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.
"Wally (Hilliard) and Rudi formed a fictitious company to keep Rudi in the U.S.," explained one aviation observer in Naples. "But the I.N.S. has known about that for years. Something else is going on."
Aviation sources suggest the deportation move by the I.N.S.— widely-accused of having failed to do anything while terrorists roamed freely across U.S. borders— is less a sign of any renewed vigor at a beleaguered federal agency than an Administration effort to curtail the 9/11 investigation by placing Dekkers beyond the reach of questioning.
For the record, a spokesperson speaking for the I.N.S Commissioner would only say, "We do not comment on individuals being removed from this country."
The (acting) I.N.S. Commissioner is Michael Garcia, who headed the terrorism investigation for INS following the 1993 World Trade Center attack.
"What happened to the flight school records? Ask Jeb."
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.
Many in the South West Florida aviation community have begun to voice the suspicion that ‘Magic Dutch Boy’ Dekkers played a still-unexplained role in the story of the terrorist conspiracy’s time in Florida.
"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," said one skeptical Naples aviation executive.
"They're getting Rudi out of town fast. And Wally Hilliard is heading out the door right behind him."
This statement is bolstered by records of recent Florida property transactions, which reveal that Rudi Dekkers has, indeed, been liquidating assets including airplanes and a condominium.
'Cashing out' at Huffman Aviation
Now the MadCowMorningNews has learned that 70-year old Wallace J. Hilliard of Naples, FL., multi-millionaire businessman and self-styled Mormon Bishop, is also selling out, peddling Huffman Aviation, the infamous "terror flight school" bought just three years ago.
As if the Venice Airport needed any more "Magic Dutch Boys," the potential buyers represent what one source close to the sale characterized as "two Dutch investors."
As Rudi Dekkers prepares to (hopefully-for-him) slip from sight, many things about him remain mysterious. The biggest unanswered question involves how Dekkers, running a flight school which trained both pilots who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center Towers, and a known fugitive from justice in Holland, managed to end up being invited to testify before the Congress of the United States of America… instead of behind bars.
Why did the FBI and the national media accept at face value (and so eagerly) Dekker's claims to being an innocent victimized businessman? Was Rudi, even in the immediate aftermath of September 11, somehow being protected?
"When the FBI came down the day after Sept. 11, it totally amazed me that they took everything Rudi said as the truth," said Sue DeAngelis, Dekkers’ former office manager, who let FBI agents in at Huffman Aviation when they arrived in the middle of the night.
Perhaps the answer is that Dekkers was already well-known in certain circles. A startling number of federal agencies, the MadCowMorningNews has learned exclusively, have files on Dekker's going back a decade.
"One of the usual suspects."
"I remember when DEA, Customs, everyone was after him over here," stated one aviation observer in Naples, FL. "Some money got seized because of his supposed illegal activities."
"Everything that guy ever did—from a to z—was illegal," said another.
Dekkers, of course, is one of the two Dutch nationals whose curious and nearly-simultaneous appearance as flight school owners several years ago at the Venice Airport was followed by an influx of hundreds of Arab and German student pilots.
The other "Magic Dutch Boy" is equally mysterious, according to some. "Arne Kruithof sat across from my desk and told me he had trained at a U.S. military installation in South East Missouri," stated one aviation executive in Venice.
"What is a Dutch national doing training at a secure U.S. military facility?"
If Mohamed Atta had local logistical assistance while in this country, Rudi Dekkers is the right place to start looking.
In the aftermath of 9/11, Dekkers defended having trained anyone who walked up to his counter.
"I don't need anything from you, just a check to start flying," he insisted.
He even likened flying lessons to shopping for groceries…
"We're just a business," Dekkers said.
The Man Who Went on Larry King Unmasked
Just what kind of business Dekkers was running, while terrorists were practicing touch and go's on the runways at the Venice Airport?
Some answers can be gleaned in court documents filed at the Sarasota County Courthouse in a sexual harassment lawsuit by a former 18-year old female against Dekkers, her overweight and middle-aged former boss.
Dekkers settled the suit, agreeing to pay damages. When he later stopped making payments, the young woman's attorney filed a motion to enforce the settlement agreement, and the sealed complaint became public information for the first time.
It includes contemporaneous notes taken by the then-18 year old girl, who was jotting down Dekkers statements and behavior towards her at the same time Mohamed Atta and his terrorist cadre attended the school.
"As long as I worked at Huffman Aviation I have been subjected to sexual harassment by Rudi Dekkers," the girl states.
"Can I bite into you?" Dekkers asked her on one occasion, her notes state. Told that that was 'sick,' Dekkers' replied, "I know, I just can't help it. Look at you: your hair, your face, your ass…you're a hot girl!"
Another time Dekkers' asked his young female employee, barely out of high school, according to her contemporaneous notes, if he could "buy her."
"Buy me what?" she responds.
"You know, just buy you. It should be like in the olden days. I should be able to just buy you," Dekkers replied. .
In the same conversation, according to her notes, the boorish Dekkers wondered aloud what the reaction would be if someone walked into his office while he was tucking his shirt (and ample girth) back into his pants.
"Wouldn't that be funny if somebody walked in now as I'm putting my shirt away? They would think I was fucking you!"
"All publicity is good publicity."
On another occasion, the girls notes state, Dekker's asked her, "Did you see that Russian girl I had in here? I couldn't hire her, because she's Russian. But I did tell her I had a job for her."
"In the pilot shop?" the young employee asks.
"No, I told her she could give me a blow job," Dekkers says.
Dekkers, the girl wrote, told her, "You're beautiful when you're mad." To which she replied, "You have no right touching my pants."
The young woman's allegations of a pattern of harassment by Dekkers was confirmed by Amanda Keller, Mohamed Atta's former live-in girlfriend, who spent time waiting in the flight school lounge while Atta trained.
"Rudi Dekkers… He’s a total pervert," she stated in an exclusive three hour interview videotaped at a secret location. "A nasty, nasty man."
"He said to me one time, 'What would it take for me to have a piece of you?' I told him I didn't know what he was talking about. He said, 'Oh come on you know what I mean.'
"So I looked at him and said: 'You’re lucky I don’t hit you.'
And his secretary stood up and applauded. He told her to 'sit down and shut up.'"
Like many who worked with Dekker's, his former office manager Sue DeAngelis has a poor opinion of his character.
"You know why he told me he did so many TV interviews after the attack? Because, he said, it was the best free advertising we would ever get."
The FBI has stated that they have found no evidence that the terrorists received any outside help while in this country.
Maybe they should look again.
What links are there between Atta's Hamburg cadre and its sponsors and the flight schools in Venice, Florida?
We may never know.
