Charles Bishop

"I have prepared this statement in regards to the acts I am about to commit. First of all, Osama bin Laden is absolutely justified in the terror he has caused on 9-11. He has brought a mighty nation to its knees! God blesses him and the others who helped make September 11th happen. The U.S. will have to face the consequences for its horrific actions against the Palestinian people and Iraqis by its allegiance with the monstrous Israelis--who want nothing short of world domination! You will pay--God help you--and I will make you pay! There will be more coming! Al Qaeda and other organizations have met with me several times to discuss the option of me joining. I didn't. This is an operation done by me only. I had no other help, although, I am acting on their behalf."

Boy in Plane Crash Is Recalled as Patriotic

Published: January 8, 2002

The 15-year-old who crashed a small plane into a skyscraper on Saturday was a former flag bearer at school assemblies who wanted to join the Air Force, the boy's teachers said today.

The police said the youngster, Charles J. Bishop, left a note of support for Osama bin Laden and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. That stunned one educator who remembered the boy singing patriotic songs.

''I can picture him singing 'My Country 'Tis of Thee,' bellowing it out,'' said Dale Porter, a former headmaster of the Dunedin Academy, a private school that Charles Bishop attended in the eighth grade.

In a statement today, the boy's family said it was devastated by the loss and grateful that no one else had been harmed. ''Charles and his family have always fully supported our United States' war on terrorism and Osama bin Laden,'' the statement said. ''We do not understand why or how this incident happened.''

The authorities said Charles Bishop had no known terrorist ties. Chief Bennie R. Holder of the Tampa police said on CNN that investigators were looking into reports that the boy had ''often mentioned being of Arab descent.''

The police said it appeared that he deliberately flew the Cessna 172R into the 42-story Bank of America Plaza on Saturday after ignoring signals from a Coast Guard helicopter to land. He was the sole fatality.

The boy, a student pilot, took off in the plane without authorization while he was supposed to be checking its equipment at his flight school. Gov. Jeb Bush said today that the Federal Aviation Administration should consider changing the way it regulates the schools.

''How do we make sure this doesn't happen again?'' Mr. Bush said.

The head of the air traffic controllers' union here told The St. Petersburg Times that the plane passed 1,000 feet above a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 taking off from Tampa International Airport. Controllers warned the jet's pilots, and they slowed their climb, the head of the union, Joe Formoso, said.

The youngster's journalism teacher at East Lake High School, Gabriella Terry, said that her class discussed the attacks on Sept. 11 and that they saddened Charles Bishop. ''He told me he wanted to join the U.S. Air Force because he wanted to do something good for his country,'' Ms. Terry said. ''He was a good boy.''

Teachers at Dunedin said he managed a literary magazine, entered essay contests run by the Daughters of the American Revolution and helped plan bake sales and food drives as a student council member.

Robert Cooper, owner of the flight school where Charles Bishop began lessons in March, said he doubted the sincerity of the youngster's note and said the boy had voiced anger over the Sept. 11 attacks.

''I would call him a relatively typical gangly, intelligent, articulate 15-year-old with a complexion problem and a passion for flying,'' Mr. Cooper said.

The 911 You Were Never Told About

 

Was The White House Attacked By A Drone Plane With A Dead Pilot? 

