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COMMENT: Fol­low­ing major heart surgery, hero­ic inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Daniel Hop­sick­er is still rockin’! “Back in the [jour­nal­is­tic] sad­dle,” he relates that Jeb Bush stum­bled bad­ly when asked about his actions on the day after 9/11.

When asked about his pres­ence on a C‑130 car­go plane car­ry­ing the files of Huff­man Avi­a­tion to the Wash­ing­ton D.C. area, he denied it.

In his land­mark book Wel­come to Ter­ror­land: Mohamed and the 9/11 Cov­er-Up in Flori­da, Daniel dis­cussed this and ref­er­enced infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to him by, among oth­ers, Venice police offi­cer Mike Tre­anor (who died of can­cer at the ripe old age of 47 in 2008.)

Among the inter­views we did with Daniel describ­ing the Jeb Bush milieu, Kather­ine Har­ris and their remark­able behav­ior with regard to Wal­ly Hilliard and the milieu around Huff­man Avi­a­tion are FTR #‘s 482, 483, 484.

“Jeb Bush’s 9/11 Prob­lem” by Daniel Hop­sick­er; Mad Cow Morn­ing News; 9/4/2015.

On the cam­paign trail in New Hamp­shire two weeks ago, Jeb Bush was asked a ques­tion for which he clear­ly wasn’t pre­pared, which hear­kened back to Bush’s time as Flori­da Gov­er­nor. You can see the ques­tion here.

“Accord­ing to Sergeant Mar­ty (Mike) Tre­anor and oth­er law enforce­ment offi­cials in Sara­so­ta Flori­da, the files per­tain­ing to 9/11 hijack­er pilots Mar­wan Al-She­hhi and Mohamed Atta from Huff­man Avi­a­tion Flight School in Venice Flori­da were loaded onto two Ryder trucks and dri­ven onto a C‑130 car­go plane which left Sara­so­ta the day after 9/11,” began new­ly-mint­ed radio talk show host Mike Jack­man, who with his broth­er com­prise a media out­let pols this elec­tion sea­son can ill afford to miss appear­ing on called “Jack­man Radio.”

“Is it true that you were onboard the C‑130? And, if so, can you tell us what became of the files?”

Accord­ing to those who were there, a cer­tain amount of dis­com­fort ensued. Bush, who has appeared as limp as over­cooked spaghet­ti on the cam­paign trail, vis­i­bly stiff­ened.

“Is it true that you were onboard the C‑130? And, if so, can you tell us what became of the files?”

Accord­ing to those who were there, a cer­tain amount of dis­com­fort ensued. Bush, who has appeared as limp as over­cooked spaghet­ti on the cam­paign trail, vis­i­bly stiff­ened.

“No. Not true,” he replied. Then, as an aside to those sit­ting in front row of his town hall meet­ing, he said, “How weird.”

Bush began tak­ing anoth­er ques­tion, then stopped. His voice ris­ing slight­ly to con­vey indig­na­tion, he said, “I was in the Emer­gency Oper­a­tions Cen­ter try­ing to make sure the state of Flori­da was safe… try­ing to work with local offi­cials to fig­ure out how to make sure anoth­er attack wouldn’t hit and dev­as­tate our economy…That’s what I did.”

“So, that was kind of a weird… (ques­tion.)”

No, Gov­er­nor, not real­ly. What would be “weird” would be if you could back up your off-the-cuff and very star­tled asser­tion that on the day after 9/11 you were in the Flori­da Emer­gency Cen­ter with any­thing like proof. Because there are a num­ber of peo­ple who know you can’t.

Jackman’s ques­tion refers to evi­dence uncov­ered dur­ing my inves­ti­ga­tion into the activ­i­ties of the 9/11 hijack­ers in Venice. And some­where in there Jack­man had also ref­er­enced Wal­ly Hilliard and Rudi Dekkers, the prin­ci­pals in Hoff­man Avi­a­tion. When he did, one observ­er not­ed, Bush seemed to freeze slight­ly.

Per­haps that has some­thing to do with the lit­tle-known fact that a Lear­jet belong­ing to Hilliard, who owned the Venice flight school that trained both pilots who flew planes into the World Trade Cen­ter Tow­ers, had been caught car­ry­ing 43 pounds of hero­in by DEA agents in July of 2000.

Just weeks ear­li­er, Jeb Bush’s Sec­re­tary of State, the infa­mous Kather­ine Har­ris, had heaped praise on Hilliard’s start-up com­muter air­line, Flori­da Air.

Requiem for an hon­est cop

What fol­lows is a re-cap from pri­ma­ry sources who were there —includ­ing local offi­cial and avi­a­tion observers—about what took place on the day after 9/11.

And, after that, one final aston­ish­ing dis­clo­sure, a world exclu­sive, revealed here for the first time.

