Jeb Bush seized flight school records at 2 AM on September 12.

[Minstrel Boy]

Why did Jeb Bush and federal agents seize records from Huffman Aviation - Florida flight school of Mohammed Atta, and other 9/11 hijackers - in the middle of the night following the attacks of September 11th and load them onto a C-130? And why did Jeb Bush know, hours after the attack, where to look?

"Whatever secrets Dekkers may possess about the terrorists, records from his flight school were deemed sensitive enough to have merited being escorted 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."
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0212/S00058.htm

Valentine:
The federal authorities came in and grabbed up all of the records of the flight school.

Hopsicker:
That’s right. They flew them out on a plane that also had Jeb Bush aboard.

Valentine:
The federal authorities told the local law enforcement authorities to keep their noses out of the investigation, didn’t they?

Hopsicker:
That’s correct. I sat down with two Southern lawmen, a current sheriff and his immediate predecessor. These two guys looked me dead in the eye and said that, based on what they have seen with a lot of CIA-connected covert operations in the area, the CIA was somehow involved in, if not responsible for, the World Trade Center attacks. You might expect some wild-eyed leftist radical to say that. But these are two Southern sheriffs. They have spent years watching CIA activities that they could not interfere with.
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=news_government&Number=387736&t=-1

And what are the linkages between the flight school and its Republican owner, Wally Hilliard, to US covert agencies and the covert drug trade?

"A Learjet belonging to the true owner of the Venice flight school that trained both terrorist pilots who flew into the World Trade Center was seized with more than 30 pounds of heroin onboard by Federal Agents in July of 2000 at the Orlando Executive Airport."
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/archive/scoop/stories/92/eb/200210310005.2ee1e73a.html

What's the largely unexplored connection between Atta, the CIA, al Qaeda and drugs?

From Sander Hicks:

...what makes Ben-Veniste such an intriguing player on the 9/11 Commission (The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) is his experience with rogue drug-running CIA operatives. Ben-Veniste defended Barry Seal, the notorious smuggler who flew C-123 military cargo planes filled with cocaine into Mena, Arkansas on behalf of the contras.

Al Qaeda's lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta, was allegedly partying with CIA-connected pilots while he got his flight training in fall/winter 2000 at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Fla., where two of the other 9/11 hijacker pilots trained. Atta wasn't acting much like a holy martyr: He wore jeans and sneakers, played video games, bought himself a red Pontiac and was said to be a hedonist. The Press posed the question to Ben-Veniste: If Atta belonged to the fundamentalist Muslim group, why was he snorting cocaine and frequenting strip bars?

"You know," said Ben-Veniste, as he smiled a little. "That's a heck of a question."
http://www.911citizenswatch.org/print.php?sid=82

And Daniel Hopsicker:

FBI agents harassed and intimidated witnesses to the 9/11 terrorist conspiracy’s activities in Florida, issuing warnings to avoid talking with reporters, say current and former residents in Venice, Florida. At least one eyewitness, who knew Mohamed Atta because he lived next door for a time, received regular visits for over six months after the attack from FBI agents eager to ensure she continued to remain silent. Several said they felt unfairly singled out because what they saw and heard is at considerable variance with the official story of the terrorist cadre’s time in Florida.

An American girl named Amanda Keller, for example, briefly lived with Mohamed Atta in Venice, according to both local news reports and numerous eyewitnesses.

http://www.madcowprod.com/issue44.html

[ixion]

1. and people wonder how I can believe in MIHOP

... I dunno... the more I look into it, the more that MIHOP is the only scenario that makes sense.

[bahrbearian]

6. I've always been a LIHOP

That has Changed.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

9. i also have ALWAYS been a MIHOPer

:toast:

[Must_B_Free]

10. Always been MIHOP

Look at who has the resources, look at who derived the political benefit.

I knew as soon as I heard. No surprise here.

[Kazak]

14. It was almost transparent...

even on the very day it happened.

[NMDemDist2]

70. My hubby said the same on the day after...

i just couldn't believe it then and still hate to think it's the truth now geez what a country

[Doctor_J]

2. the level of corruption of these people

is astounding. I keep thinking we've seen the depth of their depravity, and almost daily they continue to outdo themselves.

[Insider]

3. besides taking records

wasn't the u.s. under total standdown for all flights on sep 12th?

[ixion]

44. yeah, unless your last name was Bush or bin Laden

The you could fly anywhere you felt like.

[CaptainClark23]

4. Good presentation, thanks.

You put these posts together well, Minstrel.

A question for you: I get the impression that Daniel Hopsicker is kind of the odd man out in the 9.11 investigation community. He and his team have done some incredible research. Not by surfing links, but by hitting the pavement and tracking people down and speaking to htem face to face. His work is often reffered to but he seems apart somehow. was he in the SF symposium last week?

Is this a false impression I have?

