Mohamed Atta and the Venice Flying Circus

The video here goes into the heroin smuggling connection. Osama was well known as a heroin smuggler.

The al Qaeda terror group has embraced heroin trafficking to such an extent that its leader, Osama bin Laden, is now a "narco-terrorist," says a U.S. congressman just back from a fact-finding mission in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"It seems clear to me heroin is the No. 1 financial asset of Osama bin Laden," Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, Illinois Republican, told The Washington Times. "There is a need to update our view of how terrorism is financed.

"And the view of Osama bin Laden relying on Wahhabi donations from abroad is outdated. And the view of him as one of the world's largest heroin dealers is the more accurate, up-to-date view."

Well this is interesting.

Dekkers, the owner of Huffman Aviation, purchased the flight school at just about the time the terrorist pilots moved into town and began their lessons. Atta and al-Shehhi paid $28,000 each for flight instruction that was available nearby for a fraction of the price. Yeslam bin Laden also provided several students for training at Huffman, though he claims to be estranged from his step-brother.224

Dekkers had reportedly been indicted in his native Holland on charges that included fraud and money laundering. More might have been known about Dekkers’ dubious history, but following 9/11, the FBI removed the files at Huffman, and loaded them onto a C-130 military cargo plane at the Sarasota airport, which took off for Washington with governor Jeb Bush on board.225

Wally Hilliard, Dekkers’ financier, entered the aviation business in Florida with an assortment of criminal and covert intelligence elements. Less than three months before the two terrorists began flight training, a Learjet owned by Hilliard, carrying 43 pounds of heroin, was seized by the DEA. Charges were dropped for “lack of evidence”, but the DEA refused to return Hilliard his plane. Hilliard had gotten his Learjet from World Jet Inc, owned by drug smuggling brothers Don and Bill Whittington, who had supplied Barry Seal his plane.226

Hilliard was then loaned a plane, a Beechcraft King Air 200, worth over $2 million, by Truman Arnold, for only one dollar. The plane was conveyed from Arnold to a Hilliard company, Oryx, founded by Sheikh Kamal Adham, former director of Saudi intelligence, and BCCI front-man, and Adnan Khashoggi.227

Is any of this true? Who knows? But as I said above. It is interesting.

Update: If you tuned in earlier I have changed the videos and some of the links to give a more complete picture. For instance the video on this page is a longer version of the original.

Eric in the comments reminds me of this post: Financing our enemies.

And if you want to follow more of Daniel Hopsicker's work go here.

Cross Posted at Classical Values.