EXCLUSIVE: FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Will Now Tell All - and Face Charges if Necessary - to Any Major Television Network That Will Let Her
She's Prepared to Name Names, Including Those of Two 'Well-Known' Congress Members Involved in Criminal Corruption
The 'Most Gagged Person in U.S. History' Tells The BRAD BLOG She's Now Exhausted All Other Channels...
-- By Brad Friedman
Attention CBS 60 Minutes: we've got a huge scoop for you. If you want it.
Remember the exclusive story you aired on Sibel Edmonds, originally on October 27th, 2002, when she was not allowed to tell you everything that she heard while serving as an FBI translator after 9/11 because she was gagged by the rarely-invoked "States Secret Privilege"? Well, she's still gagged. In fact, as the ACLU first described her, she's "the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America."
But if you'll sit down and talk with her for an unedited interview, she has now told The BRAD BLOG during an exclusive interview, she will now tell you everything she knows.
Everything she hasn't been allowed to tell since 2002, about the criminal penetration of the FBI where she worked, and at the Departments of State and Defense; everything she heard concerning the corruption and illegal activities of several well-known members of Congress; everything she's aware of concerning information omitted and/or covered up in relation to 9/11. All of the information gleaned from her time listening to and translating wire-taps made prior to 9/11 at the FBI.
Here's a handy bullet-point list, as we ran it in March of 2006, for reference, of what she's now willing to tell you about.
"People say, 'why doesn't she just come forward and spill the beans?' I have gone all the way to the Supreme Court and was shut down, I went to Congress and now consider that shut down," she told The BRAD BLOG last week when we spoke with her for comments in relation to our story on former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's original attempt to move a resolution through the U.S. House in 2000 declaring the 1915 massacre of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in Turkey as "genocide."
"Here's my promise to the American Public: If anyone of the major networks --- ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX --- promise to air the entire segment, without editing, I promise to tell them everything that I know," about everything mentioned above, she told us.
"I can tell the American public exactly what it is, and what it is that they are covering up," she continued. "I'm not compromising ongoing investigations," Edmonds explained, because "they've all been shut down since."
"She's Very Credible"
She has, in fact, spent years taking every reasonable step to see that the information she has goes through the proper channels. The Supreme Court refused to hear her whistleblower lawsuit, even in light of the Department of Justice forcing the removal of both her and her own attorneys from the courtroom when they made their arguments concerning why it was that she still had to remain gagged under the "States Secrets Privilege."
On the morning that the SCOTUS refused to hear her case, the facade cracked on the front of the building. In a ridiculously ironic metaphor which would have been rejected by any credible screen-writer, a chunk of marble --- just above an allegorical statue representing "Order" and just below the words "Equal Justice" --- came crashing to the ground.
She has met with, and told her story to, U.S. senators including Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Patrick Leahy, both of the Senate Judiciary Committee, both who found her extremely credible. 60 Minutes producers may remember when Grassley told them, "Absolutely, she's credible...And the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story."
In fact, the FBI itself has done so. Their Inspector General found her allegations, as described in the unclassified version of his report, to be "credible," "serious," and "warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI."
As far back as 2002, Grassley and Leahy co-wrote letters on Edmonds' behalf to Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and DoJ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, calling on all of them to take action in respect to the allegations she's made.
"Certain officials in this country are engaged in treason against the United States and its interests and its national security," she said during an interview an August 2005 interview on Democracy Now. That comment followed 60 Minutes' revelation years before alleging that Edmonds had information revealing that a "Turkish intelligence officer" she worked with at the FBI "had spies working for him inside the US State Department and at the Pentagon."
She's briefed many legislative offices --- as well as the 9/11 Commission --- in regard to her claims, and now, she says, she's even prepared to tell the media "the names of every single Congressional office who has received the names of the witnesses" to the crimes she's detailed.
When we spoke last week, Edmonds seemed to reserve most of her frustration for Congressman Henry Waxman's office. Waxman is the Democratic Chairman of the U.S. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
After briefing members of his security-cleared staff "inside the SCIF" --- a high-security room in the U.S. Capitol, specially created for discussion of highly sensitive information --- Edmonds says she was told on several occasions, prior to the 2006 Election, that her case would be one of the first heard in his committee, once he became Chairman.
"I even gave names of former and current FBI agents who were willing to go to Waxman's office and give more information on all of this," she said.
"Before the elections, I had a promise from Congressman Waxman's office." She claims they told her, before the election, "the only reason they couldn't hold hearings, was because the Republicans were blocking it."
"They said 'your case will be one of the first ones we will hold investigations on,'" she told us. Now, however, since the Democrats have become the majority in the House, Waxman's office is "going mum." They won't even respond to her calls.
The congressman's office did not respond to several requests for comment on this story.
Two Other "Well-Known" Congressmen
Aside from the allegations she's already made concerning Hastert, as we reported in some detail in early 2006, following up on a Vanity Fair exposé in 2005, Edmonds says there are at least "two other well-known" members of Congress that she's prepared to name as well.
"There are other Congressional people, whose names have not come out," she explained. "As [Waxman's office knows] I'll be able to give them file numbers and investigations, including investigations by the IRS. I will be giving details one by one, not just allegations."
"But," she added, "unfortunately nobody wants to have an investigation like that."
For the record, she told The BRAD BLOG, the other two "well-known members" are from the House, both Republican, and "one of them is recently no longer there."
So far, she says, "those names have not been public."
"Kafka-esque"
Since leaving the FBI, and in the wake of her years-long ordeal, which she frequently describes as "Kafka-esque," Edmonds has founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
In addition to the support she has received, at various times, from members of Congress, she's received a great deal of support from members of the national security whistleblower community and government watchdog organizations.
As we reported last Spring, Veteran FBI counterintelligence agent John Cole has said he's "talked to people who had read her file, who had read the investigative report, and they were telling me a totally different story" than that given publicly by FBI officials. "They were telling me that Sibel Edmonds was 100 percent accurate," he said, "management knew that she was correct."
Famed "Pentagon Papers" whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has described Edmonds as "extremely credible." In a 2005 interview on KPFA, Ellsberg said, "FBI agents we've talked to have, in every respect that was raised, have confirmed her story - that she's a very credible witness."
More than 30 groups, from across the political spectrum --- including the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the September 11th Advocates, the Liberty Coalition, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), OMB Watch, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and People for the American Way (PFAW) --- all signed a letter in March of this year calling on the House Oversight Committee to "hold public hearings into the case of FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, and the erroneous use of the State Secrets Privilege to shut down all court proceedings in her case."
That petition was sent almost precisely one year after The BRAD BLOG originally reported on a public petition to Congress, demanding they hold public hearings. More than 30,000 people, Edmonds says, have now signed that petition since it was first announced.
"Exhausted Every Channel"
In a speech given over the Summer in D.C. at the American Library Association (ALA, video here), Edmonds detailed the "Kafka-esque" nature of her unprecedented gag-order. Among the information still-regarded as "classified" under the States Secret Privelege: the fact that she was a translator for the FBI, where she was born, what languages she speaks, the date of her birth, the universities she attended, and the degrees she earned.
In fact, the interview that CBS's 60 Minutes aired with her in 2004, was later retroactively classified by the Department of Justice under the same "privilege"!
But enough is enough. She's now ready to tell all. To the public. But not (yet) to us. She will speak, however, to any broadcast network that would like to have her.
"I have exhausted every channel. If they want to, they can bring criminal charges against someone who divulges criminal activity, and see how far they're going to get."
But will any of the corporate mainstream networks take her up on the offer? It'd certainly be an explosive exclusive.
