A federal complaint filed April 5 in Ft. Myers, FL. accusing flight school owners Wally Hilliard and Rudi Dekkers of flying numerous "unauthorized and unsupervised flights" during April and May of 1999 makes no mention of the clients on the illegal flights, who the MadCowMorningNews has learned were Saudi nationals.
“They were flying for the Saudis,” said an aviation executive familiar with the operation. "They were ferrying Saudi princes all over the U.S."
Nor does the complaint mention that a Hilliard-owned Lear jet is currently flying regularly to a remote island in the Bahamas, apparently without an FAA air carrier operating certificate.
The unauthorized flights in the federal complaint took place on three separate Lear jets owned by Wally Hilliard of Naples, FL., the self-same ‘retired’ 71-year old Midwestern insurance executive who bankrolled the flight school attended by both Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi.
Also named in the complaint is "Magic Dutch Boy" Rudi Dekkers, whose criminal activities, according to court documents filed in his native Holland, once put him at the center of "a web of intrigue," from which he has apparently never emerged.
The federal complaint reveals that the flights took place during April and May of 1999, raising questions about still-undisclosed ties to Saudis the men may have had before terrorists began arriving at their two hastily-purchased Florida flight schools.
Saudi Princes "not germane" to 9/11?
“You can go to jail for the kind of things they’re charged with," said the aviation executive. "But all they're getting is a slap on the wrist. What they were doing is blatantly illegal. Without a Federal Aviation Administration air carrier operating certificate, the Government has no idea where those planes went, or even who was on board. Whoever they were flying for didn’t want anyone to know.”
Any move by the FAA to curb the suspicious aviation activities of Hilliard and Dekkers at this late date raises a question.
“Why start now?”
“Because they’re back in business,” explained a source at the Naples Airport. “They could become a major embarrassment.”
Federal officials declined to discuss the case, other than to say it was a civil matter unrelated to 9/11.
Thank god for that bit of reassurance, some felt. Without it questions might be raised about the thoroughness of the FBI's investigation into the two men's relationship to the terrorist conspiracy's activities in this country. Or whether there was any real investigation of the two men at all.
"Sabotaged fuel lines, death threats, & fire-bombed planes"
Like a 'bandit cab' in the air, Hilliard's Lear jet is still flying without any apparent official sanction. Though the FAA license under which it operated has been suspended, (that of Air Florida, belonging to Pakistani Perez Khan) the plane (see photo:N35NK -1983 Learjet 35A) still makes regular runs to the Bahamas, as this photo taken two weeks ago in Rum Cay attests, for clients involved in what appears to be a titanic struggle for control of the isolated island, amid rumors that a principal in the struggle has financial ties to Saudi arms merchant (and Iran-Contra middleman) Adnan Khashoggi.
According to Georgia real estate developer Billy Davis, one of the participants in the fight, the Lear serves as a backdrop in a colorful saga seemingly ripped from a Tom Clancy spy thriller, including sabotaged airplanes, death threats, and the recent fire-bombing of a brand new private plane at the airport in Rum Cay.
As we've already seen , the Rolodex of the secretive financier whose flight schools trained the key Hamburg cadre terrorists contains an eclectic mix of names: from a former CIA U-2 pilot to a Texarkana money-man to a famous right wing televangelist to whom Hilliard loaned millions which the "Servant of God" feels no special calling to repay.
A recent front page review of "Welcome to TerrorLand" in Hilliard's home-town Green-Bay Press Gazette noticed the same thing about Hilliard which has been on our minds for two years: "Terrorists, drug runners, cover-ups, CIA, KGB and shady characters are the cloak-and-dagger kinds of elements that make for a riveting spy novel or action thriller. It's hardly the place you'd expect to find retired Green Bay businessman Wally J. Hilliard."
Now the MadCowMorningNews has learned that Hilliard's taste for business associates involved in questionable activities continues unabated.
Of course, as Federal officials have indicated, none of this has anything to do with 9/11. The business associates of Dekkers and Hilliard, two men doing land office business with Osama bin Laden's organization before the 9/11 attack, are of no interest in the investigation.