By Joe Vialls

1-10-2

According to the mainstream media, at about 2300 hrs on 11 September 1994, Frank Eugene Corder stole a single-engine Cessna 150L plane from an airport north of Baltimore, then headed south to Washington, flying over the National Zoological Park and down to the Mall, probably using the Washington Monument as a beacon. As he neared the famed obelisk, he banked a tight U-turn over the Ellipse, came in low over the White House South Lawn, clipped a hedge, skidded across the green lawn that girds the South Portico and crashed into a wall two stories below the presidential bedroom. Unfortunately, there are huge problems with this glib media account of what was, in reality, the first known deliberate air attack on a major building in America. Corder had no obvious motive for the crime, and although his wife had died some weeks before from cancer, Frank was getting on with life as best he could. He was building a small kit aircraft of his own at the same airport the Cessna 150L was stolen from, and frequently worked alone at night on his pet project, making him the perfect target of opportunity for anyone needing a pilot, dead or alive. Immediately after the crash, intelligence sources concurred that the flight was most probably flown as a "Proof of Concept", designed to thoroughly test Washingtonís air defenses and expose possible flaws. If the Cessna 150L managed to strike the White House wall directly, the concept would be considered proven, perhaps paving the way for later attacks using heavier aircraft loaded with munitions. In this respect the flight was a complete success. Although Corderís badly mangled body was recovered from the wreckage, there was no forensic way of establishing whether he had died in the crash itself, or several hours earlier. No one witnessed Frank Corder board or steal the Cessna in Maryland, and at no time did he make radio contact with the control tower or anyone else. Frank Corder behaved in all respects like a ghost, and he may well have been dead before the Cessna left the ground in Maryland. How? By use of remote control. Remote controlled aircraft have been around since the late fifties, and can be flown from the ground with absolute precision. All that is needed is a reliable radio link to the target aircraft, and if the target aircraft gets out of normal radio range, a "shepherd" aircraft to act as a radio relay, or as airborne flight director. It is now beyond reasonable doubt that the WTC attack aircraft of 11 September 2001 were controlled in a similar manner, in this case utilizing a counter-hijack system known as "Home Run". Those not familiar with "Home Run" can read a comprehensive report here, or use the link at the bottom of this page. Detailed technical information about aircraft remote control systems will be provided later in this report, but before getting into the heavy stuff, we should probably take a closer look at 15 year-old Charles Bishop. Bishop is alleged to have stolen a Cessna 172R in Florida, and then "committed suicide" by flying into the Bank of America building in downtown Tampa on 5 January 2002. Unfortunately, just like Frank Corder in 1994, no one witnessed Charles Bishop board or steal the Cessna in Florida, and at no time during the flight did Bishop communicate with the control tower or anyone else. Spookily perhaps, there is at least one visual indicator that Bishop was probably dead long before his aircraft hit the Bank of America. A Coastguard helicopter patrolling in the local area actually flew alongside the Cessna in an attempt to force the pilot to land, but without success. In the words of the helicopter pilot: "He [Bishop] sat motionless at the controls. He would not look at the helicopter, nor would he respond to radio or hand signals telling him to land his aircraft".   Think about it people, think about it! If this excitable 15 year-old was on a glorious suicide mission in support of his "idol" Osama Bin Laden, the temptation to give the Coastguard helicopter crew the finger would have been damn near irresistible. After all, what did he have to lose? On the other hand, what if Bishopís aircraft had been hijacked by remote control without his knowledge or consent? If he was still alive and saw himself being steered unerringly towards the Bank of America, chances are he would have been clawing desperately at the aircraft window, trying to get the Coastguard to save him from imminent destruction. "I would characterize it as a suicide," said Tampa Police Chief Bennie Holder. A suicide note, which was found in the wreckage of the plane, "clearly stated that he had acted alone, without any help from anyone else," Holder said. "He did, however, make statements expressing his sympathy for Osama bin Laden and the events which occurred September 11, 2001." News of the note police found stunned Bishop's fifth-period algebra teacher, who described him as a bright, disciplined student who was well-liked by his classmates. "I'm floored. Totally floored," said Rayette Bouldrick. "He always had a smile. He was always pleasant and respectful." The suicide note "clearly stated that he had acted alone"? Sure it didÖ It is not hard to imagine a Kamikaze school kid thinking ahead to the time when his local Police Chief will have to explain what happened, and for political reasons will need to reassure the public that no one else was involved. Absolute Bulldust! If Police Chief Bennie Holder is incapable of recognizing deliberately planted evidence, he should quit his job and go fishing. Many readers find the concept of remotely controlled aircraft difficult to grasp, and in the past I have received many emails critical of this aspect of my investigations. Accordingly I decided to post precise details from various sources. It is a fascinating subject little known to the public, and it all really began near a sleepy little village in Wales during the fifties. Nestling beneath the stunning backdrop of the Snowdonia mountains on the mid-Wales coastline is the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) station of Llanbedr, home to the most unusual collection of 'aircraft' in the UK. It is here that DERA provide remotely piloted Drone 'aircraft' for use as aerial targets by the RAF and other UK forces. Situated within reach of the sand dunes of Cardigan Bay, the site is clearly visible from the nearby tourist havens of Barmouth and Shell Island. The airfield itself was constructed in 1939, however by 1950 Llanbedr had been used by the Army for Korean War training, but was refurbished in order to return it to aviation use by No.5 Civil Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit with its Mosquito target tugs and Meteor TT8 aircraft. However it was intended that an unmanned target aircraft should be used from Llanbedr, and plans were laid to procure a RPV called 'Jindivik' from Australia. However development delays led to a decision, taken in September 1951 to develop a number of surplus Royal Navy Fairey Firefly aircraft as a target drones, to bridge the inevitable gap. The piston engined Firefly was a useful asset, but it was not long before the drone programme was authorised to use jet powered ex-RAF Meteor F4's and F8's, as they became available. In its drone guise the Meteor became known as the U.15. The first take-off under automatic control took place on 17 January 1955 with a human safety pilot on board. Llanbedr received the first Meteor U.l5 in January 1957 and the first Meteor drone sortie took place on l7 July 1958. Telemetry as such was not available then, so a shepherd aircraft, usually another Meteor would escort the drone to the entrance to the Range, hold well clear and rejoin after the mission was concluded. As the Meteor F.8 became more available, surplus airframes were also converted into the more sophisticated Meteor U.l6, which made its first drone flight in the September of 1960, with over 200 of the type eventually being 'droned'. More details on RAF Llanbedr:- LINK Note carefully here, that although Llanbedr was nominally a Royal Air Force military base, development and effective control of the remotely controlled Fireflys and Meteors, lay in the hands of the civilian British Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), which has close though discreet ties with the civilian American Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Back in the seventies it was DARPA and two American multinationals who collaborated in order to manufacture the system now known as "Home Run", a secret counter-hijacking system designed to recover hijacked aircraft to a friendly airport with minimum damage to surviving passengers and crew.     