Sometime in the middle of March of the year 2000 Amanda Keller rented an apartment at the Sandpiper Apartments across the street from the Venice Airport, according to credible eyewitnesses.
Two weeks later terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta moved in with her, beginning a bumpy relationship which came to a stormy end six weeks later with Amanda dumping his two suitcases and one gym bag from her second floor balcony down onto the building's asphalt parking lot, say eyewitnesses, where Atta stood waiting for a cab to take him away. (see 'Key Witness 'Disappears' in Venice FL')
This squalid little domestic spat would be of no more importance than a bad episode of "Cops" except for this:
As the MadCowMorningNews has been reporting exclusively (see 'One Year Later, the Cover-Up Continues') this brief romance or assignation between 'terrorist ringleader' Atta and 'out-call lingerie model' Keller took place a full three months before the FBI says Atta first arrived in the U.S.
Since there's justice for 3000 dead people to consider, the question must be asked: is this just another example of sloppy investigative technique by the much-maligned FBI?
Or is there, instead, some hidden can of worms here that federal officials don't want opened?
"What's the Wahabbi take on girls with pink hair?"
In either case, the discrepancies and gaps in the FBI's account of 'Islamic fundamentalist' Atta's U.S. timeline encourage speculation on whether there is something suspicious and unexplored in the fact that Mohamed Atta showed up at her apartment just two weeks after Amanda Keller moved in.
"She (Amanda) had only been here for a short time before he showed up, just a couple of weeks," says the couple's neighbor, Stephanie Frederickson, to which apartment manager Charles Grapentine concurs.
"She told us she met him at the bar at the 44th Aero," states Frederickson. "They were remodeling and the 44th Aero wasn't open yet, but the bar was still doing business."
"That's when she started dressing really slutty, and dyeing her hair pink," Frederickson continues.
The image of Mohamed Atta as "Islamic fundamentalist" has been taking a continuous beating (see 'Says Waitress of Terror Pilots: "I Thought They Were Mafia!" from people we met in Florida who had crossed paths with him, many of whom made him sound more like a character out of HBO's "The Soprano's" than an "Islamic fundamentalist."
If 'Islamic fundamentalists' ever shack up with women with hot pink hair, we haven't heard much about it.
Then, too, Atta also liked to flash a roll, we learned, like any 'made guy' from New Jersey.
"Atta carried a fanny pack around his waist, says Charles Grapentine. "I remember Amanda once telling him she needed some new clothes, and he reached in and peeled off a few hundreds from a thick roll of cash he had stuffed inside the fanny pack."
Mum's (still) the word in Venice Florida
The FBI, which still insists Atta didn't arrive in the U.S. until June, did not warm to apartment manager Charles Grapentine's earlier recollection of his presence.
And they were especially frosty on the subject of his talking to reporters…
"They called me a liar, and told me to keep my mouth shut," states the ex-marine grimly. "Nobody likes to hear that: that they didn't see something they know they saw."
Grapentine's account of Atta's presence is confirmed by the couple who lived next door, who also received 'friendly' warnings from the FBI, as we have previously reported, about the advisability of maintaining a low media profile.
"Atta was a nasty guy, very rude," says housewife Stephanie Frederickson. "When I said 'hello' to him on the stairs one time, he said to me, "You do not speak to me unless I speak to you first!"
"I said get over yourself, bub," says Frederickson. "You're in America now."
Since early April we have been reporting growing evidence indicating that there are big problems with the FBI’s account of Mohamed Atta’s terrorist cadre’s stay in this country, in everything from when the FBI says Atta first arrived in the U.S. to where Atta and the inner cadre spent the final days before the attack.
According to the FBI Atta first arrived in the U.S. (in Newark) on June 3, 2000. As we have seen this is not quite correct. Mohamed Atta came to America months (at least) before the FBI says he did.
And now comes independent confirmation of this huge scoop, from an unexpected source: an official with the US Government itself.
In an interview with Brian Ross of ABC NEWS, an official of the U.S. Department of Agriculture who had dealings with Mohamed Atta may have inadvertently let the cat out of the bag for good about Atta's presence in the U.S. during the Spring of 2000.
"That's A-T-T-A… like in 'Atta boy.'"
Johnelle Bryant, a Dept of Agriculture loan officer, said (transcript here) that Mohamed Atta applied for a USDA loan to buy a crop duster, "between the end of April and the third week of May of 2000."
But as we've seen the FBI says Atta didn't arrive in America until June 3.
And the Farm Services Administration loan officer is unlikely to have misstated the date: she told Ross she took notes from the moment Atta came in to her office and gave her his name.
"He called himself "Mohamed Atta," loan officer Bryant told Ross.
"And I was taking notes. We typically take notes of what's considered an initial applicant interview. And while taking notes, I wrote his name down. And I spelled it A-T-T-A-H, and he told me, "No, A-T-T-A, as in 'Atta boy!'"
ABC's Ross, focused on the "face to face with the terrorist ringleader!" angle, missed the revelation.
"Welcome to the Island of Lost Witnesses"
Since her ABC interview USDA official Johnelle Bryant has been transferred within the Agriculture Department to an undisclosed location, where, according to one government source, "she is most assuredly not talking with reporters anymore."
Apparently Ms Bryant spoke a little out of turn, and has been whisked away to an idyllic hideaway shielded from the media, a place which I have begun to think of as "The Island of Lost Witnesses."
There she may be frolicking in the surf even now, alongside other Lost 9/11 Witnesses, unfortunate souls all, who through no fault of their own saw things that they shouldn't have seen and now possess inconvenient knowledge and information for which they were never properly cleared.
Like Atta's former squeeze Amanda Keller, currently missing, or the manager and bartender of the Ft Lauderdale bar where Atta got drunk three nights before the attack, also missing, or…
The point is, the list is, slowly but steadily, growing.
The truly amazing thing about what loan officer Johnelle Bryant had to say about Mohamed Atta's presence in this country in the Spring of 2000 is that her testimony has been confirmed by numerous other credible sources.
So if Mohamed Atta was, demonstrably, in the U.S. at least three months or so before the FBI says he first arrived, why don't they just quietly change their timeline?
Why dissemble over a couple of months?
We admit we haven't a clue.
But at least after the Kennedy Assassination sources were in agreement about when Lee Harvey Oswald had been in New Orleans, and when he'd been in Dallas.
Despite our wondrous communications technology, this sort of truth seems to have become, forty years on, an ever-more elusive quality.
