[Fred Mertz]

"We have never employed that person, at least not under that name," said Joe Czyzyk, CEO of Mercury Air Cargo. "I would be interested to know where that rumor started."

I believe Debka mentioned Amercan Mercury, but it was our own Betty Jo who made the leap to Mercury Air.

[aristeides]

Not the only thing in the article this reporter might have picked up from FR.

[Shermy]

Debka says "...Mercury ground service company"...

At Los Angeles there's a "Mercury Air Center" providing

Aviation fuel Aircraft parking (ramp or tiedown) Passenger terminal and lounge Catering Rental cars on site Courtesy transportation Courtesy cars (free for pilots to use in the local area) Public telephone Pilots lounge / snooze room Restrooms "

Mercury Air Center LAX

Mercury Air Center, Inc.

There is also Mercury Air Cargo, part of but separate from the fixed base operations part. So it is possible that this "CEO" of Mercury Cargo is making an accurate statement, but the fellow actually worked, under his real name, for Mercury Air Center.

[Shermy]

To clarify with info from the site, Mercury Air Group, Inc. has three parts---

"Currently, Mercury Air Group provides three basic aviation industry services through three wholly owned subsidiaries:

Air Cargo Services

Subsidiary: Mercury Air Cargo ...

Fixed Base Operations (FBO) Services

Subsidiary: Mercury Air Centers ...

Government Support Services

Subsidiary: Maytag Aircraft..."

______

So we can see that if the Mercury Air Cargo subsidiary said they never hired the guy, that doesn't mean Mercury Air Centers subsidiary didn't. Because Debka references "ground services", they must intend "Mercury Air Centers"

So the same question must be posed to them. Reporters: their telephone number can be found at my first posted link above.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

under that name

That might be true because there seems to be confusion on the spelling of the last name. Different media reports use Hadayet , others are spelling it Hadayat!

[Betty Jo]

Yep, Fred Mertz, I make a lot of leaps here, sometimes without a parachute!!

[archy]

I believe Debka mentioned Amercan Mercury, but it was our own Betty Jo who made the leap to Mercury Air. Not precisely. The DEBKAfile report described *Mercury ground service* as an American company, leading some to think the name was *American Mercury.* More about the Mercury Air Group and their subsidiaries/propritrary firms *here*.

Actually, I had sort of wondered if it might have been Mercury GSE At LAX that had previously employed Hadayet.

There's more to be found about Mercury GSE and their activities circa 1988 when they were spun off from the other Mercury Group operations at their company history page *here*. The text of the DEBKAfile report follows. See http://www.debka.com for full text.

According to DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources, the man who murdered two Israelis on the El Al ticket line at Los Angeles airport on July 4th worked for the American Mercury ground service company from 1993 (one year after he arrived in the US) until 1998, when he left to set up his own limousine service for air passengers.

Exactly what he did at Mercury is vague, but during his five years in their employ, this former bank clerk from Cairo was free to move around Los Angeles international airport. Our sources reveal that during that time, he aroused the suspicions of El Al security personnel who warned airport security. When no action was taken, they put him under surveillance. El Al asked Mercury to rearrange Hadayat’s shifts for periods when none of its planes were scheduled, which Mercury agreed to do