Similar systems used on the Meteors at Llanbedr were used on American aircraft, which improved enormously as the years went by. Nowadays the most sophisticated unmanned aircraft is probably the conversion of an F4 Phantom fighter to "QF4", denoting full remote control capability. However, most of QF-4s retain a piloted capability. This is because test and training scenarios require a high degree of choreography to make them as realistic as possible, and so pilots have to fly the QF-4s through "dry runs" to ensure that all details are considered. The US Air Force refers to unpiloted flights using the acronym NULLO ("Not Utilizing Local Live Operator"), while the US Navy calls them NOLO ("No Onboard Live Operator"). Up to four QF-4s can be flown in formation during NULLO flights. The drones do not interact with each other, they are simply commanded to follow a specific moving point in space known as a "rabbit", with each aircraft maintaining a specific three-dimensional offset from the rabbit. The autopilot system on the QF-4 is very sophisticated. For example, the remote operator can land the aircraft simply by giving it a single command to land. Although missiles used in air combat tests don't usually have combat warheads, once a QF-4 is used as actual target in exercises, its expected lifetime is no more than four missions. The QF-4 carries a self-destruct system to destroy itself if missile damage fails to shoot it down but causes it to become a potential threat. More details on the unmanned QF-4 here:- <LINK>     It does not take a rocket scientist to fit a basic remote control (plus rabbit), to a humble little Cessna standing unguarded at a remote civilian airfield. Once the pilot is on board ñ or placed on board, the basic system will fly the aircraft wherever the controller desires, including into the wall of the White House or the Bank of America building. Basically all he or she needs to do is "lead" the aircraft with the invisible rabbit, and the Cessna will follow as vigorously as a greyhound at a race track. The reason for the attack on the White House on 11 September 1994 is still shrouded in mystery, but the logic of a "Proof of Concept" flight is compelling. We can safely leave that incident alone for the present, especially bearing in mind later events on 11 September 2001, which need no further explanation here. Not so obvious is the use of young Charles Bishop against the Bank of America late on Saturday 5 January, so informed speculation will have to suffice. At the subliminal television level, the two words "Bank" and "America" certainly acted as powerful psychological reinforcers on the global viewing public. Everyone knows that the World Trade Center was Americaís premier "banking" zone, and everyone knows "America" has been attacked by aircraft belonging to "American" Airlines. Whether intentional or not, the effect of the Cessna crash in Florida was to once again sensitize Americans and others to flying over, or even near, America. Still on the subject of psychological reinforcers, it cannot be denied that this particular crash served to highlight the utter futility of grounding crop spray planes to prevent "terrorists" from spreading "biological toxins". The simple reality here is that Bishop's small plane, or any of the other tens of thousand like it, could easily carry enough Anthrax spores to kill half the population of Florida, or any other state, simply by crashing into a tall city building.. An alternative motive, perhaps compelling for the American Administration, would be that of "reinforcing" the absolute fiction that a bunch of "Arab Hijackers" with basic Cessna training, managed to control three heavy jets moving at over 400 miles per hour, manipulate their descent, and then hit three target bullseyes in Washington and New York so small that success would tax the skills of highly experienced jet fighter pilots. Vast numbers of American and others around the world are questioning the involvement of Osama Bin Laden in the events of 11 September, even more so now after the release of George W Bushís blatantly forged "Osama Confession" video. Somehow this questioning must be stopped, and the public forced to believe the increasingly wild myth about the hijackers. What better way than to arrange for a 15 year-old boy with only six flying hours to mount an attack on the Bank of America building in Florida? Think about it. If 15 year-old Charles Bishop could score a direct hit on Bank of America, then surely everyone must believe that the far more experienced and older Mohammed Atta (or whoever), with ten flying hours on a 4,000# Cessna, could obviously throw a 420,000# Boeing 767 airliner around New Yorkís restricted airspace like a giant kiddy toy. But the show must go on. Though Osama Bin Laden and Afghanistan had absolutely nothing to do with the New York and Washington attacks, from the viewpoint of certain American institutions it is vital that American operations in Afghanistan be allowed to continue unhindered, to their final and extremely profitable conclusion. Put simply, the "War on Terror" in Afghanistan has nothing to do with terror, and absolutely nothing to do with Unocal plans for an oil pipeline running from the Caspian Sea, through Afghanistan, to a Pakistani port. Though plans were once drawn up for just such a pipeline, estimated infrastructure costs were so high that the project was permanently filed in the wastebasket. Afghanistan is all about the drugs trade, which provided nearly 80% of the worlds #4 100% pure opium through American cartels and the CIA, until the Taliban took control in 1996. For a while the Taliban stopped the trade altogether, then started it again when the heroin was required as "trade" for more weapons and ammo from China and Russia. The problem after 1996 was that Taliban heroin was no longer routed via the American cartels, which lost tens of billions of dollars as a direct result. The "War on Terror" was launched to get rid of the Taliban, and their stranglehold on the heroin reserves rightfully "owned" by the American cartels. That job is almost complete. As I write, all of the CIAís old warlord "friends" have been restored to power, and the Afghan poppy fields have already been sowed with the 2002 crop. So courtesy of a thoughtful American Administration, fresh supplies of heroin for your children and their friends should be arriving in your American town or city sometime soon. Vialls Investigations: http://geocities.com/vialls/index.html

