- VENICE, Florida - While the
media spotlight was on the mis-cues at the perennially "troubled"
INS, the real news this week was that Rudi Dekkers was telling reporters
a significantly different version of his relationship with terrorist
ringleader
Mohamed Atta than he gave in the wake of the September 11 disaster.
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- Several key details in Dekker's public account of Mohamed
Atta's stay in this country changed, even as, claiming to feel
"vindicated,"
Dekkers tried to use the INS snafu to his public relations
advantage.
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- "When they hit the buildings they were approved
to be here," Dekkers insisted, indicating himself to be a man of
principle
who would never teach people to hit buildings with airplanes until they
had been vetted by the proper authorities.
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- Anyway, that's his story. But it is one he is having
an amazing amount of difficulty sticking to.
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- "Sometimes we all feel the heat"
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- Dekkers was not the only one trying to get some public
relations mileage from the INS debacle. In addition to provoking
"outrage"
on Capital Hill, the hapless INS's bungling was said to have made even
President George W. Bush "pretty hot."
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- And suddenly it seemed the tide of public opinion was
turning against the lowly INS, America's Slacker Guardians of our Porous
Borders, and a finger of blame began to be pointed towards an otherwise
swell bunch of guys who spend most of their time standing around in the
hot sun at border crossings doing their level best to look the other
way.
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- Nobody ever said life was fair.
-
- More importantly, while speaking with reporters after
receiving the now-famous letter in which the INS cordially invites two
dead terrorists to stay, Dekkers' cast further doubt on his own credibility
by blithely changing his testimony on key points like when Atta started
flying lessons, or how much he paid for them.
-
- Perhaps it is only of interest to (Anderson?)
accountants,
but we have found ourselves fascinated as Dekkers' has so far told three
different stories about how many pieces of silver he collected per
terrorist.
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- At first, Atta and Marwan each paid $10,000.
-
- That figure was later quietly revised to $20,000
apiece.
-
- Finally, this week, the Atta-Dekkers "contract"
grew once again, to almost $30,000 for each.
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- Nobody has mentioned it so we will:
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- This totally negates the stated purpose for the terrorist
presence in Venice, which as you'll remember was to save a buck on flight
training.
-
- According to aviation training experts we spoke to for
half of what Rudi Dekker's was charging you can become a flight trainer
yourself.
-
- Moreover, the chief flight instructor at neighboring
Jones Aviation in Sarasota, where Atta and Marwan trained for six weeks,
insisted in an exclusive interview with the MadCowMorningNews that Dekkers
was flat out wrong when he told reporters that Mohamed Atta already had
a private pilot's license when he entered the U.S.
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- That's pretty basic information.
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- How can so many crucial facts be in dispute?
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- The question underscores how little has been made public
about the subjects of the biggest American criminal investigation since
the Kennedy assassination.
-
- "Lone nut cadres always act alone."
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- In the days immediately after the Sept 11 tragedy Dekkers
was quoted in numerous news accounts saying that Mohamed Atta and Marwan
Al-Shehhi began flight training at Huffman Aviation in early July of 2000.
Some published reports gave the date of Atta's first lesson at Huffman
as July 3rd
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- After this six month sojourn spent learning to fly in
this quiet retirement community located midway between Tampa and Naples
on the Gulf Coast of Florida, Atta and his cadre moved on to more advanced
training on Florida's east coast around Miami.
-
- So, at least, goes what remains of the official story
of Mohamed Atta, Islamic Fundamentalist.
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- But even Rudi Dekkers himself--one man who should know
for sure--contradicted this generally-accepted chronology of Mohamed Atta's
stay in the U.S.
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- While fielding questions about his role in the INS flap
Dekkers told the Associated Press that "Atta and Al-Shehhi had
completed
their immigration paperwork on Aug. 29, 2000, just before they began their
six-month flight instruction program at the school."
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- Just before.
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- "Its my party, and I'll scowl if I want
to."
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- Was Dekkers now saying that Atta and Marwan didn't start
flight training until August 30 at the earliest, seven weeks later than
he stated in the aftermath of September11th?
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- And if Mohamed Atta wasn't scowling at his flight
instructors
and everyone else at the Venice Airport for seven weeks that summer, who
had he been scowling at?
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- And where?
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- Atta's flight records, obtained by the MadCowMorningNews,
clearly show Atta's flying history with Huffman commencing July 6.
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- So Dekkers has once more been caught lying. And its
his story of Mohamed Atta & the Venice Flying Circus which we're meant
to believe?
-
- Today Americans can learn more about a story like
"Local
man attempts to avoid arrest by forging another man's name on traffic
ticket,"
than we can about the biggest crime against humanity of the still-young
21st Century.
-
- As for the question of who ultimately is to blame for
the tragedy?
