One more 911 participant is removed from life - The mechanics of cover-up.

Another owner of the flight school in Venice Florida that trained Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi to fly is in trouble with the law; current owner Arthur G. Nadel, 75, was arrested recently for running a Ponzi scheme which methodically looted investors in his Sarasota-based hedge funds of more than $300 million.

Nadel's arrest marks the second time in recent years that the owner of Huffman Aviation, the FBO (fixed base of operations) at the Venice Airport has been involved in crimes traditionally associated with the Mob.

Ponzi schemes, of course, are a trademark Mafia specialty. So, too, is the crime of heroin trafficking in which previous owner Wally Hilliard was implicated.

Nadel may have stolen as much as $350 million from his hedge fund investors, many of them middle-class retirees who do not fit the typical hedge fund investor profile of wealthy people willing to risk their entire investment.

New York tabloids, already in overdrive on the story of Bernard Madoff, instantly dubbed Nadel Mini-M, for Mini-Madoff.

Before turning himself in late January, Nadel spent several weeks on the lam. Rumors spread that Nadel was already dead.

He wasn't... Instead he was flying above the clouds on a sleek luxury jet, from Sarasota to San Antonio to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Orleans. His high-end Learjet 31-A offers performance matched by few other civilian airplanes; it cruises comfortably at 500 miles an hour, and at an altitude of 51,000 feet.

A few questions no one is asking:

Nadel was worried, he wrote, about being murdered. But not, we suspect, by one of the blue-haired widows from whom he stole millions.

For most of his life, Art Nadel was a "jazz pianist," meaning he played the piano in hotel lounges, not seen as a springboard to careers of looting at will.

Take a closer look at the Learjet he was flying before his arrest. Another owner of the flight school in Venice Florida that trained Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi to fly is in trouble with the law; current owner Arthur G. Nadel, 75, was arrested recently for running a Ponzi scheme which methodically looted investors in his Sarasota-based hedge funds of more than $300 million.

While previous owner Wallace J. Hilliard owned Huffman Aviation, and Mohamed Atta was taking flying lessons, DEA agents busted Hilliard’s Learjet carrying 43 lbs. of heroin. It was July 25, 2000, at the Orlando Executive Airport. (Typical entrapment to make a subject to accept a mission).

43 lbs of heroin is known in the trade, we have been told, as " heavy weight."

How did city officials in Venice allow the airport's mission-critical FBO to fall into the hands--not once but twice--of people otherwise engaged in organized crime?

How many small towns with barely ten thousand people “boast” a tiny local airport which play host to terrorist hijackers? Or been run by a heroin trafficker disguised as a flight school owner, or a man accused of stealing $300 million in a huge financial fraud?

Why do shadowy underworld figures have the permanent run of the airport in Venice, Florida?

no comment?

Drugs and terror and tiny airports? Maybe we ought to ask Mena, Arkansas.

I think they are removing witnesses now at a circle so wide, that it touches even those schools.

No arguements here.