by Daniel Hopsicker
January 14--Tampa Florida 
Tampa’s kamikaze kid pilot was (pick one):  a. A Bin Laden sympathizer b. An American Patriot.  c. A British Citizen.
Answer: All of the above. Puzzled? So is everyone else...
In an exclusive investigation the MadCowMorningNews has discovered startling and critical discrepancies in key elements in the official account of the life and death of Charles Bishop, the kamikaze pilot who a week ago flew a Cessna into a Tampa skyscraper. 
Taken together, these discrepancies seem designed to deflect public attention away from the boy's father, a man named Charles J Bishara. 
Charles Bishop’s wild last ride is the only authenticated episode of terror associated with a sympathizer of Osama Bin Laden since the September 11 attack. 
So Bishop's case is important. But a week later the word used most often to describe it in the press is "puzzling." 
Why did young Bishop target the Bank of America skyscraper after telling friends that he abhorred the World Trade Center attacks and wanted to go to Afghanistan and "get the SOBs''?
"Pushing the envelope in juvenile delinquency"
Osama Bin Laden had urged his followers to hit banks. Is that why Charles Bishop went out and hit one? Is he really just a troubled kid? Doesn’t flying a plane into a skyscraper somewhat stretch the definition of adolescent "acting out?"
Why would an honor student bellowing out patriotic songs near the top of his lungs and telling teachers he aspires to join the Air Force leave a suicide note praising America’s Public Enemy No.1, Osama bin Laden?
Why would he tell his family that he didn't want his ``enemies'' coming to his funeral, a request similar to one made in the last will and testament of suicide pilot Mohamed Atta?
Last Saturday, Charles Bishop crashed a plane into a building, leaving behind a suicide note professing admiration for Osama bin Laden. 
Yet by Monday police were saying he wasn’t a terrorist...
On Tuesday, reporters began speculating—in a truly Orwellian double-speak touch, since anyone flying a plane into a building is the very picture of sincerity—on the sincerity of his note.
By Friday, he was being remembered in news stories as, of all things, an American patriot.
At his Saturday funeral, the reputation of this "polite, brilliant, compassionate kid" had been so redeemed (or twisted) that someone placed a stripe off one of his father's Air Force shirts in his casket.
Finally, on Sunday, Charles Bishop's metamorphosis was complete. Now the terrorist act he carried out was no longer even a specific case anymore, and Bishop was reduced to an icon, the poster child, one editorialist imagined,  for "what might go down in history as "the terrorism generation." 
Perhaps this week he’ll be nominated for a Nobel Prize.
With every important question in the case still-unanswered, the official version of events borders on satire; it is so ridiculous that it reads like a bad spy novel by E. Howard Hunt.
The official explanation for why Charles Bishop killed himself in such spectacular fashion is "suicide by zit." 
His actions weren’t political. 
They were hormonal.
"This particular kid fits an interesting profile that I think the Secret Service and the FBI have been investigating for some time now," said one ‘expert’ trotted out for a quote in a typical wire story. "Kids who have grown up with an inadequate sense of empathy," said Michael Peck, a Santa Monica psychologist who has specialized in suicides of youths.
"But he's only half-Sicilian."
Might there be a better explanation than this? Might this suppressed explanation offer glimpses of the real identities of some of the people and organizations responsible for murdering 4000 innocent civilians on September 11? 
The first hint of trouble came from Katie Hughes, a Tampa police spokeswoman. She said Bishop's father, who they have been unable to contact since his son’s suicide, is of Syrian and Sicilian descent.
"Another mystery to be unraveled," read the Miami Herald. "Where is the boy's father?"
 The mystery deepened... Reporters could not find the father of the dead kamikaze kid, but they tracked down his grandfather. Strangely, he didn't seem to know much about Bishara either..Never mind that he's his son. Robert Bishara said, apologetically, "I don't want to say anything that might be wrong."
Aren’t Mobsters noted for omerta--not talking to outsiders? Or is this instead just another example of the breakdown of the nuclear family? 
"Heroin, sure. But nobody said 'trafficking.' Yet."
Press accounts referred to Bishara as a "small time crook" from Winchester, Massachusetts. They said that he began a string of mostly petty, occasionally alcohol-fueled crimes that made him familiar to the police in both Malden, and nearby Everett, where he lived.
He was cited for running a stop sign and driving without a license in 1985. Two years later, he was convicted of breaking into a restaurant two blocks from his father's house. The same year, he was convicted of possession of burglary tools and larceny. 
He is currently wanted by authorities on heroin charges.
Bishara's list of encounters with the law must be a long one... We discovered this particularly colorful opportunity for Charles to get to know local law enforcement from 1987, that we haven't seen mentioned anywhere... 
Turns out, Charles gets stabbed a lot.
First in an unsuccessful and by now famous suicide pact with the woman who is today the grief-stricken Mother, Janis Bishop. A sensitive soul she may be today, but sixteen years ago she plunged a 13-inch knife into poor Charles' liver. 
