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This is great! A real hub!!!! It was Oliver Ringling North (of the circus
family) who as an OSS officer unlocked the prisons of southern Italy and set
the mafia free!
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 7:32 AM
Subject: [MadCowMorningNews] Atta, Dekkers & the Venice Flying Circus
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> Atta, Dekkers & the Venice Flying Circus
> -----
> Atta, Dekkers & the Venice Flying Circus
>
> November 13--Venice, Florida.
>
> The first thing you notice about the airport in Venice Florida is that
> there is a Flying Trapeze planted down at the end of one of the
> runways. It is a strange juxtaposition.
>
> While taking off or landing, the terrorist student pilots practicing
> 'touch and go's' could look over and see tightrope walkers or
> aerialists dancing high above the ground while practicing
> gravity-defying stunts, at a circus school which is a vestige of
> Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus, which used to make its
> winter home here.
>
> Come to Venice. Join the Flying Circus.
>
> Become a Human Missile.
>
> Until Rudi Dekkers bought Huffman Aviation, Venice, Florida was best
> known as the Shark Tooth Capital of the World. But the flight training
> given to terrorists out at the local airport has now changed all that,
> and thrust this sleepy burg into the middle of one of American
> History's worst nightmares.
>
> Within hours of the September 11 attack authorities concluded that the
> terrorist pilots had shown such unusual skill in maneuvering
> commercial airliners toward their targets that at least one hijacker
> on each jet must have been trained right here in the U.S.
>
> They were right.
>
> Cut to Venice, Florida. Middle of the night.
>
> The FBI swarms. Local police do the grunt work. Under bright klieg
> lights they carry away boxes upon boxes of records from Rudi Dekkers
> flight school.
>
> Remember Rudi?
>
> "I don't need anything from you, just a check to start flying," said
> Dekkers, who likened flying lessons to shopping for groceries. "We're
> just a business."
>
> The next day, the FBI is back again at the Venice Airport, this time
> down the block at Arne Kruithof's flight school.
>
> "It's really just coincidence that terrorists chose such a place (as
> Venice) to be their training ground for the unspeakable," says Venice
> City Manager George Hunt.
>
> Determining whether that statement is true is complicated by the fact
> that the FBI has confiscated everything in sight looking remotely like
> evidence.
>
> And the FBI isn't talking.
>
> "The FBI took all our files, everything," said one local law
> enforcement official, after shaking his head ruefully when we asked if
> Rudi had any local `priors.'
>
> He shrugs. He can't tell. His files are now All Gone.
>
> "They loaded two Ryder trucks right outside that (police station)
> window, then drove them right onto a C130 military cargo plane at
> Sarasota airport which flew out with Jeb Bush aboard."
>
> Nobody has yet been charged over the attacks on America. FBI chiefs
> talk about the agents they have on the case, the doors they have
> knocked down, the thousand and more suspects they have arrested.
>
> They do not explain why they have failed to catch anyone responsible.
>
> That the terrorist cadre had been trained right here in America opened
> a huge can of worms. And before all the squiggly little creatures had
> been put back into a cool dark place it had been disclosed that after
> establishing their terrorist beachhead in unsuspecting Venice as many
> as six of the Terrorist 19 had gone on to receive training at U.S.
> military bases.
>
> Mohamed Atta, for example, was reported to have attended the
> International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery,
> Alabama.
>
> The Pentagon quickly disputed the reports, which had appeared in
> Newsweek, the Washington Post and the Miami Herald. But their denial
> was vague, almost flimsy, and only raised further questions. Still,
> they were apparently enough for Newsweek, the Washington Post, and the
> Miami Herald.
>
> All three dropped the story.
>
> Was this a triumph for accuracy in Media? Or an example of wartime
> censorship?
>
> The answer is: no one knows. If they do they aren't telling.
