Man who ran flight school that trained terrorists survives helicopter crash into Caloosahatchee

Dekker's helicopter crashed on way to showdown over Huffman Aviation

Venice, FL.—January 28, 2003
by Daniel Hopsicker

Despite settling his lawsuit with former partner Wally Hilliard, Rudi Dekker's legal woes may be just beginning, says State's Attorney Jonathon Greene.

Meanwhile it was learned that Dekker’s still-unexplained helicopter crash last Friday came while he was en-route to a Venice, FL. meeting to sign papers relinquishing control of terror flight school Huffman Aviation. 
Although the two events have not been linked by law enforcement, the strange timing adds another bizarre twist to the saga of the 46-year old Dutch national, who gained international notoriety for running the flight school that trained both terrorist pilots who crashed into the World Trade Center.

In the space of little more than a week the tumultuous Dekkers crashed his helicopter into the Caloosahatchee River, learned he would be arrested on felony fraud by the state attorney's office, and signed over the flight school that gave him his 15 minutes of fame.

Rudi Dekker’s picaresque adventures made the news from Sarasota to South Africa, testifying to an abiding public curiosity about him.

At theaters everywhere: 'There's Something about Rudi.' 

"Real life never seemed so deranged." 

Take his helicopter crash. Did Dekkers suspect trouble was in store?

Though the trip to Venice from the Naples-Fort Myers area is less than an hour long, Dekkers prevailed on another helicopter pilot headed in the same direction to fly alongside him, "in an effort to stave off boredom." 
 

"Who you calling 'we,' white man?"

Then things begin going very wrong for Rudi, even before his chopper begins experiencing difficulties. 

When his more powerful helicopter surged ahead, pilot Tony Douangdara told the Venice Gondolier, Dekkers seemed upset.

"He was calling me on the radio saying 'Slow down, slow down!" said Douangdara.

"A couple minutes later, I heard him say, 'I'm going down.' "

All things considered, it was a bad week for Rudi. Just several days before the helicopter crash he learned he was being arrested for fraud. 

Dekker's response was "Wow, I'm surprised." 

Later, after he overcame his incredulity, he called the charge "political,"  heaping some thinly-veiled scorn on the man prosecuting him, State's Attorney Jonathon Greene. 

"We're drawing the paperwork as we speak that resolves the deal. We have a deal, we know about it. Everybody knows about it except the state attorney."

Wally Hilliard, present at the contract signing Friday, was agreeable to dismissing the suit, confirmed Jim Beach, director of operations for Triple Diamond enterprises, the new owners.

When he completed the sale of Huffman Friday, Dekkers expected his  problems to go away. He indicated his legal woes would end when Wally Hilliard dropped his lawsuit, an action which he believed would trigger the dismissal of the criminal fraud charge filed against him in connection with a $200,000 loan...a loan he secured with a mortgage on property in the name of a company which had no interest in the property.

This is what people mean when they say "Nice work if you can get it." 

Dekkers said, "We don't have problems anymore."
 

In Deep Dutch 

Not so fast, says State's Attorney Jonathon Greene. "Wally Hilliard called me and asked for a waiver of prosecution," he told us.

"But I told him that nothing has changed on our end. We're going forward with the charges."

Greene indicated that Dekkers record includes a number of blemishes, like owing $3 million in the Netherlands, some of which is also the result of pledging assets he doesn't own to secure loans he doesn't plan on repaying.

A Dutch court had adjudged him guilty of acting "in a manifestly improper fashion;" saying his "manifest failure to properly manage the company was an important cause of bankruptcy." 

Aviation sources in Naples confirmed rumors we had heard to the effect that Dekkers had been the subject of a federal investigation in the mid-90's, with several federal agencies expressing interest in his activities.

State Attorney Greene confirmed that Dekkers had been under suspicion of illegal exportation of high technology.

Coming full circle, officials indicate that there is renewed prosecutorial interest in Dekkers at the federal level.

What makes the controversial Dekkers something more than a run-of-the-mill con-man and quick-fading historical footnote is an important fact that remains unacknowledged, except obliquely, by U.S. officials: 

Rudi Dekkers sits at the critical nexus of the terrorist conspiracy. Much relies on his claims to having been just an innocent business owner.
 

Cliff notes on a national tragedy

Should Dekkers not be telling the truth--an action he takes with awe-inspiring regularity--the clear conclusion will be that Mohamed Atta didn't 'just happen' to stumble onto Venice, FL. like a guy who's been listening to Tom Petty albums all his life.