"Just don't point the knife at my liver, okay?"
Just two years later Charles Bishara gets stabbed again.
Though current press reports haven't mentioned it, he was stabbed in the leg, arm, back and shoulder (thank god they missed his probably still-tender liver). His attacker was simultaneously shouting at his girlfriend, "Do you want to see me stab someone?"
Sounds like something right out of Raging Bull. How many other "incidents" like this might there be?
The reason this may be important is that there may be a little problem with the widely-disseminated police and FBI portrayal of Bishara as a small time crook running into minor spats with the law. If the authorities aren't lying to us--and when have we ever known them to do that?--then being a small-time crook  must be paying really well in Boston these days.
Charlie's own little place in the sun
Wanted in Massachusetts on heroin charges, Charles Bishara, the MadCowMorningNews has learned, owns a penthouse condominium at the new Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort in Naples Florida, located just a hundred miles down 1-75 from the family he is reputed to have had no contact with for 15 years.
Penthouse condominiums sell for about a million dollars each, said Ritz Carlton sales representative Jeff DeAngelis. He vaguely remembered Charles Bishara purchasing a little over a year ago.
Bishara's million dollar get-away is behind the gates of the "Bolero" neighborhood, which is not as cheesy as it sounds because it sits on a Greg Norman-designed golf course.
It looks to be the very lap of luxury. Perhaps more trained observers in the FBI see something else.
Is half-Syrian and half-Sicilian Charles J Bishara just a small time crook? Or is he in reality some kind of Mob Boss? Take a look at his house: What do you think? 
Could young Charles Bishop's violent act of terrorism have been an attempt to impress his absent Mobster Dad with his big cojones? 
An even bigger question: why did Charles Bishop praise Osama? No one knows. Maybe he saw something. Or heard something.  In America's current war, what might this help explain about the postures of the Sicilian Mafia and the Arab Christian clans of Lebanon from which Charles Bishara sprang--along with another Bishara,  Sirhan Bishara Sirhan?
No information at press time on any relationship. But Sirhan worked at race tracks. Is the Mob big on the ponies?
"Only connect." 
Could the secretiveness surrounding the entire Bishop/Bishara family be because Bishara is somehow implicated in the currently-controversial scandal involving Bishara's fellow Boston Mobster, Whitey Bulger?
Bulger, it appears,  was "whacking" his rivals as well as various and sundry other citizens of Boston with something like impunity because of his "relationship" with the Boston FBI. 
The case is made even more explosive by the startling action of President Bush last month. Bush  invoked executive privilege. Bush blocked a congressional subpoena exploring abuses in the Boston FBI office after a Congressional committee began to investigate.
Reporters in Boston charge cover  up! 
Bush's party-mate Dan Burton was so incensed that he lambasted his fellow Republican in the Oval Office.
"You tell the president there's going to be war between the president and this committee," he told a Justice Department official during what was supposed to be a routine prehearing handshake.
Observers said Bush’s invoking executive privilege was triggering what one congressman called "the start of a constitutional confrontation."
"They're all on a motoring safari in Asia."
Could the reason authorities "can't find" Bishara be the same reason they "can't find" Whitey Bulger? Or Osama bin Laden? 
Could they all be riding motorbikes across South Asia with Mullah Omar? 
These speculations make at least as much sense as the laughable notion that what the citizens of Tampa were subjected to last weekend was acne-medication-induced terror.
Finally we come to the Curiosity of the Week:  the case of Charles Bishop's nationality. According to UPI, Charles Bishop was "a British citizen, who did not have a license to fly."
A British citizen? All-American patriot Chuck? (Being born of at least one British parent inside the U.S. means that until he reached 18 he had both British and U.S. citizenship.)
"I say old chap, would you mind awfully giving us the money?"
His mother’s maiden name is deTore, which doesn’t sound English. 
So it must be Charles’ Bishop’s father, Charles Bishara, who has the British passport. How many small-time thugs in Boston carry British passports? Probably not too many, right?  Does America's Most Wanted Whitey Bulger have a British passport, too?
Someone familiar with Charlie Bishara's home, Winchester, Massachusetts, told us of the town's colorful history with the Mob. And he also told us something else about Winchester, which may shed some light on the Bishop/Bishara business, when we take up the case of Janis Bishop.
And one last item, one we have not even allowed ourselves to think about yet:
Charles Bishara's home in Naples Florida is just a short  five-minute drive from flight school owner Rudi Dekkers' headquarters at the Naples Airport.
Of all places. 
Small world.
What are the odds? 
It must be admitted that Charles Bishara’s many brushes with the ‘wild side’ would be consistent with—fourteen years ago—a low-level career in the Mob.
From the size of Charlie's little getaway home in Naples, Mr. Bishara  may have been moving up—just a little—since then.
NEXT: THE CURIOUS CASE OF JANIS BISHOP
 