"I don't think any of the mainstream media are going to have the guts to do it," she dared them.
So whaddaya say 60 Minutes? We've given you scoops before that you ended up turning down --- and likely later regretted. Will you be smart enough to take this one?
"You put me on air live, or unedited. If I'm given the time, I will give the American people the exact reason of what I've been gagged from saying because of the States Secrets Privilege, and why it is that I'm the most gagged person in the history of the United States."
"My feeling is that none of them have the guts to do that," she dared them, before charging, "they are all manipulated."
"I keep using the word Kafkaesque..." she paused, during her speech at ALA, clearly showing her exasperation, "because...," she continued slowly, "...I really can't come up with a better word."
CORRECTION: We had originally described Senators Grassley and Leahy as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, when in fact they were, and are, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee instead. We regret the error, and have corrected the typo in the above story.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:44 pm Post subject:
Delete _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Last edited by outsider on Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:49 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:45 pm Post subject:
I hope she's passed her knowledge around to a number of other people, as an insurance and to lessen the temptation of the NWO to arrange an 'accident'.
May God bless and protect you, Sibel. You are a beacon of light, truth and courage to the Truth Campaign. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 10/31/2007 3:00PM
BRAD BLOG Sibel Edmonds Article 'Disappears' from Google News
PLUS: Follow-Up Article to Come Detailing Response to Our Monday Exclusive and the 'Gagged' FBI Whistleblower's Challenge to the American Mainstream Media...
Well, this is interesting. It seems our Monday Exclusive on "gagged" FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has disappeared from Google News. Sort of.
A simple news search for "Sibel Edmonds" at Google no longer offers the rather blockbuster story, in which it's announced that she is now challenging American mainstream media television outlets to allow her to tell her story, uncensored and in violation of the ridiculous years-long "State Secrets Privilege" that the DoJ has been using to keep her quiet.
The story can be found via Google News, but it requires a search for both "Sibel Edmonds" and "Brad Blog," or drilling by date, etc. We've got no idea why the story fails to show up otherwise.
That's particularly odd since it's been incredibly popular since we first blogged it, having made it's way to #3 at Digg.com and #4 at Reddit.com, as well as becoming the #1 "recommended" diary at DailyKos.com for most of the day it first ran. (Those rankings alone translate to big traffic on the Internets, for those not familiar with how these things work.) We also ran a version of the report over at Huffington Post. That one doesn't show up either.
Oddly, our much older story from two weeks ago, in which we referred to and quoted Edmonds --- in relation to the recent House resolution declaring "genocide" in Turkey, and her damning allegations concerning former Speaker Dennis Hastert's corrupt bargain while pushing the same legislation in 2000 --- does show up via the Google News search for "Sibel Edmonds." Even though that one, unlike this week's, doesn't even have her name in the headline and was far less popular and infrequently linked to.
No idea what all of that is about, of course, but it seems noteworthy.
In related news, we'll have an exclusive follow-up soon on Edmonds, and the interesting response (or lack thereof), she's so-far received from the American mainstream media in the wake of the blockbuster Monday report. Here's a hint, she's called it "disgusting."
In the meantime, the blogger who pointed out the above anomaly suggests the "Stephen Colbert Effect" might be useful in Edmonds's matter as well.
UPDATE 11/1/07 12:02pm PT: The original story that wouldn't appear via simple Google News search for "Sibel Edmonds" now does show up as a result of that search. We have no idea what, if anything, has changed, but since we ran this report (which also shows up on the same search) 24 hours ago or so, the story now shows up as expected, when it did not previously. No clue what to make of it all still, of course, but noting it nonetheless.
and this from Myspace Bulletin:-
complete with list of links
-- By Brad Friedman
Attention CBS 60 Minutes: we've got a huge scoop for you. If you want it.
Remember the exclusive story you aired on Sibel Edmonds [1], originally on October 27th, 2002, when she was not allowed to tell you everything that she heard while serving as an FBI translator after 9/11 because she was gagged by the rarely-invoked "States Secret Privilege"? Well, she's still gagged. In fact, as the ACLU first described her, she's "the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America."
But if you'll sit down and talk with her for an unedited interview, she has now told The BRAD BLOG [2] during an exclusive interview, she will now tell you everything she knows.
Everything she hasn't been allowed to tell since 2002, about the criminal penetration of the FBI where she worked, and at the Departments of State and Defense; everything she heard concerning the corruption and illegal activities of several well-known members of Congress; everything she's aware of concerning information omitted and/or covered up in relation to 9/11. All of the information gleaned from her time listening to and translating wire-taps made prior to 9/11 at the FBI.
Here's a handy bullet-point list [3], as we ran it in March of 2006, for reference, of what she's now willing to tell you about.
"People say, 'why doesn't she just come forward and spill the beans?' I have gone all the way to the Supreme Court and was shut down, I went to Congress and now consider that shut down," she told The BRAD BLOG [2] last week when we spoke with her for comments in relation to our story [5] on former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's original attempt to move a resolution through the U.S. House in 2000 declaring the 1915 massacre of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in Turkey as "genocide."
"Here's my promise to the American Public: If anyone of the major networks --- ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX --- promise to air the entire segment, without editing, I promise to tell them everything that I know," about everything mentioned above, she told us.
"I can tell the American public exactly what it is, and what it is that they are covering up," she continued. "I'm not compromising ongoing investigations," Edmonds explained, because "they've all been shut down since."
"She's Very Credible"
She has, in fact, spent years taking every reasonable step to see that the information she has goes through the proper channels. The Supreme Court refused to hear her whistleblower lawsuit, even in light of the Department of Justice forcing the removal of both her and her own attorneys from the courtroom when they made their arguments concerning why it was that she still had to remain gagged under the "States Secrets Privilege."
On the morning that the SCOTUS refused to hear her case, the facade cracked [6] on the front of the building. In a ridiculously ironic metaphor which would have been rejected by any credible screen-writer, a chunk of marble --- just above an allegorical statue representing "Order" and just below the words "Equal Justice" --- came crashing to the ground.
She has met with, and told her story to, U.S. senators including Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Patrick Leahy, both of the Senate Judiciary Committee, both who found her extremely credible. 60 Minutes producers may remember when Grassley told them, "Absolutely, she's credible...And the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story."
In fact, the FBI itself has done so. Their Inspector General found her allegations, as described in the unclassified version of his report [7], to be "credible," "serious," and "warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI."
As far back as 2002, Grassley and Leahy co-wrote letters on Edmonds' behalf [8] to Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and DoJ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, calling on all of them to take action in respect to the allegations she's made.
"Certain officials in this country are engaged in treason against the United States and its interests and its national security," she said during an August 2005 interview [9] on Democracy Now. That comment followed 60 Minutes' revelation years before alleging that Edmonds had information revealing that a "Turkish intelligence officer" she worked with at the FBI "had spies working for him inside the US State Department and at the Pentagon."
She's briefed many legislative offices --- as well as the 9/11 Commission --- in regard to her claims, and now, she says, she's even prepared to tell the media "the names of every single Congressional office who has received the names of the witnesses" to the crimes she's detailed.
When we spoke last week, Edmonds seemed to reserve most of her frustration for Congressman Henry Waxman's office. Waxman is the Democratic Chairman of the U.S. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
After briefing members of his security-cleared staff "inside the SCIF" --- a high-security room [10] in the U.S. Capitol, specially created for discussion of highly sensitive information --- Edmonds says she was told on several occasions, prior to the 2006 Election, that her case would be one of the first heard in his committee, once he became Chairman.
