Pilot for 9/11 flight school considered "Grave threat to national security"

A U.S. Customs Agent on duty when controversial drug pilot and “soldier of fortune” Michael Brassington attempted to re-enter the US through Fort Lauderdale International Airport in April of 2004 was instructed by a Supervisor at Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE) to treat Brassington—a long-time employee and business associate of Wallace J. Hilliard, owner of the flight school that taught Mohamed Atta to fly— as a “grave threat to national security.”

The news comes as the former Guyanese military pilot prepares to go on trial in a Federal Courthouse in Newark next month for recklessly endangering the lives of passengers, whose number includes ex-Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton as well as numerous celebrities.

The disclosure, from a soon-to-be-released documentary, “The New American Drug Lords,” is a reminder, more than eight years later, of the unfinished nature of the investigation into the 9/11 attack.

Narcotics record was first revealed in "Welcome to TerrorLand"

James Sanders was a Customs Agent on late night duty on April 6^th 2004 at Fort Lauderdale International Airport, when he had a memorable encounter with Michael Brassington, who was attempting to re-enter the U.S. from the Bahamas.

“Brassington went through Immigration first," explained Sanders. "The Immigration Inspector had ‘top-stamped’ his Customs declaration, which means he needed to be ‘secondary-ed,’ which means given a closer inspection… search his luggage, at the very least, and ask him more questions,”

“The INS Agent whispered to me that Brassington had a narcotics record.”

Brassington has previously been identified, in news articles in this space and in the book “Welcome to TerrorLand,” as the co-pilot aboard a Lear Jet belonging to Wally Hilliard on thirty-nine weekly drug flights from Venezuela to Fort Lauderdale and Teterboro Airport outside New York City on

After being surrounded on the tarmac at Orlando Executive Airport by DEA agents with submachine guns, the plane was busted on July 25, 2000.

Agents found 43 lbs. of heroin onboard.

The Orlando Sentinel called it “the biggest bust of its kind in Central Florida history.”

The revelation, which is clearly significant to the story of the 9/11 attack, has been treated to years of official silence, and ignored in the mainstream media.

"Thirty-nine weekly drug flights:" Irrelevant to story of 9/11 attack?

A notation had been placed after Brassington’s name on his computer screen, Sanders said.

It provided—at long last—official confirmation of our reporting.

“Brassington had an "active lookout" for narcotics,” sander explained. “And there was the date, July 25, 2000, that he’d got caught.”

“Come to find out later, he’d been working for a 9/11 flight school owner named Wally Hilliard. But I only found that out after I discovered your website, www.madcowprod.com. Its kind of strange that the whole subject never came up while I was working down there. And I just couldn't have imagine that this was all connected to 9/11.”

While Customs Agent Sanders was examining his narcotics record in the computer Brassington began brandishing a letter from a top official in the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security.

“I was looking at Brassington’s narcotics record on the computer,” says Sanders, still incredulous at the memory, “when he handed me a letter from Washington!”

Despite Brassington’s ongoing participation in a criminal enterprise, the letter seemed clearly designed to smooth his re-entry into the U.S.

"A 'get out of jail-free-pass' sometimes isn't enough"

Sanders’ voice rose in indignation as he read it out loud.

“This is what the Dept of Homeland Security has to say to somebody that got caught smuggling drugs for a 9/11 flight school owner:

“This is in reference to your letter of Sept 23 2003 when you expressed concerns you were having clearing customs when returning to the United States from foreign travel.

”Please let us apologize for any inconvenience or unpleasantness you may have experienced. On behalf of the border and Transportation security directorate, let me assure you it is not our intent to subject the traveling public to unwarranted scrutiny.

"The traveling public is entitled to and is accorded the utmost courtesy and facilitation we can offer within the limits of our enforcement responsibilities. Regrettably our efforts can occasionally cause inconvenience.”

"We have reviewed our records and taken action so you will no longer encounter any automatic special attention beyond normal probabilities upon future return to the United States or territories thereof."

The letter is signed by Gloria Marshall, head of the "Information Disclosure Unit" of the "Mission Support Division" of the Dept. of Homeland Security.

DEA be damned! De-activate his lookout!