Kamikaze Kid Cover-up in Tampa?

by Daniel Hopsicker 

January 22--Tampa Florida 

"The 15-year-old student pilot who crashed a stolen plane into a Florida office building earlier this month had no alcohol or drugs in his system when he died, according to medical examiners. Nor was there any sign the teen had taken Accutane, an acne medication that carried a label warning it might cause depression and suicide." 

  

Monica Lothrop was working in her law firm office in downtown Tampa. It was a typical Saturday afternoon.

Then the plane hit.

"Suddenly you're looking out into the open air, the blue sky, 28 floors up," she recalled.

"I thought 'Oh my gosh, it's happening again, and they're targeting the Bank of America building, the plane is going to explode, and there's more planes coming, and we have to get out of here!’"

It was a moment of terror she will never forget. Neither will Joe Formoso, head of the Tampa air traffic controllers union. He was on duty when Bishop's small plane passed just 1,000 feet above a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 that had taken off from Tampa International Airport moments earlier.

"It was only by the grace of God that the Southwest pilots saw it," Formoso says, shaking his head.

When "troubled teen" Charles Bishop stole a plane and flew it into the 28th floor of the Bank of America in downtown Tampa—leaving behind a suicide note praising Osama bin Laden—he catapulted himself into the middle of the mystery surrounding the Sept 11th terrorist attack.

That mystery has only deepened in the two weeks since.

Charles Bishop is the first American suicide bomber in history. Two weeks after his death authorities have finally ruled out acne as the explanation for his act of terrorism.  