"I even gave names of former and current FBI agents who were willing to go to Waxman's office and give more information on all of this," she said.
"Before the elections, I had a promise from Congressman Waxman's office." She claims they told her, before the election, "the only reason they couldn't hold hearings, was because the Republicans were blocking it."
"They said 'your case will be one of the first ones we will hold investigations on,'" she told us. Now, however, since the Democrats have become the majority in the House, Waxman's office is "going mum." They won't even respond to her calls.
The congressman's office did not respond to several requests for comment on this story.
Two Other "Well-Known" Congressmen
Aside from the allegations she's already made concerning Hastert, as we reported in some detail [11] in early 2006, following up on a Vanity Fair exposé [12] in 2005, Edmonds says there are at least "two other well-known" members of Congress that she's prepared to name as well.
"There are other Congressional people, whose names have not come out," she explained. "As [Waxman's office knows] I'll be able to give them file numbers and investigations, including investigations by the IRS. I will be giving details one by one, not just allegations."
"But," she added, "unfortunately nobody wants to have an investigation like that."
For the record, she told The BRAD BLOG [2], the other two "well-known members" are from the House, both Republican, and "one of them is recently no longer there."
So far, she says, "those names have not been public."
"Kafka-esque"
Since leaving the FBI, and in the wake of her years-long ordeal, which she frequently describes as "Kafka-esque," Edmonds has founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition [14].
In addition to the support she has received, at various times, from members of Congress, she's received a great deal of support from members of the national security whistleblower community and government watchdog organizations.
As we reported last Spring [15], Veteran FBI counterintelligence agent John Cole has said [16] he's "talked to people who had read her file, who had read the investigative report, and they were telling me a totally different story" than that given publicly by FBI officials. "They were telling me that Sibel Edmonds was 100 percent accurate," he said, "management knew that she was correct."
Famed "Pentagon Papers" whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has described Edmonds as "extremely credible." In a 2005 interview on KPFA [17], Ellsberg said, "FBI agents we've talked to have, in every respect that was raised, have confirmed her story - that she's a very credible witness."
More than 30 groups, from across the political spectrum --- including the Project on Government Oversight [18] (POGO), Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington [19] (CREW), the American Civil Liberties Union [20] (ACLU), the September 11th Advocates [21], the Liberty Coalition [22], the Electronic Frontier Foundation [23] (EFF), OMB Watch [24], Electronic Privacy Information Center [25] (EPIC) and People for the American Way [26] (PFAW) --- all signed a letter [27] in March of this year calling on the House Oversight Committee to "hold public hearings into the case of FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, and the erroneous use of the State Secrets Privilege to shut down all court proceedings in her case."
That petition was sent almost precisely one year after The BRAD BLOG originally reported [28] on a public petition to Congress, demanding they hold public hearings. More than 30,000 people, Edmonds says, have now signed that petition [29] since it was first announced.
"Exhausted Every Channel"
In a speech given over the Summer in D.C. at the American Library Association (ALA, video here [30]), Edmonds detailed the "Kafka-esque" nature of her unprecedented gag-order. Among the information still-regarded as "classified" under the States Secret Privelege: the fact that she was a translator for the FBI, where she was born, what languages she speaks, the date of her birth, the universities she attended, and the degrees she earned.
In fact, the interview that CBS's 60 Minutes aired with her in 2004, was later retroactively classified by the Department of Justice under the same "privilege"!
But enough is enough. She's now ready to tell all. To the public. But not (yet) to us. She will speak, however, to any broadcast network that would like to have her.
"I have exhausted every channel. If they want to, they can bring criminal charges against someone who divulges criminal activity, and see how far they're going to get."
But will any of the corporate mainstream networks take her up on the offer? It'd certainly be an explosive exclusive.
"I don't think any of the mainstream media are going to have the guts to do it," she dared them.
So whaddaya say 60 Minutes? We've given you scoops before that you ended up turning down --- and likely later regretted. Will you be smart enough to take this one?
"You put me on air live, or unedited. If I'm given the time, I will give the American people the exact reason of what I've been gagged from saying because of the States Secrets Privilege, and why it is that I'm the most gagged person in the history of the United States."
"My feeling is that none of them have the guts to do that," she dared them, before charging, "they are all manipulated."
"I keep using the word Kafkaesque..." she paused, during her speech at ALA, clearly showing her exasperation, "because...," she continued slowly, "...I really can't come up with a better word."
CORRECTION: We had originally described Senators Grassley and Leahy as members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, when in fact they were, and are, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee instead. We regret the error, and have corrected the typo in the above story.
From The Sunday Times
January 6, 2008
For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets
A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.
Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.
She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.
Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.
Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.
The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.
However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”
She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.
“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.
Her story shows just how much the West was infiltrated by foreign states seeking nuclear secrets. It illustrates how western government officials turned a blind eye to, or were even helping, countries such as Pakistan acquire bomb technology.
The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort. But rather than shut it down, investigations by law enforcement bodies such as the FBI and Britain’s Revenue & Customs have been aborted to preserve diplomatic relations.
Edmonds, a fluent speaker of Turkish and Farsi, was recruited by the FBI in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Her previous claims about incompetence inside the FBI have been well documented in America.
She has given evidence to closed sessions of Congress and the 9/11 commission, but many of the key points of her testimony have remained secret. She has now decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned with the US authorities’ failure to act.
One of Edmonds’s main roles in the FBI was to translate thousands of hours of conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets that had been covertly recorded by the agency.
A backlog of tapes had built up, dating back to 1997, which were needed for an FBI investigation into links between the Turks and Pakistani, Israeli and US targets. Before she left the FBI in 2002 she heard evidence that pointed to money laundering, drug imports and attempts to acquire nuclear and conventional weapons technology.
“What I found was damning,” she said. “While the FBI was investigating, several arms of the government were shielding what was going on.”
The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.
They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.
In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed location by someone in the Turkish diplomatic community who was working for the network.
The Turks, she says, often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract suspicion. Venues such as the American Turkish Council in Washington were used to drop off the cash, which was picked up by the official.
Edmonds said: “I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost certainly more.”
The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.
Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attachés in the Turkish embassy.
Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.
The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.
Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan’s nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme.
Khan caused an alert among western intelligence agencies when his aides met Osama Bin Laden. “We were aware of contact between A Q Khan’s people and Al-Qaeda,” a former CIA officer said last week. “There was absolute panic when we initially discovered this, but it kind of panned out in the end.”
It is likely that the nuclear secrets stolen from the United States would have been sold to a number of rogue states by Khan.
Edmonds was later to see the scope of the Pakistani connections when it was revealed that one of her fellow translators at the FBI was the daughter of a Pakistani embassy official who worked for Ahmad. The translator was given top secret clearance despite protests from FBI investigators.
Edmonds says packages containing nuclear secrets were delivered by Turkish operatives, using their cover as members of the diplomatic and military community, to contacts at the Pakistani embassy in Washington.
Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or somehow aided the attacks.
Edmonds said the State Department official once again proved useful. “A primary target would call the official and point to names on the list and say, ‘We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans’,” she said. “The official said that he would ‘take care of it’.”
The four suspects on the list were released from interrogation and extradited.
Edmonds also claims that a number of senior officials in the Pentagon had helped Israeli and Turkish agents.
“The people provided lists of potential moles from Pentagon-related institutions who had access to databases concerning this information,” she said.
“The handlers, who were part of the diplomatic community, would then try to recruit those people to become moles for the network. The lists contained all their ‘hooking points’, which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to.”