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- Today's best guess seems to be the INS.
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- Could they be the "global network" we keep
waiting to see?
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- Not unless the swells start hanging out in Laredo,
they're
not.
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- What does that leave?
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- Precision timing when you least expect it
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- In an operation nearly the equal in pin-point accuracy
of Atta's own swan dive into the World Trade Center Towers the INS letter
was mailed on March 6 and scored a bulls-eye five days later, arriving
in Dekkers' inbox on precisely the six month anniversary of the
disaster.
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- Consider: at some point fairly recently, the INS letters,
containing the names of the most heinous villains in living memory, had
been stuck into an envelope, and sent out...
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- Even the New York Times raised an eyebrow. "The
error seemed particularly difficult to explain, because Mr. Atta and Mr.
Shehhi were among the most infamous of the 19 hijackers," said the
Times.
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- "We don't understand why this came in today, and
why this was not done a year go," said Dekkers.
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- The answer to the question of why two INS letters
inviting
dead terrorists to stay showed up in Rudi Dekkers mailbox on precisely
the six month anniversary of September 11 is, sadly:
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- "We may never know."
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- It was a triumphant performance for Dekkers, who was
widely portrayed as feeling "vindicated."
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- "I could not show that we applied for the right
paperwork. Therefore I am happy that I can do that now."
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- "So you feel vindicated?"
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- "Yes."
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- Not widely disclosed even today is the fact that that
not two, but three of the four planes commandeered by the terrorists were
piloted by people who "just happened" to have learned to fly
at the tiny off-the-beaten-path Venice Airport.
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- Left out of most news accounts is the fact Siad Al-Jarrah
learned to fly next door to Dekker's operation at a second flight school,
that of Arne "one damn Dutch boy too many" Kruithof, also like
Dekker's a native of the Netherlands.
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- In fact, a veritable squadron of terrorist pilots trained
in Venice, including several "America's Most Wanted" Hamburg
cadre guys still eluding capture.
-
- Also eluding capture, though we have no evidence they
have been to Venice Florida, are , of course, Osama Bin Laden and Mullah
Omar.
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- Mullah Omar! Now there's a real blast from the
past!
-
- He's been heard from about as much as a one-hit
television
actor who makes a really bad career move.
-
- Mullah Omar is the Philip Michael Johnson of
international
terrorism.
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- Mullah Omar has been disappeared.
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- Sinking into deserved obscurity does not, however, seem
to be what fate has in store for Rudi Dekkers. He and his Venice flight
school students-Atta and Marwan-have received so much attention since 9/11
that Rudi thinks we should begin to think about "Movin'
On."
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- "I don't expect when I get in on Monday morning
to get two permits for Atta and Al-Shehhi," Dekkers said. "I
thought they were behind me already and my life goes on."
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- "Not so fast, bub, is what we want to tell
him."
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- There is another story still to surface, a so far secret
story, a story which began unraveling this week and is not about inept
federal agencies like the INS...
-
- There is another Agency of the Government of the United
States whose good offices, apparently, resulted in Mohamed Atta and his
terrorist cadre finding themselves in Venice, Florida during the summer
of the year 2000.
-
- Usually reliable sources have confirmed to the
MadCowMorningNews
that this agency is not the INS.
-
- Dekkers, who said he faced scrutiny in the media after
the attacks for admitting the students, said the INS forms showed he had
followed the law.
-
- "The forms, filled out by an assistant at Huffman,
indicated that both men met the English language requirements to study
at the school," stated the AP story. "Atta listed his nationality
as Egyptian, while Al-Shehhi said he was from United Arab
Emirates."
-
- The AP story said, "On the form, filled out by a
Huffman assistant, Atta's name is spelled "Mohomed."
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- What the AP failed to note is that the mis-spelling might
have owed something to the fact that the 18-year old Huffman Aviation
assistant
who filled them out, Nicole Antini, was just then also being sexually
harassed
by Rudi Dekkers, her beefy middle-aged boss, according to a lawsuit for
sexual harassment which Dekker's was forced to settle recently for an
undisclosed
sum.
-
- The AP also let slip that the documents filled out
indicated
the terrorists academic term at Huffman was for up to 12 months, and would
cost $27,300.
-
- What no one has noted till now is that this is the third
mutually-contradictory account Dekkers has given so far on the simple
question
of how much the two paid for their flight lessons.
-
- As we begin to follow the money we recall some cop wisdom
we once heard from a grizzled detective, about how to take down a criminal
when all else fails...
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- "Al Capone murdered over 500 people," this
investigator told us. "You know what he went to prison for? Tax
evasion."
- ___
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- NEXT: ATTA DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT!
another MadCowMorningNews exclusive
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- Daniel Hopsicker is the author of Barry & 'the boys:
The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History.
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- http://www.madcowprod.com
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