Two stories currently unfolding in Venice FL offer glimpses behind the curtain veiling the terrorist conspiracy's activities before the Sept 11 attack…
Arne Kruithof, one of the two ‘Magic Dutch Boys’ at the Venice FL Airport, may have previously-undisclosed links to Zacharias Moussaoui, charged by the United States government as an accomplice with Osama bin Laden and the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings.
Kruithof was grilled for two days last week at the Sarasota FL court house about his connections to Moussaoui by a Justice Dept. Asst. Attorney General and top-level officials from the FBI, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.
The group was in town taking depositions from potential witnesses in Moussaoui's upcoming trial.
Kruithof is the owner of the Venice flight school which trained Siad Al-Jarrah, at the controls of the plane which went down in western Pennsylvania. Less well-known is the fact his school also trained Ramzi Binalshibh, who lived at the same Hamburg address as Atta and who is currently the ‘most wanted’ Hamburg cadre member.
But authorities have not hinted previously that Kruithof's contacts with terrorists may have included dealings with Moussaoui, the alleged "20th hijacker."
More to come.
Present whereabouts (still) a mystery
On another front, we have so far learned very little more more about Mohamed Atta’s American girlfriend. Amanda Keller and Mohamed Atta, you will recall, lived together in her Venice apartment during March and early April of 2000, fully four months before the FBI says Atta first entered the U.S.
For her part, Ms Keller has spoken barely a dozen words to the press. Authorities told her not to say anything at all about Atta, she told reporters in her one quote…
"I can't really discuss anything," she said. "I'm afraid I'll get in trouble."
A lot can happen in two years
It’s been two years since hundreds of Arab student pilots practiced take-offs and landings, in squadrons of as many as sixteen aloft at a time, on the runways of the Venice FL Airport.
In some ways nothing has changed. The airport's two 6000-foot runways still point out over the vast and sparkling Gulf of Mexico. There is still no tower, no radar, and no one to check in with.
Some people seem to find that an irresistibly-attractive set of circumstances.
It has been reported that terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta lived in Venice for more than six months, from June-December 2000.
What is being kept secret is that Mohamed Atta was also in Venice during two of the last three weeks of his life.
Visiting persons unknown… For reasons unknown… On some of his last days on Earth.
This has been reported nowhere except the MadCowMorningNews. (Now you know how we got our name.)
Three days after September 11 it briefly surfaced in the news that three of the four terrorist pilots from Hamburg, Germany had moved from there to tiny Venice FL.
The question that has never been answered is why.
Venice FL is a retirement community, its got the second-oldest population in the entire United States, and absolutely nothing to recommend it to young men.
They roll up the sidewalks at sunset. Local restaurant traffic peaks a half-hour before the end of the early-bird special.
An operation hiding in plain sight
Yet large numbers of Middle Eastern men were enrolled as students at flight schools here, which were operated by people reeking with shady and clandestine connections. And all within spitting distance of communities of 'retired' CIA agents.
A row of aluminum hangars runs along the street side of the airport.
The ownership of those hangers is, even now, quietly changing hands.
Rudi Dekker's Huffman Aviation anchors one end. Rumor around the airport is that he'll be gone in 60 days.
Then comes Florida Air (now Triple Diamond), then Arne Kruithof's Florida Flight Training Center. Aviations observers say Kruithof has been told to cooperate or his papers may be revoked.
Arne, too, may now have outlasted his usefulness.
Then there is a specialty plane repair shop, and at the other end of the airport a hangar where Florida Air used to keep its Jetstreams.
Dozens of the pilot trainees at the two Dutch-owned flight schools in Venice are today suspected of being terrorists.
The schools were training a hundred Arab student pilots for every Mideast job opening.
What went on here does not exactly, at this time, make any kind of sense.
And now it's been a whole year since we watched the unimaginable made manifest right before us.
In its Aug 30 9/11 recap story the New York Times says, "The Federal Bureau of Investigation believes that Mr. Atta was the pilot of one of the planes that struck the World Trade Center, and Mr. Shehhi is believed to have flown the other one. Mr. Jarrah is presumed to have been the pilot of the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania (italics ours.)
Considering we lost 3000 people, that's pretty weak tea.
Some might even consider it a betrayal.
Why haven't we done better?
