[If this report is true, it illustrates beautifulyl the twisted irony so beloved by these terrorists.]

Miami Herald

Published Tuesday, September 25, 2001

Suspect may have sought loan for crop-dusters

BY DOUGLAS HANKS III dhanks@herald.com

The FBI is looking into whether suspected terrorist pilot Mohamed Atta sought a government business loan in South Florida to buy a crop-duster, according to a bank official in Homestead.

Investigators last week contacted the Community Bank of Florida in Homestead to see whether Atta had ever done business there, said Robert Epling, the bank's president. According to Epling, the FBI told bank officials that it believes Atta visited a federal farm agency that makes agricultural loans and that rented space in the bank's building. Atta apparently asked about borrowing money to start a crop-dusting business, Epling said Monday.

Atta's suspected loan inquiry would mark the first suggestion that he and his associates were looking to obtain more than just flying expertise in South Florida.

Florida has become a crucial venue for the federal investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington because several of the terrorist pilots apparently received flight training in South Florida. Investigators also say they believe Atta, 33, and a group of men visited a crop-dusting business in Belle Glade, asking how much chemical the plane could carry and how far it could fly.

Investigators say they believe Atta steered a hijacked American Airlines flight from Boston into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, killing thousands, including himself. His alleged interest in small airplanes in Florida helped prompt the Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday to ground the country's crop-dusters for fear of biological or chemical attacks from the air.

President Bush has said the prime suspect for masterminding the attacks is Osama bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire living in Afghanistan and linked to anti-American terrorism, including the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. A federal witness in the trial of defendants charged with those bombings said bin Laden wanted a crop-dusting business.

Epling said the FBI told bank officials that Atta came to Homestead to visit the federal Farm Service Agency, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that makes farm loans. Agents said three Farm Service employees identified Atta as the man who visited the office to ask about a crop-duster loan.

The FBI declined to comment for this story.

Kevin Kelley, head of the Farm Service Agency in Florida, said Monday that the agency could not have considered such a request because it does not finance crop-duster purchases. The federal loan program backs only farm purchases or materials needed to plant and harvest crops, he said.

Kelley said the head of that office, which handles farm loans for Miami-Dade County, declined to discuss the matter with him.

``I called to run this down and talked to the loan officer there. And she's been instructed not to talk to anyone else about that,'' he said.

It is unclear when Atta might have visited the Farm Service.

The USDA moved its Farm Service office out of the bank building about three months ago to a Florida City location, and Epling said he understood the suspected visit occurred well before that.

Crop-dusters range in price from $100,000 to $900,000, according to the National Agricultural Aviation Association, but Epling said used ones can be had for as little as $30,000.

A Community Bank loan officer told investigators he also received a phone inquiry about a crop-duster loan, though he could not identify the caller as Atta. The call stuck out because so few farms here still use planes for spreading pesticides, Epling said. The loan officer said he remembered little else about the call except that nothing ever came of it.

``That was a pretty rare thing to get a phone call from someone who wanted to buy a crop-dusting company'' because most farms are too close to residential areas to dump pesticides from the air, Epling said.

``He called up to a loan officer, made an inquiry, asked for some information. . . . End of conversation. No application was ever filed.''

-- Anonymous, September 25, 2001