[Minstrel Boy]

11. That's a very good point about Hopsicker.

He does seem a breed apart, because he's actually out there tracking people down. Atta's girlfriend, for instance. You'd think she'd be someone the networks would want to talk to. But no; just dogged Hopsicker.

It seems as though he has the Florida beat to himself. And there's a lot there.

Don't know if he was at the SF symposium. Sure hope he makes it to Toronto.




http://www.madcowprod.com/books.html

[seventhson]

5. Jesus K. Riste!

This is a really hot story

Has someone sent it to Drudge???

Or airamerica?

[CaptainClark23]

8. this material has been out there for almost two years.

and my thanks again to Minstrel for keeping it bubbling to the surface.

keep it up, it works.

[bloom]

7. It would make sense

With Daddy Bush having led the CIA, Jeb and George would have an inside track.

(Another thing that follows how the Bush marketing machine operates is the total staging with the one plane and the other to follow with the TV cameras on. It's all about the coverage.)

Those are interesting finds.

[Minstrel Boy]

12. Huffman wasn't the only Florida flight school

which authorities "miraculously" knew to descend upon in the hours following the attack.

Kristen Breitweiser, grilling senior FBI agents:


"I don’t understand, with all the warnings about the possibilities of Al Qaeda using planes as weapons, and the Phoenix Memo from one of your own agents warning that Osama bin Laden was sending operatives to this country for flight-school training, why didn’t you check out flight schools before Sept. 11?"

"Do you know how many flight schools there are in the U.S.? Thousands," a senior agent protested. "We couldn’t have investigated them all and found these few guys."

"Wait, you just told me there were too many flight schools and that prohibited you from investigating them before 9/11," Kristen persisted. "How is it that a few hours after the attacks, the nation is brought to its knees, and miraculously F.B.I. agents showed up at Embry-Riddle flight school in Florida where some of the terrorists trained?"

"We got lucky," was the reply.

http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=7816

[enough]

13. kick (nt)

.

[Octafish]

15. Attah and Co. reported to have trained at US military bases.

In the days after 9-11, The Washington Post, NEWSWEEK and The New York Times reported that the alleged ringleader had also received US government training.

Whatever happened to that story? Chairman Kean? Chairman Hamilton? Anyone? Mr. Kerrey?

PS: Great post, Minstrel Boy! Old Hopsicker is all over this one.

BTW: FBI Director Louis Freeh must've known about all this. I can't wait for him to be questioned. Will it be in public and under oath?

[Rex]

16. Jeb got a msg from God

"Hey bro, head on down thar and make sure Atta didn't slip up and mention my name."

Love,
George.

[GeronimoSkull]

17. Outrageous

http://septembereleventh.org/

[Minstrel Boy]

18. Jeb's cozy relationship with Hilliard, the flight school owner:

At the same time their planes were flying back and forth from Venezuela with illegal cargo Hilliard's charter service was also, unbelievably, being utilized at virtually no cost--despite the fact that rentals for Lear jets can run as high as $1,800 an hour--by Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Even stranger, both Governor Jeb Bush and Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris were providing celebrity endorsements to Hilliard's operation well after the company's Lear (N351WB) had been busted by DEA agents armed with machine guns.

...

One would think a sitting Governor seems well-advised to steer well clear of anything to do with heroin trafficking. Yet Governor Jeb Bush honored Hilliard's operation--called at various times Florida Air, Sunrise Airlines and Discover Air--with a personal visit, even posing for photos with the "Discover Air family."



Is it just incredible bad luck that these two prominent Florida politicians endorsed an operation that both trained murderous terrorists AND brought heroin into America?

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/archive/scoop/stories/92/eb/200210310005.2ee1e73a.html

[Karenina]

19. Heh?

:freak: Why did Jeb Bush and federal agents seize records from Huffman Aviation - Florida flight school of Mohammed Atta, and other 9/11 hijackers - in the middle of the night following the attacks of September 11th and load them onto a C-130? And why did Jeb Bush know, hours after the attack, where to look? :freak:

Is this a trick question? ;-) :freak: ;-)

[Minstrel Boy]

22. "Is this a trick question?"

Nope, just a rhetorical one!

[Karenina]

35. Tee-hee-hee!

:loveya: :toast: :loveya:

[soup]

20. Rudi Dekkers

Wasn't he hustled out of the country? Deported? Or was he one of those in the small plane/ helicopter incidents (in Sarasota, if memory serves)?

Memory falters, puzzle pieces slide, and some fall off of the table.

Thanks for the research and the post, Minstrel Boy.

[Minstrel Boy]

21. As I recall, Dekkers is still here.

And he was in a small plane crash, but survived.

[soup]

23. Something just bugging me says differently

The mind-boggling Crashes - so many broken planes - I swear there's a helicopter crash in there somewhere, too. Just can't seem to put it together in my memory.


