Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2016 9:24 pm Post subject: Fethullah Gulen, Turkish Bin Laden, working for the CIA?
outsider wrote:
A friend of mine emailed me with a warning about the 'Ergenekon' business; here is the relevant part:
'there is an incredible amount of disinformation on Ergenekon..... even some of those newspapers like Zaman that appear to be strongly critical of Ergenekon and the 'new middle east project' are in reality very closely alligned with the US.... in fact, the owner of Zaman is Fethullah Gulen, whose sect is instrumental in pacifying/diverting religious circles' opposition to Anglo-American imperial policies. So, despite all the important revelations, it is quite possible that the Ergenekon investigation is being used as a distraction from the bigger picture.'
I have reproduced the warning here, for those who are following the issue.
Though I am not following it up, it does appear a little 'too good to be true'; considering the hold the military have on Turkey, and the CIA's controlling hand on the Turkish military (Kemal Ataturk is believed to have been initiated into Freemasonry in a Lodge in Salonika), there could well be something fishy being dished up here.
TonyGosling wrote:
CIA involvement with religious groups not a new charge
By Wayne Madsen - Online Journal Contributing Writer - Mar 13, 2009
(WMR) -- Accusations that the CIA is involved with various religious movements, including the Nurcilar movement of Pennsylvania-based Turkish moderate Islamist leader Fethullah Gulen and the Unification Church of one-time Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) operative Reverend Sun Myung Moon, follow a long history of suspicions that the U.S. intelligence agency is deeply involved with some religious movements. The CIA has also been accused of using foreign missionaries as espionage agents.
A 1975 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities concluded that between the 1950s and 1960s, 21 missionaries were used as agents by the CIA. One of them was Roman Catholic missionary Reverend Tom Dooley who spied for the CIA as a doctor in Vietnam and Laos. He passed on information to the CIA about the political leanings of villagers and troop movements near the Laotian hospital where he worked as a doctor. The CIA recruited a number of their Chinese analysts from the families of U.S. missionaries in China.
A religious charity, World Medical Relief of Detroit, was used by the CIA as a conduit to funnel millions of dollars in secret aid to Laotian Hmongs that made up the CIA’s secret army in Laos that fought against the Communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. Retired Air Force Brigadier General Harry Aderholt and former CIA station chief in Laos and Thailand Daniel Arnold admitted their role in funneling money to the Hmong through World Medical Relief in a November 1982 interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
The Philadelphia Bulletin, on May 4, 1981, reported how the Wycliffe Bible Translators’ Summer Institute of Linguistics was suspected of working with the CIA. The institute reportedly received U.S. government grants for “special projects.” The institute employed some 1,500 missionaries worldwide who translated unwritten native languages in remote locations into written form and then translated the written text into the New Testament. The institute maintained supply bases and radio stations in some of the world’s most remote villages. In 1981, a Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based institute missionary, Charles Bitterman 3rd, was kidnapped by leftist rebels in Colombia and accused of being a CIA agent. Bitterman was later executed by his captors. The Bulletin said the Summer Institute “has been a target for more than a decade of rumors that it has spied, set up missile bases and even mined precious metals or run drug operations in Latin American countries. The rumors have never been confirmed.”
After the reports of links between the Summer Institute and the CIA, Mexico, Brazil, Panama, and Ecuador expelled Summer missionaries.
In February 1993, a Panamanian rebel group opposed to the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 -- the December 20-Torrijista Patriotic Vanguard -- kidnapped three American missionaries with an evangelical Sanford, Florida-based group called “New Tribes” or “Nuevas Tribus.” The rebel group claimed the three men were CIA agents. In 1983, an investigation by the Venezuelan Congress concluded that “New Tribes,” which was active in the Amazon region of the country and was converting native tribal members, was funded by General Dynamics and Westinghouse and industrial agents for the two firms were disguising themselves as missionaries to conduct mineral surveys in the resource-rich Amazon region of Venezuela.
In 2005, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered all New Tribes Mission (NTM) missionaries, then active in 17 countries, expelled from Venezuela citing their links to the CIA. Chavez said the missionaries possessed wireless communications equipment and built landing strips for aircraft that avoided Venezuelan Customs. U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield defended the missionaries’ work. Brownfield, who is now the U.S. ambassador to Colombia’s narco-fascist regime, was accused of helping to organize coups and secessionist movements against Chavez.
