CHAPTER SEVEN: MOHAMED ATTA'S SECRET WORLD
If the media had just treated Mohamed Atta like they do any other celebrity, like O.J. writ large ... If Entertainment Tonight had just taken viewers for a sneak peek backstage into the private life of one of history's greatest villains ... If Mohamed Atta had only gotten the media spotlight accorded J-Lo's latest boyfriend ... 9/11 might not remain such a near-total mystery.
The reason they didn't is simple. They couldn't. They weren't allowed to. But if they could ... If they could, reporters would still be camped out on Amanda Keller's doorstep, the way one New York Times reporter was, until the FBI ordered him to go home.
We finally found Amanda. Overall, she was not a happy camper ...
About press harassment, she said, "A New York Times reporter named Chris -- young, tall, kind of heavy, dark hair and a dark goatee -- came to my house. And he was mad because I wouldn't talk to him. But I was still reeling from Garret dying, and this dude would NOT leave me alone. I stood outside arguing with him forever, and he was trying to trip me up, get me to say something, and I said, I don't know what the hell you're trying to do," she said.
"And I called the FBI agent that had been calling me -- right while this reporter guy was standing there -- and said, this guy won't leave me alone. The FBI agent said let me talk to him, so I handed him the phone. And I don't know what was said, but after that he left me alone."
Amanda Keller may have had 'scorching-hot' details of life with a terrorist ringleader ...
But the FBI had other ideas.
***
When we met Amanda Keller, she didn't look at all like what we'd been expecting. While she and Atta lived together she was moving in pretty fast company, so we'd been expecting -- maybe not a pink-haired stripper -- but still, someone who chewed gum and had a really really short attention span.
Instead, the now 22 year-old Amanda Keller looks just like what she is today: a young mom, raising three small children and living with a man with a day job.
She was dressed in a pullover sweater and jeans, with natural light brown hair framing an attractive face. She even wore glasses, which made her blue eyes look a little watery.
In short, it was hard to visualize how she could ever have been wild enough to attract the jaded Atta's attention. Compared to what we'd heard about her, she looked positively matronly.
Only later, after she pulled out photographs taken two years ago, posing with the boyfriend for whom she'd left Atta without a backward glance, did we begin to understand what Atta must have seen in her ... a 20 year-old hottie.
She didn't look like that now. It was a composed young woman who came to our hotel to meet us. She even brought her sister.
Amanda Keller said she's suffered the same bullying harassment from the FBI that the other intimidated witnesses at the Sandpiper Apartments were forced to endure. Even after she left Venice, she said, FBI agents called her every other day for several months after the attack, just as they had with Stephanie Frederickson.
"There was a police car constantly watching the house," she said.
***
"When we burned some leaves in a burn barrel, a police officer came over and told us we weren't allowed to burn anything because we were on some FBI list, and they were afraid we might be burning documents or something."
Pretty serious surveillance for a girl who lived with some other Mohamed ... Was this why she recanted her original statement?
"Because of the intimidation by the FBI," she replied. "They told me not to talk to anybody, to keep my mouth shut. The newspaper quote was accurate: 'I can't say anything because I'm afraid I'll get in trouble."'
The FBI nearly convinced her that she didn't know who she'd been living with for two months, Amanda said. It was easier just to go along with what she was being told.
"When I saw Charlie (Grapentine) talking in the newspaper I knew they were going to jump all over him. I thought, "Charlie, no! Can't you just wait?"'
We were hearing way too many stories from eyewitnesses of FBI intimidation and harassment for it to be blamed on a few over-zealous agents, or a couple of 'bad apples.'
Something weird was going on in Southwest Florida ... Something -- dare we say it?
Something un-American.
***
Whoever Mohamed Atta ultimately turns out to have been, meeting Amanda brought us a huge step closer to the truth. Still, as we began to listen to her tell her story, we were mentally assessing the believability of what she was saying, until we had arrived at our conclusion.
We think a reader should be able to do the same. So we'll let her tell her story in her own words, as much as we can, just as she told it to us, in a three-and-a-half hour interview we filmed with her at a secret location. The only condition she set on our interview was that we not reveal where she is living today.
We agreed.
We began by asking her how she came to be in Venice in the first place. Frankly, we had wondered if she had been some kind of 'perk' of Atta's 'job.'
But the story she told was virtually identical with what we'd heard from the Lady Lake detective, featuring youthful immaturity compounded by casual drug use, along with big dollops of domestic violence. Meeting Atta was an accident.