“What that's saying, is that—at the very least—they were going to de-activate his lookout,” Sanders explained.

“But the lookout was placed by the DEA. It was a DEA record. So Customs is countermanding a record placed by another Federal Agency, which is illegal.”

“This was a strange occurrence. So I hesitated. I said, okay wait a second. He has this official-looking letter that says they're going to take care of his record…

“But he still has an active record. I felt like a deer in the headlights. I didn’t know what to do. But I had just enough ‘presence of mind’ to pick up the phone and call Special Agent Norm Bright, who the record said was Brassington’s 'point of contact.’”

“Point of contact” is a Customs term, Sanders told us, for an Agent assigned particular responsibility for a “person of interest” whose movements are being tracked.

“Bright was a local ICE Agent and I guess he was tracking Brassington,” said Sanders. “So I called him up, and I told him about the letter.

What every successful drug trafficker needs to know

“He said you can just disregard the letter, and told me to ignore it. And he described Mike Brassington to me as a ‘grave threat to national security. He told me that I needed to check him, search him, and search all his passengers.”

“And that's what I did,” Sanders explains. “I didn't think of him as a terrorist suspect. I just thought he was really into drugs, and I needed to check him really close. I had no idea of the shit-storm I was about to ignite.”

“I searched the luggage of all his passengers, and then I searched his plane.

“Norm Bright also told me to try to get a drug dog there. But the problem with that is that on Tuesday nights, there aren’t any drug dogs available,” explained Sanders.

“Tuesday night is the drug dogs night off."

While far from the first hint we’d received that things might not be as ship-shape in the Dept of Homeland Security as American citizens who have been footing the enormous bill have been led to believe, the news came as something of a shock.

Apparently it doesn’t take elaborate radar detection and counter-surveillance electronic gear to become a successful drug trafficker, as we’d been led to believe…

Anyone with an “in” at U.S. Customs, like Michael Brassington, is clued-in to the facts about the best time of the week to enter the U.S. through Fort Lauderdale.

On Tuesday night. While the drug dogs are out bowling.

NEXT: A SUSPICIOUS PLANE, A SUSPICIOUS PASSENGER, & A “ROGUE” U.S. CUSTOMS OPERATION THAT NEVER GETS CAUGHT.

Whitehouse on Health Care Opponents

Click this link ...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvZCOECt3a8&feature=player_embedded

Top 5 Reasons to Kill the Senate Healthcare Bill

Top 5 reasons to kill the senate healthcare bill:

1. Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income for health insurance -- whether you want it or not (source)

2. Many of the taxes that will pay for the bill will start now, but the benefits won't start until 2014. How is that helpful? (source)

3. Grants monopolies to drug companies to prevent generic versions of high tech drugs from coming to market. Not sure how that's going to lower costs... (source)

4. Under this bill, the cost of medical care will continue to RISE an average of 1000 a year for a family of four. (source)

5. The minor detail that it's not constitutional! Congress does not have the authority to enact this legislation, yet they don't seem to care. The people we have elected in both parties recognize no limitation on their power, and it's up to us - all of us - to stop this. (source)

No charges filed in vandalism of UC Berkeley chancellor's campus home

Eight people arrested after protesters vandalized the campus home of the UC Berkeley chancellor have not been charged with any crime and may never be, according to the Alameda County district attorney’s office.

There is insufficient evidence to file charges related to the Dec. 11 event, although University of California police will continue to investigate who was responsible for the estimated $18,000 in damage to windows, light fixtures and large planter urns in front of the house.

It was unclear who the vandals were in the crowd of up to 70 people who peacefully protested recent UC fee hikes, said Teresa Drenick, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office. If UC police turn up new evidence, some or all of the original eight people arrested and others could be charged, Drenick said.

“And it is possible nobody will get charged,” she added.

The eight included two UC Berkeley students and two UC Davis students. The students could still face potential UC discipline pending the outcome of a campus judicial review, UC officials said.