One of the Pentagon figures under investigation was Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst, who was jailed in 2006 for passing US defence information to lobbyists and sharing classified information with an Israeli diplomat.
“He was one of the top people providing information and packages during 2000 and 2001,” she said.
Once acquired, the nuclear secrets could have gone anywhere. The FBI monitored Turkish diplomats who were selling copies of the information to the highest bidder.
Edmonds said: “Certain greedy Turkish operators would make copies of the material and look around for buyers. They had agents who would find potential buyers.”
In summer 2000, Edmonds says the FBI monitored one of the agents as he met two Saudi Arabian businessmen in Detroit to sell nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama. She overheard the agent saying: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.”
Edmonds’s employment with the FBI lasted for just six months. In March 2002 she was dismissed after accusing a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving Turkish nationals.
She has always claimed that she was victimised for being outspoken and was vindicated by an Office of the Inspector General review of her case three years later. It found that one of the contributory reasons for her sacking was that she had made valid complaints.
The US attorney-general has imposed a state secrets privilege order on her, which prevents her revealing more details of the FBI’s methods and current investigations.
Her allegations were heard in a closed session of Congress, but no action has been taken and she continues to campaign for a public hearing.
She was able to discuss the case with The Sunday Times because, by the end of January 2002, the justice department had shut down the programme.
The senior official in the State Department no longer works there. Last week he denied all of Edmonds’s allegations: “If you are calling me to say somebody said that I took money, that’s outrageous . . . I do not have anything to say about such stupid ridiculous things as this.”
In researching this article, The Sunday Times has talked to two FBI officers (one serving, one former) and two former CIA sources who worked on nuclear proliferation. While none was aware of specific allegations against officials she names, they did provide overlapping corroboration of Edmonds’s story.
One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,” the source said.
How Pakistan got the bomb, then sold it to the highest bidders
1965 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s foreign minister, says: “If India builds the bomb we will eat grass . . . but we will get one of our own”
1974 Nuclear programme becomes increased priority as India tests a nuclear device
1976 Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist, steals secrets from Dutch uranium plant. Made head of his nation’s nuclear programme by Bhutto, now prime minister
1976 onwards Clandestine network established to obtain materials and technology for uranium enrichment from the West
1985 Pakistan produces weapons-grade uranium for the first time
1989-91 Khan’s network sells Iran nuclear weapons information and technology
1991-97 Khan sells weapons technology to North Korea and Libya
1998 India tests nuclear bomb and Pakistan follows with a series of nuclear tests. Khan says: “I never had any doubts I was building a bomb. We had to do it”
2001 CIA chief George Tenet gathers officials for crisis summit on the proliferation of nuclear technology from Pakistan to other countries
2001 Weeks before 9/11, Khan’s aides meet Osama Bin Laden to discuss an Al-Qaeda nuclear device
2001 After 9/11 proliferation crisis becomes secondary as Pakistan is seen as important ally in war on terror
2003 Libya abandons nuclear weapons programme and admits acquiring components through Pakistani nuclear scientists
2004 Khan placed under house arrest and confesses to supplying Iran, Libya and North Korea with weapons technology. He is pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf
2006 North Korea tests a nuclear bomb
2007 Renewed fears that bomb may fall into hands of Islamic extremists as killing of Benazir Bhutto throws country into turmoil
Nukes, Spooks,
and the Specter of 9/11
We're in big trouble if even half of what Sibel Edmonds says is true…
by Justin Raimondo
"The next president may have to deal with a nuclear attack," averred ABC's Charles Gibson at Saturday night's Democratic presidential debate. "The day after a nuclear weapon goes off in an American city, what would we wish we had done to prevent it and what will we actually do on the day after?"
It's a question that frightens everyone, and one to which there is no easy answer: none of the candidates really rose to the occasion, and most seemed baffled. Hillary Clinton made sure she used the word "retaliation" with unusual emphasis, and when pressed on the question of how she would retaliate against "stateless" terrorists nevertheless insisted that she would indeed retaliate against someone, because the perpetrators had to have a "haven" somewhere within a state.
Yes, well, that's not necessarily true, but what if that "haven" is… right here in the U.S.? Or, perhaps, in a NATO country, say, Turkey?
Say what?
Impossible, you say? Not if you believe Sibel Edmonds, a former translator for the FBI who listened in on hundreds of telephone intercepts and has now told the London Times that several top U.S. government officials conspired with foreign agents to steal U.S. nuclear secrets and sell them on the black market. The Times reports:
"Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of U.S. officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.
"Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the U.S. State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan. The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims. However, Edmonds said: 'He was aiding foreign operatives against U.S. interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.'
"She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents. 'If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,' she said."
Edmonds brought all this to the attention of lawmakers, as well as the American media, and several news organizations filed reports – until a federal judge issued an unprecedented gag order. Edmonds' story was deemed too hot to handle: if the public were allowed to know what she knows, according to our government, America's national security would be severely impaired. Yet now she is speaking out, and what she has to say is unsettling, to say the least.
Edmonds has named at least one of the officials: he is Marc Grossman, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, assistant secretary of state for European affairs under the Clinton administration and undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2001-2005. Grossman is now vice chairman of The Cohen Group, a consulting firm founded by Bill Clinton's defense secretary, William S. Cohen.
Edmonds contends that an international nuclear smuggling ring, associated with the intelligence agencies of Pakistan, Turkey, and Israel, has been permitted to operate in the U.S. with impunity. Our government, she claims, knew all about it yet, in order to placate the foreign governments involved, allowed a vast criminal enterprise to carry out its activities, including money laundering, narcotics trafficking, and espionage involving efforts to steal U.S. nuclear technology.
As a translator for the FBI, Edmonds had the task of translating many hours of intercepted phone conversations between Turkish officials and Pakistanis, Israelis, and Americans who were targets of the FBI's counterintelligence unit. Thousands of hours of intercepted calls revealed a network of moles placed in various military installations and academic venues dealing with nuclear technology. Edmonds gives us the details, via the Times:
"Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. 'The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,' she said.
"They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official [Marc Grossman] who provided some of their moles – mainly Ph.D. students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the U.S. nuclear deterrent."
And "while the FBI was investigating," says Edmonds, "several arms of the government were shielding what was going on." An entire wing of the national security bureaucracy, associated with the neoconservatives, has long profited from representing Turkish interests in Washington: this group includes not only Grossman, but also Paul Wolfowitz, chief intellectual architect of the Iraq war and ex-World Bank president; former deputy defense secretary for policy Douglas J. Feith; Feith's successor, Eric Edelman; and Richard Perle, the notorious uber-neocon whose unique ability to mix profiteering and warmongering forced him to resign his official capacity as a key administration adviser.
Edmonds draws a picture of a three-sided alliance consisting of Turkish, Pakistani, and Israeli agents who coordinated efforts to milk U.S. nuclear secrets and technology, funneling the intelligence stream to the black market nuclear network set up by the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan. The multi-millionaire Pakistani nuclear scientist then turned around and sold his nuclear assets to North Korea, Libya, and Iran.
This was no "rogue" operation, but a covert action executed by Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, the chief of Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, at the time. The Turks were used as intermediaries because direct ISI intervention would have roused immediate suspicion. Large amounts of cash were dropped off at the offices of Turkish-American lobbying groups, such as the American Turkish Council in Washington, which was reportedly picked up by at least one top U.S. official.
This Pakistani-Turkish-Israeli Axis of Espionage, operating through their respective embassies, systematically combed Washington officialdom for potential moles, compiling lists that, according to Edmonds and the Times, "contained all their 'hooking points,' which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to." Nice work, there.
