Word: fla
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That's precisely what the bad guys had in mind the last time the U.S. faced a serious threat to homeland security. In 1942 two German submarines landed teams of four people each at Amagansett, N.Y., and Ponte Vedra, Fla. The Germans were supposed to blow up hydroelectric plants, key railroad junctions and spread terror in New York by bombing railroad stations and Jewish-owned department stores. The operation was a fiasco; within two weeks, all eight men were caught (six were later executed), but the threat was, and is, real...
...visit. Even at this early date, Atta may have been planning an air attack. Sometime in spring 2000, Atta--now a clean-shaven cartoon version of an American in Tommy Hilfiger and heavy cologne--walked into a U.S. Department of Agriculture office in Homestead, Fla., and inquired about loans for buying crop dusters. The office doesn't offer such loans, and it turned him away...
Atta returned briefly to Europe, but on June 3, 2000, he arrived in Newark, N.J., from Prague with a six-month tourist visa. Within a month, Atta and Al-Shehhi signed up for flight training at Huffman Aviation International in Venice, Fla. When the two men moved into a little pink house in nearby Nokomis, they brought sweets to their rental agent. Their Venice landlady, Dru Voss, says that while Al-Shehhi was a likable guy, Atta was an icicle who never looked...
Around this time Atta and other hijackers purchased global-positioning devices known as GPS-3s from Tropic-Aero, an aviation-supply shop in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. These $475 devices, about the size of Game Boys, are used by pilots to navigate. Says Jerry Carbone, Tropic-Aero's president: "It's so simple to use, you and your wife would be able to find your way in a 767 once it's up. It's sad if [the hijackers] were able to use something anyone can get at K Mart...
HSAS members criticize FLA because its governing board is made up of representatives from the companies it intends to supervise...