June 26, 2002: Arne Kruithof, owner of the flight school where hijacker Ziad Jarrah trained, narrowly survives a small plane crash in Venice, Florida. The plane crashes shortly after takeoff, but the pilot and two passengers remarkably walk away unscathed. The incident may be completely accidental, but it interesting to note that the owner of the other Venice flight school that trained hijackers, Rudi Dekkers, also survives a crash six months later (see January 24, 2003). Reporter Daniel Hopsicker has been reporting on Kruithof's "curious" connections, and suggests the accident may be an attempt to silence Kruithof's knowledge of 9/11 (see Hopsicker's website).
http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/updates/update15.html

Dekker in Cancun, hmm. Wonder what that was about?
Christmas 2002
Recently a plane carrying Huffman Aviation President Rudi Dekkers crashed in Cancun. He has survived and will be testifying at congressional hearings at some point.
http://www.fantazine.net/dajpage/Christ2002.htm

Bingo!!!

from December 04, 2002
(Hopsicker) I.N.S.Deporting 'Magic Dutch Boy' Rudi Dekkers
read the whole story at...
http://www.madcowprod.com
The MadCowMorningNews
"The I.N.S. is acting to place the prime suspect in a wider-ranging 9/11 conspiracy investigation out of the reach of the Independent Investigation."

At the instigation of Bush Administration officials the Immigration and Naturalization Service is preparing to deport the man whose Venice, FL. flight school served as a magnet for Mohamed Atta's terrorist cadre, effectively placing him beyond the reach of the upcoming 9/11 investigation, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.

Rudi Dekkers, who began "marching Arabs across the tarmac" soon after his arrival in 1999 at Huffman Aviation, has run afoul of the Immigration and Naturalization Service for a variety of immigration violations, sources state, including being in the U.S. illegally.
discussion here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID43/5374.html

So, did they end up deporting him, or not?

[Minstrel Boy]

24. The latest update on Dekkers

from Hopsicker is that he's free, charges have been dropped, and someone's looking out for him.

There's a small item on Dekkers in the second episode of Hopsicker's streaming video. Among other things, it says he was seen in Atta's company often in the weeks preceding 9/11, contradicting Dekker's testimony. (The video also features a good piece on Indira Singh, another whistleblower, and what she discovered about a company called Ptech.)

http://www.madcowprod.com/

[soup]

26. Ugly business, hey?

Again, thanks for your post.

Tangled webs firmly woven.

[soup]

25. Charmed life or cursed?

January 2003-
24: Helicopter crashes in Caloosahatchee river with Rudi Dekkers, en route to Venice FL to sign over Huffman Aviation. MCP · NN (The 9/11-pilot school, remember? Apparently this is the second crash Dekker's been in since 9/11.)
http://www.geocities.com/hclsmith/my-tl/2003q1

A lot of little interesting bits at the site.

Sorry if I'm sidetracking your thread.

[nomatrix]

33. Jeb's Plane made an emergency landing

Feb. 2003
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/5278547.htm

[WFF]

27. Has this been confirmed?

It seems that if Jeb was on a plane at 2:00 in the morning, there should be a record of it somewhere.

[Minstrel Boy]

30. local detective "won't confirm or deny" on the record

From Sander Hicks:

After the 9/11 planes slammed into American landmarks, Battuello began to see a possible connection between the terrorists, their flight school, owner Wally Hilliard and his associate Du Bain. She left her comfortable Napa Valley home and went hunting for the truth. In Florida, she says, she found cab driver and Navy veteran Bob Simpson, who had driven Mohamed Atta around on multiple occasions. Simpson told Battuello that Rudi Dekkers, president and CEO of Huffman, was hanging out in nightclubs with Atta and other Saudis as recently as August 2001. According to Keller, Atta's ex-girlfriend, Dekkers and Atta did cocaine and went to strip clubs together quite a bit.

Hopsicker went looking for more on Dekkers, a Dutch citizen. Did the Huffman CEO have any prior arrests in Sarasota County, Fla.? Sgt. Michael Treanor, of the Venice Police Department, frustratedly told him they wouldn't be able to answer that question. Two of his detectives had removed all of Dekker's files and loaded them onto a plane for the FBI. One of those detectives, now promoted to Sergeant, was Tom McNulty. McNulty tells the Press, "I seized the files with the FBI because of some contacts I have in this area." But McNulty won't confirm or deny Hopsicker's reporting that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was involved in the seizure of Dekkers' files.

Will any of this information find a place in the 9/11 Commission's official report, due out in July? Don't get your hopes up.
http://tinyurl.com/3bk4r

"They loaded two Ryder trucks (of Huffman Aviation and Venice Police Department documents) right outside that (police station) window," one Venice law enforcement official told us. "And then they drove them right onto a C130 military cargo plane at Sarasota airport which flew out with Jeb Bush aboard. The FBI took all our files. Everything."
http://www.onlinejournal.com/archive/04-19-02_Hopsicker.pdf

[Stephanie]

28. If this is all true about Atta, why would he martyr himself?

Why would he carry out a suicide mission? I'm confused.