This sounds a lot like the setup the handlers of convicted spy Larry Franklin worked with to glean information from the rabidly pro-Israel Franklin and pass it off to Israeli embassy officials, including former Israeli ambassador Danny Ayalon; Naor Gilon, the former political officer at the embassy; and Rafi Barak, the former deputy chief of mission. And there is indeed a connection to the Franklin case, according to the Times,
"One of the Pentagon figures under investigation was Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst, who was jailed in 2006 for passing U.S. defense information to lobbyists and sharing classified information with an Israeli diplomat. 'He was one of the top people providing information and packages during 2000 and 2001,' [Edmonds] said."
Franklin delivered his "packages" to AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman and their Israeli handlers for ideological reasons, but others, such as Grossman – according to Edmonds – did it for money. Grossman angrily denies the charge. In any case, apparently large cash transactions were recorded on the tapes Edmonds translated, in which U.S. officials were heard selling the nation's nuclear secrets. As the Times relates:
"Well-known U.S. officials were then bribed by foreign agents to steal U.S. nuclear secrets. One such incident from 2000 involves an agent overheard on a wiretap discussing 'nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama,' in which the agent allegedly is heard saying: 'We have a package and we're going to sell it for $250,000.'"
A vast criminal enterprise supported by at least three foreign intelligence agencies acting in concert with top U.S. officials, including some "household names" – if true, it's the story of the decade. Yet that isn't all. The really scary aspect of this labyrinthine network of foreign agents, and their American dupes and collaborators, is its connections to terrorist organizations, specifically al-Qaeda.
To begin with, Gen. Ahmad is suspected of having wired a large amount of money into Mohammed Atta's Dubai bank account shortly before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. More ominously, the Times reports: "Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or somehow aided the attacks."
Pakistani and/or Turkish operatives arrested or held for questioning in the wake of the 9/11 attacks? Well, that's the first I've heard of it. However, the U.S. authorities did round up a large number of Israelis, including these guys, and held them for several months before extraditing them back to their home country.
Even more alarming is the reason Edmonds approached the Times with the story, "after reading about an al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey." That's a reference to this Nov. 2 story in the Times, which details the career of a top al-Qaeda kingpin, one Louai al-Sakka, who claims to have trained several of the 9/11 hijackers at a camp situated outside Istanbul in the resort area of the Yalova mountains.
Now that's curious: a Muslim fundamentalist training camp in a country run by a fanatically secular military that would normally not tolerate such activities. As the Times puts it: "Turkish intelligence were aware of unusual militant Islamic activity in the Yalova mountains, where Sakka had set up his camps. But they posed no threat to Turkey at the time."
Not a threat to Turkey, eh? All too true: the terrorists' target was the U.S. The al-Qaeda recruits trained by Sakka were specifically chosen by the top leadership of al-Qaeda – i.e., bin Laden – to carry out the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. That they were nurtured and steeled for their mission under the noses of our NATO allies in Ankara seems bizarre – until one begins to take Sibel Edmonds seriously. Then the whole horrifying picture starts to fall into place.
The darkest secrets of 9/11 are buried at the end of the trail laid out in Edmonds' testimony. As Luke Ryland, the world's foremost expert on the Edmonds case, writes:
"The Times article then notes something that I reported 18 months ago. Immediately after 911, the FBI arrested a bunch of people suspected of being involved with the attacks – including four associates of key targets of FBI's counterintelligence operations. Sibel heard the targets tell Marc Grossman: 'We need to get them out of the U.S. because we can't afford for them to spill the beans.' Grossman duly facilitated their release from jail and the suspects immediately left the country without further investigation or interrogation.
"Let me repeat that for emphasis: The #3 guy at the State Dept. facilitated the immediate release of 911 suspects at the request of targets of the FBI's investigation."
Corruption and a massive cover-up organized at the highest levels of government – America's nuclear secrets and technology looted on a massive scale, and sold to our enemies via a network set up by our alleged foreign "friends," while the threat of nuclear terrorism hangs over our country like a thick fog of fear, and warmongering politicians scare us into going along with the program – if even half of what Edmonds alleges turns out to be true, then we are all in some very big trouble.
In light of the Edmonds revelations, we have to reconsider the implications of the question Charles Gibson opened with during the ABC Democratic debate:
"The day after a nuclear weapon goes off in an American city, what would we wish we had done to prevent it and what will we actually do on the day after?"
Perhaps congressman Henry Waxman, who solemnly pledged to launch a public investigation into the allegations made by Edmonds, will wish he had kept his promise. Maybe even the national news media, which has been offered this story repeatedly, by Ms. Edmonds and her supporters, will wish they had covered it.
Fortunately, we don't need the "mainstream" media to get the truth out to the American people. With the new technology of the computer age, we can do an end run around the media. This YouTube video is shocking:
As Edmonds says, "we have the facts, we have the documents, we have the witnesses. Put out the tapes, put out the documents, put out the intercepts – put out the truth."
If a nuke ever goes off in an American city, it will probably have been stolen from our own arsenal – once the American people wake up to that scary fact, the rest will follow automatically.
Joined: 23 Dec 2005 Posts: 500 Location: South London
Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 8:53 pm Post subject:
Quote:
If a nuke ever goes off in an American city ...
First published in the Sunday Times, Murdoch approved. Limited hangout or misdirection or another big scare to promote military intervention in Pakistan? _________________ Follow the numbers
Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2008 3:56 pm Post subject: Please do ALL you can to support Sibel Edmonds
IMO, this video clip mentioned above in the Justin Raimondo piece is 'required viewing' - especially by those who appear to be giving up hope that the NWO nightmare will never end.
For those who can't get Youtube to work (applied to me for a few months whilst getting Linux working) please refer to the links posted by others above to get a gist of the enormity of her corroborated allegations. Also:-
How many times have we said "This could blow the whole mess wide open"? Maybe this time; the evidence seems unassailable; the potential for 'limited hangout' seems limitless in this case...
'Implausible deniability'? Depends on just how much of the US judiciary is bought; depends on how many Americans get to hear this and act as Sibel requests them to.
We can help to make it happen by posting this video far and wide throughout the States. _________________ "We will lead every revolution against us!" - attrib: Theodor Herzl
"Timely Demise to All Oppressors - at their Convenience!" - 'Interesting Times', Terry Pratchett
First published in the Sunday Times, Murdoch approved. Limited hangout or misdirection or another big scare to promote military intervention in Pakistan?
First attempted by Cheney and Minot base personnel? First postulated by arch-neocons Chertoff & Podhorwretch? Murdoch approved?
Odd as it may seem, the FBI is not, as yet, entirely populated by brown shirt goons, despite Mueller's 'best' efforts for his paymasters... _________________ "We will lead every revolution against us!" - attrib: Theodor Herzl
"Timely Demise to All Oppressors - at their Convenience!" - 'Interesting Times', Terry Pratchett
Sibel Edmonds is right up front. No, I do not know her. But she is not to be written off. I am Joe American and deemed not credible by the goverment. Sibel is not so easy to write off. She will not die in a accident.
She will be denouced as a Loon, but she is hot info. It is in my interest to contact her direct. With her permission you will be entitled to the whole transcipt. I will be offline until Febuary first and I will report any credible story only from 1st hand interviews. You can doubt all that you want.
Sam Danner _________________ Damit! When will it ever change?
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:44 pm Post subject: Re: Please do ALL you can to support Sibel Edmonds
Thermate911 wrote:
IMO, this video clip mentioned above in the Justin Raimondo piece is 'required viewing' - especially by those who appear to be giving up hope that the NWO nightmare will never end.
