he had very scary-looking eyes. His eyes were black,” she remembered. “How could somebody be that evil, be that close to me, and I didn’t recognize it?””
Are we looking at two different Mohameds who just happen to have terrifying eyes as their most memorable feature? Terrifying eyes aren’t exactly a common trait. And sure coincidences happen. But so do coverups. Which seems more likely in this case? Hmmm...
So if you happen to stumble across a French-Arab “Mohamed Arajacki” with very creepy eyes of the right age who spent time in South Florida in 2001,
you might want to alert the press and US investigatorsthat would be quite a find, but one apparently cares anymore. If ever.