Big Safari, the Kennedy Assassination, & the war for control of the Venice Airport

A fierce war being waged for control of the Venice Municipal Airport has led to the discovery of covert CIA and military operations, dating back to at least 1959, which go well beyond what was previously known to have taken place there.

Amazingly—especially for a tiny airport located in an out-of-the-way retirement community—according to a recently-uncovered police report there is a second man active at the Venice Airport with relevance to the Kennedy assassination as well.

More details of the new revelations will be disclosed over the next several days, and placed in context of their importance in any future 9/11 investigation.
First, some brief background on the current controversy, and how it led to new discoveries about the 50-year history of covert operations at the Venice Airport.
The latest discoveries began after citizens of Venice asked if we would cover the momentous struggle underway there, the raging controversy over who will control the Venice Airport.
On one side are a reform city council, elected to get a handle on the more-or-less well-organized elite deviance which has seemingly emanated from the airport since time immemorial.
On the other: the FAA, the Dept of Homeland Security, and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, which has been leading a strenuous effort to insist that the city allow Huffman Aviation’s current iteration—controlled by a federal receiver after Art Nadel took up residence in the slammer—to build four new jet hangers at the airport.
The ferocity of the battle has been puzzling.
The airport—while valuable because it has no tower and thus offers easy, unwatched, and uncontrolled access to the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and other Points South—does not seem irreplaceable.
The operations which have escaped public scrutiny for years in Venice would seem to be able to relocate somewhere else fairly easily.

There are other out of the way airports in Florida with docile local populations, easily-bought off public officials, and newspapers whose watchdog functions can be easily lulled through occasional gifts of red meat.
Why fight so hard to remain in Venice, where its been (pretty much) exposed?
In an effort to make sense of the fierce passions on display, we took a new look at the history of the Venice Airport. And the answer we found there, and which best fits the circumstances, owes more to the vagaries of human nature than to the powers of Reason.
The “boys” at the Venice Airport are fighting so hard to keep their dirty operations based there… because that’s where they think they belong.
Why? Because they were there first.
The Venice Airport, of course, first became infamous after 9/11 for having played host to three of the four terrorist pilots involved in the attack.

The Airport’s reputation was further tarnished with the subsequent discovery—first reported exclusively here—that the owner of Huffman Aviation, Wallace J. Hilliard, was implicated in international heroin trafficking, and had had his Lear jet permanently seized by the DEA after it was caught carrying 43 lbs. of heroin in Orlando on July 25, 2000.
That date was less than three weeks after Mohamed Atta arrived—from Afghanistan, according to Rudi Dekkers, speaking with reporters on Sept. 12—a country which, even then, was responsible for most of the world’s heroin—to attend his Venice FL flight school.
It came as little surprise when this seemingly fruitful line of questioning was ignored by the 9/11 Commission.

And when the new owner of Huffman Aviation was arrested recently, and charged with running a Ponzi scheme which stole almost $400 million from local investors, it began to seem like business as usual at the Venice Airport.
“Spooks,” as we have been reporting for more than five years, are no strangers at the Airport where Mohamed Atta's hijackers made their base in the U.S.
Venice was home to the headquarters of Beverley Enterprises, owned by Jackson Stephens, known as President Jimmy Carter’s roommate when both men were at the Naval Academy, we previously reported, in “Welcome to TerrorLand.”
Jackson Stephens’s name is almost invariably linked to America’s super-secret National Security Agency, the NSA, as well as to—it must be said—the massive cocaine trafficking through Mena, Arkansas during the 1980’s in support of the Contra war in Nicaragua.
From Welcome to TERRORLAND, chap 1:
“When we interviewed the former Venice Chief of Police, he seemed more than a little embarrassed, and totally apologetic about what had been allowed to happen at the tiny airport in his town. He asked that we not judge city officials too harshly. They had little or no control over what went on at the Venice Airport.
“The Venice Airport is the kind of place where it’s not unusual to see a Blackhawk helicopter touch down at three in the morning and then take off again 30 seconds later,” the former Chief said with a shrug. “Or the airport can be quiet and deserted one minute, and the next have 5000 paratroopers landing. That’s just the way it is here.”

While Byrd’s Texas Book Repository was being put to what Mr Byrd no doubt claimed was unauthorized use on Nov. 22 1963, Mr Byrd himself had been otherwise engaged.
With a big assist from Linda Minor, a lawyer and invaluable researcher into all things Texan, and resources freely available at the amazing Mary Ferrell Foundation, we make bold to offer a brief distillation of what happened next…
On the day of the assassination Byrd was conveniently “away from his desk.”
He was out of the country on a two-month safari in central Africa. When he returned in January, his good friend Lyndon Johnson was the new President of the United States, his School Book Depository building had become famous in his absence, and a huge juicy defense contract was waiting on his desk, awarded to his company to build fighter planes, and to be paid from the 1965 Congressional budget… even though it had not yet been approved by Congress.
It sounds a lot like Al Capone, who was famously taking some sun down in Miami when the St Valentines Day Massacre shook Chicago. That is, of course, just conjecture. But here’s something that’s not:
We called on a source, now retired, who had worked in the American aerospace industry building satellites for the NSA for several decades.
He might have known General Harry Byrd, we figured. He had... in fact, he had worked for him at LTV.
And in between anecdotes that are colorful, but neither here nor there, he mentioned that, oh, bye the bye, did we know that
When Byrd’s defense aerospace firm LTV “went big” after the JFK assassination, he told us, it had become a big part of an overarching Air Force Operation…
For years afterward, he said, every self-respecting big-time Air Force defense program—everyone who was anyone, in other words—came under the overall rubric of an Air Force Operation whose declassified code-name, when he named it, give us pause.
It was called Operation Big Safari.
"The Earth is one big safari park for these good old boys, and we're the lions and tigers and bears."
Oh my.
Stay Tuned.
http://www.madcowprod.com/09082009.html

Thanks to Ed for the link. Linda may have things to add here also.

David Guyatt Wrote:I don't find this especially surprising Peter. My take is that the same corrupt crew (that is to say, while faces change, the "corpus crookedness" is the same) have been running the US since JFK.

David Guyatt Wrote:I don't find this especially surprising Peter. My take is that the same corrupt crew (that is to say, while faces change, the "corpus crookedness" is the same) have been running the US since JFK.

Charles Drago Wrote:Actually, David, their control of the US of A predates the era of JFK.

Are you aware that documents relating to the Lincoln assassination remain classified to this day?

Families rule the world.

Yours in better living through chemistry,

CD

'Venice was a quiet Mena, Arkansas': former drug pilot

“Venice was a kind of quiet Mena (Arkansas)," stated a former drug pilot for The Company. "Jackson Stephens built this huge headquarters next to the airport. And he was in charge. But I do remember seeing Porter Goss around the airport a lot.”

A report in the April 28, 1982 San Francisco Chronicle headlined "Story of Spies, Stolen Arms and Drugs," stated The Company consisted of "about 300 members, many of them former military men or ex-police officers with nearly $30 million worth of assets, including planes, ships and real estate."

"The guy's shoes cost more than my car."

[B]

We uncovered evidence indicating that Guzman’s real name was Mario Silverio Villamia in testimony to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of JFK about the underworld ties of Jack Ruby, the slayer of Lee Harvey Oswald.

We received further confirmation after we tracked down a former drug pilot for The Company who spoke with us on condition of anonymity.

Throughout the decade of the 1980's, while drug trafficking exploded, there were two completely different perceptions about its role at the Venice Airport.