Contradicting the FBI’s chronology of the terrorists final days, an investigation by the MadCowMorningNews has learned exclusively that on three separate occasions during the final six weeks before September 11 Mohamed Atta was in Venice on Florida’s Gulf Coast, a place the FBI’s chronology says he left fully nine months before, visiting subjects unknown for reasons unknown.
In interviews for Mohamed Atta & the Venice Flying Circus (portions of which air this week on theconspiracychannel.com) credible local eyewitnesses report that Atta and his sidekick Marwan Al-Shehhi were in a restaurant a block from Atta’s former rented home six weeks before the attack, on the phone from Venice on a Fort Lauderdale rent-a-car company's Caller ID three weeks before, and, just one week before the attack, ordering submarine sandwiches in the deli of a Venice, Florida supermarket.
The FBI has previously publicly stated only that during the terrorist conspiracy’s final three weeks of preparation Atta was in the Miami area, with a brief trip to Las Vegas.
The Bureau has been aware of Atta’s visits to Venice, despite saying nothing about them, we have learned, through rental car receipts, phone records, and interviews with the owner of a Fort Lauderdale car rental agency who rented cars to Atta during the month before the terrorist attack.
The glaring omission of the fact that Mohamed Atta had, for unknown reasons, a continuing presence in the retirement community of Venice raises disturbing questions when viewed against the backdrop of continuing suspicion about the nature of the operations being carried out there at two Dutch-owned flight schools, which together trained three of the four terrorist pilots (see previous stories).
Discovering that the terrorist conspiracy was based in Venice, or had still-unexplained links there, would seem to be a useful lead to the enfeebled FBI, which has so far been unable to track down any living participants in a conspiracy which claimed 3000 lives.
"The FBI took all over files. Everything."
The failure to disclose to the American people what little the FBI does seems to know points directly to the existence of a cover-up, designed to shield from public view activities which took place in the Venice area over the two-year period prior to the tragedy, activities whose clear result was a massive influx of hundreds of mostly Arab student pilots into the area.
Increasing doubt still further is the circumstance under which the files of the two flight schools—which collectively may have trained dozens of terrorist pilots—were confiscated by the FBI, never to be seen or heard from again.
"They loaded two Ryder trucks (of Huffman Aviation and Venice Police Department documents) right outside that (police station) window," one Venice law enforcement official told us.
"And then they drove them right onto a C130 military cargo plane at Sarasota airport which flew out with Jeb Bush aboard. The FBI took all our files. Everything."
Do the files reveal what Mohamed Atta was doing in Venice one week before September 11th?
In addition to the local restaurant owners who witnessed a shouting match between Atta and Marwan six weeks before, the two were also spotted together just a week before the attack.
Islamic fundamentalists do lunch
At a supermarket a mile from the Venice Airport known to have been frequented by the terrorists, Brenda Cover, who works in the deli, said, "When they showed pictures of three different guys, Atta was one of them, several days later on TV, I immediately recognized their faces."
"And I told my husband then, ‘oh my god, those are the three guys! They were just in store a week ago. The week before, they were in the store. They got subs.’"
Atta had an intimidating or menacing presence, she stated, a sentiment heard again and again from people who had contact with him.
"I didn’t like they way they stared at you. It would have been different if they had talked to you like you were a normal person. You know, ‘hi, how are you today’ sort of thing."
"But he just stood back and glared at you with his dark eyes," she continued. "It gave me a frightening eerie feeling, like you wouldn’t want to be caught in the parking lot at night with him."
The flood of Arab student pilots coming through Venice had not escaped the notice of local townspeople, according to Brenda, who said she noticed the influx in the year before September 11th.
Venice to Fort Lauderdale on Caller ID
A third visit to Venice by Atta and Marwan was confirmed by the owner of a rental agency in Fort Lauderdale, near Miami on Florida’s other (east) coast…
During the first week of August Atta and Al-Shehhi rented a white Ford Escort from Warrick's Rent-a-Car, in Pompano Beach.
"He rented two cars over three contracts for a total of five weeks," owner Bradley Warrick told us. "He wanted it (his second rental) for two weeks, he told me, to go over to the west coast of Florida."
"While he was over on the west coast during those two weeks he called me from Venice. I saw it on my caller ID, and said to myself, oh wonderful. I’ve got a car broke down over on the west coast of Florida. "
"But he was only calling me because the ‘service engine soon’ light was on. I assured him that he would be all right, and that the car would be fine, he wouldn’t break down."
"Its not like there's a free press anymore."
At least three times during the last six weeks of his life terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta left the jazzier precincts of the Miami area to journey across the state to a retirement community with the second oldest population in the entire United States.
If Mohamed Atta had a preference for blue-haired widows over tall European models, it would come as a surprise, given his proven penchant for night life ranging from the Cheetah Club and the Pink Pony to Harry's Bar in New York, where he liked a table near the piano.
So the Venice meetings must have been business.
Who was he meeting? Why was he there?
Local law enforcement officials indicated to the MadCowMorningNews that they, too, would like to know the answer.
Nobody has yet been charged in the attacks on America that claimed 3000 lives.
Though the FBI talks about the agents they had on the case, the doors they knocked down, and the thousand and more suspects they have arrested, they do not explain why they have failed to catch anyone responsible.
If there is another Federal Agency involved in Venice, whose malfeasance the FBI is suppressing, they probably never will.
