Bizarre aviation story

[alaskaflyer]

It has a little of everything...international intrigue, cops and robbers, FBI, aircraft crashes...

Only in Alaska? I don't know. Some of you will remember the story about the Anchorage "businessmen" indicted for possessing unregistered military rocket launchers. Others might remember the Czech jet fighter which went down in Ketchikan a couple months ago. What I didn't know until today, is that the stories are related:

Witness's evolving odyssey sprouted from suspicion

SECURITY AVIATION: John Berens is key to felony weapons case against the charter company.
By RICHARD MAUER and LISA DEMER
Anchorage Daily News

John Berens was working at his aircraft business in Iowa last summer when he heard from a friend who was ferrying newly purchased planes from the Lower 48 to Security Aviation in Anchorage. The friend said Security, an air charter company, was expanding rapidly and looking for workers.

Berens had a long history as a jet mechanic in the military and as a civilian. Craig Wolter, Security's operations director, needed someone for the company's growing fleet of L-39 Czech military jets.
It was a match.
Thus began an odyssey -- still far from over -- that led Berens to become a central witness in the felony weapons case against Security Aviation and its second in command, Rob Kane.
Berens is the "Witness E" who identified the rocket launchers described in a series of search warrants executed against the company in February. The rocket launchers, obtained for the L-39s, were unregistered and became the basis for the weapons charges.
Defense attorneys have denounced Berens, and he's bracing for more when he reaches the witness stand. One of the attorneys, Paul Stockler, called him a disgruntled employee who "made up this wild story" that suckered in the FBI and federal prosecutors. The defense says the rocket launchers were "demilitarized" and nothing more than decorations for the jets.
But Berens, back working in a temporary job at the airport in Oskaloosa, Iowa -- he sold his business -- said it was Kane's behavior that fueled his suspicions and led him to look for answers.
Berens said his own examination showed that the rocket launchers were functional. In December, just before he quit Security Aviation, Berens said he reported the launchers to federal authorities. He expects to testify for the government in a hearing today as the defense tries to get evidence thrown out in advance of the May 15 trial.

FALSE CREDENTIALS, PLANE PLANS


Berens said he arrived in Alaska in early September. Kane, who had no formal title at Security Aviation, seemed to be the man in charge, he said. Former Anchorage prosecutor Mark Avery was the company's owner, and at the time Joe Kapper was president. Berens said he hardly saw Avery and Kapper.
Kane claimed to have been a Navy Seal, a special- operations veteran and a CIA operative, Berens said. None of that rang true. Berens said that when he was an Air Force mechanic at Homestead Air Force Base near Miami working with a rapid deployment force in the 1980s, he got to meet special-operations soldiers.
"(Kane) was different from any other special-ops people that I knew," Berens said. "He talked a lot. To just spout off about stuff here and there, openly, without being asked -- they don't usually do that. I was getting a little suspicious."
Berens tracked down the organization VeriSEAL and its Web site, which, like a trademark protection service, exposes phonies who pad their resumes by claiming to be Seals. Kane was listed as an imposter in VeriSEAL's "Hall of Shame."
Berens knew an agent in an East Coast office of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who agreed to make inquiries about "Commander Kane." Not only was Kane never a Seal, he was never in the military, the friend found.
At a hearing in February, an FBI agent also testified that Kane was never in the U.S. military, though evidence was found in a search of his home that he was in the Philippines Coast Guard Auxiliary.
In October, some unusual aircraft parts arrived at Security Aviation: two Soviet UB-16-57U rocket launchers. The torpedo-shaped pods, built for a variety of Warsaw Pact aircraft including L-39s, have a ring of 16 tubes, each 57mm (2 ¼ inches) in diameter, that can launch rockets at tanks, buildings, encampments and other ground targets.
The rocket launchers were purchased from an Internet auction site, Berens was told. Though not familiar with Eastern bloc equipment, his experience with American and NATO gear suggested the old launchers would work, he said.