[Minstrel Boy]

29. Maybe he didn't. There's evidence that there was more than one Atta,

and that many of the hijackers had doubles as well.

For instance, see this thread: "doppelgangers of Atta, Hanjour, Jarrah":
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x9930

And Paul Thompson's article "The Two Ziad Jarrahs": http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essayjarrah.html

It might have been a hall-of-mirrors covert trick: sew confusion through multiple identities. Lee Harvey Oswald had a number of dopplegangers before November 22 1963. And photos of Atta in Florida have reportedly been seized and destroyed by authorities.

From Edward J Epstein:

Question:

How many individuals named Mohamed Atta, or in league with him, passed through US passport control in Miami on January 10, 2001?

Answer:

The mystery of Atta's doppelganger remains unresolved.

The INS inspector general noted in his report that Atta appeared to have entered the US twice on January 10th 20001. That is because Atta had been given two separate admission numbers--- 68653985709, expiring 9/10/01, and 10847166009 expiring July 9th (INS report, p.48).

Two INS inspectors were on duty at Miami airport and handled Atta's case. But neither recalled Atta, or recognized his photograph.

http://edwardjayepstein.com/2002question/passport.htm

[starroute]

47. There's also the business of the several Alghamdi's

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0208/S00085.htm

by Tom Flocco * AmericanFreePress.net * And Scoop.co.nz
14 August 2002

"Amid reports in the days after the September 11 attacks that two of the hijackers, Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi received flight training at Florida’s Pensacola Naval Air Station, a new dot has been connected which may shed more light on past revelations that 9/11 terrorists learned to fly at secure United States military bases.

"Royal Saudi Air Force Major Ambarak S. Alghamdi had continued to remain in his position as a Pensacola Naval Air Station flight instructor after the 9/11 attacks, notwithstanding his Saudi Government ties - and that most of the terrorists were Saudis.

<snip>

"Strangely, however, Saudi Major Ambarak Alghamdi is now dead - victim of a mysterious, unexplained, and largely uncommented-upon plane crash on May 8 in clear weather. Two other victims of the accident were from the Raytheon Corporation, which now owns technology via its E-Systems division that is capable of, “disrupting or taking down airplanes....with advanced guiding systems,” according to patented technology invented by Texas physicist Bernard J. Eastlund."

[loudsue]

31. "Surviving TWO plane crashes since 9/11...."

There sure are a whole lotta people the bushgang have "plane crashed", who were inconveniently alive when bunnypants was a running "scardy-pants" on 9/11. Meanwhile 3,000 Americans were being burned and crushed in the TWC.

Will these people ever appear before a grand jury? I sure as hell hope Kerry doesn't believe we should just "move on".

:wtf:

A skeptic is a person who when he sees the handwriting on the wall, claims it's a forgery.

[redqueen]

32. BEST. THREAD. EVER.

Please keep this kicked to benefit all the visiting freepers and ditto heads.

God bless 'em, SOME of them have to start waking up!

[tom_paine]

34. Jebbie just making sure Imperial Family Crime goes undiscovered

Can these Monsters be stopped?

Stay tuned...

[Karenina]

40. Remember the lightning strike!

:evilgrin:

[leesa]

36. Thanks for bringing it up again. There are so many pieces to this

rotten puzzle that it's impossible to keep track of all the treasonous deeds of the Bush Crime Family. This has been out and available but suppressed by Bush's media since it happened. I well remember reading the intial reports of it.
Thanks again
I have been a MIHOPer since I heard about the planted passport and other convenient evidence on 9-11. Hopefully we will someday learn who planned and instigated the 9-11 tragedy. My guess has never wavered.

[Q]

37. The new Right and 'new' Democrats sneer at stuff like this...

...and call it a 'conpiracy theory'. Could this be why we can't seem to get to the bottom of this mess?

- The Bush* crime family depends on their friends who use the words conspiracy nut to describe those who would expose the truth in a REAL effort to protect America.

- I'm shocked that so many at DU still won't or can't see the connection between the Bushies, Saudies and some in our own government.

[redqueen]

39. Interesting points n/t

:kick:

[noiretextatique]

58. it's called "the awful truth"...to be avoided at all cost

it's why any thread with "nader" in the title gets 100 posts, while a thread in GD right now about the movie "Unprecedented" (about the 2000 election theft) gets 10 posts. people don't WANT to face the "awful truth" because accepting it means losing something. and gaining something awful.

[Selwynn]

66. It IS a theory of a conspiracy. :)

That's just what it is.

But you and I are not on opposite sides of this issue, except for the fact that you already believe what hasn't been conclusively proven, and I only keep an open mind to its possibility as well as a healthy skepticism as well.

But we agree that there are wide open questions that demand answers. We agree that politicians in Washington are refusing to deal with the tough issues. We agree that there is massive resistance to attempts to get to the truth.

