"Heroin, Al Qaeda and the Florida Flight School"

[Minstrel Boy]

Interesting stuff here from Sander Hicks:

...what makes Ben-Veniste such an intriguing player on the 9/11 Commission (The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States) is his experience with rogue drug-running CIA operatives. Ben-Veniste defended Barry Seal, the notorious smuggler who flew C-123 military cargo planes filled with cocaine into Mena, Arkansas on behalf of the contras.

Al Qaeda's lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta, was allegedly partying with CIA-connected pilots while he got his flight training in fall/winter 2000 at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Fla., where two of the other 9/11 hijacker pilots trained. Atta wasn't acting much like a holy martyr: He wore jeans and sneakers, played video games, bought himself a red Pontiac and was said to be a hedonist. The Press posed the question to Ben-Veniste: If Atta belonged to the fundamentalist Muslim group, why was he snorting cocaine and frequenting strip bars?

"You know," said Ben-Veniste, as he smiled a little. "That's a heck of a question."

The source of this information about Atta and cocaine is Amanda Keller, Atta's American ex-girlfriend, according to Daniel Hopsicker, an investigative journalist who has spent two years researching Huffman and its ties to the CIA. It took Hopsicker a year, but he tracked Keller down. Like many other witnesses who knew Atta, Keller says she has been harassed by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Keller has not been called as a witness by the 9/11 Commission.

http://www.911citizenswatch.org/print.php?sid=82

More on Amanda Keller:

FBI agents harassed and intimidated witnesses to the 9/11 terrorist conspiracy’s activities in Florida, issuing warnings to avoid talking with reporters, say current and former residents in Venice, Florida.
At least one eyewitness, who knew Mohamed Atta because he lived next door for a time, received regular visits for over six months after the attack from FBI agents eager to ensure she continued to remain silent. Several said they felt unfairly singled out because what they saw and heard is at considerable variance with the official story of the terrorist cadre’s time in Florida.

An American girl named Amanda Keller, for example, briefly lived with Mohamed Atta in Venice, according to both local news reports and numerous eyewitnesses.

http://www.madcowprod.com/issue44.html (plus a streaming video interview of Keller)

http://www.madcowprod.com/issue27.html
http://www.madcowprod.com/issue30.html