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

[Magda Hassan]

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

I knew by now that when a group of individuals gravitated toward one another for no apparent reason, or inexplicably headed in the same direction as if drawn by a magnetic field, or coincidence piled on coincidence too many times, as often as not the shadowy outlines of a covert intelligence operation were somehow becoming visible.”—New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison

Sept 08, 2009
by Daniel Hopsicker
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Preview II: "New American Drug Lords"
at
danielhopdanielhopsicker.tvsicker.tv

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.
Operations at the Venice Airport have involved individuals whose names figure prominently in the Kennedy Assassination, for example Texas oilman General D. H. (Harry) Byrd, owner of a defense contractor which in the late 50's and early 60's built and launched Regulus II cruise missiles from the beach directly in front of the Venice Airport in a program run out of at Eglin AFB in Florida’s panhandle.
“Vought's Regulus II was a Mach 2 capable cruise missile optimized for launch from surfaced submarines and other Navy surface vessels, and later served as a high-speed target drone for other weapon development programs,” company literature stated.
Byrd’s Chance-Vought Aircraft, later re-named LTV, would become—almost immediately after the JFK assassination—a principal beneficiary of the massive military spending accompanying the growth of American military involvement in the Vietnam War.

General Byrd, of course, was the owner of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, where the Warren Commission alleged Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots which killed President John F. Kennedy.
Byrd also ran the Texas and Louisiana Civil Air Patrol, at the same time cadets Barry Seal and Lee Harvey Oswald were meeting Kennedy assassination conspirator Capt. David Ferrie at a two-week summer camp of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol at Barksdale Air Force Base in July of 1955.

[size=12]Tracking down some loose ends in Cuba.[/SIZE]

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.
According to this recently-unearthed police report, that man, a suspected CIA Agent, flew to Cuba in 1969 on a mission to assassinate one of “four or five” of the men then still alive who had been part of the Kennedy assassination “hit team.”
A Dec 6 1978 memo from the Chief Deputy of the Sarasota Sheriff's Dept. to the FBI's Tampa office on the subject on Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" states he recently learned that four or five years ago "Stephen Ruth, arrested several years earlier on a burglary charge, had been the passenger on an airplane that crashed in Cuban territory in...early 1970."
"At that time Ruth was suspected of trafficking in narcotics... had spent some time in jail in Cuba... and on his release returned to Venice Florida."
The day after Ruth was arrested, "Ruth contacted Corporal Lynn Taylor of the Sarasota Sheriff's office Venice Office. Stephen Ruth reportedly told Corporal Taylor that his true mission in Cuba was to do away with an individual who was incarcerated in a Cuban prison."
"According to Ruth, this individual was one of five persons involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Ruth told... the officer....that within five years he would have some nice cars and as much money as he needed."
"Corporal Ruth asked Ruth if he had done what he was sent there to do and Ruth replied that the job had been done, and though there were no there comments, Corporal Taylor advised that he had the feeling Ruth was inferring he had been sent there by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA.)"
The police report was found in the archives of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, in an FBI folder from the House Select Committee on Assassinations. JFK VOLUME XV.
There are valid reasons to suspect Ruth may be telling the truth. For one thing, as we will see tomorrow, within five years Ruth was rich. And Ruth also appears to have unexplained pull with authorities in Florida.

"50 years of covert ops. No film at eleven."

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.

Finders play Finders keepers

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.

"National security been berry berry good to me."

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.”

The Most Dangerous Game

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.

[Peter Lemkin]

Tying Dallas to drug operations and to 9-11 through Byrd and Venice Airport! Heavy stuff...have to read again and research this further. Where is Tosh when we need him? T, You out there? I think this is important to follow-up on. The more one looks, the more important Byrd was in Dallas and in those who's orbit was centered in the events of 11-22-63! Kudos to Linda Minor too, for her important finds - some mentioned in the article. Venice Airport and a few around it seem to have a most interesting provenance. No wonder they wanted a Bush as Governor in Texas and in Florida.....important states for dirty business.

[David Guyatt]

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.

[Peter Lemkin]

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.

I agree, no surprise, but nice to have some tangible evidence to better try to wake-up the sleeping [or is it zombi] masses!

[Charles Drago]

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.

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

[David Guyatt]

Interesting fact Charlie. I had no idea that the Lincoln assassination was still classified. Over here we have the "hundred year rule" which keeps certain matters classified for 100 years. Ordinarily, it is Her Majesty's Secret Service matters that are awarded that classification while other State secrets are of lesser duration.

But, of course, some matters never make it past the fire/shredder.

