The Long Island Press is fulfilling their
responsibility to the Truth and to the US electorate
vis-a-vis 9/11. Too bad the NYTwits are not...
Long Island Press: Al Qaeda's lead 9/11 hijacker,
Mohamed Atta, was allegedly partying with
CIA-connected pilots while he got his flight training
in fall/winter 2000 at Huffman Aviation in Venice,
Fla., where two of the other 9/11 hijacker pilots
trained. Atta wasn't acting much like a holy martyr:
He wore jeans and sneakers, played video games, bought
himself a red Pontiac and was said to be a hedonist.
The Press posed the question to Ben-Veniste: If Atta
belonged to the fundamentalist Muslim group, why was
he snorting cocaine and frequenting strip bars? "You
know," said Ben-Veniste, as he smiled a little.
"That's a heck of a question."
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://longislandpress.com/v02/i08040226/news_02.asp
The 9/11 Truth Movement - Part Two
No Easy Answer Heroin, Al Qaeda And The Florida Flight School
By Sander Hicks
[read part one here:
http://www.longislandpress.com/v02/i07040219/coverstory_01.asp]
Last March, on the first day of the 9/11 Commission
hearings, commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste opened his
remarks with sharp criticism of the current White
House and the delays in processing the commissioners'
security clearances. Ben-Veniste, who first came to
prominence as a Watergate special prosecutor from 1973
to 1975, was counsel for the Democratic minority on
the Senate Whitewater committee. Today he is a major
attorney with a top firm in D.C.
But what makes Ben-Veniste such an intriguing player
on the 9/11 Commission (The National Commission on
Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) is his
experience with rogue drug-running CIA operatives.
Ben-Veniste defended Barry Seal, the notorious
smuggler who flew C-123 military cargo planes filled
with cocaine into Mena, Arkansas on behalf of the
contras.
Al Qaeda's lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta, was
allegedly partying with CIA-connected pilots while he
got his flight training in fall/winter 2000 at Huffman
Aviation in Venice, Fla., where two of the other 9/11
hijacker pilots trained. Atta wasn't acting much like
a holy martyr: He wore jeans and sneakers, played
video games, bought himself a red Pontiac and was said
to be a hedonist. The Press posed the question to
Ben-Veniste: If Atta belonged to the fundamentalist
Muslim group, why was he snorting cocaine and
frequenting strip bars?
"You know," said Ben-Veniste, as he smiled a little.
"That's a heck of a question."
Follow the Drugs
The source of this information about Atta and cocaine
is Amanda Keller, Atta's American ex-girlfriend,
according to Daniel Hopsicker, an investigative
journalist who has spent two years researching Huffman
and its ties to the CIA. It took Hopsicker a year, but
he tracked Keller down. Like many other witnesses who
knew Atta, Keller says she has been harassed by the
Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Keller has not
been called as a witness by the 9/11 Commission.
Hopsicker's self-published book, Welcome to
Terrorland, details his investigation of what he calls
the "Venice flying circus." Through interviews with
Keller, Hopsicker has drawn a private picture of Atta,
a psychopath Keller says dismembered a litter of
kittens in her apartment when she dumped him.
Hopsicker is still researching the three
Huffman-trained 9/11 pilots, who he says had
financial, drug-trafficking and military intelligence
ties to the U.S. government. He is developing
suspicions that Atta and the entire school were
involved with Osama bin Laden in heroin trafficking.
Hopsicker reports that on July 25, 2000, the DEA in
Orlando discovered more than 30 pounds of heroin
inside a Learjet owned by Wally Hilliard, owner of
Huffman Aviation. Earlier that month, on July 3, Atta
and Marwan Al-Shehri had started flight lessons at
Huffman. Hopsicker claims it's not a coincidence that
Atta was allegedly importing heroin with Hilliard's
help, selling Afghanistan's notorious opium and heroin
to finance the Taliban. Hilliard would not be
interviewed for this story.
"The apparatus that Osama bin Laden set into place
along with the CIA back in the '80s, still exists,"
Hopsicker says. "The FBI is protecting an operation
set in place back in the '80s...a money-laundering
device to funnel money to the Afghan Mujahedeen and to
flood this country with heroin."
