Searcher08 wrote:Amanda Keller told the truth to Dan Hopsicker, which she later said was her fibbing (in the context of "I just want to get on with my life...")
Hopsicker checked out her story in detail - the only thing baloney around it is her later retraction. Check his site for details.
Just as her story contradicts itself the named witnesses Hopsicker cites as backing her claims contradict themselves and/or Keller. Hopsicker cites four supporting witnesses from the Sandpiper Apartments where Amanda Keller and Mohamed Atta supposedly lived together March – late April or early May 2001. Charles Grapentine the building’s manager spoke to the Sarasota Sun-Herald shortly after the attacks and was cited in an article published September 14, 2001.
“While attending flight school at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Mohamed Atta, 33, and Marwan Alshehhi, 23, lived with four other Middle Eastern students near Venice Airport at Sandpiper Apartments.
The six Middle Eastern men shared a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in unit 26, said Charles Grapentine, manager of the apartments.
Huffman Aviation rented the unit at $550 a month,…The flight school then subletted the unit to its students, …Huffman Aviation charged each of the six Middle Eastern flight students $225 a month to live in the apartment, Grapentine said …Students were charged an additional $50 fee for cleaning costs, Grapentine said.
It is unknown how long the six men resided at Sandpiper Apartments before leaving in early January of this year. The complex's owner, Vicky Kyser, told the Sun she is turning the leases over to the FBI”
Grapentine wasn’t quoted as to when they stayed but the paper, seemingly citing the owner, said they left in “early January". He did however indicate that Atta had lived in apartment 26 with five other Middle Eastern men all of whom were students at Huffman Aviation. Interestingly according to Hopsicker, Keller (and Atta) also lived in apartment 26.
A few days later however Grapentine’s story changed. Hopsicker cited the following passage which he claimed at times came from “a Sept 15 AP story” and at others from a September 18 article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. The later scenario more likely because Hopsicker posted an image of the article, the author was a staff writer at the local paper :
“However, Atta may have been in Venice as recently as April. Charles Grapentine, he manager of Sandpiper Apartments on Airport Avenue in Venice, said he remembers seeing Atta at the complex for about three weeks in April. He said Atta was living in the apartment of Amanda Keller.”
So did Grapentine remember seeing Atta living with five other Middle Eastern students from Huffman for a few months presumably until January or did he remember seeing him staying with Keller for a few weeks in April? Or did see him in the same apartment months apart in dramatically different living situations? If that’s what happened why didn’t he say both times that Atta lived there twice? No other witnesses say he was there twice.
His wife and boss seems to have supported his original account they were interviewed for a different September 14 Sun Herald article.
"Paula Grapentine immediately recognized the face of a suspected terrorist who may have trained for the World Trade Center attacks at Huffman Aviation in Venice. He was her next-door neighbor.
Postal Carrier Neil Patton also recollects the names and faces of Mohamed Atta, 33, Marwan Alshehhi, 23, and four other Middle Eastern flight school students.
The lived at the Sandpiper Apartments, unit 26, in Venice until earlier this year.
[…]
But the Grapentines, who manage Sandpiper and Lemon Bay Apartments, didn't like the six men -- especially Atta.
[…]
The students reportedly smoked a strange tobacco which smelled like marijuana, [the apartment complex's owner, Vicky] Kyser said. "
Though Hopsicker cites the mailman, as a supporting witness he also indicated that the man he thought was Atta lived in apartment 26 till early January with several other Middle Eastern men, not that he lived with Keller in March and April.
The Sun obtained a handwritten list of names the FBI is reportedly pursuing Thursday: Gamil, Rami, Mukadam, Ibrahim and Mogadem. Stapled to the list FBI agents gave Patton was a special agent's business card. The FBI would not confirm or deny the pursuit of these five individuals.
Patton said he remembered all the above-mentioned names as those being used by some of the six Middle Eastern students allegedly attending Huffman Aviation.
Atta also may have gone by the name Youseff, Patton said.
He delivered no unusual mail at the Venice address, Patton said.
Only once was a 8-by-3-inch box mailed to the apartment, he said. Patton stopped delivering mail to the men at Sandpiper Apartments on Jan. 18, 2001 -- which means they probably moved out seven to 10 days before, he said.
But even Patton seems a bit unsure he seems to have told the paper he recognized both the real names and pseudonyms of the hijackers.
Hopsicker does have two other witnesses who said Atta lived with Keller, one is anonymous and supposedly a former manager at Huffman. This presents two problems one is there is no way to determine his credibility; the other is that there is no way to verify that he said what Hopsicker claims he did. As I will demonstrate in a future post Hopsicker can’t even be trusted to accurately and honestly report what local newspapers reported thus his claims as to what unnamed sources supposedly told him must be taken with a bag of salt. He claims the then flight school employee “vividly remembers her then-hot pink hair,” Which seems quite unlikely, are we to believe that Atta a known quantity at the school was seen there moths after he supposedly left with such a conspicuous companion and no one else seems to remember seeming them?
