Mohammad Atta - Welcome to Terrorland

[Wokeman]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&a ddress=104x1433886

The following material comes from Daniel Hopsicker's book 'Welcome to Terrorland'.

1. In Venice Florida, Mohamed Atta lived for two months with an American stripper/lingerie model named Amanda Keller.

2. Atta enjoyed a party lifestyle with Keller nearly every night. He was a heavy drinker, snorted coke, was a stylish dresser and wore expensive jewelry.

3. According to Keller, Atta loved pork chops.

4. In Miami, Atta consorted with women known to be linked to the Mafia.

5. Atta’s email list included names of people who worked for defense contractors. One, for instance, worked for Canadian firm Virtual Prototypes, which helped develop the avionics for F-15, F-22 and B-2.

6. Atta was enrolled as a student at the International Officer’s School of Maxwell Airforce Base, and witnesses recall him having been introduced around at an officers' club party.

7. According to Keller, Atta spoke Hebrew.

8. Atta, Keller, a stripper named Linda and two Germans, Peter and Johan, partied for three days in Key West. Atta paid for everything. Rented three rooms, one just for the men’s luggage, which Keller says contained drugs. Key West Airport is a known drug transit point.

9. The FBI timeline says Atta left Venice Florida in December 2000 after completing his flight training. Dozens of locals say different – his landlord, neighbours, cab drivers, restaurant employees and his girlfriend, for a few instances – and have been told not to talk about it by federal authorities. The FBI publicly sought information regarding Atta’s time in various US locations, but not Venice Florida where the airfield reportedly has links to CIA operations.

1o. Six nights before the 9 11 attack, at a bar called Shuckums in Ft Lauderdale, Atta and two companions got drunk. Manager Tony Amos and bartender Patricia Idrissi identified both.

11. Wally Hilliard upon arriving in Florida entered into aviation businesses with an assortment of criminal and covert intelligence elements.

12. Hilliard denied knowing Atta. Keller recalled, on a visit to the airport, having Hilliard ask her, "What’s a nice girl like you doing with a guy like Mohamed?"

13. Less than three weeks after Atta and Marwan Al-Shehi began flying lessons at Huffman Aviation, a Lear jet owned by its financier, Wally Hilliard, carrying 43 pounds of heroin was seized by the DEA. Authorities called it the biggest seizure of heroin ever in central Florida.

14. John Villada, an aviation executive in Naples Florida: "After Wally’s plane was impounded with the heroin and his pilots had machine guns stuck in their faces, the DEA came to visit our maintenance facility and Wally shouted out to me – right in front of the DEA guy – 'Make sure all the heroin and cocaine gets hidden!'" Hilliard's mock warning seemed to show the DEA how little he thought of them, and how well he was protected.

15. Hilliard had got his Lear jet from World Jet Inc, owned by drug smuggling brothers Don and Bill Whittington, who had supplied the plane to CIA drug smuggler Barry Seal.

16. A former Huffman executive, speaking about the hijackers: "Early on I gleaned that these guys had government protection. They were let into this country for a specific purpose. It was a business deal."

17. Jeb Bush accompanied the FBI when they removed the flight school records on the early morning of September 12, and flew them to Washington.

18. Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris have flown and endorsed Hilliard’s air carrier.

19. In the days following 9/11, a number of Saudis fled the country from Florida after the attacks. They flew on Wally Hillier’s charter aircraft to private fields of military contractor Raytheon, and departed on a 747.

20. After the attacks, a virtually non-existent company that operated out of Venice Airport under Huffman’s license called Britannia Aviation was awarded a five-year, multi-million dollar contract to run the maintenance facility at Lychburg Virginia Regional Airport. (FYI, Lynchburg is the home of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist University.) 44. Britannia executive Peter Martens boasted that his company had been providing maintenance at Venice Airport for "Caribe Air," which is a notorious CIA proprietary carrier.

21. Many of the Venice flight trainers moonlight by flying "missionary flights" to Central and South America, for such organizations as Pat Robertson’s Operation Hope.

22. Most of Atta's closest associates in Venice were not Arabs, but Europeans with connection to the drug trade.