(Atta liked the Beastie Boys--no joke--but that's a story for another time.)

If Mohamed Atta didn't stumble onto Venice, then we have stumbled onto that fabled Global Network... because it's undeniable that when the Hamburg cadre made their their fateful leap across the Atlantic, it was Rudi Dekkers assigning bunks when they arrived on the other side of the Big Pond.

At one time officials in Washington promised explanations in the wake of the Sept 11 disaster. They were not forthcoming. The official explanation, such as it was, was delivered by a seemingly-nice guy who calmly and clearly explained what we were supposed to think had happened. 

But he wasn't a U.S. official. He isn't even American. 

It was left to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to publicly sketch out for the first time the Cliff notes version of the case against Osama Bin Laden. 

"Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization with ties to a Global Network," Blair said.

There it was again. A Global Network. 

The idea that Mohamed Atta might have benefited from ties to a Global Network (other than his own) flatly contradicts the FBI's entire scenario, which rests on a firm contention that the terrorists received no outside help while they were in this country.

It is a position the FBI has held tenaciously during the year and some months since the disaster. And it has probably helped the Bureau discourage speculation about 'anomalies' in the terrorist’s milieu.

When you're playing for time, every little bit helps. 

But now the FBI's statement of 'no outside help' is the first official pronouncement rendered ‘inoperative’ by the coming scandal, after the co-chairs of the Congressional Intelligence investigation into 9/11 delivered a real bombshell (even though it went largely unnoted, perhaps because of the current imbroglio known as the "Showdown with Saddam.")

A foreign government had been involved in supporting and facilitating the activities of the terrorist conspiracy while they were in the U.S., Senator Bob Graham told reporters.

"I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States," said Graham.

"I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted—not just in financing although that was part of it—by a sovereign foreign government."

So much for the "Lone Cadre" theory. 

The Magic Dutch Boy theory--which holds that two Dutch nationals buying the two flight schools in tiny Venice at more or less the same time is just another freak coincidence--is next.
 

An unexplainable yearning for blue-haired widow ladies?

So what's the name of the foreign government involved? 

Alas, in its infinite Total Information-like wisdom, our government has decided that 'we're not cleared for that information.'

Since the foreign government involved presumably already knows who it is, this seems a bit difficult to understand...

Because it seems that they're not hiding anything from anyone but us.

"It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now," Graham said.

In the under-statement of the year, he went on, "We need to have this information now because it's relevant to the threat that the people of the United States are facing today."

Every once in a great while an American politician utters something shockingly close to the truth. 

Hearts beat faster, pulses race, hope rises. You know what happens next.

But back to the unnamed foreign government's involvement...

The logical place to go to look for evidence would seem to be Venice, FL., the retirement community on Florida’s Gulf Coast inexplicably chosen by Mohamed Atta and his Hamburg cadre to be the American home of their ghastly operation.

While it is already well-known that Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi lived in Venice for the first six months after their arrival, what's still being kept under wraps although its been attested to both by credit card receipts and eyewitnesses, is this:

Atta returned to Venice--and often--during the last several months before the attack, visiting on at least three occasions during just the last six weeks of his life.

Since the only rival to September 11 in its dramatic impact on the country is the Kennedy assassination, it seems fair to ask whether the 9/11 Commission will be as ineffectual as the Warren Commission in getting at the truth.

Might Rudi Dekkers turn out to be the 9/11 Commission's David Ferrie ? 

Most people remember Pilot David Ferrie as the nervous guy played by Joe Pesci in Oliver Stone's JFK. A shadowy figure, Ferrie had a mysterious relationship with the JFK scandal’s early prototype for the Army of One: Lee Harvey Oswald. 

Then Ferrie was found dead, suspiciously, on the eve of testifying to investigators for Jim Garrison. Ferrie committed ‘suicide,’ authorities said,  which was odd, because suicide was exactly the fate Ferrie had been worrying out loud about suffering.

Forty years on, Rudi Dekkers is just another in a long line of shadowy figures who have haunted more-recent American history.

His image will grow even shadier if it turns out that he had a slightly more complicated relationship with the terrorist ringleader than has so far been revealed.

Still, in Hollywood, they're probably already talking about the movie.

We have no opinion on who should play Dekkers.

We just think somebody should tell him not to fly for a while.