Amanda was just 19 when she moved to Venice, but she already had two children. Her recently- divorced husband had "pulled a fast one on her," she said, and was granted custody of the kids.
In the aftermath, she felt bereft, devastated ...
Pink hair was on the horizon.
She moved to Venice with her boyfriend-of-the-moment, who was from nearby Port Charlotte. "Robert liked to move around a lot," she explained.
He also liked to beat her. While looking for a way out, she worked an assortment of jobs. At one of them, in early February, 2001, she met Mohamed Atta.
"I worked as a manager at Taco Bell and McDonalds in Port Charlotte, then got hired at Papa John's in Venice," she said. "I'd worked there for 2-3 weeks before I met Mohamed."
Atta came in with people whose names she learned later: Peter, Stephan & Juergen, none of which sound Arab, oddly enough.
Her account of meeting Atta jibes with the September 14, 2001 Charlotte Sun report: "Keller, who allegedly met Mohamed while working at Papa John's Pizza in Venice ... A Papa John's employee confirmed that Keller was a manager there, but has not been to work for some time."
Her emotional state at the time could be described as fragile.
"I was at an ultimate low, living with a guy I wasn't happy with, abusive, and missing my two kids. I wanted to figure a way out without getting hurt," she explained.
"Mohamed comes in, I'm standing there covered in dough, baseball cap, hair pulled into a pony tail, looking my ultimate worst."
"Mohamed asked one of my employees to have me come over and wait on him, and so I did ... I said can I help you?"
"Mohamed said, 'Do you know how pretty you are?' And I just looked at him kind of funny and said "Are you going to order a pizza or what?"'
"So Mohamed said, how would you like to go out for dinner. I declined, and went and made them their pizza. I can remember their pizza cause it was weird; it was like every single thing you can put on a pizza, all at one time. It was disgusting."
"After that they came back every day," she continued. "Some times a couple of times a day. And they ordered the same nasty pizza over and over again."
Many of Mohamed Atta's close associates while he was in Florida weren't Arab, apparently. They were German.
"Peter and Stephan were from Austria, Juergen was German, they had nice (German) accents, yah, yah ... Peter asked me if I had any girlfriends he could introduce me to, and at that time I didn't because Robert didn't allow me to have any friends."
"And Mohamed would tell me how pretty I was, and he compared me to a flower that was still closed up, and a bud that hadn't yet bloomed. He told me I had a natural beauty about me."
This sounds like flowery Islamic rhetoric, or maybe the words of a practiced seducer. Spies learn that sort of thing, we've heard.
"I had a cell phone," Amanda continued, "Mohamed asked for my phone number, he'd come in every day for two and a half weeks, and I gave it to him. Then he called me one day and said he'd just gotten evicted from this house he lived in with seven other guys in North Port, which I saw later when I helped him move out."
This was a major clue ... If Mohamed Atta was not in Miami in February of 2001, where the FBI says he was, but on the Gulf coast, in North Port, just south of Venice, then something was well and truly rotten in the state of Denmark ...
"He (Atta) asked me if 1 knew of another apartment he could rent," she continued. "He said he didn't care if it even had a bed as long as it had a desk. He told the lady there that too."
This matches a detail in the Charlotte Sun: "The only request Atta made to the couple, the LaConcas said, was that they provide him a desk in which he could do his aviation homework. 'He didn't even care if the house had a bed, all he wanted was a desk,' said Tony LaConca."
Atta and Amanda's doughy courtship proceeded apace, until one day she came to be with Atta when he rented from the LaConcas.
"I helped him move from a house in North Port, and he asked me to talk to the landlady, because he didn't like American women, and she (Vonnie) happened to be the one renting the apartment," Amanda said.
"'How can you like me if you don't like American women?' I asked him. 'I'm as American as it gets!"'
Mohamed replied that he didn't 'translate' well with American women.
"So I talked to the landlady for him," Amanda said. "He was curt and rude with her, so she told him when it was time to pay the rent just to stick it (the check) in the freezer, so she wouldn't have to deal with him."
At right about this time she decided to leave Robert, she says. Just days later, after her and Atta's three-day party in Key West, she agreed to get a place with Atta. She remembers the date, probably from repeating the story over and over to the FBI.
"So on February 25,2001 we went to Key West for 3 days ... It was me, Mohamed, Peter, Stephan and Linda. Linda knew the owner (of the newly-rented house) and told me she was a stripper."
Linda, who the Sun-Herald reported got a phone call from Atta during the week before the attack, is the woman later characterized as unhelpful with the FBI.
