The
Hopsicker Interview
Monday,
1/12/04
Sander
Hicks and Daniel Hopsicker
SH:
Why don’t we talk first about the FBI
harassment of people who were close to Atta?
DH:
Okay
SH:
Has there been any kind of response to the
piece you posted that circulated about this
subject?
DH:
Not that I’m aware of. The harassment
of witnesses down here has been extensive.
I interviewed a good 1/2 dozen witnesses that
talked about it, especially the people who
knew Atta and Amanda, which included the apartment
manager and his wife, and their next-door
neighbors, even the postman. The apartment
manager was kind of a crusty, 65-yr old Navy
veteran, and he did not take kindly to being
intimidated at all. What I saw after a number
of people talk about the FBI silencing them
was the American streak that won’t let
that happen. Real Americans won’t
be silenced is how I put it, and I found
that pretty nice….
SH:
What do you make of the $100,000 wire transfer
from General Ahmed of the ISI on Sept. 10
to Atta? How do we make sense of that?
DH:
There are so many things here that I can’t
tell yet what they mean, but I know that Atta
and Marwan [check sp] and a third party, presumed
to be Fiyad El Chara [check sp.] had a huge
screaming match just two weeks before September
11 regarding returning excess money
they had, so what that last $100,000 would
have been for, I can’t tell you. What
I can tell you, as a result of a trip
I took up to New York City last week, to interview
a eye-witness: the FBI’s role in all
of this is even more sinister than I could
have even imagined, and it’s closely
bound up with the ISI, and goes all the way
back to the creation of BCCI.
SH:
What about the allegations that Al Qaeda is
a CIA asset?
DH:
Well, let me preface everything I tell you
with this, after spending two years down here
investigating, I turned up a lot of evidence
that no one knows about yet, or hasn’t
made public if they did know about it. Having
said that, in terms of having a big picture
view of the whole thing? I don’t think
I do yet. But I can tell you this: I can tell
you that the apparatus that Osama bin Laden
set into place, along with the CIA back in
the 80’s, still exists, it’s still
functioning in the US and is being protected,
to this day by the FBI.
SH:
So how do we make sense of the 2 or 3 Iran/Contra
pilots? Was Charles Voss an Iran/Contra pilot?
DH:
Charlie Voss, was where they lived for at
least a week, was labeled a bookkeeper at
Huffman Aviation in news accounts at the time.
I discovered that he’s an ex C-130 pilot.
I also discovered that although he
says he and his wife kicked them out one week
after they got here, a cab driver in Venice
picked Atta and Dekkers up at Charlie Voss’s
houses a week to ten days before September
11. Voss in all news accounts say they asked
Atta and Marwan to leave one week after their
rude behavior, around July 10, 2000, but now
I’ve got a cab driver who’s a 20
year Navy veteran stating that he picked up
Rudi Dekkers and Mohammed Atta at Charlie
Voss’s house, a week to ten days before
September 11th, and he knows it
was Charlie Voss’s houses because he
lives in the neighborhood. When September
11th happened, he looked up the
next day and here’s an army of press
out in front of the same house that he had
picked Atta up at a week earlier. So Charlie
Voss is lying.
SH:
So, it’s a small town down there.
DH:
Correct.
SH:
How big is Venice?
DH:
10,000 people. And this cab driver and Navy
veteran was so reliable that the FBI used
what he told them to raid several apartment
houses down here. Less than a week after September
11th. So this guy has solid information.
SH:
Why is the FBI harassing people like Amanda
Keller and people who knew Atta?’
DH:
Boy oh boy that’s an interesting question.
Because the FBI, as I’ve begun to look
at the larger picture, after finishing the
book, the FBI is protecting an operation that
was set in place back in the 80s that was
used as a money-laundering device to funnel
money to the Afghan Mujahedeen, and to flood
this country with heroin.
SH:
And do you prove that in the book?
DH:
I can prove it to you in ten seconds. This
is not conspiracy theory. This is conspiracy
fact. If there’s one fact I can impart
to you, it is this. The same month in which
the FBI say Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shaedi
[sp] arrived to begin flight lessons at Huffman
Aviation, July of 2000, the owner of Huffman
Aviation had his Lear Jet confiscated on the
runway of Orlando Executive Airport with 43
pounds of heroin on board. Now, the conclusion’s
inescapable. It hasn’t been reported
nowhere. It’s nothing short of astounding.
SH:
What’s the connection? It could be dismissed
as a coincidence by skeptical minds.
DH:
Not really. 43 pounds of heroin is "heavy
weight" talk to any DEA agent. It can not
be by accident, that two individuals working
for the man that controls the world’s
heroin supply….
SH:
i.e. who, Osama bin Laden?
DH:
Osama bin Laden. ….could come to a flight
school whose owner had his Lear jet confiscated
the same month they arrive with 43 pounds
of heroin aboard. That’s a case that
any prosecutor, any brave prosecutor, could
take to a jury and win.
SH:
But it’s weird, I never heard of Osama
bin Laden as the heroin king, just the opposite,
I thought the Taliban was cutting down on
heroin, and Mushareff [sp] and the new Northern
Alliance government that has brought heroin
production back up?
DH:
I researched books that had been printed before
9/11 about Afghanistan, in which the info
could be considered more impartial, because
it wasn’t as pressing a matter, and discovered
numerous indications that it’s absolutely
untrue that the Taliban cut heroin production.
