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The best source on this is "Welcome to Terrorland" by Daniel Hopsicker Here's a review I wrote when it came out:
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Welcome to Terrorland" by Daniel Hopsicker "Welcome to Terrorland" by Daniel Hopsicker, Mad Cow Press, Eugene Oregon, 2004.
To its eternal disgrace, the mainstream media in the US has avoided any investigation into the background of the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 like the plague. Lesser crimes, serial murders and kidnappings, are daily reviewed in every detail, and the backgrounds and motives of the perpetrators are scrutinized in the press, but September 11 is almost completely off limits. The reasons for this are becoming ever more apparent.
One single journalist has courageously bucked this trend and paid the ultimate journalistic penalty; although previously an executive producer for NBC who regularly saw his investigations aired internationally, his work now can only be self-published and diseminated on the internet. Given the truly disgusting state of journalism in the United States, Daniel Hopsicker can take this as the highest possible compliment. Every american should immediately go to his website, and purchase his latest book: "Welcome to Terrorland":
www.madcowprod.com
This book contains a wealth of material concerning lead September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and his associates, and their activities in Florida in the year prior to September 11. This has been gathered through determined investigative work: running down Atta's former girlfriend (who had been frightened into hiding by the FBI), and interviewing his former neighbors and fellow "flight students" and employers. Hopsicker has also made tremendous strides in advancing our understanding of these events by uncovering to a large extent the network of business and political connections behind the "flight school" that Atta and two other September 11 pilots attended in Venice Beach, Florida. That's in quotes because Hopsicker convincing demonstrates that Huffman Aviation was a front company for shady enterprises connected to organized crime, evangelical Christian organizations, Israel, and the CIA.
Huffman Aviation was run by a Dutch national, Rudi Dekkers, and financed by Wallace Hilliard of Naples Florida. The financial arrangements for this partnership are hard to understand by normal business standards.
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The Dekkers-Hilliard partnership lost money from the first day it began. There is no hint it mattered to either man. It is widely known - and confirmed by Hilliard himself in filings at the Sarasota Courthouse - that the Naples financier lost between five and seven million dollars in his aviation partnerships with Dekkers. But that was clearly all right with him, because when they bought Huffman Aviation, they were ALREADY losing sizable amounts of money every month at the FIRST flight school they'd purchased, in Naples. "When they bought Huffman, they were already losing $40,000 a month on the Naples school, said Stuart Burchill, a former Hilliard accountant. "It was ridiculous. No one could understand why they'd want to double the pain." (Hopsicker, pg 184)
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The "losses" of the Hilliard/Dekker enterprises at Venice airport far exceed the the five to seven million dollars reported in Sarasota. According to Hilliard's jet manager at Venice, John Vilada, Hilliard lost $40 million in three years (Hopsicker, pg 260).
It's not hard to guess how Hilliard and Dekkers maintain their lives of luxury in the face of such losses. One of Hilliard's airplanes was raided by the DEA, resulting in the confiscation of 43 pounds of heroin. According to the Orlando Sentinal this was "the largest find of its kind in the southearern United States in recent years." But this was no doubt the tip of the iceberg since the pilot told the DEA he had made the exact same run 30 times in the last 9 months (Hopsicker, pgs 245 - 252).
In spite of being the owner of the airplane and co-owner of the charter company that arranged the flights, Hilliard was never charged, although in a blatant contradiction the DEA refused to return his airplane. It's safe to say that this solves the mystery of Hilliard's very evident wealth in the face of of a long string of business "failures" and bankrupcy proceedings.
But how was Hilliard able to avoid prosecution for drug trafficking? Again the answer is not hard to find. Wallace Hilliard is very tight with many powerful politicians. In spite of his dismal history in legtimate busniss, Florida governor and presidential brother Jeb Bush has personally endorsed his airline (Hopsicker, pg 328), as has Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris (Hopsicker, pg 239). A photograph of Hilliard with Bill Clinton is on display in Hilliard's $3 million mansion (Hopsicker, pg 262). In fact, when Hilliard's plane was confiscated for drug running, Truman Arnold, the chief fund-raiser for the Democratic party in 1995, stepped in and "loaned" Hilliard, for the grand sum of one dollar, a Beechcraft King Air 200 worth over $2 million. (Hopsicker, pg 326).
The other co-owner of Hilliard's drug running Venice based charter company, Mark Shubin, is also involved in a partnership with Ken Good. Good was a major player in the notorious "Silverado" scam with the OTHER presidential brother, Neil Bush. The scam relieved the american taxpayer of roughly one billion dollars, and again, no one was charged.
Hopsicker's conclusion seems hard to dispute: The flight school attended by Mohammed Atta and two of the other September 11 pilots was a front company for a drug-running, CIA-protected racket.
It's very easy to see why neither political party has shown the slightest interest in mounting an investigation of September 11. No one wants to turn over this rock.
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Records from flight school were deemed sensitive enough to have merited being ecorted back to Washington by Florida Governor Jeb Bush aboard a C-130 cargo plane which left Sarasota less than 24 hours after the September 11 attack. (Hopsicker, pg 185).
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I have only scratched the surface of what Hopsicker has uncovered here; there's much, much more. Just a quick hint of what else you will find here. According to his girlfriend and others who knew him, Atta was hardly the novice flight student/Islamic fundamentalist portrayed by the media. He acted more like an instructor than a student, and had pilot licenses from several countries. He was fluent in several languages, including Hebrew. He had a serious cocaine habit, and was always dressed to kill. People who encountered him frequently said that they had the impression he was mafia. His associates in Venice were primarily other highly qualified pilots - mostly european.
Anyway - GET IT AND READ IT YOURSELF!! This is the most important investigative report on September 11 since "War on Freedom" by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed came out.
Tim Howells
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