Monday, July 26, 2004
 St. Petersburg Times July 25, 2004:NAPLES - In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Rudi Dekkers was a man in the spotlight.
Dekkers owned one of the Florida flight schools that trained Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, pilots of the planes that [allegedly] destroyed the World Trade Center. The talkative Dekkers gave so many interviews...
Dekkers portrayed himself as an upstanding businessman who had done everything by the book, only to see his own companies ruined by the attacks. He criticized the government for not doing a better job of screening foreign citizens entering the United States.
But now a complicated picture has emerged of Dekkers himself, a Dutch citizen who seems to have benefited from the same type of casual scrutiny of visa applicants that let the 9/11 hijackers live and train here.
After moving to Florida in 1992, Dekkers got a visa designed for investors with "substantial" capital, even though he had a bankrupt company in Holland. And for the past year, he has remained in the United States on a coveted H-1B visa that is supposed to be issued only to foreigners who have specialized skills and work exclusively for a U.S. employer.
Dekkers would not say who he is working for or what he is doing. It is not clear how he qualified for his current visa, since he also is running his own plane-leasing company, despite regulations that experts say bar H-1B visa holders from self-employment.
"I don't want to tell the whole world what I'm doing and not doing," he said in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times. "There are certain things I promised other people not to talk about..."
Even before 9/11, Dekkers had a long history of troubled businesses, run-ins with the Federal Aviation Administration and numerous lawsuits, including one in which he paid $15,000 to a female employee who accused him of "severe" sexual harassment. It is the kind of checkered history, experts say, that should have raised questions both before and after the 9/11 attacks about Dekkers' fitness to run a school that trained pilots.
"You would think that everyone surrounding that should have been scrutinized," says Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies...
many who have had dealings with him describe him as pushy and arrogant, a man with recurrent financial problems who doesn't always play by the rules.
"I'm not saying he would sell his soul, but he is very aggressive," says Robert Larson, director of operations at the Naples Airport Authority.
Dekkers, 47, continues to drive expensive vehicles and live in a million-dollar waterfront home, even though a Naples lawyer had "to chase him around" to get him to pay a $359 judgment.
[...]
It was through the Naples airport that Dekkers met the multimillionaire who would become his benefactor and partner: Wallace J. Hilliard. A prominent Green Bay, Wis., executive - a local library is named for him - Hilliard co-founded an insurance company, American Medical Security, whose shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
[...]
In July 2000, two foreigners walked through the door: Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi...
The men were just weeks into their training when the chief flight instructor complained they had "bad attitudes and behavioral problems," and asked Dekkers if it would be "acceptable" to expel them. Dekkers said their conduct changed after warnings, and they were allowed to stay.
"They were able to continue their lessons without any further problems throughout the course," he told the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 2002.
That, however, is not exactly what the 9/11 Commission found. Its report, released last week, said the men left Huffman in September and enrolled at a flight school in Sarasota. An instructor there also complained the two were "aggressive, rude and sometimes even fought with him" to take controls during training flights. After they failed an exam, they said they were going home; instead they re-enrolled at Huffman Aviation.
The men were just weeks into their training when the chief flight instructor complained they had "bad attitudes and behavioral problems," and asked Dekkers if it would be "acceptable" to expel them. Dekkers said their conduct changed after warnings, and they were allowed to stay.
"They were able to continue their lessons without any further problems throughout the course," he told the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in 2002.
That, however, is not exactly what the 9/11 Commission found. Its report, released last week, said the men left Huffman in September and enrolled at a flight school in Sarasota. An instructor there also complained the two were "aggressive, rude and sometimes even fought with him" to take controls during training flights. After they failed an exam, they said they were going home; instead they re-enrolled at Huffman Aviation.
[...]
This story also contains information from "Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11 Cover-up in Florida" by Daniel Hopsicker.
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