They may have said they did, but anyone who
would take Mullah Omar at face value while
questioning everything Bush has to say has
a very skewed view of reality. A very skewed
view of reality. Here are some facts: in the
year 2000, the same year that Mullah Omar
said the Taliban was cutting off heroin production,
UN satellite photos proved that opium cultivation
grew by 50%. That’s a fact.
SH:
So has heroin production gone up or down with
the new Afghani government?
DH:
I would imagine it’s gone up. But I certainly
can’t prove it. But if Osama bin Laden
did indeed wield great influence in Afghanistan,
to the point of running Afghanistan, then
Osama bin Laden was indisputably the world’s
heroin king. The fact that that fact
has not been brought to the fore, I believe
is designed to conceal from the American people
the fact that Osama bin Laden was trading
heroin with elements right here in the USA.
SH:
Do you have any names?
DH:
The Iran/Contra people we’ve been talking
about. The same apparatus. Wally Hilliard,
the owner of Huffman Aviation. I never had
a plane discovered with 43 pounds of heroin
on board, did you? That plane had been making
a weekly run to Venezuela and back, 30 trips
that year, just imagine how many drugs that
operation had been responsible for. It’s
absolutely untrue that the Taliban ceased
heroin production, or even curtailed it.
SH:
What about Amanda Keller? Is she still around
Venice?
DH:
No.
SH:
She’s gone underground?
DH:
Yes.
SH:
So there’s no chance the National Commission
is going to call her, even if they wanted
to?
DH:
Well if they wanted to, they could call me,
and I could put them in touch with her, but
I haven’t heard from them, I haven’t
heard from them on anything. So imagine how
serious their investigation is.
SH:
I’ve already observed how serious their
investigation is, Daniel.
DH:
My idea, Sander, has been that if I was able
to break some of the news I have overseas,
it would float back. Indeed, my book has a
German publisher, and comes out late next
month in Germany, the Mad Cow Press is bringing
the book out here in English. There’s
a chance that I will take Amanda Keller over
to Germany for a press conference. That was
always my thought, because you’re casting
about for straws if you’re me to get
out some of the astounding pieces of information.
And it’s not like I think I’m the
greatest investigative reporter in the world.
Anyone could have come down here and discovered
much of what I found.
SH:
That’s the kind of thing Gandhi used
to say too, about being an average person
just doing an experiment.
What
are some of the top things you’d like
the American media to know about Amanda Keller?
DH:
That she witnessed behavior by Atta and his
compatriots completely, totally and utterly
at odds with any description of "Islamic Fundamentalist"
that we could come up with.
SH:
Then that begs the question, who were they?
Were they double agents? Were they mind-controlled
robotic slaves? Or were they tricked into
a suicide mission that they didn’t know
was a suicide mission?
DH:
I definitely do not believe that. Mohammed
Atta was a demonstrated psychopath. He hated
us. I believe that Mohammed Atta was a lieutenant
in the world first Islamic drug cartel. And
that his hatred for America may have been
inspired by either Arab Nationalism or Islamic
Fundamentalism. But clearly, no real Islamic
Fundamentalist traffics in heroin.
SH:
Is it your theory then, that Atta’s real
identity as a lieutenant in Islamic drug cartel
is linked to the research that we all have
seen and done even before 911 about the US
government having "black ops" or operations
in narcotics.
DH:
It’s confirmed by it. The simple
fact that the man that owned the flight school
that these individuals came to had 43 pounds
of heroin, the same month they got here, if
you gave information like that to John Doe
and his friend Bob, to a Federal Prosecutor
in the US, he would draw up the same conclusion
that I have.
SH:
That they brought it in?
DH:
Correct.
SH:
And they were allowed to bring it in?
DH:
Oh absolutely. It was a protected operation.
The fact that the flight school owner’s
Lear Jet was found and busted was undoubtedly
a mistake, on the part of the DEA. It would
not have happened if a low-level operative
hadn’t been busted in Orlando two weeks
earlier. That’s my conclusion. Higher-ups
in the DEA, had they been aware of it, would
have stopped the raid on the plane by DEA
agents brandishing machine guns. It subsequently
embarrassed them. One fact pointing to that
conclusion, is the fact that the co-pilot
on the plane when it was busted was a DEA
agent.
SH:
What’s his name?
DH:
Mike Brasentine B-R-A-S-E-N-T-I-N-E
SH:
Pretty hot! Have you been harassed at all
in Venice?
DH:
Early on, yes, but not since then. It’s
been interesting. I have been approached by
individuals that indicate that there are elements
of America’s clandestine elite that are
not in favor of what was going on here and
would like to see it come out.
SH:
Similar to other stories I’ve done. There
are always elements inside the system, the
leakers, who are willing to help the rogue
reporters. It’s the leaks that can really
help a story along.
DH:
The horror of what happened on September 11th
was so overwhelming that people who are functionaries
for that secret government are still human,
like you and I. And I think it’s compelled
some of them to break ranks. When I was doing
the Mena story, I could walk up to someone
I knew to be military intelligence, and get
a stare that would just wither your soul.
When I approach people with similar job titles
here in Venice, that did not happen.
SH:
Good. Anything else you want to say?
DH:
That’s enough.
SH:
Yeah, that’s enough. Take Care.
DH:
Take Care.