That was when we realized that Amanda Keller didn't have to be a rocket scientist to help unearth information about the terrorist conspiracy. And the first case in point is that the terrorist ringleader was about to party for three days with people whose names do not appear to be Arab.
Based on her descriptions, we will later be able to positively identify at least five of Atta's close German associates during the time he was in Florida. They were not fellow student pilots, but individuals with whom he appeared to have long-standing relationships, said Amanda, and with whom he attended 'meetings.'
Our thoughts were racing as we listened to Amanda tell the story of their Key West excursion ...
"I had a beat-up '81 Ford Granada, and he (Atta) asked me to meet him," Amanda began. "He was driving a rented white Grand Am. The place he lived in, in North Port, wasn't too far from where I was living."
"We went to Key West, and he took this long, out-of-the-way route. He was really familiar with Florida. He knew a back way to Ft. Lauderdale on the way back. He drove to Daytona Beach and Naples and Fort Myers all the time. He always rented cars out of Tampa. A red Pontiac, a green Pontiac and a white one, all Grand Ams."
"I slept most of the way, he and Linda stayed awake."
Mohamed Atta cruised towards Key West accompanied by two girls who knew how to party. Amanda remembers thinking Atta may have even met Linda before ...
"Linda instantly latched onto him, at Vonnie and Tony's, when we went to move his stuff into Vonnie's place," she explained.
"She had black hair, mid-twenties, said she was a stripper in Sarasota. Her and Mohamed acted like they knew each other." On the car ride down they acted like they were old friends. She sat in the front seat, I was in the back to stretch out because I knew I was going to end up falling asleep."
She dismisses whatever suspicions she had with a wave.
"Linda was kind of easy, sort of, just open for business. She was really clingy with me too, though. It was kind of uncomfortable."
Before reaching Key West, they rendezvoused with Atta's German friends.
"We met with Peter and Stephan, at one of the first islands before you get to Key West, Largo. They had already been on their way down. Then we stopped at a Bell's outlet on Largo, and we went crazy and bought a bunch of clothes."
The original Sept. 14, 2001 Charlotte Sun article confirms, in a backhand way, Amanda's account of a shopping spree:
"While he was writing the checks, the couple noticed Mohamed had brand new clothing, all still with tags on them from a local mall, the couple remembered."
Peter and Stephan were the two German men that Atta's North Port landlord said the girls met on the trip. "The two girls were introduced to two men from Germany that they said were Mohamed's friends, Tony LaConca told the Sun."
"I thought it was strange, because Mohamed didn't appear to be French-Canadian or German."
When the group checked into a hotel in Key West, there was also something odd about the room assignments. "We rented 3 different rooms in Key West," Amanda said.
"In one room nobody slept. It was where they put their flight bags. Then they locked the room down. Peter and Stephan slept in one room. And me, Mohamed and Linda slept in the same room."
She adds immediately, "But nothing happened, no threesomes, cause I'm not a lesbian."
Amanda may have been a 'private dancer,' but she wasn't terribly worldly otherwise. She was from a small town in North Florida, and hadn't traveled much. The free-wheeling Key West made quite an impression on her.
"It was my first time ever in Key West and I was shocked -- there were naked people everywhere! We walked out on this pier and there was this naked guy right in front of me, and I freaked."
"Mohamed said this was normal for where he was from, France, where there were nude beaches everywhere. But I looked down and I was mortified."
So Amanda did think Atta was French. In her defense, when we hear more about Atta's claimed French connections later, there are details which make her belief seem slightly-less hopelessly naive.
Another big surprise: their trip to Key West mixed business with pleasure. Atta and his German pals had a dinner meeting which Amanda said she wasn't allowed to attend.
"We went to Sloppy Joe's, went to Rick's Rooftop Bar, and took a boat ride to see the dolphins, me and Linda did, while Peter, Stephan and Mohamed went to the Hard Rock to meet some people for dinner. They just said they had to meet with some people at Hard Rock. They didn't tell me who it was."
Who was Mohamed Atta meeting in Key West? All Amanda knows is that they flew in just to meet Atta ...
"Somebody had flown in to meet with them in a single-engine plane -- to come speak to them. When they came back, they met up with us on the dock, and everybody was somber-looking and kind of quiet."
Amanda's description of their demeanor when they returned from the meeting make's it hard not to conclude that it had involved discussion of actions that would leave thousands dead.
"Later we were walking through some shops, a chapel by the sea, looking at some necklaces and Mohamed turned to me and out of the blue said, 'Why don't we get married?"'
"And I said, 'What the hell are you talking about? I just met you!"'