[Helen Reyes]

thanks for the hopsicker update. he's done good work. that's right, it's rudi dekkers, not bohringer.

[Magda Hassan]

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

No. I had no idea Charles! Why is this case still classified?

[Magda Hassan]

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

[URL="http://www.danielhopsicker.tv/"]
[/URL]

“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.”
The airport where three of the four terrorist pilots in the 9/11 attack learned to fly was a hub of operations in the 1970’s and early ‘80’s for “The Company,” an international drug smuggling organization headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky and Mena, Arkansas.
Led by a mysterious Cuban exile, who used the alias “Frank Guzman,” The Company’s contingent at the Venice Airport numbered as many as a dozen pilots and associates. [/FONT] The Company began receiving national attention in the early 1980’s.
“The Company,” whose name is a commonly-used euphemism for the CIA, was profiled in Sally Denton’s best-selling book “The Blue-Grass Conspiracy,” which raised pointed questions about the involvement of the CIA with the group.
The 60-year secret history of covert CIA and military operations at the Venice Municipal Airport now coming to light goes well beyond anything previously known to have taken place there.

A Cuban exile in the Warren Commission Report... at the Venice Airport

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."
Federal Agents testified that “The Company” smuggled billions of dollars worth of narcotics into the U.S. from Latin America, as well as being involved in gunrunning and mercenary operations.
At the Venice Airport, in addition to Frank Guzman their number included: Stephen Ruth, who we reported on earlier in Confessions of a Drug Smuggling CIA Hit Man," Lee Crowell, Joseph Brea, Richard Curry, George Quarles, and several others, including a local attorney, who have been missing in action for more than 20 years.[/FONT]
Guzman first surfaced at the Venice Airport in 1974. He became an instant celebrity, as well as something of a novelty, because he was the owner of the first jet to ever be based at the Venice Airport.
A now-defunct Sarasota newspaper called the Sarasota Journal did a profile of him soon after he arrived under the headline “Venice Jet Flier Creates a Stir.”
It was a prototype Navy jet fighter called the Super Pinto, one of only 14 ever made, which could climb from the ground to 10,000 feet in just 55 seconds.
He ingratiated himself with the local political establishment by volunteering to fly it as a stunt plane in local air shows for charity.
Despite the reporter’s efforts, exactly how Guzman how come to possess a rare Navy jet fighter plane remained a little hazy. So, too, did Guzman’s former career. He was identified, without further explanation, as a “manufacturer.”
The story did reveal Guzman’s difficulty in obtaining spare parts for his jet, with necessitated trips to the planes’ manufacturer, Temco Co, in Dallas.


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

[B]
Strangely, Temco had a history in Venice which the reporter failed to note.[/B]

The founder of Temco (later LTV), was [B]D.H. Byrd, who owned the Texas School Book Depository where President Kennedy was killed. And as we’ve seen in previous stories like Big Safari, the Kennedy Assassination, & the war for control of the Venice Airport, the airport was the site where Byrd's Regulus missiles for the Air Force were tested. [/B]

For the next five years Guzman ran a business at the Venice Airport.
Then on May 3, 1979, disaster struck. “Former Venice Businessman, Pilot found shot to death” read next day’s headline in the Sarasota Herald Tribune.
“A former Venice businessman and pilot was found shot to death in an East coast motel room in what police there theorize was a drug-related execution,” the paper reported.
“The Dania FL Police Dept identified the 49-year old dead man as Frank Guzman, the former owner of Sunair Enterprises, a flying service based at the Venice Municipal Airport.”
Guzman had been found by a maid on the floor of his fifth floor room at the Howard Johnson’s across from the Fort Lauderdale Airport. Someone (the killer was never identified) had put a 32 against the back of Guzman’s head and pulled the trigger.
The motel would later achieve infamy during Iran contra as the site of meetings between Oliver North and mercenaries flying to Honduras to work with the contras.
An “associate” of Guzman’s in Venice and Fort Lauderdale, Joseph Brea, was missing and presumed dead, police said.
The story contained a great quote from a cop on the scene:
“Guzman was definitely into the big bucks,” said Lt. James Serpe of the Dania Police Dept. “This guy’s shoes cost more than my car.”
The slaying bore all the earmarks of a professional hit, a later story indicated, in which police speculated that Guzman may have been associated with the “Black Tuna” smuggling group.

The truth would come out almost a year later, in a story in the April 30 1980 Sarasota Herald Tribune.
“Testimony at a federal trial in Indianapolis has linked a murdered Venice businessman and a missing Sarasota aircraft dealer with an international drug trafficking ring.”
“On Monday witnesses testified that Frank Guzman, the former owner of SunAir Enterprises of Venice, and Lee Crowell, owner of Lemac Inc of Sarasota, were members of the drug ring known as The Company.”