The other witness however seems credible enough, Keller’s next door neighbor, a housewife named Stephanie Frederickson. But like Neil Patton (the mail man) Vicky Kyser (the building owner), Paula Grapentine and even Charles Grapentine in his original account, she contradicts part of Keller’s story. Hopsicker cited her in a 2004 newsletter.
"Amanda moved in next door first, saying she had come from Orange Park (near Jacksonville," Frederickson says. "Then one day in the middle of March (of 2000) she brought home Atta. ‘I’d like you to meet my friend Mohamed Atta,’ she said to me. ‘He’s from France.’"
However according to Keller, that’s not the name she knew “Atta” by. In chapter 3 of his book Hopsicker quotes Keller as telling him “The name on the [rent] check was Mohamed Arajaki, the name he said was his.” Two chapters later he tells his readers “She knew him as Mohamed Arajaki, which was also the name on the [bail] check. " He said this on his site as well “The alias Atta used, we have learned, was “Mohamed Arajaki,” the same one he used with Amanda Keller while living in the Sandpiper Apartments in Venice.”
If Frederickson actually told Hopsicker that Atta and Keller moved together in March 2000, that would also be a serious discrepancy because his current theory is that they were a couple February – April or May 2001. At the time though Hopsicker’s theory was that they were together in 2000 thus he presumably put words in her mouth. Either Frederickson or Hopsicker looses credibility over this one take your pick.
Posted by Len at 3:43 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Amanda Keller, Daniel Hopsicker, Mohamed Atta
Friday, March 7, 2008
The mutating tales of Amanda Keller
Truther’s frequently talk about Mohamed Atta’s supposedly un-Islamic behavior. They talk of him drinking heavily, living with a pink haired stripper - “out call lingerie” model/escort named Amanda Keller and normally cite the work of “independent journalist” Daniel Hopsicker. Keller is Hopsicker’s star witness and as far I can tell is the only person who says Atta smuggled and used cocaine.
As anyone following the story already knows she said she had lived with Atta a few days after 9/11, then retracted it, then reaffirmed it to Hopsicker saying she’d been pressured by the FBI. Then in 2006 she retracted it again saying "It was my bad for lying," according to the reporter “…the former Venice stripper now says her boyfriend was another flight student not connected to 9/11”
The retraction, reaffirmation and second retraction were not the only changes in her story as Hopsicker should well be aware because all the information I cite can be found on his site or in his book.
The story that Atta lived with Keller didn’t originate with Hopsicker but rather with stories in local papers. On Saturday, September 22 (?) the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported:
In a telephone interview late Friday, Keller said she met Atta through a friend and let him stay in the apartment with her and her then-boyfriend, Garrett Metts, because she felt sorry for him…
[…]
Payne [Keller’s mother] said Keller’s mother took Atta in because he had nowhere to stay
“Stray dogs, stray cats, stray people, she was always taught to help anybody out there when they needed help,” Payne said.
In other words she was living with Metts when she met Atta and they let him stay with them (sorta like a stray dog). Unless it was a ménage a trios he wasn’t her boyfriend.
Then on September 22 or 23 she and her family spoke to reporters for an article in the same paper subtitled “"Mohammed" slept on her couch, a Venice woman says”. Though she was now saying that he wasn’t Atta, Keller and even her mother confirmed that Mohamed stayed over while she was involved with Metts:
Susan Payne, Keller's mother, said her daughter and then-boyfriend Garrett Metts often took in strangers at her apartment.
The two were popular, Payne said, and people often stayed there after nights of partying and visiting the clubs.
Mohammed, Tammy Payne said, often went out clubbing, usually at Margarita Maggie's in Sarasota.
In an interview at her mother's house, Keller wouldn't talk about the man who stayed on her couch.
By the time she spoke to Hopsicker her story became quite a bit racier and more dramatic. Mohamed (she rarely if ever called him Atta in interviews) were live-in boyfriend and girlfriend sharing a bed until their dramatic break up on the night she met Garret. Here's how she and Hopsicker told it the first chapter of his book:
“I was up there with a whole bunch of other girls and Angelina. And this cute guy was dancing right below us, and the light was hitting him, and he had this long beautiful hair, and he looked at me, and I got real embarrassed."
The 'cute guy's name was Garret, we heard.
[…]
“He (Garret) wrapped his shirt around my legs and was dirty dancing with me”
[…]
“He [Mohamed] asked me about Garret, saying, 'Who's that?"'
"And I said, 'I guess he's the new one.'…”
That night Amanda went home with her new beau. Things were never the same between her and Atta again.