"There's nothing that's been taken apart on them -- everything looks fully intact and original," he said. No one ever suggested registering them with the federal government, he said.
Berens' view was contrary to that of Joe Griffith, an Anchorage businessman, former wing commander at Elmendorf Air Force Base, and consultant to Security Aviation. Griffith has testified that he believed the launchers were fully "demilitarized" and inoperable.
By the end of October, Security's L-39 fleet had grown to eight jets, most of them kept at a newly rented hangar at the Palmer airport where Berens was assigned as their chief mechanic.
Griffith said Security had a few ideas for the planes, all of them above-board: as a U.S. military contractor, using them as opposition forces in practice warfare, or to tow targets. Griffith said he also drafted a proposal to train military pilots in the Philippines, though he acknowledged the Philippines has no military jets and is unlikely to get any soon.
Speculation was rife among the mechanics about whether Kane had other plans in mind, Berens said, such as attacking rebel encampments on the Philippine island of Mindanao, where Kane's wife was born. In an affidavit supporting Kane's arrest, an FBI agent said the administrator at Security Aviation who ordered the rocket pods at Kane's request discussed "hypothetical missions" that included attacks on terrorist camps.

 

[alaskaflyer]

(cont.)

When he was hired, Berens said, Kane made sure he had a passport and told him to be prepared to travel to the Philippines in February. Later, Kane asked him to research whether aerial refueling booms could be attached to L-39s, greatly increasing their 1,000-mile maximum range. Berens said he determined that retrofitting an L-39 would be a daunting, if not impossible, task.
As it was, the planes weren't in great shape, Berens said, and even with the eventual staff of seven mechanics, there was too much to do.

A FLEET UNREADY TO FLY


In September, one of the world's leading experts in the L-39, Bernd Rehn of Aero-Contact in Malschwitz, Germany, was helping out at air races in Reno, Nev., when he got a call from Security Aviation.
"They got some airplanes in Alaska and they're not very good, and they asked if I would be able to come over to check the airplanes out," Rehn said in a telephone interview from Germany last month. "Our job was to find out what he had and to make the airplanes flyable."
Rehn was the chief engineer of the East German Air Force's L-39 program. After unification of the two Germanys in 1990 and the widespread disposal of L-39s into the civil aviation market, Rehn began his business. Over the last 16 years, he's worked with dentists, doctors, lawyers and businessmen who own some of the 250 L-39s now in private hands in the United States and has consulted for two James Bond movies.
Rehn and a small crew from his company spent four weeks in November working on the planes in Palmer and another two weeks in December teaching L-39 ground school to Berens and his team.
Berens said that when Rehn confirmed to him that the rocket launchers were operable, he told Kane and Griffith. Both shrugged him off, he said.
Griffith denied ever getting that report from Berens.
In an e-mail exchange with the Daily News, Rehn said, "It's a matter of fact that R. Kane got non-demiled rocket pods, no question about that." But Rehn added that the planes were all "cold" and demilitarized themselves, lacking full combat systems that could fire rockets or other arms.
"In the current status the L-39 can carry the pods, even loaded with the rockets, but that is all, they cannot be fired from the airplane," he wrote. Additionally, the launchers were old models that could only fire rockets whose production ceased long ago.
"However some could be stored in the 3rd world, you never know. But I think the guys at Sec. Aviation didn't have a clue what they got and what they need, if they ever had an intention to use them," he wrote.
Reached at a hotel in Anchorage last week, Rehn said he had just been hired by the defense to be an expert witness in the federal case and could not elaborate on his remarks.
In the March interview, Rehn said he saw nothing James Bond-ish during his six weeks in Alaska. No one at Security Aviation asked him to make the L-39s warfare-capable.
Company officials wanted him to get the fleet ready to fly by January but were disappointed when he told them as he left Alaska on Dec. 18 that only two of the six L-39 jets in Palmer were airworthy. (He never inspected the two L-39s stored in Anchorage at the time, he said.)
Four more L-39s arrived at Security Aviation in crates late fall, sold by a Quincy, Ill., company, Air USA. When Rehn arrived for the December ground school, they were assembled and packed into the Palmer hangar.
Rehn ordered those four planes -- MS models -- be towed outside before he would touch the other planes, C and ZA models. The Czech factory built only six of the MS models, using them as a prototype for the next series, the L-59. Rehn said that if asked, he would strongly advise against Security owning those planes. They weren't junk, he said -- just too finicky for a remote location like Alaska.
But Mark Sheets, one of the L-39 mechanics at Palmer, saw a kind of logic in the MS purchase.
"They're a lot more mission-capable," able to carry more munitions than the other models, Sheets said. Like Berens, he thought the plan was to take the planes overseas.
Sheets was fired Dec. 22 for refusing to sign a 24-page nondisclosure pledge and has been cooperating in the federal investigation.
Berens said he went to the federal authorities in Anchorage the first or second week of December, while he was still employed by Security. His East Coast ATF friend put him in touch with the agency here, who later connected him with the FBI agent already investigating Security Aviation.
Berens returned home to Iowa for Christmas and, with his family's blessing, decided he'd had enough and quit the company.