Still, we decided to take a look… just in case.
Dead men tell no tales
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Ft. Myers, FL. accused Hilliard and Dekkers of using three separate Lear jets in 26 unsupervised passenger flights from Naples, Florida to numerous locations around the country during April and May of 1999.
What were Hilliard and Dekkers doing in early 1999?
Whatever it was, it proved more than a little dangerous to one of their pilots, Robert Michael Johnson. A six-passenger Cessna 210’s belonging to the men crashed in the Gulf two miles off the Naples Pier in early February, resulting in the death of the pilot.
The cause of the deadly crash remains unclear. And not by accident, either…
“A federal investigation into a fatal plane crash offshore from Naples may be hampered because the aircraft's owner has suspended salvage operations,” reported the Feb 9, 1999 Fort Myers News-Press. "AeroJet Service Center called off the salvage operation, apparently because it was costing more than the aircraft was worth."
No doubt this news helped the dead pilot’s mom gain closure.
The Boys' Are Back in Town
Notice of Hilliard and Dekkers involvement in “current operations” came from Billy Davis, a former Republican state senator from Arizona who we were to learn has traveled under something of a cloud for a number of years. He wrote us that a Lear jet owned by Hilliard has been flying regularly for the past few months to Rum Cay, an off-the-beaten-path island in the Bahamas, for a client involved in what he termed “suspicious activities.”
Davis’ interest in imparting this news to us was entirely self-serving, we learned. He is a principal in one of two factions—Hilliard’s Lear jet clients are the other side—fighting for control of the island.
It seems there’s never a dull moment, where Hilliard and Dekkers are concerned. Previously, of course, their clients and partners have included thugs and assassins from Osama bin Laden’s Hamburg cadre, as well as drug smugglers busted with 43 pounds of heroin onboard one of his Lear jets (which the DEA subsequently forced him to cede).
The Orlando Sentinel called it "the biggest drug seizure in Central Florida history.”
"Gun runners, dope smugglers, & suitcase salesmen."
The first thing we discovered about Rum Cay is that it is the very definition of 'secluded.' Located 375 miles to the southeast of Ft. Lauderdale in the remote southeastern Bahamas, the island once served as a refuge for pirates, was a center of gun-running during the American Civil War and grew to full prominence during Prohibition as a port used for boot-legging.
Bob Little Jr. is the owner of the plane that was fire-bombed on the island three weeks ago. “Rum Cay was the largest privateering island back in the 1700’s,” he told us. “Some say the pirates never left.”
The two competing groups involved in the current struggle are contending over a large chunk of the island’s real estate. The faction using Hilliard's Lear jet, Davis told us, “have been after a tract of land that I have title to since the early 80's. Prior to that deeds going back to 1700's. To date I have spent over $300k for legal fees in a number of courts in Florida, Georgia, Arizona and The Bahamas. Five different law firms are working for me."
All of the battles, apparently, haven’t been in court…
"My plane had a fuel line sliced, after which the cockpit filled with gas,” said Davis. “Thankfully we got down without further problem and had the hose fixed in Nassau. Then last week another aircraft was burned (arson) on the ground in Rum Cay.”
"I believe that some of these people are connected with those you write about,” Davis wrote. “At least their aircraft is involved, and flying weekly to Rum Cay.”
Whatever the merits of Davis’ other charges, a quick check of FAA records reveals that the Lear jet in question (N35NK – 1983 Learjet 35A) is indeed registered to Plane 1 Leasing in Naples, FL, owned by Wally Hilliard.
"Location, location, location"
What's going on Rum Cay? For one thing, they've just built a new runway, which now allows private jets like Hilliard's Lear to land. Local newspapers seem to run regular items like this one: "COPS SEIZE $50 MILLION IN DRUGS."
"Bahamian and U.S. drug-enforcement officials confiscated $50 million in cocaine that was being smuggled aboard an unlicensed catamaran in Bahamian waters, officials said. Acting on police intelligence, authorities seized the 2,190 pounds of the drug aboard an unnamed 44-foot catamaran less than two miles off Rum Cay."