[…]
One night soon after meeting Garret, the 'hot new guy', she brought him back to the apartment. She told Atta he could deal with it. He could move out.
The hot new guy was sleeping over. The hot new guy was in the 'big bed.' Atta was on the couch. After discussing what she should do with the apartment house manager, who corroborated her story, Amanda Keller unceremoniously dumped Atta's three suitcases and Gold's gym bag onto the parking lot underneath their second floor apartment, and called him a cab.
To make a long story short she lived with Atta 3 – 6 weeks (accounts vary) then dumped him and hooked up with Garret, let Atta spend a few nights on the sofa then kicked him out.
So Keller now has three or four versions of events depending on how you count:
1st she said she let Atta stay over while she was living with her “then boyfriend” Garret Metts” (conveniently dead by 9/11).
Then she said the Mohamed who slept over wasn’t Atta but someone else named Mohamed.
Then she same back with an even juicier story, she was having an affair with Atta but dumped him to live with Metts.
Finally she went back to a variation of the 2nd version. She’d lied, Mohamed wasn’t Atta after all. AFAIK she hasn’t been heard from since. But even her retractions didn’t match, in the first one Mohamed was a guy who’d crashed on her couch in the second he’d been her boyfriend.
But those weren’t the only changes her story underwent.
Where did Keller meet Atta and where did she work at the time?
Story # 1a – She met him at the airport bar and was as an out-call 'lingerie model' / escort.
From issue 27 of the Mad Cow Morning News (Hopsicker’s newsletter)
During her year-long sojourn in Venice Amanda Keller was a willowy 20-year old bleached-blond, who met Atta at a bar at the airport, the 44th Aero Squadron), was an out-call 'lingerie model' for an escort service called Fantasies & Lace in nearby Sarasota, not far from Cheetah's, a nearby strip club Atta is known to have frequented .
From issue 29 of the Mad Cow Morning News
"She told us she met him at the bar at the 44th Aero," states Frederickson [Keller’s next door neighbor]. "They were remodeling and the 44th Aero wasn't open yet, but the bar was still doing business...
[...]
"That's when she started dressing really slutty, and dyeing her hair pink," Frederickson continues
Story # 1b – She was as an out-call 'lingerie model' / escort. Possibly met him at a strip club where she worked.
From Chapter 1 of Hopsicker’s book Welcome to Terrorland
When she 'hooked-up' with Atta, Amanda Keller was a willowy 20 year-old 'lingerie model' and stripper with spiky pink hair. She worked nights for an escort service called Fantasies & Lingerie which catered to a mixed crowd of politicians, judges, high-rollers and socialites of both sexes, just down the street from Cheetah's, a strip club Atta was known to frequent in nearby Sarasota.
He didn’t say where they met but tells us 1) she was a stripper and escort, 2) Atta frequented a strip club close to the escort service she worked for. Call me crazy me he seems to be implying they met at “Cheetah’s”.
Story # 2a – She met him at Papa John’s Pizza when she was the manager, became and escort soon after that:
From Chapter 5 of Hopsicker’s book Welcome to Terrorland :
Keller was a restaurant manager when she met Atta, she will tell us later. Before she switched to a more lucrative line of work, she managed the local Papa John's. And it is there she first met Atta, which is why -- two days after the attack -- the FBI was looking for Amanda Keller ...
It is interesting to note that Hopsicker completely contradicted himself in chapters 1 and 5 without even seeming to notice.
Story # 2b She met him at Papa John’s Pizza where she worked, was the manager at the time or was later promoted to manager with in a few months, seems to still have been the manager until shortly before 9/11.
A September 14, 2001 article in the Sun-Herald recounted that Florida state police visited Tony and Vonnie LaConca the previous day because on February 21, 2001 they rented a house for one week to Amanda Keller and “Mohamed”, they suspected that Mohamed was Mohamed Atta:
Keller, who allegedly met Mohamed while working at Papa John's Pizza in Venice, told the couple [the LaConca’s] she would translate because Mohamed spoke limited English
[…]
A Papa John's employee confirmed that Keller was a manager there, but has not been to work for some time.
Presumably she told the Laconca’s that she “met Mohamed while working at Papa John's Pizza” because they said she did all the talking.
Hopsicker could argue that versions 2a and 2b don’t contradict each other but the newspaper article seemed to indicate she was a manager there till not longer before 9/11. Hopsicker tells us she was an escort during their relationship, most of it from the sounds of it. They were together by February 21 and depending on which version you want to believe they broke up sometime in April or early – mid May. While one can’t infer too much from an indirect quote it’s hard to believe that if she hadn’t been in for 5 – 6 months the employee would still she was a manager there even if they said she had “not been to work for some time.”
http://lies-of-the-truth-movement.blogspot.com/