CONFRONTATION AT PALMER AIRPORT


But Berens wasn't quite done with Security Aviation. Mark Avery had paid more than $2 million for the four L-39MS jets but still owed nearly $1 million more, according to a Jan. 26 letter written by Avery to Palmer police. Don Kirlin, Air USA's president, hired Berens to go back to Alaska to help repossess the MS jets and get them ready to fly back to the Lower 48.
More than a month after Rehn ordered that the planes be towed out of the Security Aviation hangar, the MS models were still on the tarmac. Early on a Saturday morning, Jan. 21, Berens and Sheets towed each plane to a private hangar at the other end of the Palmer airport. They set to work making them ready to fly. Berens also called FBI agent Matthew Campe, the lead investigator.
That Saturday night, one of the remaining Security Aviation mechanics, Bob Anthony, let Berens and Campe into the building. Berens needed to retrieve batteries and fuel tanks for the planes. But Campe also wanted to be sure the rocket launchers were still there. According to court filings, Berens showed one of the launchers to Campe, who photographed it.
Campe's presence at the Security hangar figures into efforts by the defense to throw out the evidence seized Feb. 2, including the launchers. They say Anthony wasn't authorized to let in Campe and Berens. In effect, the defense argues, the FBI was conducting an illegal, warrantless search Jan. 21, more than a week before Campe would appear before a federal judge in Anchorage to obtain search warrants.
Anthony was fired. He also became a government witness. Reached at his new aviation job in Anchorage last week, he declined to comment.
When Security officials learned the planes were towed to another part of the Palmer airport, they raced there from Anchorage. Operations Director Craig Wolter and Ray Sleeth, a vice president, entered the private hangar. Kirlin was there, along with his two pilots, Berens, Sheets and a mechanic who worked at the hangar, according to Berens.
Berens and Sheets said they had pistols handy, not knowing what to expect. According to one of the FBI affidavits, Berens had told Campe during the investigation that Security Aviation personnel routinely carry FN Five-seveN pistols, a 10- or 20-round handgun with 5.7mm bullets capable of piercing body armor. Kane carried two in holsters under each arm, the affidavit said.
No one drew their weapon that day, but Wolter cursed Kirlin and tried to get him to fight outside, Berens said. When one of the Air USA pilots intervened, Wolter said, "Who the f*** are you?"
The pilot flashed a government badge and identified himself as Stephen Freeman. "I'm a U.S. Customs Agent -- I think you need to chill out," Berens recalled Freeman saying.
Berens said Freeman was off-duty and not trying to portray his actions as official. Wolter asked him to step outside too, Berens said.
Reached by phone in Anchorage, Wolter would only say he no longer works for Security Aviation and wouldn't comment on what happened in the hanger. Sleeth also declined to comment.
Mark Avery also came to Palmer and demanded that Palmer police arrest Kirlin and the others for stealing the planes and burglarizing the Security Aviation hanger. Lt. Thomas Remaley didn't believe a crime was committed. There was no bill of sale, he said. If Avery had a beef, he could sue, he said. In an interview, Remaley said he checked with the district attorney, who agreed with his decision.
"They were repossessed and they were repossessed legally," Remaley said.
After Berens cleared the planes for flight, Freeman and the other pilot took off from Palmer around 3 p.m. They encountered bad weather in Southeast and made an unplanned overnight stop in Sitka. One of the pilots couldn't wait out the bad weather and left Sitka on a commercial flight, leaving his L-39 parked. Freeman took off Wednesday in the other jet. A few minutes later, he reported adverse winds and said he was diverting to Ketchikan. At 12:48 p.m., he dropped out of the clouds and reported seeing the airport.
Witnesses said they saw his plane skip twice on the water and come to a flaming stop at a house trailer, where the occupants narrowly escaped. Freeman ejected but was killed. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the crash.

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/security_aviation/story/7645525p-7556233c.html

 

[tdager]

Wow.....

 

[ScottM]

An artcile about this was in ANS a few months back but not at this level of detail. One question, What did they think they needed missle racks for up in Alaska? Moose hunting?

 

[tonycondon]

amazing, quite a story

 

[Richard]

"If I had a rocket launcher..."

Scott, there was talk of using them agaist rebels in the Philipines.