The only difference is, I know that LIHOP or MIHOP are theories. Theories forumlated because of a slew of loose ends and open questions that may, or may not be accurate. There is only one thing that has been conclusively proven so far, and that is that Bush is guilty of depraved indifferenece. There is hard, credibly, documented, on the record, clear cut, factual evidence that proves that much.

This is a good thing, because it rightfully should lead to the asking for tougher questions - what was the scope of Bush's depraved indifference? How sinister was it? Did anyone in the Administration have any kind of participatory role in what transpired - either in the specific attack or in contributing to a generalized and deliberate vulnerability to future attacks? And every single one of the questions that LIHOP or MIHOP people raise demand real answers - and we the people deserve those real answers.

The only difference between me and you is that I know we don't have the answers yet - just a lot of questions, and then a of induction based on every kind of fallacious reasoning that always happens when people try to formulate absolute conclusions before there is the concrete evidence to support them.

What we know is depraved in difference. That much is clearly evidenced, tangibly. The next questions must be, what was the scope of this indifference - was it clandestine, participatory, willful? At what level? What was the nature of post 9/11 cover ups? To hide how much the administration dropped the ball in ignoring terrorist warnings (currently the most well evidenced theory)? Was it to cover up their direct hand in the specific attacks? Was it to cover up their more indirect, possibly more passive involvement in allowing the specific attacks? Was it other kind of damaning information on administration behavior, relationship to foriegn countries, etc?

These questions deserve answers.

My only problem, Q - is with people who act like anyone who doesn't believe the Bush administration planned these attacks, hired people to execute them and carried out the destruction of the world trade center and the murder of 3,000+ Americans for their own purposes is somehow and idiot. We are not idiots for reserving judgment while we continue to demand an exploration of the evidence.

Where are normal, rational, non conspiracy nutbag people today? Well, they are at a place where they know that the Bush Administration was guilty of depraved indifference to the issues of security. That much has been proven. Now rational people want answers to questions about the scope of that failure - was it deliberate and if so how specifically, what are the answers to the specific open questions out there? Was there an element of desire to allow this specific attack to happen, or was there an element of desire to allow a climate in which an attack like this would happen, or was there simply a blindness and disinterest towards these issues amidst the fixation and preoccupation with iraq, star wars, tax cuts, and whatever else?

I don't know the answer, and neither do you - yet. I'm not trying to tell you not to suspect LIHOP or MIHOP or anything else. What I'm against is people like you acting as though it is conclusively proven fact and anyone trying to think about a different theory might as well be trying to argue that 2+2=5. You are wrong to do that. And that's my biggest problem with the quote "conspiracy" crowd.

DI did happen. (And by doing so he certainly allowed a vulnerable framwork in which 9/11 happend)

LIHOP (and by that I mean having specific knoweldge of 9/11 and refusing to stop that specific event) may have happened - we need more answers

MIHOP may have happened - we need more answers

[TNOE]

38. Minstrel Boy

You are awesome - I had totally forgotten about this, will bookmark. Jeb cleaning up the flight schools in Florida, and Marvin Bush head of security, BFEE could not describe the Bush* family any better. Murders, Liars, Thieves - the lot of them.

[joanski01]

41. This is really something,

especially after just reading the thread about Senator Joe Biden stating that bush* would have thrown himself in front of the planes to prevent the attacks. I have also always believed in MIHOP.

[redqueen]

42. lol - I didn't know Biden had such a dry sense of humor!

;)

:kick:

[WarNoMore]

43. Minstrel Boy, thank you--I remember reading so many of these

items, so easy to slip down the memory hole, what with so many outrages and atrocities. I'm wondering if Dekkers is a common Dutch name. Does anyone remember when the story came out about a calendar depicting the planes crashing into the towers. *before* the event happened? (school in Holland) The instructors name was Dekkers--maybe that is something for Snopes. Also, shortly after the attacks, IIRC, there was an article, I believe maybe Online Journal, concerning top officials (INS and State) giving out visas, green cards left and right for monetary payback. I wish I could remember for sure where I read that.

[Minstrel Boy]

45. it's so easy to drop threads of the story

The 9/11 skeptics' dilemma is not that there is insufficient evidence to support official complicity; it's that there is so much, and it is so complex, it makes the case difficult to summarize and communicate in soundbites.

[JNelson6563]

46. Kicking this fabulous post

before it falls off front page.

Nice work MB. :toast:

Julie

[redqueen]

48. Good idea!

:kick:

[Minstrel Boy]

49. More on drugs, Jeb, and the family business

According to Terry Reed, author of Compromised, "the FBI had inserted a female undercover agent into the inner circle of Medellin Cartel founder Pablo Escobar. Her name was Darlene Novinger and she got very close to an Escobar cousin named Steve Plata."

