Amanda Keller, a "lingerie model and stripper" has said she was the girlfriend of Mohamed Atta, living with him between February and April 2001. Her story, as reported by Daniel Hopsicker, has formed the basis for many surprising claims about Atta: that he liked going to night clubs, for instance, drank alcohol, used drugs and more. And it also contradicts the official timeline of Atta's whereabouts, for instance, putting him in Florida months after the FBI said he left. But is it actually true?
One problem with Keller is her inconsistency. While initial reports said Atta stayed with her, she then denied them:
Keller then appears to have gone back on that, allowing Hopsicker to interview her (although in his book "Welcome to Terrorland" he does say she knew him as "Mohamed Arajki").
But then in September 2006 she again denied it:
And then there's the issue of identification. Keller said of Atta, for instance:
Hopsicker believes shots of Atta from a video apparently taken in Afghanistan support this.
However, it's worth noting that the video was taken in January 2000, more than a year before Keller lived with "Mohamed". We're told that Jarrah and Atta shaved off their beards before heading for the US:
And sure enough, Atta's US VISA image from May 2000, and his famous driving licence photo from a year later (and only a few months after supposedly living with Keller) show him clean-shaven.
Atta's driving licence photo, May 2001
We've also yet to read any accounts of witnesses saying "yes, I recognised Atta but he used to have a beard", and in fact if Atta was trying to avoid the radical look then he would have a strong incentive to keep shaving.
There were further identification issues in a story that appeared only three days after the attacks.
Hunt for terrorists reaches North PortNORTH PORT -- As authorities continue to dig through the rubble in Tuesday's terrorist attacks, agents were digging through North Port to find one of the many missing pieces to the puzzle of who declared war on the United States and why.
Thursday began like a normal day for North Port residents Tony and Vonnie LaConca, but they would later learn a man who rented their Agress Avenue home is someone whom authorities think may be connected with Tuesday's attacks.
An FDLE agent working in conjunction with the FBI arrived at the LaConca home around 10:30 a.m. Thursday and questioned the couple for two hours concerning a man they knew only as "Mohamed."
The couple told the agent the man was about 25, 5 feet 10 inches, 160 pounds, had "dark, perfect" skin, and was clean cut and "very polite."
"He was a very handsome guy," Vonnie LaConca said in an interview. "He had beautiful, unblemished skin."
Mohamed was associated with a local woman believed to be Amanda Keller, a local restaurant manager, LaConca said. The FBI is looking for Keller for additional questioning, but she might be missing.
LaConca told the agent that Keller had "dishwater blonde hair, was about 21 years old, big boned with freckles" and seemed to be enamored of Mohamed.
In an effort to locate Keller, the agent accompanied Tony LaConca to the North Port Police Department to pick up a Feb. 25 police report in which Keller had called police about harassing cell phone calls.
According to the police report, after Keller called police about the calls, a computer check was conducted and showed an outstanding warrant from Marion County on a worthless check charge.
"Mohamed bailed her out of South County Jail," Vonnie LaConca said. "We told agents this because we thought they (FBI) might be able to get his last name from the reports."
Keller, who allegedly met Mohamed while working at Papa John's Pizza in Venice, told the couple she would translate because Mohamed spoke limited English. She said he was French/Canadian. She told the LaConcas that he was not a U.S. citizen.
A Papa John's employee confirmed that Keller was a manager there, but has not been to work for some time.
While talking to Keller and Mohamed, the couple learned he had a pilot's license to charter small planes of four to six people and was going to school at Huffman Aviation in Venice to train for a commercial pilot's license. Huffman was the school that enrolled Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, both identified as suspects in the hijacked jet assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"We almost asked him if he wanted to fly our plane," Tony LaConca said. "He was a very polite guy."
Keller said she would be responsible for the rental, but the man gave the couple two checks amounting to $75 each.
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.
The only request Mohamed made to the couple 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 in a thick New York accent.
The couple learned more about Mohamed from a then-employee of Vonnie's cleaning company. After meeting Mohamed and Keller on Feb. 21, the former employee joined the couple on an adventure to Key West the following day.
"They were gone for three days," said Tony LaConca. "They didn't sleep -- it was a continuous party."