-- Larry Gordon

More breaking news in L.A. Now:

Angeles Crest Highway reopened after rain-related closure

2 bodies found in a Riverside County vineyard

High winds, falling snow levels expected in Southern California

LAPD: Brittany Murphy's death not a criminal matter

Appeals court denies Roman Polanski's bid to throw out sex case

'Everything back to normal' at LAX

Federal investigators to look into cause of fatal San Diego Coast Guard crash

Police seek shooter who killed 1, injured 2 in Mid-City

Request for Station fire choppers not heeded, Times investigation shows

Cycles of atrocities, Cycles of Shame & Regret, and Cycles of more atrocities…

This recent article by Time Magazine on Agent Orange in Vietnam opened up a floodgate of emotions I had thought I had gotten over with a year ago, after my own personal first-hand experiences there. The article was fairly well-written, that is, considering the publication. Here are some excerpts:

This lonely section of the abandoned Danang air base was once crawling with U.S. airmen and machines. It was here where giant orange drums were stored and the herbicides they contained were mixed and loaded onto waiting planes. Whatever sloshed out soaked into the soil and eventually seeped into the water supply. Thirty years later, the rare visitor to the former U.S. air base is provided with rubber boots and protective clothing. Residue from Agent Orange, which was sprayed to deny enemy troops jungle cover, remains so toxic that this patch of land is considered one of the most contaminated pieces of real estate in the country. A recent study indicates that even three decades after the war ended, the cancer-causing dioxins are at levels 300 to 400 times higher than what is deemed to be safe.

After years of meetings, signings and photo ops, the U.S. held another ceremony in Vietnam on Dec. 16 to sign yet another memorandum of understanding as part of the continuing effort to manage Agent Orange’s dark legacy. Yet there are grumblings that little — if anything — has been done to clean up the most contaminated sites. Since 2007, Congress has allocated a total of $6 million to help address Agent Orange issues in Vietnam. Not only does the amount not begin to scratch the surface of the problem or get rid of the tons of toxic soil around the nation, but there are questions about how the money is being spent.

Groups caring for children born with horrific deformities from Agent Orange — such as malformed limbs and no eyes — are wondering why they haven’t seen any of that money. Bedridden and unable to feed themselves, many patients need round-the-clock care. As they age, and parents die, who is going to look after them? asks Nguyen Thi Hien, director of the Danang Association of Victims of Agent Orange.

You can read the entire article here.

I spent the better part of the year 2008 in Vietnam. I traveled around the country, and was involved in interviewing and recording various children related charities and organizations there. While in the Da Nang area I had an opportunity to visit and interview a family who were victims of Agent Orange – bed-ridden twin men of age 28 and their parents.

The family lived in a village, in a shack, 3.5 miles from the nearest road. I had to walk the entire distance on a very hot and humid day, pass through many rice paddies, and after being chased by an angry water buffalo, I finally made it.

The following 5-minute video includes one of the interview segments I conducted with the parents, and brief footage of the twin’s horrendous condition. Before you watch the video:

• The footage of the Agent Orange victims is very graphic and may be disturbing to some.

• I apologize for the quality of the video: I had to conduct the interview through my translator and overcome my own shock and emotional response, while recording the victims.

Here is my video, recorded in March 2008, near Da Nang, Vietnam:

I want to emphasize these facts from the Time Magazine article:

The U.S. government still spends billions every year on disability payments to those who served in Vietnam — including their children, many of whom are suffering from dioxin-associated cancers and birth defects. Since 2007, Congress has allocated a total of $6 million to help address Agent Orange issues in Vietnam.

And,

Some point out that the U.S. spends only a fraction on Agent Orange cleanup compared to the $50 million it spends every year on searching for the remains of American soldiers missing in action.

And I want to add a few other comparison points:

We spend billions per week on undeclared wars to injure, kill, and destroy. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars on fraudulent and wasteful defense contracts. We spend billions on drones and bombs which kill 687 civilians per 14 enemy targets, amounting to a ratio of nearly 50 civilians killed for each undeclared enemy killed…

And when it comes to cleaning up this huge mess we left behind in Vietnam, when it comes to a certain degree of reparation expected from a superpower nation with even a minute amount of moral decency, when it comes to…we go on denying responsibility, arguing irrational technicalities, and do nothing, absolute zilch.