For those who can't get Youtube to work (applied to me for a few months whilst getting Linux working) please refer to the links posted by others above to get a gist of the enormity of her corroborated allegations. Also:-
How many times have we said "This could blow the whole mess wide open"? Maybe this time; the evidence seems unassailable; the potential for 'limited hangout' seems limitless in this case...
'Implausible deniability'? Depends on just how much of the US judiciary is bought; depends on how many Americans get to hear this and act as Sibel requests them to.
We can help to make it happen by posting this video far and wide throughout the States.
Can someone who has the capability 'capture' this video in case it gets taken off? _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Hopefully all of us are archiving everything? I never have got a handle on the phrase 'memory hole'!
http://keepvid.com/ - just plug in the link to the clip you want to save, et voila... _________________ "We will lead every revolution against us!" - attrib: Theodor Herzl
"Timely Demise to All Oppressors - at their Convenience!" - 'Interesting Times', Terry Pratchett
Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 2:56 pm Post subject: Not that this is 'news'...
Quote:
BLOGGED BY Daniel Ellsberg ON 1/20/2008 10:52PM
DANIEL ELLSBERG: Covering Up the Coverage - The American Media's Complicit Failure to Investigate and Report on the Sibel Edmonds Case
In an Exclusive BRAD BLOG Op-Ed, the Legendary 'Pentagon Papers' Whistleblower Calls on the Media to Perform Their First Amendment Obligations, on Congressional Leaders to Perform Their Oversight Duty, and for Insider Sources to Come Forward to the American Public...
For the second time in two weeks, the entire U.S. press has let itself be scooped by Rupert Murdoch's London Sunday Times on a dynamite story of criminal activities by corrupt U.S. officials promoting nuclear proliferation. But there is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped, and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the U.S. Congress and the courts.
For the last two weeks --- one could say, for years --- the major American media have been guilty of ignoring entirely the allegations of the courageous and highly credible source Sibel Edmonds, quoted in the London Times on January 6, 2008 in a front-page story that was front-page news in much of the rest of the world but was not reported in a single American newspaper or network. It is up to readers to demand that this culpable silent treatment end.
Just as important, there must be pressure by the public on Congressional committee chairpersons, in particular Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Patrick Leahy. Both have been sitting for years on classified, sworn testimony by Edmonds --- as she revealed in the Times' new story on Sunday --- along with documentation, in their possession, confirming parts of her account. Pressure must be brought for them to hold public hearings to investigate her accusations of widespread criminal activities, over several administrations, that endanger national security. They should call for open testimony under oath by Edmonds --- as she has urged for five years --- and by other FBI officials she has named to them, as cited anonymously in the first Times' story.
And this is the time for those who have so far creditably leaked to the Times of London to come forward, accepting personal risks, to offer their testimony --- and new documents --- both to the Congress and to the American press. I would say to them: Don't do what I did and waste months of precious time trying to get Congressional committees to act as they should in the absence of journalistic pressure. Do your best to inform the American public directly, first, through the major American media.
But perhaps today the alternative media and the international press are a necessary precursor even to that. It shouldn't be true, but if it is, it's a measure of how far the New York Times and Washington Post have fallen from their responsibilities to the public, to their profession and to American democracy, since I gave them the Pentagon Papers in 1971. They printed them then. Would they today? ... ...
more at:-
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5583 _________________ "We will lead every revolution against us!" - attrib: Theodor Herzl
"Timely Demise to All Oppressors - at their Convenience!" - 'Interesting Times', Terry Pratchett
Newly Released FBI Documents Support Explosive Claims by Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds by Luke Ryland: http://wp.me/p5qmX-jei _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
sibeledmonds FBI Documents prove existence of sensitive National Security & criminal investigations of Turkish Op.s in US: http://boilingfrogspost.com _________________ 'Come and see the violence inherent in the system.
Help, help, I'm being repressed!'
“The more you tighten your grip, the more Star Systems will slip through your fingers.”
Newly Released FBI Documents Support Explosive Claims by Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds by Luke Ryland: http://wp.me/p5qmX-jei
I haven't followed all the Sibel Edmonds stuff, but there seems to me to be an element of self-importance in her claims and the way her evidence has come out.
Yes, there were a lot of Chicago based criminal investigations by the FBI going on, that were shut down. But that is nothing new. Since 2000, anything that related to wrong-doing by the neo-cons, was shut down. Start with the electoral fraud investigations into the Bush 'election'.
Does anyone actually know what the 'explosive' revelations are except that the guys at the top, protect their criminal friends, who are usually their financial backers as well? _________________ In the end, it's not the words of your enemies you will remember, but the silence of your friends. Martin Luther King
scienceplease; I guess the last post was aimed at me. Thanks, ... but what are the 'explosive revelations'.
Yes it is great that someone who was on the inside is willing to talk. However, any truther knows that the CIA was in close touch with Bin Laden while getting his hospital treatment on Sept 10th, so there is nothing new there. All the stuff about Sibel sounds to me like a hard sell; 'explosive, new, damaging, will tell all' but I don't know what IT is.
To quote a former US Presidential hopeful, "Show me the beef" _________________ In the end, it's not the words of your enemies you will remember, but the silence of your friends. Martin Luther King
scienceplease; I guess the last post was aimed at me. Thanks, ... but what are the 'explosive revelations'.
Yes it is great that someone who was on the inside is willing to talk. However, any truther knows that the CIA was in close touch with Bin Laden while getting his hospital treatment on Sept 10th, so there is nothing new there. All the stuff about Sibel sounds to me like a hard sell; 'explosive, new, damaging, will tell all' but I don't know what IT is.
To quote a former US Presidential hopeful, "Show me the beef"
Yes, aimed at you. Sorry. I'm rather Time-Poor at the moment.
The "explosive" revelations may be associated with the nuclear secrets being leaked by blackmail US senators
The OBL kidney treatment story was dissed by Mike Rudin's Conspiracy Theory programme so you need insiders like Sibel actually corroborating facts. Anyway, she had countless "gag orders" on her to stop her speaking for years. Finally she came out and made a sworn statement. That's the difference between Sibel and many other stories: legally admissable, sworn statement evidence as opposed to just some story on the internet...
A whistleblower has revealed extraordinary information on the U.S. government’s support for international terrorist networks and organized crime.
Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds
By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
911 Blogger
May 19, 2013
The government has denied the allegations yet gone to extraordinary lengths to silence her. Her critics have derided her as a fabulist and fabricator. But now comes word that some of her most serious allegations were confirmed by a major European newspaper only to be squashed at the request of the U.S. government.
In a recent book Classified Woman, Sibel Edmonds, a former translator for the FBI, describes how the Pentagon, CIA and State Department maintained intimate ties to al-Qaeda militants as late as 2001. Her memoir, Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story, published last year, charged senior government officials with negligence, corruption and collaboration with al Qaeda in illegal arms smuggling and drugs trafficking in Central Asia.
In interviews with this author in early March, Edmonds claimed that Ayman al-Zawahiri, current head of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden’s deputy at the time, had innumerable, regular meetings at the U.S. embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, with U.S. military and intelligence officials between 1997 and 2001, as part of an operation known as ‘Gladio B’. Al-Zawahiri, she charged, as well as various members of the bin Laden family and other mujahideen, were transported on NATO planes to various parts of Central Asia and the Balkans to participate in Pentagon-backed destabilisation operations.