Jeeps to Castro & the drug ring known as "The Company"

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.
Ruby had approached Texas gunrunner Robert McKeown about selling jeeps to Castro.
McKeown had been convicted of the same offense in 1958, said a Commission exhibit dated April 17, 1964. "the company AND "the bluegrass conspiracy"
Also convicted with McKeown had been the former President of Cuba, Carlos Prio, and four other men, one of whom was one Mario Silverio Villamia, aged 34, also known as Frank Guzman.
We did the math.
The Warren Commission “Frank Guzman” had been 34 in 1964. Ten years later, in 1974, the Sarasota newspaper profile of “Frank Guzman” reported:
“For the 44-year old Guzman, the jet is a partial answer to the search for finding excitement in life.”

"Venice was a quiet Mena. And a sweet deal."

We received further confirmation after we tracked down a former drug pilot for The Company who spoke with us on condition of anonymity.
He had flown with Guzman, he said, “at least a hundred” flights to Colombia from the Venice Airport. We had no trouble believing him. His name and involvement with the group is well-chronicled in news reports from the time.
After a conviction for drug trafficking 30 years ago, his life has returned to normal, he said. Today he is a respected businessman in a city not far from Venice.
“Frank came from Cuba when Castro came to power,” he confirmed. “He had ties to a former Cuban President Carlos Prio. Along with other Cuban exiles he participated in the Bay of Pigs, then worked with the CIA during the 1960’s.”
“Venice was a kind of quiet Mena (Arkansas)," said our pilot informant. [/FONT]
"Jackson Stephens had 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.”[/FONT]
At that time, Goss was a CIA Agent assigned to Latin America. He later became a Florida Congressman from Charlotte County, where he eventually became head of the House Intelligence Committee. In 2002 he was named Director of the CIA under George W. Bush. [/FONT]
“Venice was a sweet deal. The Coast Guard had radar sites in Tampa and Key West, but nothing in between. So we’d fly in and out totally unnoticed.”[/FONT]

"Nothing to see here, folks. Move along."

Throughout the decade of the 1980's, while drug trafficking exploded, there were two completely different perceptions about its role at the Venice Airport.
Call them the minimalists and the maximalists...
"Only a few late night flights use the uncontrolled airfield in Venice," Venice Police Sgt. Jim Hanks told local reporters. “We’ve only caught two or three smugglers. But there have been several who keep their planes here and have been caught in other areas."
Local reporters, on the other hand, begged to disagree.
“In the past year the Venice Airport has been the scene of several drug raids,”the Herald Tribune reported on Sept 29, 1983. “In recent years the Venice Airport has been rocked by vandals thieves and drug smugglers.”
“The airport is attractive to drug dealers and thieve because it is uncontrolled,” the paper reported. “Thieves use the uncontrolled airport to drop stolen airplanes, including stolen private jets.”
The city’s response was to hire a private security guard to “protect the airport grounds during non- business hours.” Aviation executives at the Airport were unimpressed.
“We have planes come in here late at night, drop a load and leave,” said Harold Haggen, owner of the Venice Flying Service.
“And nobody knows they’ve ever been here.”
“Police protection?” asked Harold Haggen, rhetorically. “The police don’t hardly come around here.”
Even Sgt. Hanks was hedging his bet a little.

"Pointing to past drug smuggling incidents discovered at the airport, Hanks said unregulated plane usage there provides an opportunity for planes to come and go as they please, usually without scrutiny from anyone."

Almost two decades later, when Mohamed Atta first cast his malevolent eye down the runway in Venice, not much had changed. For some people, that was just fine...
The official story of the 9/11 attack goes like this:
"The arrival of Atta’s terrorist cadre at the Venice Municipal Airport was happenstance, and the terrorist’s presence there an accident of history, unrelated to any pre-existing climate of crime or corruption."
Once again, and emphatically: Nothing could be further from the truth.

http://www.madcowprod.com/04162010.htm

[Peter Lemkin]

Surprised to see that this thread died....to me the connection between major false-flag ops is the needed lever and fulcrum to pry open the closed American mind....if that fails.....bye, bye America....sooner, rather than later...and I mean VERY soon!!!! [within the next ten years...could be a lot less...]

In fact, this thread here also connects the two, without specifically calling attention to that fact. Persons involved in both [and lots of other covert ops and false-flag ops] were involved in drugs.....funny thing about that.....