But first, a word about the sources of the infor­ma­tion about Bush, who it came from, and how I learned of it. In his ques­tion, Jack­man ref­er­ences Mike (Mar­ty) Tre­anor from the Venice Police Depart­ment.

Tre­anor was the first per­son to tell me of Jeb Bush’s flight to Wash­ing­ton with the files from Huff­man Avi­a­tion and the Venice Police Depart­ment. But not the last.

“The FBI took all our files, every­thing,” Tre­anor told me. “They loaded the files right out­side this win­dow 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.”

Tre­anor wasn’t a flake, or a name I made up. He’d been quot­ed in nation­al news reports right after 9/11.

“Det. Sgt. Mike Tre­anor of the Venice Police Depart­ment said that FBI agents had obtained the two sus­pects’ school records from the Huff­man school and the Voss home and iden­ti­fied them as two of the men who agents believe flew the hijacked jets,” report­ed the LA Times on Sept 13 2001.

“Tre­anor said FBI agents were drawn to Venice after find­ing Ara­bic lan­guage flight man­u­als in a car at the Boston air­port.”

“’This one man, Atta,” said Tre­anor, “was con­firmed on one of the planes that hit the tow­ers.’”

“Like Leisure World…without the bright lights”

My per­son­al involve­ment began the day after 9/11, with the news that three of the four ter­ror­ist pilots had learned to fly in tiny Venice Flori­da, a sleepy retire­ment com­mu­ni­ty on Florida’s Gulf Coast. And immediately—there’s no oth­er way to say this—I smelled a rat. For two rea­sons:

First, I knew Venice. My par­ents retired there in the ear­ly 80’s. And being a (semi)-dutiful son, I’d vis­it them reg­u­lar­ly, fly­ing in from Cal­i­for­nia, where I lived. And if by the third or fourth night I was there I was rest­less enough to feel the need to go out and have a beer, I knew from per­son­al expe­ri­ence that there was no place to go, and noth­ing to do… because Venice, Flori­da has the sec­ond old­est pop­u­la­tion in the entire Unit­ed States. Pic­ture Sun City, or Leisure World… only with­out the bright lights.

So what were young men with no known fetish­es for blue-haired wid­ows doing in Venice? Espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing there are 220 oth­er flight schools in Flori­da alone?

It didn’t make sense.

And sec­ond, the way the news qui­et­ly drib­bled out did­n’t make sense, either. That three of the four ter­ror­ist pilots—including both pilots who slammed planes in the World Trade Cen­ter Towers—had learned to fly in Venice instant­ly made Venice Flori­da the biggest Sep­tem­ber 11th crime scene that wasn’t reduced to rub­ble.

But when I rolled into Venice Flori­da three months after 9/11, there hadn’t been any spot­ting of Bob Wood­ward or Sey­mour Hersh or Michael Isikoff at any local water­ing holes.

The town seemed eeri­ly qui­et. Qui­et but jit­tery, I dis­cov­ered. In 25 years of vis­it­ing the par­ents I hadn’t remem­bered ever even see­ing a cop, but on my first day in town, I was pulled over twice by local police.

Nei­ther traf­fic stop result­ed in a tick­et. But when I won­dered aloud if it might be pru­dent to pay a cour­tesy call on the Police Chief, the cour­te­ous offi­cer allowed that it might.

Pay­ing a cour­tesy call on the Chief

So I slid on by the new Police Head­quar­ters to say hel­lo. The Chief wasn’t in, or if he was, wasn’t receiv­ing. And that’s how I met the Sergeant on duty, Mike Tre­anor, who proved con­ge­nial enough for me to ask the burn­ing ques­tion I had about Huffman’s man­ag­er Rudi Dekkers, who had been every­where on tele­vi­sion dur­ing the days after the attack.

My strong sus­pi­cion was that every word out of his mouth had been a lie. So I asked my ques­tion. “Does Rudi Dekkers’ have any local pri­ors (pri­or arrests)?”

Sergeant Tre­anor sighed. He start­ed to say some­thing. He thought bet­ter of it. And then he sighed again.

“Trust local before state. And nev­er trust the Feds”

When Tre­anor died of can­cer in 2008, his obit­u­ary in the Sara­so­ta Her­ald Tri­bune called him the “voice of the Venice Police Depart­ment.”

“His pro­fes­sion­al­ism, com­pas­sion and occa­sion­al humor had earned him the respect of his col­leagues in law enforce­ment,” said a fel­low offi­cer. “He was gre­gar­i­ous, friend­ly and had a big heart.”

More­over, he wasn’t afraid of speak­ing his mind. He was open­ly crit­i­cal of a Venice Chief of Police— even fil­ing a com­plaint against him for improp­er­ly han­dling a crim­i­nal investigation—for more than a year before the Chief was forced out.