A Lebanese man whose convenience store in Venice Florida was used by Mohamed Atta and his cadre of terrorist hijackers to receive overseas wire transfers, and from whose apartment Atta and Marwan took taxis to Orlando Airport to pick up visiting Saudis has filed a defamation lawsuit against the MadCowMorningNews alleging unspecified “false statements.”         

Chams is asking for $15,000 in damages. He also has a second defamation suit going, this one in Saudi Arabia, for a whopping $21 million, against Titan Corporation of San Diego.

In addition to owning a convenience store, the peripatetic Chams' recent resume includes having been a partner in a Jack Abramoff-style gambling boat which operated for two years in Venice without permits, working for the FBI in San Diego, and pulling down multi-million dollar contracts in Saudi Arabia, one of which suspected of being with the Saudi Bin Laden Group, for controversial U.S. defense firm Titan Corp.

Strangely (or not) the FBI apparently never bothered to mention anything at all to the 9/11 Commission about Makram Chams.

A story Monday in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported the lawsuit:

"A former Venice convenience store owner has filed a defamation lawsuit against local author Daniel Hopsicker, who published reports that the mini-market owner assisted the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists in Venice,"

"The lawsuit refers to Hopsicker as a 'conspiracy fanatic' who 'published and disseminated ... false statements' that Chams "was associated with the 9/11 terrorists.'"

“Hopsicker... author of a book about Venice's role in the 9/11 attacks called "Welcome to TERRORLAND," termed Chams' lawsuit "false charges." Hopsicker said he has an attorney and plans to "vigorously defend" himself. He said Monday that "numerous local witnesses have stated that several of the terrorists basically hung out at (Chams') Kwik Check."

"I'm not particularly concerned with Makram Chams' lawsuit;  I see it as an opportunity to get testimony under oath from an individual which should enlighten all of us about aspects of the situation in Venice, Florida, before the Sept. 11 attack."

A Kwik Check on the Kwik Check

The FBI's testimony before the 9/11 Commission revealed that the largest overseas money transfer the terrorists received had come from the UAE, for $70,000.

A copy of the money transfer was projected  overhead.

What the FBI didn't point out to the Commission was the significance of the address where the money was wired to: 201 Nokomis in Venice, the address of the Kwik-Check owned by Makram Chams, the Lebanese man who shortly thereafter would be in Saudi Arabia procuring multi-million dollar contracts from the Saudi Bin Laden Group.

Atta and his fellow terrorists also availed themselves of a second floor apartment Chams rented in a building across the street from the convenience store. The apartment was occupied by his sister, May Chams, and her husband, an Indian Muslim named "Khal" who disappeared from Venice in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack.

Local Venice Yellow Cab driver Bob Simpson (whose testimony about Atta's local associates was used by the FBI to apprehend a half-dozen Saudi nationals in Venice after the attack) says he picked up Mohamed Atta and his bodyguard Marwan at the apartment in his cab on several occasions, and taken them to the Orlando Airport.

Even Zacharias Moussaoui, whose presence in Venice, was exclusively reported by MadCowMorningNews (and later confirmed by other sources) was seen at Chams' apartment.
 

Rich Saudis in "Armani and shades"

"The FBI was especially interested in a rich Saudi guy, dressed in Armani, shades, manicure, and a gold Rolex, that I was sent to pick up at the Orlando Executive Airport," said Simpson.

"They (the FBI) knew he’d ridden in my cab because they’d gotten my cab number from a surveillance camera there.”

Six weeks later, when Simpson received a call to go to the apartment to pick up the "rich Saudi in Armani and shades" and return him to the Orlando Airport, the cabbie was asked to help carry a chest, the kind kept at the bottom of a bed, down from the apartment and load it into the trunk of the cab. 

"It was so heavy it took two people to carry it. I could not believe anything that small could weigh that much! It must have weighed at least 150 pounds."

Carrying the other end of the chest was someone Simpson recognized much later. "A big bald guy who I later identified as Zacharias Moussaoui helped me carry it down to the cab.”

Simpson's obvious amazement while telling the story about how heavy the chest had been made us curious. We contacted a former intelligence operative, and asked: "What could have made the chest so heavy?"

His reply was immediate. "Gold."
 

Convenience store owner-turned-defense contractor

At some point after the attack Chams abandoned the mini-market (it has stood vacant since) and left Venice.

