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EuroSkeptic ago

Ok, so I've been going through this whole thing for a while now. My main concern was understanding what kind of relevance could Santa Maria ever have. It's virtually irrelevant in context. It's one of the smallest and extremely close to the biggest island. Plus Terceira have the Lajes base, so why wouldn't an ex-POTUS just make a stopover there? So, upon digging deeper, I found out that the LPAZ airport was started as a military airfield for WW2, in a partnership between the USA and Portugal governments. The idea was to reinforce maritime protection and serve as complement to the Lajes base. The project was designed by Pan American World Airways and approved by Portugal. A few quonset huts are still there, a 30-second walk from the airport.

That kind of past and infrastructure makes it the perfect place for a secret meeting to take place, as bizarre as it would sound to any local. The American contact with the airport does not end there, though. Following the Iraq invasion a few other stopovers were barely talked about. Through this I discovered what might explain the relevance of this tiny airport in a finer detail. A EXPRESSO (portuguese newspaper) issue states that "Abdurahman Khadr, son of a founder member of Al Qaeda" made a stopover on the island in 7 Nov. 2003. In the document (here) it reads "Although Lajes was nearby, it was decided to land at Santa Maria, a civil airport at which no authorization is necessary to land. After refueling, they left at 5.35 for the Tuzla military base in Bosnia"... Of course! It's a civil airport with a twist... It has the infrastructure of a military airport. Isn't that just perfect to make quiet, secret stopovers? (another source citing it as a CIA stopover)... After all, the Portuguese government itself denied the existence of facts corroborating any of the multiple alleged stopovers by CIA planes, even if it seems glaringly obvious they have in fact done so. Fishy indeed.

As to answer where they stayed, there'd first need to be confirmation that they actually stayed there. Can we trace their steps? How would one do that? I don't even know how to search the flight logs!

Anyway, one more little oddity about the island: it has a casemate complex (here), in the main peak (Pico Alto, which was constructed synchronously to a similar complex in Terceira in 1956/7, following the Warsaw Pact. It's supposed function was to harbor radar stations, but both are abandoned and degrading.

Do you have any extra leads?