"Very little safe ground so far."

A few things are known for sure:

 MacDill Air Force Base—the center of operations for Operation Enduring Freedom—had no interceptors on hand. So Tampa was a pretty safe place to do something stupid in a plane.  

A Cessna does not have anywhere near the same destructive potential as a jumbo jet.  

If you crash into a mostly deserted building, the person you end up killing is yourself.  

The mainstream press quickly concluded that Charles Bishop's kamikaze flight had no connection to terrorism, a judgment some thought a little cavalier.

Improbably, his suicide was instead adjudged to have been acne-induced. Or so said the Washington Post, ABC News, and the Associated Press, which all ran stories blaming Bishop's suicide mission on Accutane, the powerful acne pills produced by Hoffman-La Roche.

This made little sense. But what else should we expect in a surreal tragedy which saw Mohamed Atta use a passport from the "Republic of Conch," which doesn't exist, while boarding his fatal flight?

Alone among the major morning news shows, the  MadCowMorningNews questioned this finding, and devoted all newsroom resources—TeamMadCowCoverage—to investigating  questions about Bishop's suicide hanging in the soft Gulf breezes which roll into the port city of Tampa, Florida.

Our diligence has been rewarded.

This week the chief toxicologist with the Tampa Medical Examiner's office told reporters the results of tests on Bishop's blood for a range of substances, including opiates, antidepressants, stimulants, marijuana, PCP and cocaine.

All came back negative.

The toxicology tests showed no sign at all of Accutane, the acne medication that the press had a week earlier linked to suicide and depression.

"Suicide by zit" could now officially be ruled out. 

But if acne hadn't impelled young Bishop to do it..what had? What motivates a 15-year old Young Republican to fly a plane straight into a skyscraper on a balmy Saturday afternoon? 

Since the authorities refuse to release the crucial evidence, the answer is we may never know.  

  

  

"Nothing to see here. Move along."

The Tampa police have still not released the contents of the boy's suicide note. No one in the media is protesting very loud. 

This pronounced lack of curiosity is vindication—of a sort—for the pat response a Tampa police spokeswoman gave over and over to questions about the suicide. 

"We may never know," she repeated patiently. She did not sound dismayed when she said it.

"We may never know."

In Charles Bishop's two-page-long suicide note there had been  "some (other) things in there that we prefer not to talk about [since] the investigation is still ongoing," Tampa Police Chief Bennie Holder told a news conference. "But everything in the note mentioned things that occurred on Sept. 11 and his support of bin Laden and al-Qaida."  

  

"Everything in the note."  

Media critics sometimes accuse the press for being responsible for the increasingly short national attention span. 

After each new item is served up it has a brief ‘half-life’ in the news, goes this reasoning, and then disappears... Afterwards Americans are encouraged to assume that the matter is settled... 

Even when it isn’t.

The night the Kamikaze Kid piloted his plane into a 28th floor office the local Fox news anchors had whipped themselves into an absolute frenzy over the question they asked breathlessly during every local commercial break..

"Was there a connection to Osama bin Laden? We'll tell you at ten!"

Two weeks later they no longer seem to care as much at ten. 

The kamikaze kid’s flight instructor, Robert Cooper, observed out loud  that the media tornado had disappeared as abruptly as it had arrived.

"The news media has a short memory," he said. "They're on to the next hot thing."

For the past two weeks Julia Bishop has been kept under tighter wraps than any female witness since Marina Oswald. She has spoken a total of just two words to the press: 

"Get" and "out."

Reporters waited for a word from her to no avail in front of her home in Palm Harbor, a wealthy suburb north of Tampa consisting of gated communities stretching almost as far as the eye can see... cluster after cluster of white-stucco homes on silent palm-fringed cul-de-sacs.

"Opulent monotony," one reporter called it.

No reporters spoke with Julia Bishop. The only activity that could be seen at her luxury apartment was a victim's advocate from the Sheriff's Office who came out periodically to walk the family's dogs. 

Rumor had Julia Bishop holding out to tell her story to People magazine first. But when their Jan 21 issue came out the story had not a single photo of the boy's mother, which means we still don't know what she looks like. 

Millions of Americans have seen the mothers of several of the Arab terrorists. How, in freeway-close Tampa Florida, has the mother of kamikaze kid pilot Charles Bishop been so completely shielded from view? 

Even Marina Oswald got her picture in the papers. 

"Remembered for his special interest in environmental impact issues."

