Important news on Mohammed Atta and 9/11

Daniel Hopsicker has uncovered fascinating new details about Mohammed Atta and his pre-9/11 travels and associations. I can recommend without reservation his most recent interview on the For the Record program -- which, sadly, seems to be the only radio venue paying attention to his work.

For the latest interview, go here, then download F-516a and F-516b. (I wish that web site was organized in a more user-friendly fashion, but let's be grateful for what we have.) I can happily report that Hopsicker and his host have, on this occasion, presented the story in a focused, organized and professional manner.

You should also read Hopsicker's latest article on this subject, which you can find here.

So what is he saying that's so damned important?

Much. Here are a few examples:

1. Amanda Keller, the "B-girl" named by a number of local news agencies as Mohammed Atta's one-time live-in girlfriend, was extensively interviewed by Hopsicker. He spent months tracking her down and convincing her to tell her story. In the early news accounts, she was portrayed as "too afraid" to speak openly, perhaps because she reports details which conflict sharply with the official Atta bio.

Now, a Frenchman using a known Atta alias has come forward, claiming that Amanda Keller is mistaken -- that he, not Mohammed Atta, was her boyfriend in 2001! This gentleman does not resemble Atta (he does not even look Egyptian) and is of a very different height.

Obviously, I find it very hard to believe that a woman can be so mistaken about her bedmate -- especially so notorious a bedmate.

Furthermore, this "false Atta" claims -- predictably -- that Amanda is now telling her tale for the sake of publicity. Odd, then, that she proved so difficult to track down. Odd, too, that she was so reticent to speak to legitimate Florida newspapers. Odd that she finally opened up to the relatively down-at-heels Hopsicker -- who, frankly, would not be the first choice of anyone interested in either fame or money.

Obviously, the "second Atta" is a disinformationist. No such attempt would be mounted if the tale of Amanda Keller were not of key importance.

2. Lexis/Nexis is purging its files of important stories about Atta, published by mainstream news journals in those relatively-open first few weeks following the tragedy.

3. Former Iranian SAVAK agent Sam Koutchesfahani, more recently a rather mysterious landlord in San Diego, may also possess ties to the 9/11 catastrophe.

Koutchesfahani was indicted for helping to bring illegal Middle Eastern "students" into this country in the 1990s. A witness has connected him to the same bogus university linked to Abdussattar Shaikh, the mendacious FBI informant who provided aid and shelter to two of the hijackers.

Hopsicker connects these two men (Shaikh and Koutchesfahani) to a long-running, little-known scandal involving a network of fake colleges -- storefront schools based in California and Utah (and perhaps elsewhere). This network first came to light some 15 years ago.

Pete Wilson, then the governor of California, mounted a committee to investigate these fake institutions of higher learning. Wilson named as chairman of this committee a man named Dr. Richard Crews -- an odd choice, for Crews also was the titular head of two of these fake schools.

Crews is a doctor connected with the Special Forces in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Why (one wonders) would he run phony universities in California?

And why would Wilson invite him to investigate the problem when he seems to have been the problem?

These same bogus schools appear in the resume of Abdussattar Shaikh, the FBI informant who helped two 9/11 plotters find shelter in California. (Shaikh has falsely claimed to be a professor.)

As a moment's thought will tell you, terrorists within our borders had -- and have -- a pressing need for both housing and "student" cover documentation. These requirements may explain why Shaikh would have links to such schools.

But we still have many further questions:

Why isn't Shaikh explaining this tangled situation to interrogators at Gitmo?

Why are "his" schools the same ones formerly run by Richard Crews, a gentleman connected to the American Special Forces?

Why (if Hopsicker's informants are correct) did Sam Koutchesfahani run foreign students into our country? And why is Koutchesfahani connected to at least one of these very same fake schools?

Koutchesfahani is of particular note since his name first appeared in the press in connection with the "Heaven's Gate" suicides. He was the landlord who owned the mansion in which the cultists died. Although I doubt whether he had any further interaction with that bizarre cult, I am open to speculation that he originally purchased the mansion to house overseas "students."

Kotchesfahani later purchase of a motel may have served a similar purpose.

As Hopsicker wrote in a previous story:

"For more than six years in the 1990s, people from the Middle East came to San Diego County on bogus student visas," reported a September 21, 2001 San Diego Union-Tribune story headlined "Terrorists may have exploited student visas."

"Through an underground network led by a Rancho Santa Fe man, nearly 100 Middle Easterners paid local community college teachers and administrators for counterfeit admission papers and grades, which allowed them to get student visas."

(The final figure was "more than 200," according to Sam's plea bargain.)

"At the center of the scam was a Rancho Santa Fe man, Sam Koutchesfahani, whose family roots and wealth were deep in Iran. He pleaded guilty to tax evasion and fraud and was sentenced to a year in prison."

Here's the topper:

Hopsicker uncovered an eyewitness who could put Sam Koutchesfahani and Abdussattar Shaikh together in the same place at the same time. (Shaikh, many believe, remains a key witness in the events leading up to the attack.)

This same witness, Hopsicker now reports, has now received the proverbial middle-of-the-night death threat.

There is more. I strongly urge you to listen to the interview and read the articles.

The events of September 11, 2001, have occasioned many unconvincing theories, and have filled many a plate with a side order of scarlet red herring. Readers interested in the "unconventional wisdom" on 9/11 will, I hope, pay less attention to wild claims of "controlled demolition," jet-shaped missiles, and similarly far-fetched ideas. The "ground level" investigative leads which I have briefly outlined here seem much more promising.

Here's a very telling fact: Well-funded right-wing conspiracy theorists have embraced the "controlled demolition" nonsense. Yet these rightists have studiously ignored the more important tale of Mohammed Atta and the subterranean linkages between the terorrists and various personages within our own national security establishment.

That is where we should focus our attention.