Venezuelan Justice Minister Jesse Chacon accused NTM of conducting medical experiments on Venezuelan Yanomami Indians, killing 80 in the process. Chacon reiterated that the group had ties to both Westinghouse and General Dynamics and was seeking access to strategic mineral resources in the states of Amazonas, Bolivar, and Delta Amacuro.
Given links between New Tribes and the Reverend Billy Graham’s organization, there could be links between the missionaries and the defense contractor-infused and supported secretive Christian Fellowship of Arlington, Virginia, which treats Graham as its spiritual leader.
Right-wing Hindu groups have accused Christian missionaries of working for the CIA in India.
In 1975, President Gerald Ford admitted that the CIA had, in the past, used missionaries as agents and held out the possibility that it might do so in the future. Ford’s CIA director, George H. W. Bush, issued an internal CIA memo in 1976 that terminated “paid or contractual” relationships with “American clergymen” and stated the agreements would not be renewed. President Jimmy Carter’s CIA director, Stansfield Turner, issued another CIA guideline in 1977 that stated: “American church groups will not be used as funding cut-outs (fronts) for CIA purposes and that “no secret, paid or unpaid, contractual relationship with any American clergyman or missionary . . . who is sent out by a mission or church organization to preach, teach, heal or proselytize” will be established by the CIA.
National Council of Churches official Eugene Stockwell, a Methodist missionary, urged a ban on contacts between missionaries and the CIA. He stated, “Church bodies overseas have the right to expect that the relationships of United States religious personnel to those churches will be solely at the service of common worldwide Christian missions and will not be used in any way for the purpose of one government.” He added that the CIA’s use of missionaries threatened their safety.
In 1982, the issue of CIA use of missionaries was once again raised. CIA director William Casey and Vice President Bush tried to assure religious leaders that the agency had not returned to the practice of using missionaries as spies. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch of June 13, 1982, Casey and CIA External Affairs Director William Doswell told the Richmond-based Southern Baptist Foreign Missions Board that the CIA’s use of missionaries violated the First Amendment on separation of church and state. The Baptist Mission Board president, Dr. R. Keith Parks, had requested the meeting with Casey due to “persistent rumors of contact” by CIA agents with missionaries. The same day Casey was meeting with the Southern Baptists in Richmond, Bush was taking up the missionary spy issue with officials at the Southern Baptist convention in New Orleans.
More recently, the CIA has been actively recruiting Mormon missionaries due to their foreign language skills and supposedly “clean” backgrounds.
Congolese Tutsi rebel General Laurent Nkunda, now allegedly exiled in Rwanda, is associated with a mysterious U.S.-based group called “Rebels for Christ.” Nkunda has been accused of receiving covert U.S. intelligence support through Rwanda.
Perhaps the most infamous CIA association with a religious group was the People’s Temple compound in Jonestown, Guyana.
On August 31, 2007, WMR reported, “WMR has uncovered documents that show the CIA kept extensive open source records on the agency’s suspected involvement in the People’s Temple cult that set up shop in Jonestown, Guyana, after moving from the San Francisco Bay Area. Most official U.S. intelligence files on Jonestown remain classified . . . The U.S. ambassador to Guyana at the time of the Jonestown massacre was John Burke, who served with his deputy chief of mission, Richard Dwyer, and were allegedly working for the CIA in Bangkok during the Vietnam war. Dwyer was wounded in the Port Kaituma shootings where [Congressman Leo] Ryan and the others were killed. On Sept. 27, 1980, Jack Anderson reported that Dwyer was a CIA agent and a friend of Jones. Anderson reported that on one of the tapes made during the mass suicide Jones was heard saying, “Get Dwyer out of here before something happens to him.” Dwyer reportedly left Guyana for Grenada after the massacre. The US consular officer at the embassy in Georgetown, Guyana, was Richard McCoy, who allegedly liaised with Jim Jones and was a U.S. Air Force intelligence official. Another alleged CIA employee, operating under State Department cover, was Dan Webber, who also visited the Jonestown the day after the massacre. Joe Holsinger, Ryan’s assistant and friend, later said that he believed that Jonestown was a massive mind control experiment and that the CIA and military intelligence were involved in the program.”
Recent reports from central Asia and Latin America suggest the CIA is back in its old business of mixing espionage with religion and giving credence to what some observers claim “CIA” actually stands for: “Christians In Action.”
In rural Pennsylvania, a Turkish-born Muslim imam lives in self-imposed exile.