Julia Bishop’s only public utterance concerning her son came in a statement read by the family’s attorney:

"He cared about the world his generation was inheriting and took special interest in environmental impact issues, animal rights and endangered species laws, and the new world of national politics which impacts all of these issues.''

Poor Charles Bishop. Is that how a son wants to be remembered by  his Mom? 

Even stranger than the fact that the boy's suicide note was being withheld from the media by the police is that apparently Charles' Bishop’s own mother hasn’t seen it either. 

The family’s lawyer Pamela Campbell—who served as the absent Julia Bishop's mouthpiece—said Charles Bishop's distraught mother still had no insight into the crash. Her client hadn’t seen the note. Nor had the police read it to her. 

Campbell said. "At this point in time, she really doesn't know what to believe.'

If  your child committed suicide, wouldn't  you want to read their suicide note right away?  

  

  

"Nothing to see here. Move along."

Charles Bishop’s "missing" Dad is Charles J. Bishara, a half-Sicilian and half-Lebanese career criminal who hails from Winchester, Mass., described by Bay State natives as a ‘Mob town.’

He is currently wanted on heroin charges. 

News accounts had been at pains to make one thing perfectly clear: "The boy's father has been out of the mother's and son's lives for some time."

Bishara's organized crime ties could thus have had nothing to do with young Charlie Bishop's bizarre suicide, still the only authenticated act of Osama bin Laden-inspired terror in America since September 11.

Julia Bishara had changed her and son Charles' last names, from Bishara to Bishop. She told officials she made the change because ‘Bishara’ is an Arabic name and the U.S. was at war with Iraq, and subsequent news reports pointed to this as evidence that young Charles  had had no contact with his "missing" father.  

  

  

Team coverage was clearly the right way to go.

The MadCowMorningNews has learned that this may not be the whole story. We had puzzled over why the divorced woman hadn't reverted to her maiden name, Detore. She changed her name instead to Bishop. 

"The entire Bishara clan in Winchester changed their names to Bishop," a long-time native of Massachusetts told us. "They anglicized it."  

Six years after "small time hood" Charles Bishara had supposedly left his ex-wife and son's lives for good, had Julia Bishop changed her name to match her ex-husband’s?

Mother Julia and son Charles lived a rootless, nomadic lifestyle, moving from town to town and school to school, news reports indicated, without saying why. Julia Bishop listed five addresses in the Tampa Bay area. Charles had attended at least four schools there. It was a virtual prescription for maladjustment.

Behind the walls of his gated community, Charlie nursed a grievance.

One boy who lived on the same cul-de-sac told a reporter he would see Charlie walking his dog. "I said `Nice dog' a lot to him, but he never said anything back. I would smile, but he wouldn't smile back.''

The collapse of the official story of Charles Bishop's flight leaves troubling questions unanswered.

Where did the straight "A" Kamikaze Kid get the crazy idea that flying a plane at 160 miles an hour into a building after praising an Arab terrorist with a sideline in narcotics trafficking was going to be just way cool? 

Does the identity of the Kamikaze Kid's father have anything to do with the manner in which the son "acted out?" Does this help unravel the mystery of just who it was that targeted innocent civilians for murder on September 11?

The FBI's new theme song should be sung by former Go-Go's lead singer Belinda Carlisle:

"Our Lips Are Sealed."

When we found Bishara’s million dollar penthouse condominium at the Ritz Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Florida, we thought: why can't the FBI find Bishara? 

We spoke recently with a grizzled McDill Special Forces Commander who had just come back Afghanistan, and used the opportunity to ask him something similar. 

"Does the Sicilian Mafia or the Lebanese Arab Christian clans have a beef with the present Administration? 

He allowed that they might. 

Someone wrote to tell us that on a whim they had entered www.bishara.com into their browser's address line.

It turns out to be a subsidiary of the Sultan of Oman.

This is probably just coincidence.

In another unrelated story,  officials announced that investigators from Treasury, Justice, and the FBI have "finished the initial phase of their exhaustive effort to trace the financial underpinnings of the attacks that killed about 3,000 persons in New York City and Washington, DC, on September 11."

Despite repeated charges from pundits and politicians, including President Bush, that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization was aided and abetted by funds derived from drug trafficking, the federal "investigators" did not mention illicit drug profits as a source of funding for the attacks.

Huh. Imagine that. 

Charles Bishop is the first American suicide bomber in history. Two weeks after his death authorities have finally ruled out acne as the explanation for his act of terrorism.

"Nothing to see here. Move along."