>
> Even a Senator, Bill Nelson of Florida, couldn't get a response from
> the Attorney General and the Justice Department when he specifically
> inquired about the report that three of the Terrorist 19 had listed
> the Pensacola Naval Air Station as their home address.
>
> We know of at least one woman in Montgomery Alabama who has credibly
> insisted to local reporters that she met Atta at a party on the base.
> She remembers because she then introduced him to her friends.
>
> "Mohamed, meet my friend the Colonel."
>
> Arab pilots, mostly Saudis, took up most of one of the most elite
> upscale apartment complexes in Montgomery, one observer there informed
> us. They too are now All Gone.
>
> "They went in and got every one of them out of there pronto. Right
> after it happened."
>
> There are dozens of terrorist pilots out there loose that went through
> U.S. flight training. But of the thousands of flight schools in this
> country, a mere handful of names keep popping up. Did a covert
> operation at the two Venice flight schools serve as a portal into an
> informal military training network?
>
> The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah from 1987 to
> 1989, Michael Springman, told BBC Newsnight: "In Saudi Arabia I was
> repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue
> visas to unqualified applicants."
>
> Last week the Boston Globe reported that the NSA was destroying
> evidence, to the fury of other intelligence agencies and FBI
> investigators.
>
>
> "A crying shame."
> Often mentioned in connection with the NSA, Jackson Stephens has been
> a prominent figure in tiny Venice, Florida... for decades.
>
> >From a baronial estate built by Stephens financial empire the Boone
> law firm may still rule the city today, at least according to an angry
> letter to the editor we came across in last week's local Venice
> Gondolier...
>
> "I think it is a crying shame that Dan Boone and his crowd can raise
> obscene sums of money to control the election and make it impossible
> for a candidate without great resource to run for city council. We
> might as well cancel future elections."
>
> Even if it is a run-on sentence, this tells us something. Stephens was
> a big player in tiny Venice. Could be, he still is. Things are already
> beginning to look like somebody's game of Inside Baseball...
>
> Then last Tuesday the BBC reported that there had always been
> "constraints" on investigating Saudis, but that under President George
> W Bush it had become much worse, according to "a highly-placed source
> in a US intelligence agency."
>
> The Bush Family has had a number of connections with Saudi Arabia's
> prominent Bin Laden family. But it would be wildly unfair for anyone
> to accuse President George W. Bush of a conflict of interest.
>
> Still, we have now heard one credible source claim that President Bush
> knows Osama Bin Laden personally. They met in Texas in the 80's, when
> the CIA was pouring money into Bin Laden's efforts, says this source.
>
> If Bush knew Osama Bin Laden, though, he needs to tell us. Because,
> this time, we need to know everything. Otherwise how will we be sure
> that we have avenged the poor people we saw that day, so much like
> ourselves, except we were watching television while they were holding
> hands in twos and threes and jumping out of 110th story windows?
>
> How long does it take a 200-pound body to fall 100 stories?
>
> What prior dealings with U.S. officials might the terrorists
> individually or collectively have had?
>
> What was the nature of those deals? Did they compromise U.S. security?
>
> Did money change hands?
>
> One way to get some answers, we figured, might be to go to Venice,
> tucked on the Florida Coast between Tampa and Fort Myers, where the
> terrorists began their U.S. training, and walk in their footsteps.
>
> The terrorist cadre came here to train at two flight schools, each
> purchased independently by two separate Dutch nationals in 1998.
>
> Some found that a little odd.
>
> "One damn Dutch boy too many," muttered one longtime national
> investigator.
>
> Perhaps they were just seeing things. Dutch people are free to buy
> businesses in the U.S., aren't they?
>
> Even if the companies being bought up are located next door to one
> another, and both of the supposedly competing Dutch Boys are business
> partners of a third man, Pascal Schrier?
>
> Even if the businesses are shortly thereafter used to train the Bin
> Laden Air Force... what of it?
> "We're just a business."
