- VENICE, FL -- A year-long
<http://madcowprod.com/index.html>MadCowMorningNews investigation
has uncovered evidence that at least seven of Mohamed Atta's closest associates
in Florida during the year leading up to the 9/11 attack were not Arab,
but German.The names of the seven, all pilots, have not surfaced in any
press accounts of Atta's stay in the U.S., nor has their existence been
mentioned or alluded to in official statements.Traveling with Atta, or
meeting him around the state, Atta's German friends appeared to share a
relationship with him of long-standing, according to eyewitnesses, dating
back to his days in Hamburg. The meetings, in places like Key West and
Miami, were apparently very serious business; when they returned, said
someone who was there, Atta and his German associates "always came
back glum."Only one of the seven is still in the U.S.; five live in
Germany or Switzerland. The seventh, with whom Atta reportedly traveled
extensively, has a criminal record in Germany, and today lives in Saudi
Arabia.
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- The identities of the seven German nationals were pieced
together from information gleaned in interviews with Atta's one-time American
girlfriend, corroborated by independent aviation sources in Venice and
Naples, FL.From what has been learned so far, the backgrounds of Atta's
German associates seem strikingly similar to that of another German national,
Andreas Strassmeir, whose possible relationship with Oklahoma City bomber
Timothy McVeigh was in the news a decade ago. Strassmeir was at one point
named in a lawsuit by families of the victims as a "US federal informant
with material knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing."Strassmeir's
father was once a top aide to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl; Atta's German
friends are all children of the German elite.
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- "Glum's the word"
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- But before delving further into Atta's German connections,
there were two other related developments in Florida last week.In the first,
the former owner of the terror flight school in Venice, FL., Rudi Dekkers,
was arrested last week on a single count of felony fraud, and booked into
the Collier County Jail in Naples FL.As the <http://madcowprod.com/index.html>MadCowMorningNews
has been reporting, suspicious and often illegal activities were commonplace
occurrences at Dekkers-owned flight schools at the same time the schools
were training a veritable "Who's Who" of Hamburg cadre terrorists.
Now the arrest of the controversial Dutch national comes amid indications
from authorities that Federal agencies involved in the 9/11 investigation
are taking a closer look at Dekker's business activities in Florida during
the past decade, fueling speculation he might become the first non-Arab
charged in a wider 9/11 conspiracy than has so-far been revealed.Despite
settling his lawsuit with former partner Wally Hilliard, Rudi Dekker's
legal woes may be just beginning, said State's Attorney Jonathon Greene.Posing
for a new mug shot is the latest in a series of reversals suffered recently
by the Venice "Magic Dutch Boy," so-called because he is one
of two Dutch nationals who owned flight schools at the Venice Airport which
each--by apparent freak coincidence--ended up training terrorists to fly.Dekkers
also recently lost his battle for control of Huffman Aviation. Last week
its sale to new owners was ratified by the Venice City Council in a unanimous
voice vote, amid questions about who had been responsible for approving
Dekker's lease at the Venice airport in the first place.
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- Then, too, Dekker's helicopter crashed recently, while
he was en route to a showdown meeting with partner Wally Hilliard over
control of Huffman Aviation.
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- In another freak coincidence, owner of the second Dutch-owned
flight school at the Venice Airport, Arne Kruithof, also suffered a near-fatal
aviation mishap last summer when his plane fell from a hundred feet in
the air onto the runway of the Venice Airport.
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- It appears as if both would be well-advised to stay away
from open windows.
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- Atta's German buddies
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- The German element arrived in Florida with "Wolfgang"
in 1996. Prior to arriving in Naples he was associated with an organization
called "The Flying Club of Munich."
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- "Wolfgang showed up from Munich in the mid 1990s
and immediately began operating a flight school illegally in '96,"
stated an aviation source in Naples. "He's half Swiss, half German."
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- Wolfgang was instrumental in bringing another of Atta's
German associates to Florida, a pilot named "Stephan," who we
were to learn has done jail time in Germany, was on parole there when he
came to the U.S., and recently spent a year in Gundogdu, Turkey.
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- While regular German flight students struggle to obtain
the necessary visas, Wolfgang and Stephan apparently had inside connections
which smoothed their progress.
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- "Sometimes it makes me mad that a criminal gets
preference," stated one German national flight instructor in Naples
with obvious bitterness.
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- "Wolfgang signed off on Stephan's books, and Stephan
also got in on a fraudulent business investor's visa."
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- "Wolfgang was in his thirties," says Amanda
Keller, who lived with Atta during March and April of 2001. "He and
Wolfgang were very tight, they went everywhere together. When he came into
the picture they were together all the time."
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- "Him and Wolfgang drove around in the red convertible,"
Keller remembers. "Their favorite place to eat was Hooters in Sarasota.
They got kicked out of Hooters for grabbing their boobs."
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- Strangely, Keller also states that Atta always spoke
German with Wolfgang, a statement contradicted by the testimony of Rudi
Dekkers, who told a Congressional Committee that when he addressed him
in German, Atta had merely looked at him strangely.
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- "What this is all about"
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- Less than 24 hours after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
the world's eyes were riveted on Florida's Gulf Coast, where FBI agents
swarmed the peaceful retirement community of Venice. Authorities said the
tiny airport there had served as a secret terrorist training site, teaching
three of the four pilots involved in the Sept. 11attack to fly.Since then,
authorities have had strikingly-little to say about Venice.The last related
development last week was the reported 'outrage' over 9/11 that Florida
Sen. Bob Graham said prompted to join the Democratic presidential sweepstakes
last week.The 66-year-old Graham-who recently had heart surgery-has toyed
with the idea of running for years, but says he always lacked "fire
in the belly," until, he says, FBI and CIA failures inspired his
White House run.
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- Graham told NEWSWEEK, his experience last year overseeing
a joint House-Senate inquiry into the events of 9-11 left him outraged
by the intelligence and law-enforcement failures discovered by the inquiry-most
of which, he charges, are still being suppressed by the Bush administration.The
inquiry's 400-page report can't be publicly released because the administration
won't declassify key portions. Graham says the report documents far more
miscues by the FBI and CIA than have been publicly revealed, as well as
leads that remain unpursued which point to "facilitation" of
the hijackers by a "sovereign nation." "There's been a cover-up
of this," Graham said.NEWSWEEK says its sources say the unnamed country
is Saudi Arabia.That may prove to be at least partly correct; still, there
are few, if any, Saudi's named "Wolfgang." Newsweek should keep
digging.
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