Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta and the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida

Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta and the 9-11 Cover-Up in Florida, Daniel Hopsicker, MadCow Press, 2007

This in-depth investigation explores one part of the 9-11 story: the activities of terrorist leader Mohamed Atta in Florida before that fateful day.

A major part of the official story is that Atta and his fellow hijackers slipped into America unnoticed and were able to attend flight school without attracting government attention. A person would think that law enforcement, including the FBI, would be interested in finding out the truth. There are numerous instances throughout this book of witnesses being intimidated into silence by the FBI. Soon after the attacks, the FBI raided the local police department, seized all the files on the "owner" of the flight school where several of the terrorists trained, and put them directly onto a military plane to Washington, accompanied by Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

A person named Mohamed Atta was accused of a bus bombing in Israel in the mid-1980s. Even if they were not the same person, wouldn't that have put the name "Mohamed Atta" on some terrorist watch list? A Mohamed Atta is also listed as a graduate of the US International Officers School at Maxwell AFB. The researchers who worked on this book offered to clear up the question for the Pentagon, free of charge, but they were not interested. Assertions from the Pentagon that they were not the same person were not convincing. As many as seven of the hijackers received training at secure military installations. To even be considered for such a program would have required Atta to be on very friendly terms with an Arab ally, like Saudi Arabia.

Much of this book looks at Rudi Dekkers, the "owner" of  Huffman Aviation. A Dutchman who is a fugitive back home in the Netherlands, he is generously described, by people familiar with aviation in Florida, as a "scumbag." He would fall several months behind on his rent at Venice Airport, then suddenly be flush with cash. He deserved to be arrested, several times over, on various state and federal charges. Each time, "high government officials" would tell his accusers to back off. Dekkers was also the subject of a federal task force accusing him of smuggling high technology out of the USA.

A reasonable question would be: Who cares what Atta and the others were doing in Florida before the attacks? If this one part of the official 9-11 story can be so thoroughly discredited, are there other parts of the official story that are similarly worthless? This book is very highly recommended. It is investigative journalism the way it is supposed to work; put a witness statement next to a seemingly unrelated verified fact, and see where the trail leads. This is very much worth reading.

Barry and "the boys": The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History

Barry and "the boys": The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History, Daniel Hopsicker, Mad Cow Press, 2001

This book is all about a scandal feared by the White House more than Whitewater, a scandal not touched by the American news media. It's a totally different look at the last half century of American history, and it revolves around a place called Mena, Arkansas and a man named Barry Seal.

Seal grew up in Louisiana and was addicted to airplanes from an early age. While still a teenager, he could pilot nearly anything with wings. Joining the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol, he met a man named David Ferrie (later to be well known in JFK assassination circles) who introduced him to the clandestine world. Soon, Seal would disappear for days or weeks at a time, and come back with, for a teenager in the 1950s, insanely large amounts of money.

Becoming a life-long CIA operative, Seal started his career running guns to both sides in the Cuban Revolution, to Fidel Castro and Fulgencio Batista. Over the next 40 years, Seal was at the center of all the major events in US history, from the JFK assassination (the book blows more holes, as if more were needed, in the Warren Commission's Lone Gunman theory), to Vietnam drug-running, to Watergate, to Iran-Contra. The entire period is characterized by very deep ties between US intelligence and the Mafia, even going back to Cuba before Castro. The author isn't talking about vague ties with minor-league mobsters, he is talking about people like Johnny Roselli and Carlos Marcello, the absolute top of the Mob "pyramid."

Mena, Arkansas was a small town with an equally small airport. It was also a major entry point for a flood of airplane-carried cocaine into the United States (by the ton). Going on for years and years, one must ask if the major players in Arkansas politics, like Jackson Stephens and Bill Clinton, were somehow in cahoots with the CIA and the Mob. The author also explores plenty of ties between Seal and the Bush family.

This book surpasses the level of Wow. It has enough revelations for ten books. It is extremely highly recommended, especially for anyone interested in recent American history.