by Daniel Hopsicker
Flight School Owner Has Shady Ties
EXCLUSIVE--Venice, Fl. Authorities are probing the European business associations of a Venice flight school owner, whose school at the Venice airport trained the nucleus of foreign national terrorist pilots, looking for possible links to international organized crime groups, reported by the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday to be laundering large sums of drug money for major terrorist organizations. Organized crime said to launder billions for terrorists. Three of the airliners involved in the September 11th terrorist attack—two in Manhattan, and one wrested to the ground over Pennsylvania—were piloted by terrorists who had trained at two flight schools at the Venice, Florida airport.
Dekkers was widely interviewed on television after the disaster expressing outrage over the terrorist attacks, and disclaiming any responsibility for the actions of former students. But he may have been lying in his portrayal of his association with the men who became eventual terrorist pilots, when he repeatedly stated they were people who had just basically "walked in" off the street into his school at the tiny Venice airport.
Instead, Rudi Dekkers was actively marketing his flight school in Germany at the exact same time Mohamed Atta and his terrorist cell left Hamburg and moved to Florida, where several immediately enrolled in his school. Both ringleaders, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehri, each believed to have piloted a plane into the World Trade Center Towers, learned to fly at Huffman Aviation flight school in Venice, Fla.
Two years ago Dekkers began an aggressive European ‘marketing’ campaign, just after purchasing the flight school, reported the local Venice Gondolier at the time. "The world is my working place," Dekkers boasted to the paper. "I won't forget Venice, but I'm going to market throughout the world, Germany, France, Belgium. That's our goal, to get people to come in here from all over the world." New owners of Huffman Aviation have global presence
His plans were so successful that they had soon changed the entire makeup of his flight school. Foreign nationals came to account for over 80 per cent of the student pilots enrolled with him. Rudi Dekkers' flight schools (he has another down the road in Naples) are training four hundred foreign nationals a year.
According to German prosecutors, after Atta moved from Germany to train with Dekkers' flight school in Venice, at least four other members of the same terrorist cell moved there to train as pilots as well. Could Atta have recruited by Dekkers, and not the other way around? Officials involved in the September 11th investigation said early this week that the key to unraveling the plot might lie in Germany, not the United States.
In press interviews, Dekkers has inferred that students pilots were just showing up at his flight school and thrusting fistfuls of dollars (10,000 of them) across his counter. But what if it was the other way around? What if Mohamed didn’t go to the mountain, but that the mountain, in the guise of the portly Dekkers, came to Mohamed? If Dekkers was actively marketing in Germany when the terrorists moved to the U.S., he bears closer scrutiny...
In press accounts of Dekkers’ business dealings, prior to the September disaster, he is revealed as a fast talking con man. And in the first mention of him afterwards his hometown paper, the Venice Gondolier, ran a headline saying Huffman Aviation no stranger to headlines.
"Huffman Aviation Inc. has had problems in the last few months with the city of Venice, Sarasota County and the state of Florida, but the school keeps flying," the paper reported.
Rudi wasn’t paying his rent out at the airport. Huffman rent is late again, the paper headlined on May 12th. "When Huffman Aviation paid three months of overdue rent last Friday, company president Rudi Dekkers said the rent wouldn't be late again. "No, we won't have this any more," he said during an interview last Friday."
Headlines in the Venice Gondolier about Dekkers grew even less flattering as time goes by. City threatens lessee with eviction, again.
"Huffman Aviation Inc. is again on notice from the city to catch up on its rent payments or face eviction from the airport," the paper wrote on June 9th.
Nothing had changed by mid-summer. Huffman rent late, again, the paper reported in mid-July. "For the sixth straight month, Huffman Aviation Inc. has failed to pay its rent to the city on time."
A month before the September 11th tragedy, Huffman finally paid the rent.
Huffman pays rent.
What makes this airing of Rudi's dirty linen of note is that while Dekkers was receiving this humiliating deadbeat coverage he was simultaneously launching a commuter air taxi service in Florida (Flair Starts Service) a venture for which he had been provided both planes and pilots by a Gig Harbor, WA man linked to current Mob activities in Portland, Oregon. Richard Boehlke "owns" Harbor Air, or what's left of it, and he was simultaneously actively involved in a massive looting of workers pension funds in Portland, Oregon. Hardest hit ($60 million) was the pension fund of the Laborers, called the biggest Mob-run union in America. Labor Leaders Troubles Follow History of Union Woes
While supplying both the planes and the pilots for the new Florida Air, Boehlke's Harbor Air was simultaneously going bankrupt. So were two other of Boehlke's companies, Crossings Aviation, and Crossings Development, a Portland condo deal for which Boehlke borrowed $17 million, mostly unpaid, through Capital Consultants, a pension fund management company that was in the midst of somehow "losing" $320 million dollars.
Worst-hit were the pension funds of laborers and secretaries. Some were so badly looted that experts thought some workers would have to extend their careers by another decade to receive the level of benefits they'd have had if their money not been made to disappear in ludicrously bad deals like Richard Boehlke’s. Playing Catch Up in Retirement.
"Boehlke would do anything for money, he was so desperate," said an aviation executive who had witnessed Boehlke's descent. "I’m surprised he hasn’t skipped the country by now, what with all the trouble he’s gotten himself into farting around with those Mafia boys down in Portland."
Another recipient of the pension fund largesse is Alvin Malnick, whom Readers Digest once called "Meyer Lansky’s heir as head of Organized Crime." If one is looking for "international organized crime groups," they don't get much bigger that the Mob.
Firm Linked to Reputed Mob Figure Got Loans.
Little known, and even stranger, is the fact that Alvin Malnick, who avows only to being a Jewish lawyer from Miami, has extremely close ties—family, ties, actually—to a leading Prince of the Saudi Royal Family.
