Among our speakers: Investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker talks about the Florida base of Mohamed Atta's terrorist cadre.

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Labor Day weekend, Aug 30 - Sept 2, 2002

 

  

AP photo: President Bush in Florida is told the grim news of the firstWorld Trade Center attack

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Investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker lives in Venice, the Florida base of Mohamed Atta's terrorist cadre. On July 22 this year he wrote that four hours and thirty-eight minutes before Mohamed Atta flew an airliner into the World Trade Center on Sept 11, the Secret Service agents guarding President George W Bush during his visit to Sarasota, Forida, received a warning that a terrorist attack on America was imminent.

The President might also be a target for assassination that morning.

Was there in fact such an attempt, and has it been covered up?

On the night before the attack, Zainlabdeen Omer, a Middle Eastern resident of Sarasota, told local police that a friend he knew as "Ghandi," who had made threats against the President in the past, had just arrived in the city. Sarasota Police called in the Secret Service.

When local reporters later got wind of the story the Secret Service dismissed Omer's warning as "coincidence".

But Longboat Key Fire Marshall Carroll Mooneyhan, who was at the front desk of the Colony Beach Resort that morning as President Bush prepared for his morning jog, told the Longboat Observer that at about 6 a.m. on Sept. 11 a van carrying Middle Eastern men tried to gain entry to the Resort, and identified themselves as a TV news crew with a poolside interview scheduled with the President. They asked for a Secret Service agent by name, Mooneyhan said. Secret Service agents turned the van back, telling the men to contact the President's public relations office in Washington D.C.

Assassins had used exactly the same ruse just two days earlier to liquidate the Afghan Northern Alliance leader Shah Masood. He granted an interview to a television crew, and theircamera exploded, killing him and two suicide bombers disguised as journalists. Some "coincidence." Later that morning Secret Service agents did search an apartment in Sarasota looking for further corroboration of Omer's account. They arrested three occupants from Sudan; they were questioned for the next ten hours, according to one, Fathel Rahman Omer.

The Secret Service also raided a beauty supply store in Sarasota, owned by one "Hakim," who identified the mysterious "Ghandi" as a member of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, a Christian group fighting against the fundamentalist Muslim government in Sudan, itself closely allied with the Taliban and Al Queda.

Hakim's story seems to make no sense. But the key witnesses are all missing. A few days later the beauty supply store suddenly closed, and the owner, Hakim, was gone. Said the owner of a liquor store next door, "We saw a lot of people go in there, but didn't see anyone come out with beauty supplies."

Zainelabdeen Omer, who warned of an assassination attempt, is missing too. It turns out he quit his job and his apartment.

"All I know is he can't leave town," a friend of his told reporter Monica Yadov. "Omer got in a lot of trouble with the law." "So you think he's still somewhere?" Yadov asked.

"Should be," shrugged Omer's friend, who insisted on anonymity. "If he's still alive."

The Secret Service's stonewalling leads to questions about the ongoing cover-up in in Florida.

• It was Bush brother Jeb Bush who flew out of Sarasota aboard a C-130 loaded with files about the Venice flight schools which trained the terrorist cadre. Did the Secret Service help with this get-away project?

• Where are the missing witnesses? The Secret Service says they don't know.

• Is Omer being detained? The INS won't say.

• What's the reason for all the official silence?

The answer may lie in the identity of the mysterious "Ghandi." His name may have been deliberately misspelled. The share the same name as a revered Indian pacifist seems downright absurd -- unless his real name was in fact "Al- Ghamdi." Then he would join three other men with the same last name who were listed by authorities as being among the nineteen plane hijackers. All three gave on their drivers' licenses a home address at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.

All three are now, presumably, very much dead. But there is yet another Alghamdi . . . still very much alive. He was also involved in the Sept 11th terrorist conspiracy. And this is the link that leads to the Saudi Royal Family.

Daniel Hopsicker is the author of Barry & 'the boys: The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History. A video of his researches, Mohamed Atta and the Venice Flying Circus, will be on sale at the Cincinnati function.