Military Money Makers
Outlandish? Yes. Impossible? Certainly not, given the
documented histories of narcotics trafficking by the
U.S. military intelligence. If true, this puts the
story on a par with the alleged Vietnam War-era
heroin-exporting operation coming out of Laos and
Cambodia, or the connection between the Nicaraguan
Contras, the CIA and crack cocaine, as alleged in 1995
by Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury News.
But wait, weren't the Taliban famous for accepting a
gift of $43 million in U.S. funds—four months before
9/11—to help outlaw opium crops and suppress their
heroin trade? Yes, but old habits die hard, and heroin
was the Taliban's cash cow. William Bach of the Bureau
of International Narcotics and Enforcement Affairs
suggested in October 2001 that the Taliban made more
than $40 million in 1999 taxing opium farmers. UN
satellite photos showed that opium cultivation grew by
50 percent in 2000, according to Reaping the
Whirlwind, a well-received book by Michael Griffin,
identified in his book as a former information
consultant for UNICEF in Afghanistan.
That the Taliban made money from drugs is no surprise.
But according to Hopsicker, the Venice operation was
"protected" by top officials in the same U.S.
government that created the Taliban (when the Taliban
were known as the Mujahedeen, fighting the Soviets).
Hopsicker says that when low-level DEA agents burst
into Hilliard's plane on July 25, an embarrassed DEA
higher-up was sitting in the co-pilot seat.
The Larger World
Hopsicker says that federal agents stated in court
that Hilliard's planes made at least 30 weekly trips
to Venezuela before the bust in July, but that
Hilliard claimed innocence, saying the planes were
leased to others. Hopsicker adds that neither Hilliard
nor his business partner, Diego Levine-Taxar (the
Learjet's pilot), did any time for the heroin.
Instead, two low-level traffickers were incarcerated,
Hopsicker says.
A web of larger corporate connections links Wally
Hilliard to a much bigger world than that of
small-town Venice, Fla. It has been reported that
Hilliard did business with Myron Du Bain, who worked
alongside late ex-CIA director John McCone on the
boards of several banks. Du Bain was chairman of the
Fireman's Fund Insurance Company in 1981 when the
company announced plans to acquire Employers Health,
an insurance company cofounded by Hilliard, who was
chairman. The deal collapsed and Employers Health was
later acquired by another company.
Du Bain later became CEO of Amfac Parks and Resorts,
(now Xanterra Parks and Resorts), which owned the
Silverado Resort in the Napa, Ca., wine country.
Researcher Lois Battuello contends that Silverado
often hosted Iran/Contra heavyweights Ollie North, Rob
Owen and George H.W. Bush for golf and cocktails.
Follow the Money
Battuello worked at United California Bank (UCB) when
Du Bain was on the board, right after former CIA
director McCone served as chairman. She tells the
Press that UCB had been on the brink of collapse,
"under the weight of highly irregular loans." UCB had
been known as John McCone's "piggy bank" and with Du
Bain on board, they "attempted to recover monies
looted and missing" by Saudi arms dealers (such as
Adnan Khashoggi) and former CIA personnel.
After the 9/11 planes slammed into American landmarks,
Battuello began to see a possible connection between
the terrorists, their flight school, owner Wally
Hilliard and his associate Du Bain. She left her
comfortable Napa Valley home and went hunting for the
truth. In Florida, she says, she found cab driver and
Navy veteran Bob Simpson, who had driven Mohamed Atta
around on multiple occasions. Simpson told Battuello
that Rudi Dekkers, president and CEO of Huffman, was
hanging out in nightclubs with Atta and other Saudis
as recently as August 2001. According to Keller,
Atta's ex-girlfriend, Dekkers and Atta did cocaine and
went to strip clubs together quite a bit.
Hopsicker went looking for more on Dekkers, a Dutch
citizen. Did the Huffman CEO have any prior arrests in
Sarasota County, Fla.? Sgt. Michael Treanor, of the
Venice Police Department, frustratedly told him they
wouldn't be able to answer that question. Two of his
detectives had removed all of Dekker's files and
loaded them onto a plane for the FBI. One of those
detectives, now promoted to Sergeant, was Tom McNulty.
McNulty tells the Press, "I seized the files with the
FBI because of some contacts I have in this area." But
McNulty won't confirm or deny Hopsicker's reporting
that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was involved in the seizure
of Dekkers' files.
Will any of this information find a place in the 9/11
Commission's official report, due out in July? Don't
get your hopes up.