According to two Sunday Times journalists speaking on condition of anonymity, this and related revelations had been confirmed by senior Pentagon and MI6 officials as part of a four-part investigative series that were supposed to run in 2008. The Sunday Times journalists described how the story was inexplicably dropped under the pressure of undisclosed “interest groups”, which, they suggest, were associated with the U.S. State Department.
Shooting the Messenger
Described by the American Civil Liberties Union as the “most gagged person in the history of the United States of America,” Edmonds studied criminal justice, psychology and public policy at George Washington and George Mason universities. Two weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, her fluency in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani earned her an FBI contract at the Washington DC field office. She was tasked with translating highly classified intelligence from operations against terrorism suspects in and outside the U.S..
In the course of her work, Edmonds became privy to evidence that U.S. military and intelligence agencies were collaborating with Islamist militants affiliated with al-Qaeda, the very forces blamed for the 9/11 attacks – and that officials in the FBI were covering up the evidence. When Edmonds complained to her superiors, her family was threatened by one of the subjects of her complaint, and she was fired. Her accusations of espionage against her FBI colleagues were eventually investigated by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, which did not give details about the allegations as they remained classified.
Although no final conclusions about the espionage allegations were reached, the Justice Department concluded that many of Edmonds’ accusations “were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI’s decision to terminate her services.”
When she attempted to go public with her story in 2002, and again in 2004, the U.S. government silenced Edmonds by invoking a legal precedent known as “state secrets privilege” – a near limitless power to quash a lawsuit based solely on the government’s claim that evidence or testimony could divulge information that might undermine “national security.” Under this doctrine, the government sought to retroactively classify basic information concerning Edmonds’s case already in the public record, including, according to the New York Times, “what languages Ms. Edmonds translated, what types of cases she handled, and what employees she worked with, officials said. Even routine and widely disseminated information — like where she worked — is now classified.”
Although certainly not the first invocation of “state secrets privilege”, since the Edmonds case the precedent has been used repeatedly in the post-9/11 era under both the Bush and Obama administrations to shield the U.S. government from court scrutiny of rendition, torture, warrantless wiretapping, as well as the President’s claimed war powers.
Other intelligence experts agree that Edmonds had stumbled upon a criminal conspiracy at the heart of the American judicial system. In her memoirs, she recounts that FBI Special Agent Gilbert Graham, who also worked in the Washington field office on counter-intelligence operations, told her over a coffee how he “ran background checks on federal judges” in the “early nineties for the bureau… If we came up with * – skeletons in their closets – the Justice Department kept it in their pantry to be used against them in the future or to get them to do what they want in certain cases – cases like yours.”A redacted version of Graham’s classified protected disclosure to the Justice Department regarding these allegations, released in 2007, refers to the FBI’s “abuse of authority” by conducting illegal wiretapping to obtain information on U.S. public officials.
Incubating Terror
Five years ago, Edmonds revealed to the Sunday Times that an unidentified senior U.S. State Department official was on the payroll of Turkish agents in Washington, passing on nuclear and military secrets. “He was aiding foreign operatives against U.S. interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives”, Edmonds told the paper. She reported coming across this information when listening to suppressed phone calls recorded by FBI surveillance, marked by her colleague Melek Can Dickerson as “not pertinent”.
In the Sunday Times exposé, Edmonds described a parallel organization in Israel cooperating with the Turks on illegal weapons sales and technology transfers. Between them, Israel and Turkey operated a range of front companies incorporated in the U.S. with active “moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions”, supported by U.S. officials, in order to sell secrets to the highest bidder. One of the buyers was Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) – which often used its Turkish allies, according to the Times, “as a conduit… because they were less likely to attract suspicion.”
The Pakistani operation was, the paper reported, “led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief” from 1999 to 2001, when the agency helped train, supply and coordinate the Afghan Taliban and gave sanctuary to their Arab allies brought together in the coalition named al-Qaeda. Ahmad, as the Times noted, “was accused [by the FBI] of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.”
According to Indian intelligence officials, they had assisted the FBI in “tracing and establishing” the financial trail between the General and the chief hijacker. The discovery was, they allege, the real reason behind the General’s sudden retirement in October 2001. The Pakistani daily, The News, reported on 10th September 2001 that the ISI chief held several “mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council” that week, including with CIA director George Tenet.
In an interview with this author in March, Edmonds raised the question of whether U.S. officials’ liaisons with an espionage network overseen by Ahmad, and the FBI’s suppression of related intelligence, played a role in facilitating the attacks.
“Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or somehow aided the attacks”, reported the Sunday Times. The paper related that according to Edmonds, the senior State Department official received a call from a foreign agent under FBI surveillance asking for help to “get them out of the U.S. because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans.” The official promised “he would ‘take care of it’.”
Edmonds told this author that high-level corruption compromised the ability of the U.S. intelligence community to pursue ongoing investigations of those planning the 9/11 attacks. “It was precisely those militants that were incubated by some of America’s key allies”, she said. Corruption helped guarantee Congressional silence when that incubation strategy backfired in the form of 9/11. “Both Republican and Democratic representatives in the House and Senate came up in FBI counterintelligence investigations for taking bribes from foreign agents”, she said.
Al-Qaeda: Enemy or Asset?
In her interview, Edmonds insisted that after its initial exposé, the Times‘ investigation had gone beyond such previous revelations, and was preparing to disclose her most startling accusations. Among these, Edmonds described how the CIA and the Pentagon had been running a series of covert operations supporting Islamist militant networks linked to Osama bin Laden right up to 9/11, in Central Asia, the Balkans and the Caucasus.
While it is widely recognised that the CIA sponsored bin Laden’s networks in Afghanistan during the Cold War, U.S. government officials deny any such ties existed. Others claim these ties were real, but were severed after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989.
But according to Edmonds, this narrative is false. “Not just bin Laden, but several senior ‘bin Ladens’ were transported by U.S. intelligence back and forth to the region in the late 1990s through to 2001?, she told this author, “including Ayman al-Zawahiri” – Osama bin Laden’s right-hand-man who has taken over as al-Qaeda’s top leader.
“In the late 1990s, all the way up to 9/11, al-Zawahiri and other mujahideen operatives were meeting regularly with senior U.S. officials in the U.S. embassy in Baku to plan the Pentagon’s Balkan operations with the mujahideen,” said Edmonds. “We had support for these operations from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, but the U.S. oversaw and directed them. They were being run from a secret section of the Pentagon with its own office”.
American-Conservative-Nov-2009-Sibel-Edmonds-Ceasefire-MagazineEdmonds clarified, “the FBI counterintelligence investigation which was tracking these targets, along with their links to U.S. officials, was known as ‘Gladio B’, and was kickstarted in 1997. It so happens that Major Douglas Dickerson” – the husband of her FBI co-worker Melek whom she accused of espionage – “specifically directed the Pentagon’s ‘Gladio’ operations in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan at this time.”
In testimony under oath, Edmonds has previously confirmed that Major Doug Dickerson worked for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) under the weapons procurement logistics division on Turkey and Central Asia, and with the Office of Special Plans (OSP) overseeing policy in Central Asia.
Gladio B
Edmonds said that the Pentagon operations with Islamists were an “extension” of an original ‘Gladio’ programme uncovered in the 1970s in Italy, part of an EU-wide NATO covert operation that began as early as the 1940s. As Swiss historian Dr. Daniele Ganser records in his seminal book, NATO’s Secret Armies, an official Italian parliamentary inquiry confirmed that British MI6 and the CIA had established a network of secret “stay-behind” paramilitary armies, staffed by fascist and Nazi collaborators. The covert armies carried out terrorist attacks throughout Western Europe, officially blamed on Communists in what Italian military intelligence called the ‘strategy of tension’.