The imam, Fethullah Gülen, came to the United States in 1999 due to cited health problems and has stayed in the United States after gaining his visa with help from former CIA officials. The FBI previously resisted granting permanent residency status to Gülen. According to leaked cables, parts of the U.S. government believe that Gülen “is a ‘radical Islamist’ whose moderate message cloaks a more sinister and radical agenda.”
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Gülen followers claim that he does not control or have anything to do with the day-to-day dealings of the massive network of charter schools he helped found.
Gülen-inspired schools are the largest charter network in the U.S. and receive approximately $150 million a year in taxpayer money. There are about 130 of these charter schools in 26 states where the majority of the teachers are from Turkey, as well as many of the contracts for construction and operation have gone to Turkish businesses. Those actions have raised red flags for the U.S. government.
The schools themselves are considered high quality and are focused on STEM-based learning — something that proponents of the Gülen Movement claim is lacking in U.S. education.
According to 60 Minutes, in Turkey, Gülen schools are everywhere and considered the best. But recently Turkey passed a law to shut down Gulen schools, a main source of the movement’s revenue.
Why Are My Tax Dollars Funding an Islamic Movement?
In the United States, many of the Gülen schools have long waiting lists. But that comes at a price for our American teachers:
“Our tax dollars are paying for them to come over here and take our jobs,” said Mary Addi, a teacher. “They want to give you the impression that they’re just hard-working guys over here to try and educate our kids, because American teachers are just too stupid.”
According to Addi, those Turkish teachers’ visa applicants oddly include English teachers. Gülen brings in foreign teachers and then takes a cut of their salary. She learned this after marrying a Turkish teacher. She said that after he was paid. He’d cash the check and return 40% of his salary back to the school for a secret fund used by the movement.
These allegations have caused the U.S. government to investigate for immigration fraud as well as misuse of taxpayer money. It has also caused many to wonder about the actual intent of the Gülen school.
According to a secret U.S. government document released by Wikileaks, “Deep and widespread doubts remain, however, about his (Gülen) movement’s ultimate intentions. We have anecdotal evidence of the pressure that the various circles of his movement put on people they have drawn in, for instance severe pressure on businessmen to continue to give money to support Gülenist schools or other activities. We have multiple reliable reports that the Gülenists use their school network (including dozens of schools in the U.S.) to cherry-pick students they think are susceptible to being molded as proselytizers and we have steadily heard reports about how the schools indoctrinate boarding students.”
One public school teacher from the South spoke with Benswann.com’s Joshua Cook on condition of anonymity, said her students recently won a free cultural trip to Turkey through an art contest sponsored by a Gülen organization called the Atlantic Institute.
The teacher had a terrible experience. “They take you on this grueling 10-day death march through Turkey,” said the teacher. “It was exhausting.”
“After being food deprived the Gülenist hosts brought us to a building called the Journalist and Writer’s “light house” which was a compound. This is where we got the cult spiel for 2 hours. The speaker told us, ‘Fethullah Gülen, he is the imam that sheds light on the dark waters of our time,'” said the teacher.
“This trip was not about a moderate message of interfaith dialogue or Turkish culture. The whole purpose was to promote the imam Fethullah Gülen,” said the teacher.
The teacher added, “the Gülen movement’s ultimate goal is to open charter schools in the U.S. to funnel U.S. tax dollars to back into the Gülen movement in Turkey. They skim just enough off the public taxpayers from these charter schools so it won’t look suspicious.”
Gülen schools are among the nation’s largest users of the H1B visas. In 2009, the schools received government approvals for 684 visas – more than Google Inc. (440) but fewer than a technology powerhouse such as Intel Corp. (1,203), reported the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Critics also find it hard to believe that qualified American teachers in math and science are hard to find.
Former president of the parent’s group at the Young Scholars of Central Pennsylvania Charter School, Ruth Hocker started asking questions when popular, certified American teachers were replaced by uncertified Turkish men who often spoke limited English and were paid higher salaries. Most were placed in math and science classes.
“They would tell us they couldn’t find qualified American teachers,” Hocker told the Philadelphia Inquirer. That made no sense in Pennsylvania State University’s hometown, she said: “They graduate here every year.”
Other school parents described how uncertified teachers on H1B visas were moved from one charter school to another when their “emergency” teaching credentials expired and told of a pattern of sudden turnovers of Turkish business managers, administrators, and board members.
Leaked communications from a diplomatic cable suggests that some Gülen teachers maybe using the school as cover to get to the U.S.
