Daniel Hopsicker Hanging Out With David Irving

Turns out that Hopsicker was a featured speaker at a "Real History, USA" conference hosted by Holocaust Revisionist Supreme, David Irving. Michael Ruppert of From the Wilderness was scheduled to speak at this conference, but apparently came to his senses in time.

I'm reading Hopsicker's Welcome to Terrorland right now; you can read it here. It relies heavily on Amanda Keller, who has admitted that she was not Atta's girlfriend. And the FBI agrees:

But the former Venice stripper now says her boyfriend was another flight student not connected to 9/11. And, for the first time, federal investigators say she's right.

"There's nothing there to corroborate the relationship between the two," a New York-based FBI counterterrorism agent said recently after reviewing 9/11 case files.

Of course, to conspiracy theorists, that's just evidence that the FBI is in on the plot. But to the rest of us, it says that the relationship was looked into by the FBI and they concluded it was a bunch of BS.

As I read the book, I see lots of evidence that the Mohammed that Amanda was dating was not Atta. For example, in Chapter Five:

Mohamed had used a check to bail her out of jail, Amanda will tell us. She knew him as Mohamed Arajaki, which was also the name on the check. "The FBI told me they found bank accounts of his all over in numerous different names," Keller stated.

And I suspect that this is the book's central trick. Hopsicker assumes Atta is Arajaki, and therefore, when his witnesses call him Mohamed he dutifully quotes them, but then adds some side commentary about how "Atta sure doesn't sound like a devout Muslim to me!"

For example:

"The two girls were introduced to two men from Germany that they said were Mohamed's friends," Tony LaConca continued. "I thought it was strange, because Mohamed didn't appear to be French-Canadian or German."

Atta was meeting "two men from Germany" in Key West, who we will later learn flew in solely to meet him. This is the first hint we have gotten that all of Mohamed Atta's associates don't face East five times every day.

People who refer to him as Atta associated with Amanda Keller:

Stephanie Fredrickson, neighbor:

"Amanda said to me, 'I'd like you to meet my friend Mohamed Atta. He's from France.' I looked at her to see if she was joking, but I guess she wasn't," stated Frederickson.

Fredrickson refers to him as Atta several times. But what about the point up above about how Amanda "knew him as Mohamed Arajaki"? See the problem?

Apartment Manager Charlie Grapentine:

"Atta always carried a fanny pack around his waist," Grapentine said. "I remember Amanda once telling him that she needed some new clothes, and he reached in and peeled off a few hundreds from a thick roll of cash he had stuffed inside the fanny pack."

The FBI did not receive apartment manager Grapentine's recollections any more warmly than they had those of Stephanie Frederickson.

In fact, says Grapentine, the FBI was positively frosty, especially on the subject of talking to reporters.

"They called me a liar, and told me to keep my mouth shut," states the ex-marine grimly. "Nobody likes to hear that; that they didn't see something they know they saw."

There's also quite a bit of evidence of BS in Amanda's tale as well. For example, she claims:

"I helped him move from a house in North Port, and he asked me to talk to the landlady, because he didn't like American women, and she (Vonnie) happened to be the one renting the apartment," Amanda said.

"'How can you like me if you don't like American women?' I asked him. 'I'm as American as it gets!"'

Mohamed replied that he didn't 'translate' well with American women.

"So I talked to the landlady for him," Amanda said. "He was curt and rude with her, so she told him when it was time to pay the rent just to stick it (the check) in the freezer, so she wouldn't have to deal with him."

Stick the check in the freezer? Wouldn't it be simpler and involve less interaction with Mohammed to say "Stick the check in the mail?" Would a terrorist agree to an arrangement where his landlady could come into his apartment pick up the check? It doesn't pass the reasonability test. It's a nonsense story, unless of course the boyfriend was not a terrorist. Even then it sounds dubious. Do landladies often rent to people who are curt and rude with them?

I haven't finished the book, so these are preliminary impressions.