“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game” explained Gladio operative Vincenzo Vinciguerra during his trial in 1984. “The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people… to turn to the State to ask for greater security.”
While the reality of Gladio’s existence in Europe is a matter of historical record, Edmonds contended the same strategy was adopted by the Pentagon in the 1990s in a new theatre of operations, namely, Asia. “Instead of using neo-Nazis, they used mujahideen working under various bin Ladens, as well as al-Zawahiri”, she said.
The last publicly known Gladio meeting occurred in NATO’s Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) in Brussels in 1990. While Italy was a focal point for the older European operations, Edmonds said that Turkey and Azerbaijan served as the main conduits for a completely new, different set of operations in Asia using veterans of the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, the so-called “Afghan Arabs” that had been trained by al-Qaeda.
These new Pentagon-led operations were codenamed ‘Gladio B’ by FBI counterintelligence: “In 1997, NATO asked [Egyptian President] Hosni Mubarak to release from prison Islamist militants affiliated to Ayman al-Zawahiri [whose role in the assassination of Anwar Sadat led to Mubarak’s ascension]. They were flown under U.S. orders to Turkey for [training and use in] operations by the Pentagon”, she said.
Edmonds’ allegations find some independent corroboration in the public record. The Wall Street Journal refers to a nebulous agreement between Mubarak and “the operational wing of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was then headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri… Many of that group’s fighters embraced a cease-fire with the government of former President Hosni Mubarak in 1997.”
Youssef Bodansky, former Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, cited U.S. intelligence sources in an article for Defense and Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy, confirming “discussions between the Egyptian terrorist leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and an Arab-American known to have been both an emissary of the CIA and the U.S. Government.” He referred to an “offer” made to al-Zawahiri in November 1997 on behalf of U.S. intelligence, granting his Islamists a free hand in Egypt as long as they lent support to U.S. forces in the Balkans. In 1998, Al Zawahiri’s brother, Muhammed, led an elite unit of the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbs during the Kosovo conflict – he reportedly had direct contact with NATO leadership.
“This is why”, Edmonds continued in her interview, “even though the FBI routinely monitored the communications of the diplomatic arms of all countries, only four countries were exempt from this protocol – the UK, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Belgium – the seat of NATO. No other country – not even allies like Israel or Saudi Arabia, were exempt. This is because these four countries were integral to the Pentagon’s so-called Gladio B operations.”
Edmonds did not speculate on the objectives of the Pentagon’s ‘Gladio B’ operations, but highlighted the following possibilities: projecting U.S. power in the former Soviet sphere of influence to access previously untapped strategic energy and mineral reserves for U.S. and European companies; pushing back Russian and Chinese power; and expanding the scope of lucrative criminal activities, particularly illegal arms and drugs trafficking.
Terrorism finance expert Loretta Napoleoni estimates the total value of this criminal economy to be about $1.5 trillion annually, the bulk of which “flows into Western economies, where it gets recycled in the U.S. and in Europe” as a “vital element of the cash flow of these economies.”
It is no coincidence then that the opium trade, Edmonds told this author, has grown rapidly under the tutelage of NATO in Afghanistan: “I know for a fact that NATO planes routinely shipped heroin to Belgium, where they then made their way into Europe and to the UK. They also shipped heroin to distribution centres in Chicago and New Jersey. FBI counterintelligence and DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) operations had acquired evidence of this drug trafficking in its surveillance of a wide range of targets, including senior officials in the Pentagon, CIA and State Department. As part of this surveillance, the role of the Dickersons – with the support of these senior U.S. officials – in facilitating drug-trafficking, came up. It was clear from this evidence that the whole funnel of drugs, money and terror in Central Asia was directed by these officials.”
The evidence for this funnel, according to Edmonds, remains classified in the form of FBI counterintelligence surveillance records she was asked to translate. Although this alleged evidence has never made it to court due to the U.S. government’s exertion of ‘state secret privilege’, she was able to testify in detail concerning her allegations, including naming names, in 2009.
Censorship
In recent interviews, two Sunday Times journalists confirmed to this author that the newspaper’s investigation based on Sibel Edmonds’ revelations was to break much of the details into the open.
“We’d spoken to several current and active Pentagon officials confirming the existence of U.S. operations sponsoring mujahideen networks in Central Asia from the 1990s to 2001,” said one Sunday Times source. “Those mujahideen networks were intertwined with a whole range of criminal enterprises, including drugs and guns. The Pentagon officials corroborated Edmonds’ allegations against specific U.S. officials, and I’d also interviewed an MI6 officer who confirmed that the U.S. was running these operations sponsoring mujahideen in that period.”
But according to Edmonds, citing the investigative team at the paper, the last two articles in the series were spiked under U.S. State Department pressure. She recalled being told at the time by journalists leading the Sunday Times investigation that the newspaper’s editor had decided to squash the story after receiving calls from officials at the U.S. embassy in London.
A journalist with the Sunday Times‘ investigative unit told this author he had interviewed former Special Agent in Charge, Dennis Saccher, who had moved to the FBI’s Colorado office. Saccher reportedly confirmed the veracity of Edmonds’ allegations of espionage, telling him that Edmonds’ story “should have been front page news” because it was “a scandal bigger than Watergate.” The same journalist confirmed that after interviewing Saccher at his home, the newspaper was contacted by the U.S. State Department. “The U.S. embassy in London called the editor and tried to ward him off. We were told that we weren’t permitted to approach Saccher or any other active FBI agents directly, but could only go through the FBI’s press office – that if we tried to speak to Saccher or anyone else employed by the FBI directly, that would be illegal. Of course, it isn’t, but that’s what we were told. I think this was a veiled threat.”
Saccher’s comments to the journalist never made it to press.
A lead reporter on the series at the Sunday Times told this author that the investigation based on Edmonds’ information was supposed to have four parts, but was inexplicably dropped. “The story was pulled half-way, suddenly, without any warning”, the journalist said. “I wasn’t party to the editorial decision to drop the story, but there was a belief in the office amongst several journalists who were part of the Insight investigative unit that the decision was made under pressure from the U.S. State Department, because the story might cause a diplomatic incident.”
Although the journalist was unaware of where this belief came from – and was not informed of the U.S. embassy’s contact with the paper’s editor which the other journalist was privy to – he acknowledged that self-censorship influenced by unspecified “interest groups” was a possible explanation. “The way the story was dropped was unusual, but the belief amongst my colleagues this happened under political pressure is plausible.” He cryptically described an “editorial mechanism, linked to the paper but not formally part of it, which could however exert control on stories when necessary, linked to certain interests.” When asked which interests, the journalist said, “I can’t say. I can’t talk about that.”
Edmonds described how, due to the U.S. government’s efforts to silence her, she had no option left except to write her story down. The resultant book, Classified Woman, had to be submitted to an FBI panel for review. By law, the bureau was required to make a decision on what could be disclosed or redacted within 30 days.
Instead, about a year later, Edmonds’ lawyer received a letter from the FBI informing them that the agency was still reviewing the book, and prohibiting her from publishing it: “The matters Ms. Edmonds writes about involve many equities, some of which may implicate information that is classified… Approval of the manuscripts by the FBI will include incorporation of all changes required by the FBI. Until then, Ms. Edmonds does not have approval to publish her manuscripts which includes showing them to editors, literary agents, publishers, reviewers, or anyone else. At this point, Ms. Edmonds remains obligated not to disclose or publish the manuscript in any manner.”
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