LaConca said Mohamed footed the entire bill for the weekend including buying Keller and the unnamed employee new clothes, alcohol, drugs and hotel stay. However, the couple said, Mohamed did not have a job.
"The two girls were introduced to two men from Germany that they said were Mohamed's friends," Tony LaConca continued. "I thought it was strange, because Mohamed didn't appear to be French-Canadian or German."
The couple said the agent tried to locate and interview the unnamed employee, however they said she was "uncooperative to the agent." However, Vonnie learned the former employee made telephone contact with Mohamed last week.
At the end of his week-long stay at Agress Avenue, Mohamed returned to the LaConcas' home to pick up his $75 security check. This time, the couple noticed he spoke "good English." He arrived in a rental car with a friend that he claimed he had just picked up from the airport. Mohamed requested that the check be made out to his unidentified friend.
"His friend didn't speak any English, and his name was very strange," said Vonnie LaConca. "The two stayed at our house for at least an hour. Mohamed seemed real interested in the architecture and decor of our home. He asked all kinds of questions about it. I thought they would never leave."
The couple said the FDLE agent showed them four photographs of possible suspects in the terrorist attack.
"The first photo they showed us was the pilot who crashed into the first building," Vonnie LaConca said. "It was not Mohamed or his friend. But the last picture they showed us was very close, but I could not say 100 percent that it was him."
The FBI in Tampa would neither confirm nor deny any agents interviewing people in the North Port area.
"We recommend that you check in with CNN for current information," an FBI spokesperson only identified as "Pam" said Thursday afternoon. "Any press statements can be found on televised stations like CNN."
Web Archive source
Here his landlords describe Mohamed as about 25, 5 feet 10 inches, 160 pounds, a very handsome guy, with beautiful, unblemished skin. Meanwhile Atta was 5 feet 7 or 8 inches tall, we'd say looked older than his 32 years, and handsome? Really? It's no wonder that they didn't recognise Atta's photo. And the problems only continue in another article.
We found a survey which said the average height of men in the US between 1999 and 2002 was 5’ 9.2”: Atta’s driving licence puts him at 5’8”, his pilot's licence at 5'7". Why would he be described as “tall and lanky”?
One possible answer came in Hopsicker's May 2005 report that a Mohamed Arajaki emailed him, saying he was the man who had lived with Amanda Keller. Hopsicker dismissed this on, amongst other things, the grounds that many other local witnesses had identified Atta. However he did show pictures of Arajaki, who looked much more likely to be called "handsome" (to my straight male eyes, anyway).
And another site talking about this said Arajaki was seven inches taller than Atta, which would make him 6 feet 2 or 3 inches, a better fit for the "tall and lanky" comments.
This is a complex story, so please read Hopsicker's take on Arajaki, and perhaps browse the rest of the site to discover more of his arguments. But while you do that, keep in mind that his account has also been subject to change. Here's an early, short version of the Keller story:
Note that here "credible witnesses" are used to place Keller with Atta towards the end of March 2000. Very significant, as the FBI say Atta wasn't even in the US until June 2000. And yet now Hopsicker tells us that, ah, it was actually March 2001, and so those witnesses (or the assumptions used to consider what they said) weren't so credible after all.
And a later article showed an even more surprising date-related error.
Documentary evidence? Well, no. Here's the Atta fax he was referring to, with a matching application from al-Shehhi.
The faxes are headed March 11 2014, the first extremely clear indication that you really can't rely on the date. And the second comes in the content. Atta says he wants to train at the same time as al-Shehhi, who requests a starting date of 22nd of December 2000, with completion before the end of the year, strongly suggesting the fax was sent before that time.
This just isn't conclusive proof that the FBI is lying, then. Anyone can see that by simply looking at Atta's fax and doing maybe 60 seconds of research. And yet Hopsicker managed to misrepresent the fax date, failed to check the fax for more date-related clues, then oversold the whole thing. That can't and doesn't invalidate everything he says, but does reinforce the same point we make here, over and over again: it's vital to check and cross-check 9/11 sources and stories before you accept any version of events, and that goes just as much for this site as anyone else.