"Thanks to the 'uc', as undercovers are called, Barry Seal and Terry Reed were sent on a drug sting to meet some wealthy Texans," writes Ruppert. "It turns out that the wealthy Texans were George W. and Jeb Bush who flew in on the family owned King Air to pick up the cocaine themselves. Hidden DEA cameras filmed the whole incident, including the tail number of the aircraft and both Bushes participation. According to Reed, nobody knew in advance who the buyers were. Reed states that he has both the tail number of the aircraft and the DEA case file number and he strongly suspects that tape to turn up during the 2000 presidential election."

Former CIA operative Terry Reed had worked closely with the late Barry Seal, a notorious drug smuggling pilot who also worked for the CIA.... Reed describes a conversation he had with Seal about his 'insurance" aka blackmail, in case the Bush Family Crime Syndicate would try to double-cross him.

...

Reed was incredulous. "... Barry, are you telling me George Bush's kids are in the drug business?" he asked.... "Yup, that's what I'm tellin ya. A guy in Florida who flipped for the DEA has got the goods on the Bush boys. Now I heard this from a reliable source in Colombia, but I just sat on it then, waiting to use it as a trump card if I ever needed it. Well I need to use it now. I got names, dates, places, even got some tape recordings. I even got surveillance. videos catchin' the Bush boys redhanded. I consider this stuff my insurance policy, " said Seal.
http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma/offline9.htm

More good reading: "Why Does George W. Bush Fly in Drug Smuggler Barry Seal's Airplane?" http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/W_plane.html

And remember, from the original post of this thread:

"...what makes Ben-Veniste such an intriguing player on the 9/11 Commission (The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) is his experience with rogue drug-running CIA operatives. Ben-Veniste defended Barry Seal, the notorious smuggler who flew C-123 military cargo planes filled with cocaine into Mena, Arkansas on behalf of the contras."

Seal was gunned down in 1986.

As for undercover agent Novinger, she was threatened, family members were killed and she was forced to resign. She died of cancer in January 2003.

Here's a passage from Rodney Stitch's book Defrauding America:

"Darlene Novinger said to me that she discovered during an FBI investigation that George Bush and two of his sons were using drugs and prostitutes in a Florida hotel while Bush was vice president. She said that when she reported these findings to her FBI supervisors they warned her not to reveal what she had discovered. Novinger had been requested to infiltrate drug trafficking operations in South America and the United States. She was pressured to quit her FBI position; her husband was beaten to death; and four hours after she appeared on a July 1993 talkshow describing her findings (after she was warned not to appear), her father mysteriously died. A dead white canary was left on his grave as a warning to her. After receiving death threats she went into hiding, from where she occasionally appeared as guest on talk shows, and called me from undisclosed locations." - page 469

More details from later in the book:

Novinger had been an investigator with the Federal Crime Task Force, and then was recruited by the FBI to work in an undercover capacity.

She worked on Operation Nimbus, investigating large-scale drug smuggling on the Eastern seaboard. The investigation revealed the narcotic operation of a powerful Lebanese family living in Miami and Jamaica, which was also tied to the Lebanese fascist Phalange. Family's name is Smatt, headed by William Smatt. And Novinger said the Smatt operation implicated VP Bush and son Jeb.

After submitting her report, orders came to cease the investigation and destroy all reports. She says someone in the FBI's Miami office leaked to the Smatt group that she had penetrated the operation.

Before Operation Nimbus was shut down, veteran US Customs investigator Joe Price filed corroborating reports implicating Bush. After he filed in Sept 1983, FBI agents arrested him on a narcotics trafficking charge.

[starroute]

51. Does this fit in with George W.'s Florida and Alaska jobs?

Remember that when George W. was in the Air National Guard, he got his first job from Robert Gow, an old Skull and Bones pal of his dad's who had a mysterious business in tropical plants. (I believe Hopsicker's latest piece is on Gow.) Then in the summer of 1974, I think it was, Bush briefly worked for an Alaska air shipping company that later on would have documented ties to the CIA.

This pattern also fits, a little more indirectly, with the whole Houston-based complex of savings and loan scandals/CIA/drugs/Mafia in the 1970's and 1980's. George W. wasn't a part of that himself, but his good friend James Bath was, and so were many people associated with his time in the Texas Air National Guard.

The Bush/drug/money connections reach out to BCCI and the Saudis in one direction and to the Mexican drug cartel (via the Salinas de Gortiari families) in the other. (See http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO202C.html)

It's hard to keep track of it all, but drug-smuggling, money-laundering, and the CIA are the key themes that keep recurring.

[Minstrel Boy]

53. Hopsicker suspects it. A recent series of articles

explore Bush's time with Gow and the Alaskan airline.

Part III is up here ("Bush Flew for Airline Tied to Iran/Contra Drug Trafficking"), with links to the other two:
http://www.madcowprod.com

It really is the family business.

[Wapsie B]

63. This explains why

the BFEE will stop at nothing to silence those who dare shed light on them. This is the reason why the rest of the world is shaking their heads at us, wondering why we have the leaders we do. We may as well have Vito Corleone in the WH.