>
> The only explanation offered as to why the terrorists picked Venice
> has been a vague assertion that flight training in Florida is cheaper
> than in Europe.
>
> Cheaper than Europe, maybe. But is it cheaper than in the Sudan?
>
> And even if true it does nothing to answer questions about why, with
> more than 200 flight schools to choose from in Florida alone, Atta's
> deadly pilot cadre from Hamburg began their deadly invasion of the
> U.S. flight training at adjacent flight schools owned by Dutch
> nationals in a podunk town in the middle of nowhere.
>
> Even the weak "cheaper by the terrorist squadron" explanation breaks
> down upon closer examination...
>
> Typical training fees for a private pilot's license are in the $10,000
> range. Yet Atta and his sidekick together paid almost $40,000 to
> Dekker's Huffman Aviation.
>
> Was Dekkers charging double the going rate?
>
> The Rudi Dekkers Surcharge.
>
> Atta didn't care. Atta was flush. Atta flashed a Big Roll. Ask the
> girls who dance at the Cheetah club in Sarasota. Cash was no problemo.
>
> Atta liked very Un-Islamic lap dances at the Pink Pony Strip Club.
> Atta liked stuffing $20 bills into the panties of topless dancers in
> nightclubs at the seedy end of Las Vegas' Strip.
>
> Atta liked ogling infidel flesh. And he had a taste for the finer
> things in life too. Atta liked hanging out at Harry's Bar in New York,
> where he preferred a table near the piano.
>
> Life in Venice must have been hell for Atta. The median age is 69.
> Dinnertime begins at 4 PM. Almost everyone gets in on the early bird
> specials.
>
> Atta must have chafed. No wonder everyone ragged his "bad attitude."
> Six months in Venice was an eternity. Whose fault was that? Was Venice
> his choice? Or someone else's? Why did Mohamed Atta come
> here? Coincidence? Mere happenstance?
>
> The Magic Dutch Boy Theory does not cohere. Will the Lone Nut Cadre
> story hold?
>
> Do the American people have a right to know the true nature of the
> threat which has so suddenly changed all our lives?
>
> Might we be better off not knowing?
>
> Maybe these questions are being answered in meetings being held right
> now in Hollywood, between Bush aide Karl Rove and studio honchos.
>
> Back in Venice, even the circus that made its winter home here has
> sinister connections. Headquartered in Vienna, Virginia, it is owned
> by the Feld family of Washington D.C.
> According to a recent two-part story in Salon magazine, circus owner
> Kenneth Feld hired former top CIA honcho Clair George to torment a
> hapless freelance writer for eight years because she wanted to write a
> book about his family.
>
> The head of Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Circus farmed out a covert
> op which put top Agency operatives on the payroll, just to torment a
> writer.
>
> Assume, just for the sake of argument, that he may have had his
> reasons. It almost goes without saying that guys like Kenneth Feld,
> Jackson Stephens, and Clair George usually do.
> Still, a guy whose company based right beside the runways at the
> Venice Airport knows CIA honchos like Clair George, who ran Latin
> America for the Agency under then-Vice President Bush during the
> period of Iran Contra during the '80's.
>
> Taking down governments is right up his alley. Taking down a hapless
> journalist must have been cake.
>
> Jackson Stephens, Clair George...
>
> We have just realized that we are in the process of collecting
> 'snapshots' from the security cameras out at the Venice Airport.
>
> We are creating a mug file of people who can fairly be labeled the
> Usual Suspects.
> Down at the Naples, Florida airport "entrepreneur" Rudi Dekkers has
> offices next to Casablanca Air.
>
> It would be a disservice to the memory of Humphrey Bogart to quip
> "Everybody comes to Rudi's."
>
> But it might very well be true.
>
>
>
>
> Daniel Hopsicker
> is the author of
> Barry & 'the boys:
> The CIA, the Mob
> and America's
> Secret History.
>
> -----
> Al
>
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