From Wikileaks: “…we are concerned by the link with charter schools in the U.S. that have petitioned for marginally-qualified H1B candidates (The Kentucky Consular Center and our posts in Turkey have started compiling a list of these Gülenist charter schools in the US for use in visa adjudication). These applicants were simply not convincing, did not seem as fully in tune with Gülen’s approach to education and might be using the reputation of the school as a cover to get to the U.S.”
Recently, FBI agents carried out raids at 19 Gülen Charter schools in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio as part of an “ongoing white-collar crime matter.”
Many oppose the Gülen movement due to their lack of transparency, the cloud of suspicion regarding their funding, hierarchy, their pursuit of buying political influence, and their true purposes, and leaving U.S. taxpayers in the dark.
Tax payers being forced to indirectly support Islamist movements is one thing but is there something more insidious planned by the Gülen movement?
While Gülen followers and some U.S. officials claim Gülen teaches a moderate version of Islam, some believe it is only part of a strategy to infiltrate the U.S.
According to The Middle East Quarterly, in 1999, Turkish television aired footage of Gülen delivering sermons which revealed his plan to implement Shari‘a law and use controversial tactics to achieve those goals.
In the sermon, he said:
“You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers … until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria … like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it … You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey … Until that time, any step taken would be too early—like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all—in confidence … trusting your loyalty and secrecy. I know that when you leave here—[just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and the feelings that I expressed here.”
Is Gulen a Front for the CIA?
A classified communication reveals that many secularists in Turkey are convinced that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is the creation of the United States Government (USG), and that Washington bolsters and funds the Fethullah Gülen movement.
Is the CIA or another agency in the USG using the Gülen movement to fund “cold war” operations overseas? Is the USG using the Gülen Islamic schools to influence Central Asia with a more “moderate” version of Islam to rival more racial Islamic sects?
Some claim that Gulen is a front for the CIA. See here and here.
If there is anyone who knows the truth about the inner workings of U.S. and Turkey relations it is FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds.
Edmonds is considered the “the most gagged person in American history.” The USG invoked “state secrets privilege” in her case and she is prevented from revealing government corruption and cannot discuss certain aspects of her knowledge regarding her case. The DOJ’s Inspector General stated her claims are credible and Edmonds says her claims can be backed up by FBI files.
Benswann.com’s Joshua Cook asked Edmonds via email about her thoughts regarding Gülen. Edmonds has been covering the Gülen movement for years and has extensive research on her website.
Cook asked Edmonds, is Gülen a threat to US interests?
“This has to do with Gülen’s role in terrorism,” said Edmonds. “Under the guise of schools [Madrasas] in Central Asia & Caucasus his network is involved in training terrorists [from Chechens to other Islamic Jihadis in the area]. The bureau had him under investigations since 1998. However, they were prevented from pursuing the cases [despite all evidence collected] due to direct pressure from the CIA/State Deptment. How do I know? Some of the case files were under the division where I worked [counterintelligence]. Other investigations were being conducted under the FBI’s crime & terrorism division.”
Cook asked, “Is the CIA using the Gülen network to fund CIA ops in Turkey?”
“They did,” said Edmonds. “It was also a channel for money laundering for their $20 billion worth network. They bring teachers from Turkey. They provide them with decent/high salaries, but then, they force them to voluntarily and individually contribute over 50% of their income to their various front charity organizations … I met with several ex-teachers and spoke with them in 2006-2008; however, because of overt and covert threats from Gülen’s network to their families in Turkey, they were not willing to come forward or go on record.”
While under oath during a legal disposition, Edmonds, was asked if she had any information regarding Fethullah Gülen.
“He landed on the Turkish government’s wanted list and was going to be persecuted for wanting to replace Turkey’s secular government with an Islamic/Sharia-type of government. When he was wanted in Turkey for that and was going to go jail, he actually got on a plane and came to the United States, and was given immediately a visa to stay in the United States,” said Edmonds.
Edmonds states that Gülen has close ties to training militant Muslims.
Edmonds claims in her testimony that “Gülen established more than 300 Madrasahs in Central Asia and what he calls universities that have a front that is called Moderate Islam, but he is closely involved in training Mujahideen (Al-Qaeda) – like militia Islam who are brought from Pakistan and Afghanistan into Central Asia where his Madrasahs operate, and his organization’s network is estimated to be around $25 billion, and that he has close ties to training militant Muslims.”
When asked if she considers Gülen a threat to U.S. interests, she responded, “100%, Absolutely.”
Watch Sibel Edmonds’s testimony regarding Gülen Schools and U.S. Foreign Policy Connections.
Sibel Edmonds ON GULEN SCHOOLS
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