A story in the Sarasota Herald Tribune called the abandoned convenience store, “A pocket of urban blight in the otherwise smartly tailored suit of downtown Venice.

Chams went to San Diego, said his sister, who worked at Barclay's Pharmacy in Venice (the same pharmacy visited by Mohamed Atta and his Cairo lawyer father two weeks before the 9/1 attack.

Asked what he was doing in San Diego, she'd replied, "Helping out the FBI."

Then recently we learned Chams had been working as a contractor in Saudi Arabia for controversial San Diego defense firm Titan Corp a 23-year old company  which sells information and communication services to military and spy agencies, and has about 12,000 employees and revenues of about $2 billion a year.

An SEC filing last year Titan reported that Makram Chams had filed a $21 million lawsuit against them in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Goodwill said take them to the dump yourself

Apparently Titan didn't hold the lawsuit against Chams, because he recently received a six-figure payout from Surebeam, a bankrupt Titan subsidiary which, in the aftermath of the anthrax scare had been the lucky recipient of a big windfall from the U.S. Post Office.

Surebeam announced in a press release that the post office "would use Surebeam's electron beam systems to eliminate the threat of anthrax in the U.S. mail system."

Despite there being not the slightest hint of scientific evidence that the company could perform as advertised, the firm was awarded a $40 million contract to set up machines to detect and kill anthrax spores,

Some people (and companies) have all the luck, right? That is...unless there was some other unknown factor in play.

Predictably, Surebeam’s machines didn’t work. Instead, a U.S. Congressional investigation blamed them for causing headaches, nose bleeds, nausea, rashes, and eye irritation suffered by more than 200 Congressional staff members.

Presumably to spare the Post Office the embarrassment of having their donation turned down by Goodwill, the machines were quietly given away to U.S. universities for what Titan called “research.”
 

"The bin Laden Group been berry berry good to me"

We were curious how a Lebanese convenience store owner in Venice had come to merit a six-figure payout from a company purporting to irradiate and kill anthrax spores.

So we phoned Chams' attorney in San Diego to ask several months ago, he told us Chams was planning on suing us, saying "I know who you are," before declining to reply.

A little sleuthing was in order. It revealed that Makram Chams had apparently landed a $5 million contract in Riyadh for Surebeam with the Saudi Bin Laden Group.

Surebeam, in a curious press release, had boasted of winning a $5 million contract in Saudi Arabia, “to build a network of Surebeam facilities within the Kingdom for pathogen and environmental pest control.”

Oddly, the company which gave Surebeam the $5 million contract went unnamed in the press release, identified only as “a private Saudi Arabian conglomerate headquartered in Riyadh;" and as "a leading Saudi company whose business dealings involve high rise construction, large living compound construction, hotel design and construction, oil and gas projects, defense and security contracts.”

Only one company fits this description, while at the same time being a firm Surebeam would have wanted to keep quiet about having as a business partner...The Saudi Bin Laden Group.

More 'conspiratorial' musings

Makram Chams curious curriculum vitae includes having been a partner in a gambling boat called Vegas-in-Venice, owned by a Philadelphia man alleged to have ties to organized crime. The gambling vessel somehow managed to operate for almost two years in Venice, despite having no approval to do so from the city of Venice, County of Sarasota, or State of Florida.

The only other local partner in the gambling venture, Max Burge, also did business with Skyway Aircraft/Royal Son principal Frederick Geffon.

In addition the well-connected Burge owned the light planes used by the terrorists in their flight training at Huffman Aviation; we recently learned from a local attorney that Burge once owned the Sandpiper Apartments across the street the airport where Mohamed Atta spent several months living with Amanda Keller.

Questions posed by the mysterious Makram Chams have significant relevance in explaining the background, and sometimes the foreground) of  events leading to the 9/11 attack.

How did a Lebanese convenience store owner with unexplained links to Abramoff-style gambling boat interests connected with organized crime, and unexplained links with the terrorists in Venice, end up working for a well-connected defense contractor embroiled in numerous major controversies?

Answers (or may not) be forthcoming, depending on our financial ability to learn never-before-revealed details about the activities of Mohamed Atta and his fellow terrorists in the United States by deposing individuals under oath with knowledge of what was going on.

http://www.madcowprod.com/11072006.html