Some accounts attest to the more grisly side of the trade: "Mr. Thompson's body was found in ignominious circumstances, dumped in the ocean after having been missing for three or so days. The head and much of the body was wrapped in duct tape, which strapped the arms to the sides and the legs together, and bound with a chain fastened by a large lock and weighted by a cement block tied to the legs with a rope. Once it was retrieved, dog bites were discovered all over the body. It appears that the person was killed by attack dogs and then dumped."
It has long been well-known, of course, that the Bahamas offer a strategic location convenient to Florida, and is used as a staging post to smuggle cocaine and marijuana into the US. DEA officials state that as much as two-thirds of all cocaine entering the US transits the Bahamas.
Even travel writers know Rum Cay is in the middle of the action. “Today the islands serve as airstrips to refuel light aircraft flying in from Colombia en route for southern Florida, or as transshipment points from aircraft to high-speed motor boats,” reads a yachting guide to the region around Rum Cay.
"The operation is swift and simple. All the drug-traffickers need are a few willing hands to work for as little as 15 minutes, and for someone in authority to look the other way.”
More of “The Usual Suspects”
Who is Wally Hilliard in business with in the Bahamas? Does their identity shed any light on the milieu which we have come to think of as “Wally World?”
"I have learned that the original conspiracy for the things involving me where put together in Tallahassee at the Federal Prison," said Billy Davis. "Those involved at prison were Leslie S. Greyling, F. Lee Bailey, Raymond MacDonald and others."
What was this? F. Lee Bailey?
The reputed head of the operation, according to Davis, is a South African named Lesley Greyling, a country where Hilliard has "business interests." Another reason Greyling caught our interest immediately is that stories about him relied rather heavily on the "M" word. Mobster. Mob. Mafia.
"A Mafia Cloud"
London's MAIL ON SUNDAY on August 26, 2001 headlined: "Mafia cloud over web domain operator." The paper reported, "AN international financier charged by police in America in connection with a Mafia-related extortion scheme on Wall Street has emerged as the key figure behind Britain's biggest web domain name business… Greyling has managed to avoid extradition to America on charges filed against him last year alleging that he participated in a Mafia scheme to extort money from investors."
“FAMILIAR NAMES IN SECURITIES FRAUD BUST” headlined a June 17, 2000 story in the Palm Beach Post on Greyling's most recent arrest. “A federal bust Wednesday of 120 people on investment fraud charges reacquainted veteran law enforcement officials with some familiar faces. Some of them have been around for so long they're considered part of the "old school" of investment con men, officials said.”
The paper continued, "The securities fraud crackdown Wednesday was billed by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White as "the biggest dent we've ever made in the mob's influence on Wall Street." Each of the five chief Mafia families was represented in the arrests, which followed charges that the defendants had engaged in Internet-based fraud schemes as well as old-fashioned violence."
Greyling was running a stock swindle out of Vancouver, Canada, dubbed the "scam capital of the world" by Forbes magazine. The Vancouver Stock Exchange checkered past has seen stock offerings floated for everything from cone-shaped headpieces designed to cure baldness to archeological expeditions to find King Solomon's mines. "The white-collar translation of omerta" — the mafia code of silence — is the description of Vancouver Stock Exchange offered by a securities analyst who testified in a recent case there," read one typical account.
Lions and tigers and bears… oh my!
But Lesley Greyling isn't a mobster of the 'dese dem & dose' variety. He helmed a Palm Beach company, Members Service Corp., which we learned had been chaired by former Republican Governor of Florida Claude Kirk, and which used Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi as an "international consultant."
Greyling was even said to be considering helping the Saudi arms merchant and Iran-Contra middleman build a casino on the Gaza Strip.
It is a Strange Brew… Saudis and the Mob and terror flight school owner Wally Hilliard all bumping chests together in the world's Bermuda Triangle of narcotics trafficking.
What to make of it all?
The one thing known for certain, thanks to vigilant Federal officials, is that none of this is of interest to the 9/11 investigation.