"And he said, 'Well this way I can have my visa and I can stay here.' Peter and Stephan started laughing, and told him, 'You're not in the right country.' And Mohamed got really mad at me."
"And I said, 'How the hell can you get mad at me for not wanting to marry you? I just met you, plus I just got out of a bad marriage.'"
"Pointing at Peter and Stephan, Linda said, 'I'm getting ready to marry one of you two."'
"So we went by Diva's, and it was the first time I ever saw a drag queen, and I was standing there talking to them. They had their pictures taken with a drag queen. Peter, Mohamed and Stephan were all standing next to the drag queen, who stuffed his hand down all their pants in the pictures, and Peter and Stephen both laughed it off, but Mohamed got really angry," said Amanda.
The truth is always stranger than fiction. Somewhere there are photographs of terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta being groped by a drag-queen in Key West. This is startling, and not a little surreal.
But given numerous accounts of Atta's proclivities, which included frequent visits to strip clubs, it's not at all unbelievable.
"He (Atta) was mad because 1 was standing there talking to the drag queens," she continued. "So he stopped at this store, a Cuban cigar shop, and they bought big fat cigars and began smoking one which smelled really really bad."
Perhaps Atta was used to being fawned over. He had, after all, a full-time bodyguard (Marwan), acolytes, and minions. But in Key West he was forced to play second fiddle to his young blonde companion, who was clearly the center of attention. Getting a big fat Cuban Cigar must have been small compensation.
"And we walked past Sloppy Joe's and the bartender -- I was wearing a purple top that tied around my neck in three places and came down my back in a v-shape, and a khaki skirt, and chunky shoes -- and the bartender called me into the bar, saying, "Hey Blondie! Come in here! Shots are on me!"'
Blonde babes get treated different. Stop the presses. Atta would have to learn to cope. "He (the bartender) lined purple hooters down the bar, and there was a drag queen and Linda and me drinking shots with him. And Mohamed got really mad at this, and told me I shouldn't be drinking in public. And I said 'I don't know who the hell you are, you're not my father!"'
There was, already, trouble in paradise.
"This was where it first started. I was telling him, 'You're not going to run me.' But I was also trying to be nice about it, because I was looking at him (Atta) as a way to get out of my relationship with Robert," explained Amanda.
"After that we went to Rick's Rooftop bar, and I didn't see the sign cause someone was standing in front of it, but it said 'clothing optional,' and Linda and I went first and we got up there and there were just naked people standing everywhere! The one that sticks out in my mind was a woman who must have been 80 years old, dancing in nothing but a tattooed thong."
An 80 year-old woman wearing nothing but a tattooed thong is exactly what an Islamic fundamentalist would expect to find in America. If Atta minded this display of Western decadence, he kept it to himself.
Then, again, he'd probably seen it before ... Amanda says she was surprised to see how well Atta and his chums knew their way around Key West.
"We went back to the hotel, and I couldn't find my way, but the guys knew exactly where they were going, and I said, 'how did you guys remember?' And nobody answered me."
Again the next day Atta had a business appointment. But this time Amanda got to ride along.
"Next morning we went to the Key West Airport, and they pulled over at a beach nearly, and there were flight students from the airport, and Peter, Stephan and Mohamed talking with the flight students, and they introduced me, and I remember one guy said he was from Africa. They were all talking in a language I couldn't understand," she said.
An aviation executive in Venice who'd recently flown into the Key West Airport filled us in on its colorful history.
"For a long time down in Key West, the Sheriff's Department was under orders to keep all the dope sniffing dogs out of the airport," he said.
"At one time the Sheriff would even send patrol cars to escort the dope going up the road to Miami. At least they aren't doing that any more.
"But after the World Trade Center attack, it was only 4 hours before the FBI showed up at Big Pine Key. There were a bunch of Arabs on Little Pine Key," this executive said.
"They were gone three hours before the FBI got there."
***
Amanda said something which may be important about the curious hotel room that Atta rented but nobody slept in, vacant except for the men's flight bags.
"They were drinking the whole time we were there," she said. "And they were doing drugs, but not in front of me. They would go into the locked down room where no one slept, saying they needed to look at their manuals, and when they came back you could tell their jaws were locked, and they started chewing gum like there was no tomorrow."
"They didn't do drugs in front of me until after I had met everyone back at the apartment in Venice, at the Sentinel Apartments," Amanda stated. "Once I had met everyone these they felt comfortable with me and pulled out the coke."
Atta was a juiced-up Islamic fundamentalist.
Atta was coke-head Wahhabi.
We've never heard of anything like that.