It wasn’t all that unusual when a man who appeared to be Middle Eastern applied for work at a Saskatchewan crop spraying company last June.
“I mean, what does a Canadian look like?” said Norm Colhoun, of Lumsden, who owns Skynorth Aviation.
But after Sept. 11 he and his pilots saw the man’s visit in a different light.
That’s when terrorists hijacked four passenger planes in the United States, crashing two into the World Trade Center in New York, another into the Pentagon in Washington and a fourth in rural Pennsylvania.
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All aircraft, including crop sprayers, were grounded for a time after the attack. Some warned that terrorists could use spray planes to spread biological weapons or infectious agents such as anthrax and small pox.
“We weren’t suspicious until after the 11th of September,” Colhoun said.
Skynorth pilots remembered that the man knew little about the planes he wanted to fly.
Colhoun said he asked rudimentary questions for someone who claimed to have experience. The man wanted to know how far the plane could fly, how much it could carry and how much fuel it would use – all information contained in the flight manual.
“I interviewed him for 15 minutes and he hung around for three or four hours,” Colhoun said.
“He spent most of the time talking to the pilots as they were reloading chemicals and fuel.”
Colhoun wasn’t hiring, so the man left his resume.
A few months later, and two days after the terrorist attack, Colhoun received an e-mail inquiring about a plane he had for sale. When he talked to the potential buyer, he found the man knew little about crop spraying. He said the man also had a Middle Eastern accent.
“He claimed to be from Ontario and he was not, and he claimed to be in the business and he was not,” Colhoun said.
That information, along with the first man’s resume, has been turned over to the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Police and CSIS are also looking into a report that another man, who called himself Sam and said he was from Iran, tried to get a job at a Weyburn, Sask., aerial application firm.
Sam showed up at Arndt-Air Ltd. in June. Owner Ron Arndt would not comment, but Richard Wayne, a pilot at Arndt-Air last summer, said there was something odd about Sam.
Like the man at Skynorth, Sam asked a lot of basic questions and didn’t seem to know a lot about planes.
“He had the documentation in his hands and a pilot’s licence,” Wayne said.
“But he couldn’t prove to us that he was actually experienced at flying.”
Sam spent some time helping refuel aircraft, mixing chemicals and putting them in the planes, Wayne said. He left Weyburn about a week later without ever flying an Arndt-Air plane.
Blair Mutcher, vice-president of the Canadian Aerial Applicators Association, said members are being cautious in light of these events.
Investigators asked the association to provide lists of students at training schools for possible suspicious activity.
“We didn’t find anything”
He too said it wouldn’t be unusual for people who appear to be from the Middle East to apply for jobs.
“Our office gets many applications from all over the world with regard to flying,” Mutcher said.
Canadian crop sprayers were grounded for two days following the attacks and the Federal Aviation Administration banned crop sprayers from U.S. airspace for two weeks afterward.
Meanwhile, at a conference on terrorism in Regina Oct. 1, officials discussed a federal government report claiming there are more international terrorist groups active in Canada than in any other country, with the possible exception of the U.S.
The April 18, 2001, report by the federal solicitor general said agriculture is a potential target. It said there is circumstantial evidence that some major animal disease outbreaks may not have been accidental, and there is “factual” evidence that anti-livestock and anti-crop agents have been “weaponized.”
