[NYTr] Pilot of Crashed Drug Plane: "Don's $2 Million Bought the Plane"

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Previous reports:

The Statesman Picks up Mystery Drug Plane Story
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20071008/070053.html

Sloppy Tradecraft Exposes CIA Drug Plane
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20071008/069923.html

Jet Linked To CIA Crashes in Yucatan w/6 Tons Heroin
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20071001/069703.html

Mysterious US Biz Jet Crashes in Mexico w/4 TONS of Coke; 
Gitmo Gulag Connection? 
http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070924/069193.html


Mad Cow News - Oct 18, 2007
http://www.madcowprod.com/10182007.html


PILOT OF CRASHED DRUG FLIGHT: 

'DON'S $2 MILLION BOUGHT THE PLANE'

by Daniel Hopsicker

A pilot accused of owning the Gulfstream business jet (N987SA) which
broke in two and crash-landed in the Mexican Yucatan carrying nearly 4
tons of cocaine has pointed a finger at a notorious convicted drug
smuggler as the true owner of the drug-running airplane, the
MadCowMorningNews can report exclusively.

Don Whittington, whose WORLD JET INC at the Fort Lauderdale Executive
Airport was widely reported to have been deeply involved in CIA
rendition flights, provided $2 million in cash to purchase the
Gulfstream business jet, according to Greg Smith, one of two pilots in
Fort Lauderdale Florida who have been accused of owning the plane.

The claim is the only discernible movement in the case to date.

"Who owned drug plane that crashed in Mexico?" asked the headline of
Jay Root and Kevin Hall's September 27, 2007 story in the McClatchy
Newspapers, the first U.S. report of the incident.

The question has been met with stony silence by U.S. authorities, and
remains unanswered, marking the second time in the past 18 months an
American-registered aircraft carrying a multi-ton load of cocaine has
been interdicted in Mexico... with no subsequent action taken by U.S.
authorities against the American owners of the drug-running aircraft.

The war on drugs is a war on some drugs

While more than three weeks has elapsed since the American-registered
airplane's  crash-landing, there has still been no official word on
indictments, arrests, or even a determination from aviation officials
of who exactly owned the plane that crashed in a field 45 kilometers
outside Merida International Airport shortly after dawn on September
25th.

A list of questions sent last week to the FAA's media contact,
Kathleen Bergin, remains unanswered. If you'd like to assist our
government in understanding it's role in serving the people, please
write her (kathleen.bergin at faa.gov) to remind her of her promise to
respond.

However a phone call to Jeannette Moran, the DEA's Miami media
contact, did produce this just-before-deadline voicemail response:

"I know you're asking about the Gulfstream in the Yucatan, I do not
know who has that case, or if it's a DEA case, I don't know which
division it might be out of... So I really can't help you with that,
and I apologize. If you need anything else give me a call."

This encapsulates the situation perfectly. When a bank robber steals a
few thousand dollars before holing up with a hostage, does the FBI
take three weeks before divulging the name of the suspect?

But cases involving politically-connected American drug smugglers,
ferrying multi-ton loads of dope worth hundreds of millions of
dollars, are treated as matters of the highest national security.

Meaning: don't bother to ask...

But while U.S. officials aren't talking, one of the two pilots at the
Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport accused of owning the Gulfstream
business jet told an aviation executive this week that the money to
purchase the plane came from the owner of a jet charter business at
the airport, where he sometimes works as a contract pilot.

Considered "most likely to go down"

According to the McClatchy report, Pilot Greg Smith's signature is on
the FAA transfer of registration documents, along with that of fellow
pilot Clyde O'Connor.

Both pilots refused to talk to the media. Understandably, both are
feeling the pressure. O'Connor was apprehended carrying firearms into
Canada over the weekend while fleeing the U.S. for sunnier climes, in
his case, the Azores.

The two men are among those considered most likely to take the fall
for owning the plane when it was caught carrying 4 tons of cocaine,
along with Brazilians Joao Malaga and Eduardo Dias Guimaraes, who
were, according to FAA registration documents in our possession, the
last registered owners of the plane.

When news of the plane's discovery with a multi-ton load of cocaine
became public, the Brazilians immediately began asserting to reporters
that they had already sold the plane to Smith and O'Connor.

Verifying their claim has proven impossible to date.

The Brazilian men are alleged to be aircraft brokers. But their
"company," Donna Blue Aircraft, as we saw last week, is a paper
entity. And just like the supposed aircraft broker in California to
whom St Petersburg Florida's Frederic Geffon claims he sold the DC9
airliner caught with 5.5 tons of coke in the Yucatan 18 months ago,
the men and their firm have no track record of purchasing and selling
aircraft, which is what aircraft brokers do.

"Not likely to have $2 million anytime soon"

An aviation executive in frequent contact with Smith -- the only one
who hasn't yet fled the country -- agreed to contact him for us to ask
about the incident and get his comment on the situation.

Asked how he was, Smith allowed that he was doing good... considering.

"I'm having my ups and down," Smith admitted, sounding a little morose.

"You probably heard, I had a bit of an accident in Mexico."

The executive tried to lighten the mood. "Are you good enough to loan
me two million dollars? I hear you've come into quite a bit of money."

The reference is to the statement to authorities by Brazilian Joao
Malaga of Donna Blue Aircraft (d/b/a), that the men had paid him $2
million in cash to purchase the Gulfstream.

Malago's statement was greeted with derision by insiders at the
airport who know the men, neither considered anywhere near wealthy.