President Gerald Ford had the following to say on February 19, 1976, on the anniversary of the Japanese Internment:

I call upon the American people to affirm with me the unhyphenated American promise that we have learned from the tragedy of that long ago experience-forever to treasure liberty and justice for each individual American and resolve that this kind of error shall never be made again.

Okay, for this post I am not going to dwell upon President Ford’s consciously chosen words to emphasize our responsibility to treasure liberty and justice only for individual Americans, and not for all humanity (Still- I’m grinding my teeth, and holding my tongue). Now, here is my question:

What is it with all these past lessons of tragedies we later come to admit to and regret?! Because we keep doing the same thing over and over again. Because we seem to always turn around afterwards and start the next vicious cycle again. And it seems we have been making the vicious cycles longer and crueler each time: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, Extraordinary Renditions …

Perhaps a president or two later, we’ll be hearing regrets along the same lines on all the atrocious acts we’ve been engaged in since 2001, in the name of a war on terror, in the name of national security. Perhaps, we’ll be taking a solemn oath or two to not repeat the same atrocious acts. Perhaps we’ll have a law or two written to emphasize and engrave our regrets and commitment to never do the same again… And then, perhaps, there will come another pretext, or something declared and used as pretext, and we’ll go about forgetting all past regrets, declare our previous oaths nullified, and have the previous laws replaced with the opposite of the original and name them ‘patriotic,’ and …there we’ll go repeating history, only making each cycle bigger and worse than the one before.

Am I just being cynical here? I don’t think so. But, what do you think?

British Army 'waterboarded' suspects in 70s

Evidence casts doubt on guilt of man sentenced to hang for killing soldier

Evidence that the British army subjected prisoners in Northern Ireland to waterboarding during interrogations in the 1970s is emerging after one of the alleged victims launched an appeal against his conviction for murder.

Liam Holden became the last person in the United Kingdom to be sentenced to hang after being convicted in 1973 of the murder of a soldier, largely on the basis of an unsigned confession. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he spent 17 years behind bars.

The jury did not believe Holden's insistence that he made the confession only because he had been held down by members of the Parachute Regiment, whom he says placed a towel over his face before pouring water from a bucket over his nose and mouth, giving him the impression that he was drowning.

But now the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has referred Holden's case to the court of appeal in Belfast after unearthing new evidence, and because of doubts about "the admissibility and reliability" of his confession. The commission says it believes "there is a real possibility" his conviction will be quashed. After a preliminary hearing earlier this month, Holden's appeal was adjourned to the new year.

However, the account that Holden gave at his trial is remarkably similar to those that have emerged since the CIA began using waterboarding techniques while interrogating al-Qaida suspects during the so-called war on terror.

Lawyers who have taken up his case have identified a second man who gave a similar account of being waterboarded after being arrested by detectives of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and questioned about the murder of a police constable. In a statement to a doctor in April 1978, this man said officers had put a towel over his face and poured water over his nose and mouth, and that "this was frightening and was repeated on a number of occasions". He was eventually released without charge. The CCRC also has a statement taken from a third man who says he was waterboarded by the British army in the early 70s.

All of the allegations of waterboarding come from a period after March 1972, when the then prime minister, Ted Heath, banned five other notorious torture methods which were subsequently condemned by the European court of human rights as being inhuman and degrading.

Holden, a Roman Catholic, was 19 and a chef when he was detained during a raid by soldiers of the Parachute Regiment on his parents' home in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast in October 1972. Apparently acting on a tipoff from an informer, the soldiers accused Holden of being the sniper who, a month earlier, had shot dead Private Frank Bell of the regiment's 2nd Battalion. Bell had just turned 18 and had joined the regiment six weeks earlier. He was the 100th British soldier to die in Northern Ireland that year.

When Holden came to trial in April 1973 he told the jury he had been playing cards with his brother and two friends in a public place at the time Bell was shot. He said that after being arrested in his bed the soldiers had taken him to their base on Black Mountain, west of Belfast, where he was beaten, burned with a cigarette lighter, hooded and threatened with execution.