In fairness it must be stated: whether any of these associations is germane to answering questions about Dekkers' role in recruiting and training foreign national pilots is at this point unknown. But its a brand new world we have all been living in since September 11, 2001. No one is immune from pointed questions that lead to answers about an international network helping the terrorist cadre that was able to move so freely in our midst.
When President Bush said all evidence pointed to bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda organization as responsible for the attacks, he also equated the Islamic group to the Mafia, stating "Al-Qaeda is to terror what the Mafia is to crime."
Our question is, do the two ever meet?
Flight 77: "The Plane Was Flown With Extraordinary Skill"
Once again: Operation 911 demanded that the attacks be tightly coordinated. Four jets took off within 15 minutes of each other at Boston, Dulles, and Newark airports, and roughly two hours later, it was over. If we are to believe the story we are being told, the masterminds needed, at an absolute minimum, pilots who could actually fly the planes and who could arrive at the right place at the right time.
American Airlines Flight 77, Boeing 757, took off from Dulles Airport in Northern virginia at 8:10 a.m. and crashed into the Pentagon at 9:40 a.m. The Washington Post's September 12 says this: "Aviation sources said that the plane was flown with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm, possibly one of the hijackers. Someone even knew how to turn off the transponder, a move that is considerably less than obvious."
According to the article, the air traffic controllers "had time to warn the White House that the jet was aimed directly at the president's mansion and was traveling at a gut-wrenching speed—full throttle.
"But just as the plane seemed to be on a suicide mission into the White House, the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver. The plane circled 270 degrees from the right to approach the Pentagon from the west, whereupon Flight 77 fell below radar level, vanishing from controller's screens, the sources said," (pg. 11). (Washington Post, September 12, 2001, "On Flight 77: 'Our Plane Is Being Hijacked., pgs. 1 & 11. )
Meet Ace Suicide Pilot Hani Hanjour
Let's look at what we know about the alleged suicide pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, Hani Hanjour. According to press reports, Hanjour had used Bowie's Maryland Freeway Airport three times since mid-August as he attempted to get permission to use one of the airport's planes. This from The Prince George's [Maryland] Journal September 18, 2001:
"Marcel Bernard, the chief flight instructor at the airport, said the man named Hani Hanjour went into the air in a Cessna 172 with instructors from the airport three times beginning the second week of August and had hoped to rent a plane from the airport.
"According to published reports, law enforcement sources say Hanjour, in his mid-twenties, is suspected of crashing the American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. . . .
"Hanjour had his pilot's license, said Bernard, but needed what is called a 'check-out' done by the airport to gauge a pilot's skills before he or she is able to rent a plane at Freeway Airport which runs parallel to Route 50.
"Instructors at the school told Bernard that after three times in the air, they still felt he was unable to fly solo and that Hanjour seemed disappointed.
"Published reports said Hanjour obtained his pilot's license in April of 1999, but it expired six months later because he did not complete a required medical exam. He also was trained for a few months at a private school in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 1996, but did not finish the course because instructors felt he was not capable.
"Hanjour had 600 hours listed in his log book, Bernard said, and instructors were surprised he was not able to fly better with the amount of experience. Pete Goulatta, a special agent and spokesman for the FBI, said it is an on-going criminal investigation and he could not comment." (pg. 1.)
If you were the mastermind who planned this breathtaking terrorist attack, would you trust a man who took 600 hours of flying time and still could not do the job? Who was paying for Hanjour's lessons, and why?
Yet this is the man the FBI would have us believe flew Flight 77 into the Pentagon "with extraordinary skill." He could not even fly a Cessna 172!
By shifting the plane's position so radically, Flight 77 managed to hit the side of the Pentagon directly opposite the side on which the offices of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Chief of Staff were located.
Let's Meet The Other Aces
According to The Washington Post (September 19, 2001, "Hijack Suspects Tried Many Flight Schools"), Mohammed Atta, alleged hijacker of Flight 11, and Marwanal-Al-Shehhi, alleged hijacker of Flight 175, both of which crashed into the World Trade Center, attended hundreds of hours of lessons at Huffman Aviation, a flight school in Venice, Florida. They also took lessons at Jones Aviation Flying Service Inc., which operates from the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport. According to the Post, neither experience "worked out."
"A flight instructor at Jones who asked not be identified said Atta and Al Shehhi arrived in September or October" and asked to be given flight training. Atta, the instructor said, was particularly difficult. 'He would not look at your face,' the instructor said. 'When you talked to him, he could not look you in the eye. His attention span was very short."
The instructor said neither man was able to pass a Stage I rating test to track and intercept. After offering some harsh words, the instructor said, the two moved on . . . . "We didn't kick them out, but they didn't live up to our standards." (page A 15.)
Or try the Washington Post: Alleged hijackers Nawaq Alhazmi (Flight 77), Khaid Al-Midhar (Flight 77) and Hani Hanjour (Flight 77) all spent time in San Diego. "Two of the men, Alhazmi and Al-Midhar, also briefly attended a local fight school, but they were dropped because of their limited English and incompetence at the controls . . . .
"Last spring, two of the men visited Montgomery Field, a community airport . . . and sought flying lessons. They spoke to instructors at Sorbi's Flying Club, which allowed them to take only two lessons before advising them to quit.
"'Their English was horrible, and their mechanical skills were even worse,' said an instructor, who asked not to be named. 'It was like they had hardly even ever driven a car . . . ..'
"'They seemed like nice guys,' the instructor said, 'but in the plane, they were dumb and dumber.'" ("San Diegans See Area as Likely Target," Washington Post, September 24, 2001, pg. A7.)