Posted on 06/11/2002 12:10:44 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
WASHINGTON – One of Osama bin Laden's personal pilots was a flight-school instructor at the small Texas airport where the FBI, just weeks after the Sept. 11 hijackings, let 14 Syrian nationals go to learn to fly.
Essam al-Ridi, a government witness in the U.S. embassies-bombing trial, testified that he had taken classes and taught at the now-defunct Ed Boardman Aviation School at Fort Worth Meacham International Airport.
The airport's manager says the school went out of business in the early '90s.
But the airport's al-Qaida connection is disturbing, because Meacham has become a magnet for Middle Eastern student pilots, some from terrorist countries such as Syria.
In fact, 14 young Syrian men enrolled at one school there in early October, alarming local Immigration and Naturalization Service agents, as WorldNetDaily first reported.
Four of the seven schools at Meacham are owned and run by Middle Eastern men, most of them from Syria or Lebanon, the airport manager told WorldNetDaily.
Al-Ridi – an Egyptian, like hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta – testified that in 1993 he bought a used Saber-40 aircraft for $210,000 for bin Laden. He said bin Laden wanted it to transport Stinger missiles, so he flew it from Fort Worth to bin Laden, who at the time was based in Khartoum, Sudan.
Last year's trial of bin Laden operatives for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa produced documents revealing a number of references to bin Laden pilots and U.S. flight schools. The FBI has come under fire for failing to connect these and other dots before Sept. 11, which may have shown an outline to al-Qaida's terrorist plot.
Even after Sept. 11, the FBI did not seem overly concerned about the flight-school connection.
INS inspectors at Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport, where the Syrians entered the U.S., alerted the FBI about the clean-shaven men, who came in groups of seven, but were told only to copy their visas and other papers. The FBI did not detain or even interview the men.
However, Meacham manager Luis Elguezabal says FBI agents paid him a visit after WorldNetDaily's story broke, and was amplified by local and national media. He says they asked him for the names of the owners of the flight schools and their phone numbers.
"They were concerned about the students," he said in a recent WND interview.
FBI agents returned this year to ask him more questions, Elguezabal says. He declined to say more.
The 14 Syrians enrolled at Delta-Qualiflight Aeronautics, owned by Khaled Miloud. They entered the U.S. on M-1 visitor's visas, which expired in April, according to INS agents. Elguezabal does not know if they've left the school and returned to Syria. Neither Miloud nor his wife, contacted at their Arlington, Texas, home, would say if they've left.
"He's been very tight-lipped even with me on that issue," said Elguezabal, who has managed the city-owned airport since 1996.
The INS, for its part, does not track foreign visitors – even those from terrorist countries – after they've entered the country to see if they've overstayed their visas.
Meacham's three other Arab-owned schools are: Gold Star Aviation (owned and run by Wael Alborghie), MK Conquest International (Eric Kudimi) and Skywings Flight Training (Walid Yammine). Elguezabal says the men are from Syria and Lebanon.
A Meacham flight-school instructor, speaking on condition of anonymity, says the Arab nationals at neighboring schools are allowed to speak in Arabic, even though the Federal Aviation Administration requires that pilots speak English, the universal language of aviation around the world. Meacham is certified by the FAA.
Meacham's schools teach student-pilots to fly small-engine planes, not jetliners.
But Atta's original plan, it turns out, was to pack small planes with explosive chemicals and slam the flying bombs into U.S. targets.
The government's Pantex nuclear-bomb facility in Amarillo, Texas, and President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, are not long flights from Fort Worth.
Large numbers of Middle Eastern men, including the alleged 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, received flight training at schools just north of Fort Worth in Oklahoma.
What's more, Abdul Hakim Murad, who was convicted several years ago of a plot to crash a suicide plane into CIA headquarters, trained at Alpha Tango Flying Services in San Antonio, Texas. The flight school is owned by Hamid Afzal.
Not long after federal authorities let the Syrians attend flight school in Fort Worth, a large group of Algerian nationals waltzed into the U.S. to take classes at a flight school in Tyler, Texas, as WorldNetDaily also first reported.
Algeria is another Islamic terrorist hotspot.
Like the Syrians before them, the 14 Algerian men, all clean-shaven and in their mid-20s, told airport immigration inspectors that they were training to fly for their national airlines.
But a pilot, who bases his plane at Meacham field in Fort Worth, doubts their story.
"There are probably more than a hundred times as many Middle Eastern students in flight schools here as there are potential flying jobs back in their home nations," the pilot said.
Syria is one of the seven countries on the State Department's terrorist blacklist. Planes from the Syrian national airline are banned from entering the U.S.
Another pilot who flies out of Tyler told WorldNetDaily: "This story that these Algerians would be hired by their national airline upon completion of learning how to fly a single-engine airplane stinks to high heaven."
He added: "Airlines do not send pilots to flight school to fly a single-engine airplane, such as a Cessna 150 or 172."
If foreigners---particularly Middle Easterners, in light of 9/11---cannot FLUENTLY speak English, they need to be DENIED the ability to fly airplanes of ANY kind in the U.S.!
They are an ACTUAL, IMMEDIATE DANGER to other pilots flying in the region, not to mention the potential as kamakaze (sp?) "9/11 want-to-be" pilots. Let them learn how to fly in their OWN country and quit allowing them to learn here!
If foreigners---particularly Middle Easterners, in light of 9/11---cannot FLUENTLY speak English, they need to be DENIED the ability to fly airplanes of ANY kind in the U.S.!
They are an ACTUAL, IMMEDIATE DANGER to other pilots flying in the region, not to mention the potential as kamakaze (sp?) "9/11 want-to-be" pilots. Let them learn how to fly in their OWN country and quit allowing them to learn here!
It bears repeating.
Of course, Mena, Arkansas is even closer and better ranged by a Cessna 172.
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