This thread gets bookmarked.

[Karenina]

67. Fed2neck's graphic

puts it ALL into perspective:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1329353#1329408

[Minstrel Boy]

65. Look at how ansty 9/11 Commissioner Ben-Veniste gets

when journalist Sander Hicks asks him about Barry Seal. (He'd defended Seal, who was tied to Bush-sponsored and CIA protected drug running. Seal was murdered in 1986, after boasting he had an "insurance policy" of video documenting Bush complicity.)

SH: Let’s go back for a second and talk about what you just said about the INS forms of the terrorist hijackers. How there just seems to be a disconnect. How could these people — it was pointed out that a couple of these people were on the CIA’s list of terrorists, they had attended the terrorism conference and yet they were allowed to be in country. There was a gentleman you may know of, named Daniel Hopsicker? He’s a former producer of NBC and he wrote a book called, "Barry and the Boys." You are mentioned in it. It’s about a former client of yours who is now deceased, Mr. Barry Seal. Are you familiar with this book?

RB: No, I haven’t read the book but I did represent Barry Seal, who was convicted. He thereafter, on his own, became a government informant. He worked against the Sandinistas and that certainly is not the subject of this....

SH: That’s not the subject of ....

RB: We have quite a bit to do here in our Commission without going into all my private practice. I certainly wouldn’t want this to be an infomercial for Richard Ben-Veniste as a private attorney.

SH: Not at all. But the question was, Daniel Hopsicker is

RB: So, if you wouldn’t mind staying on our subject...

SH: Not at all.

RB: I’d appreciate it.

http://sanderhicks.com/benveniste.html

[Lorien]

50. Kick

Sad to say that NOTHING surprises me with the Bush* junta anymore!

[Desperadoe]

52. Preaching to the choir but

kick for Minstrel

[soup]

54. The flight out of Tampa

Trying to find anything reporting where jeb was Sept. 12-13, and came across this. I'm sure it's in someone's timeline, somewhere- but it's something I'd forgotten.

Another Florida connection, another piece of the puzzle that quickly fell off of the table- Not flight school, but flight. Does anyone else remember this?

and wasn't there also a connection somehow with Teresa LePore (of butterfly ballot infamy)? Or am I 'misrememberating'?

The Secret Saudi Flight on 9-13 Could be the Key to the Bush-Saudi-Al Qaeda Connection
By Catherine Arnie

About a month after the September 11th attacks, I read an article in the Tampa Tribune by Kathy Steele entitled "Phantom Flight From Florida." The intriguing report told the tale of a flight out of Florida that allegedly took place on September 13 - a day when ALL civilian air traffic in the United States was grounded.

"This was out of a Tom Clancy movie," according to a retired homicide detective who was hired for the flight. Its mission was to spirit the son of a Saudi prince, the son of a Saudi army commander, and another unidentified Saudi from Florida to Kentucky, because "there was a perceived threat, and the family of the person wanted him home right away."

The "person" in danger was the son of Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, who is no minor figure in the Saudi Royal family. Rather, Prince Sultan is the kingdom's minister of defense, the third-ranking position in the Saudi Government, whose powers exceed those of even America's super-powerful Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Dan Grossi and Manuel Perez were the two Floridians who were hired to serve as private bodyguards on the flight.

According to the article in the Tampa Tribune, Dan Grossi is a retired Tampa cop who worked in internal affairs and homicide. Perez is a retired FBI man whose experience was in counter-terrorism and bomb-making. Perez now runs a detective agency and the two men provided security for the National Football League at Raymond James Stadium in September of 2001.
>much more here:
http://www.democrats.com/view2.cfm?id=14289

-----

Tampa Trib article
October 5, 2001

TAMPA - The twin-engine Lear jet streaked into the afternoon sky, leaving Tampa behind but revealing a glimpse of international intrigue in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on America.
The federal government says the flight never took place.

But the two armed bodyguards hired to chaperon their clients out of the state recall the 100-minute trip Sept. 13 quite vividly.

In the end, the son of a Saudi Arabian prince who is the nation's defense minister and the son of a Saudi army commander made it to Kentucky for a waiting 747 and a trip to their homeland.

The hastily arranged flight out of Raytheon Airport Services, a private hangar on the outskirts of Tampa International Airport, was anything but ordinary. It lifted off the tarmac at a time when every private plane in the nation was grounded due to safety concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Local and federal authorities will say little about the flight.
>full article archived here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20011108145853/http://www.tampatrib.com/MGA3F78EFSC.html

and a :kick: for Minstrel Boy's most excellent thread.

[Karenina]

55. And another

:kick: for latecomers!

[Minstrel Boy]

56. just a Saturday evening kick n/t

[oceanpoetry]

57. kick!

great thread!

[rumguy]

59. kick and bookmarked

[acmavm]

60. The reason there are conspiracy theories is simply because there ARE

conspiriacies. And I wouldn't put anything past a family who had no qualms supporting the NAZI government. What's a little drug running and treason when you're grandpa was a supporter of the Hitler regime? It's just the family business.