Holden also gave a detailed account of being waterboarded, although he did not use that term. In a court report published the following day, the Belfast Telegraph said the defendant told the jury that he had been pushed into a cubicle where he was held down by six men, that a towel was placed over his head, and that water was then poured slowly over his face from a bucket. "It nearly put me unconscious," Holden was quoted as saying. "It nearly drowned me and stopped me from breathing. This went on for a minute." A short while later he was subjected to the same treatment again, he said.

A sergeant from the Parachute Regiment and a British army captain told the court that Holden had confessed to the shooting during an "interview". The unnamed sergeant said Holden had wanted to confess to the murder because "he wanted to get it off his chest", while the officer said the teenager had told him that he had left the IRA a short while later because he felt such remorse.

The jury took less than 75 minutes to convict Holden of capital murder, and the judge, Sir Robert Lowry, told him: "The sentence of the court is that you will suffer death in the manner authorised by law." The then Northern Ireland secretary, William Whitelaw, commuted the sentence the following month, and the death penalty was abolished in Northern Ireland shortly afterwards. Holden did not appeal, however, with relatives saying at the time that he believed his trial had been "rigged" and a "farce".

He was eventually released from prison in 1989.

Holden's solicitor, Patricia Coyle, said: "At trial Mr Holden gave compelling evidence that the alleged confession was obtained by the army using water torture. He spent 17 years in jail. He is looking forward to the court hearing his appeal."

The new evidence that the CCRC has submitted to the court of appeal is being kept secret. The CCRC is unwilling to discuss this material, other than to say that it has not yet been disclosed at the request of the public body from which it was obtained. Holden's lawyers are now asking for it to be disclosed.

The Ministry of Defence said it was unable to confirm whether British service personnel had received instruction in waterboarding techniques as part of their counterinterrogation training at that time, and it would not disclose whether personnel currently receive such instruction "for reasons of operational security".

There is evidence that such instruction has been given, however. In 2005 Rod Richard, the former Welsh Office minister, told a Welsh newspaper that he had been waterboarded during his counterinterrogation training as a Royal Marines officer in the late 60s.

The Guardian has spoken to a former Royal Marines officer who says that he and his fellow officers and their men were all waterboarded at the end of their escape and evasion training at Lympstone, Devon, in the late 60s and early 70s. "You were tied to a chair and they would tip you over on your back, put a towel over your face and pour water over you. I can't recall what we called it – not waterboarding – but it produced a drowning sensation and it was pretty unpleasant."

Seven months before Holden was detained by British soldiers, the Heath government had publicly repudiated and banned five "interrogation techniques". RUC officers had learned the techniques – hooding, sleep deprivation, starvation and the use of stress positions and noise – from British military intelligence officers, but Heath assured the Commons that they "will not be used in future as an aid to interrogation".

There were subsequently unconfirmed allegations that the British army had experimented with other methods of torture, including electric shocks, and the use of drugs. Towards the end of the decade, Amnesty International was reporting that terrorism suspects were again being mistreated, this time by RUC detectives, "with sufficient frequency to warrant the establishment of a public inquiry".

A number of Republican former prisoners have told the Guardian that waterboarding was used as a form of punishment, as well as a means of extracting confessions.

UK drops terrorism charges against Libyan

A Libyan national who has been under restriction for the past six years in the United Kingdom on terrorism charges has won his long court battle against the UK Home Office and Security Services.

Faraj Hassan told Press TV over phone on Monday that his solicitors tried hard and finally succeed in convincing a High Court judge that he is not a terrorist threat to the United Kingdom.

“They couldn’t manage to fight this case. All the allegations they had against me were based on suspicions,” he said.

Hassan, 28, was arrested in 2002 shortly after he entered Britain. He spent 15 months in detention without trial before eventually being charged in 2003 under the UK Terrorism Act. He has been subject to a control order ever since.

“After spending months in detention I was told that they wanted to extradite me to Italy. I fought this case for approximately five years,” Hassan said.

“After my acquittal in absentia in Italy, the Italian government was not interested in me anymore, therefore I was released under strict conditions,” he told Press TV.

“Myself and my family were for two-and-a-half years isolated from the community, we were not allowed to use the basic things that any human being is entitled to such as mobile phones and internet,” the Libyan said about his lifestyle in the UK.