"Smith's a good pilot, and dependable, and I never thought twice about
hiring him to fly a charter for me," one aviation business manager at
Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport told us.

"Except I had to be sure to always front him money for expenses, or
I'd get phone calls from the backside of nowhere telling me they
didn't have enough money to gas up the plane to fly home."

Confession is good for the soul

"No, I didn't come into any money," Smith replied. "It was Don's money
that bought the plane."

If the allegation is true, it would not be the first time Don
Whittington has been discovered wading hip-deep into the murky world
of covert operations and international drug trafficking.

Many of the Learjets associated with CIA renditions came from the
World Jet, Inc. (including N-numbers N229WJ, N500ND, N252WJ), all of
which  have been tracked making numerous stops at Guantanamo.

Don Whittington (born January 23, 1946) is a former American racing
driver from Lubbock, Texas. Like the Mob's front man in Vegas, Allen
Glick, he and his brothers raced sports cars in the United States and
Europe in the '70s and '80s, winning the 24-hour Le Mans in France and
coming in sixth in one Indianapolis 500.

Authorities said they financed their racing operation with drug profits.

As we learned while writing "Barry & the boys:' The CIA, the Mob, and
America's Secret History," when the Whittington brothers were indicted
for smuggling and tax evasion in the mid-80's, they lost their prized
Learjet.

It ended up going to a man who was soon to become known as the biggest
drug smuggler in American history until then, long-time CIA pilot
Adler Berriman Seal.

The IRS found the connection so intriguing that when they found out
about it years later, they subpoenaed Seal's records.
b('The boys' history is our history

When, in turn, Seal himself got in trouble, his Lear jet (N13SN) went
back to its true owner: the CIA's Paul Helliwell, called the "CIA's
paymaster at the Bay of Pigs," through a Cayman front company he
controlled called Intercontinental Holding.

Helliwell's storied spook career, too illustrious and shady to recap
here, included founding The Bank of World Commerce in the Bahamas,
where CIA and Mob money flowed into secret numbered accounts by the
billions -- Lansky money, most of it -- and then out again to the
International Credit Bank of Switzerland before returning to the U.S.
for reinvestment.

One of Whittington's drug smuggling associates, convicted at the same
time he was, had been Gary Levitz, grandson of Levitz Furniture Corp
founder Richard Levitz.

Court documents said Levitz deposited large sums of money into bank
accounts in Nogales, Mexico, and "helped disguise William
Whittington's narcotics profits by investing into legitimate business
ventures."

Oh well. Imagine how Ferdinand Marcos felt

In an amusing postscript, after being released from prison one of the
Whittington brothers dug up 220 pounds of gold they had stashed away
before going to prison. Then he took it to be cashed-in at a Delaware
bank.

The government, notified of the transaction as a routine process, a
DEA spokesmen said, leapt into action the way they only seem to do
when money is involved, and seized the gold. And although the brothers
were outraged enough to file a lawsuit, they never got their gold
back.

Almost twenty years later, terror flight school owner Wally Hilliard
didn't get his drug-running Lear jet out of the ads in Trade-a-Plane,
either.

Hilliard's Lear, confiscated with 43 pounds of heroin onboard at the
Orlando Executive Airport in July 2000, coincidentally (or not!) the
same month that Mohamed Atta arrived to attend his flight school, had
been sold to him by Don Whittington at World Jet Inc in Fort
Lauderdale.

The man who had owned the Lear before Hilliard?

Gary Levitz, killed in 1999 when his modified P-51 Mustang crashed
during the National Championship Air Races in Reno, Nevada.

"Shit writer writing some shitty shit"

Whittington's angry response to the U.S. Government taking his gold
while he was in prison is both telling, and typical.

Whittington, we'd been told by multiple sources, was no fan of ours,
and resented having been written about in both of our books. When we
phoned him for his response to pilot Greg Smith's allegation, he at
first denied knowing who we were, then changed tack.

"You're a shitty writer," he told us. "You write shit. Nobody reads
your shit anyway. So why should I talk to you?"

We couldn't think of a reason.

Even if we had, Whittington had already hung up.

Going round and round in the circle game

Gary Levitz even had ties in Venice, Florida, with a man whose name
we'd heard whispered about at the Venice Airport. "Ben Bradley's a DEA
informant at the Venice Airport who got arrested for beating his
wife," aviation executive Coy Jacob told us bluntly, when we first
asked around about Bradley.

"Gary Levitz got in the drug trade. He rolled on the Whittington's,
and so did Ben Bradley. He set people up in Ft. Lauderdale and was
given some of their toys. His life was threatened, he went to Polk
County, and ended up mooring his boat in Venice."

So CIA pilot Barry Seal got a Lear jet after a small-time informant
'snitched out' the Whittington brothers, making one available.

Twenty years later Wally Hilliard got a Lear jet because a guy who got
busted with the Whittington brothers dies in a crash, making one
available.

Small world.

We are looking at a monster from the deep.

Beneath the surface of the story of the latest American-registered
drug-running airplane whose American owner is going unpunished lies
corruption on such a massive scale that the only rational response
appears to be a boogie board, some suntan oil, and an extra large
pitcher of margaritas.

[Now Available! Welcome to Terrorland: Mohammed Atta and the 9/11
Cover-up in Florida, by Daniel Hopsicker, madcow at gmail.com. The
two-year long investigation into Mohamed Atta & his contacts and
associates in Florida. English and German editions. Order a signed
copy now; $29.95: http://MadCowProd.com.]

Copyright 2007 Daniel Hopsicker