[Minstrel Boy]

61. Some things are too terrible to be true, and yet are.

That's what the past three years have taught me. I became a "conspiracy theorist" only because I started paying attention.

A great piece by Michael Hasty, which details the "paranoid shift" so many of us have undergone:

In his book, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower," William Blum warns of how the media will make anything that smacks of "conspiracy theory" an immediate "object of ridicule." This prevents the media from ever having to investigate the many strange interconnections among the ruling class—for example, the relationship between the boards of directors of media giants, and the energy, banking and defense industries. These unmentionable topics are usually treated with what Blum calls "the media's most effective tool—silence." But in case somebody's asking questions, all you have to do is say, "conspiracy theory," and any allegation instantly becomes too frivolous to merit serious attention.

On the other hand, since my paranoid shift, whenever I hear the words "conspiracy theory" (which seems more often, lately) it usually means someone is getting too close to the truth.

...

Perhaps the biggest hidden reason people don't make the paranoid shift is that knowledge brings responsibility. If we acknowledge that an inner circle of ruling elites controls the world's most powerful military and intelligence system; controls the international banking system; controls the most effective and far-reaching propaganda network in history; controls all three branches of government in the world's only superpower; and controls the technology that counts the people's votes, we might be then forced to conclude that we don't live in a particularly democratic system. And then voting and making contributions and trying to stay informed wouldn't be enough. Because then the duty of citizenship would go beyond serving as a loyal opposition, to serving as a "loyal resistance"—like the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, except that in this case the resistance to fascism would be on the side of the national ideals, rather than the government; and a violent insurgency would not only play into the empire's hands, it would be doomed from the start.

...

But as a paranoid, I'm ready to join the resistance. And the main reason is I no longer think that the "conspiracy" is much of a "theory."

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html

[teryang]

62. This question is answered in great detail

...in Truth, Lies and the Legend of 911

Chaim Kupferberg

OnlineJournal.com

Comment: It has to do with Ramzi Binalshibh's inability to get a visa through Ruddi Dekkers efforts, and when that information was known to the FBI. The timing of the visa rejection to go to the flight school was based upon the fact that Ramzi was a terrorist and proves that the Dekkers and the FBI was aware of the presence of Al Qaeda terrorists at flight schools in Florida AND DID NOTHING ABOUT IT. It was for this reason that all the Florida flight school records had to be seized, as documentary evidence of prior knowledge of the threat.

You can read this difficult article if you like. I have excerpted an even more interesting part which evidences a prior conspiracy and an obvious nexus between the 911 plot and the anthrax plot:

<As for his choice for flight training, Atta and his comrades presciently chose to hone their skills within commuter distance of the CIA/military base that would later serve as Central Command for the War in Afghanistan. As posted on the CBS News site on March 5, 2003, here was Binalshibh's simple explanation to Yosri Fouda as to why Florida was chosen for its flight schools:

"The prices in America were convenient and the weather was ideal for more flying hours, especially in the coastal states like Florida . . . and the term of study wouldn't take long."

Perhaps Binalshibh might have added that it would also allow Atta and his comrades to lay an incriminating trail in the presence of bona fide American eyewitnesses, and all within shouting distance of the military handlers at MacDill Air Force Base. As an added bonus, two of Atta's fellow hijackers would also be set up with rental accommodations by the wife of the employee of a CIA-founded company. Gloria Irish, the wife of the tabloid Sun editor Michael Irish, rented a Delray Beach apartment to hijackers Marwan Al-Shehhi and Saeed Alghamdi. Perhaps it is a coincidence, but the very first victim of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks also happened to be a Sun photo editor by the name of Bob Stevens. And perhaps another peculiar coincidence, as reported in the St. Petersburg Times on October 15, 2001:

"Mike Irish, who, records show, is a licensed airplane pilot, several years ago was a member of the Civil Air Patrol based at a small-plane airport in Lantana, just north of Delray Beach, an official there told the Washington Post. One of the hijackers, Atta, reportedly rented a plane at that airport to practice flying for three days in August. Stevens, the Sun photo editor who died of anthrax Oct. 5, also lives in Lantana. But there is no indication whether Irish or Stevens ever crossed paths with Atta.">

[Minstrel Boy]

64. Thanks teryang, that's a great point.

I should have read the article months ago. I printed it out - it's 70 pages - but never got it. I will now.

Here's a link to Kupferberg's article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310A.html

[lostnfound]

68. Sunday night kick nt

[Oddman]

69. Just Amazing

Do you think it will make the major news? Of course not!

“President” Bush Takes a Vacation!!! Click Here!!
http://www.arts-america.com/vacation.htm
Was our fearless "leader" asleep at the wheel of terrorism???

[redqueen]

71. Kick

for our visiting freeptard friends. :)

They'll figure it out, eventually. Maybe.