I wrote a three-part speculative piece on Sibel Edmonds back in 2004. I wanted to know what kind of information she has that is forcing the Justice Department to muzzle her with the rarely used States Secrets Act.
Here are the links:
Sibel Edmonds
Sibel Edmonds: Part Two
Sibel Edmonds: Part Three
Update [2005-8-4 16:40:32 by BooMan]: The Daily Kos archives are not working at the moment.
Sibel Edmonds’s case interested me because she made a number of startling allegations. The one that really stands out is this:
Sibel Edmonds: Yes. Certain elected officials will stand trial and go to prison.
I thought that was quite a statement. I wanted to know which elected officials she was referring to. The new issue of Vanity Fair citing several anonymous sources claims she was referring to, among others, Dennis Hastert!!
:::flip:::
Thanks to John Byrne of The Raw Story for the scoop:
Compartmented Information Facility on several occasions: to congressional staffers, to investigators from the OIG, and to staff
from the 9/11 commission,” Rose continues.
“Sources familiar with this testimony say that, in addition to her allegations about the Dickersons, she reported hearing Turkish wiretap targets boast that they had a covert relationship with a very senior Republican indeed—Dennis Hastert, Republican congressman from Illinois and Speak
of the House since 1999. The targets reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information. “The Dickersons,” says one official familiar with the case, “are just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes,” writes Rose. “One
name, however, apparently stood out—a man the Turkish callers often referred to by the nickname “Denny boy.” It was the Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert.
According to some of the wiretaps, the FBI’s targets had arranged for thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small
checks. Under Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings.
“Hastert himself was never heard on the recordings, Edmonds told investigators and it is possible that the claims of covert payments
were hollow boasts,” Rose says. “Nevertheless, an examination of Hastert’s federal filings shows that the level of un-itemized payments
his campaigns received over many years was relatively high. Between April 1996 and December 2002, un-itemized personal donations to the
Hastert for Congress fund amounted to $483,000. In contrast, un-itemized contributions to the same period to the committee run on behalf of the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas,
were only $99,000. An analysis of the filings of four other senior Republicans shows that only one, Clay Shaw, of Florida declared a higher total of un-itemized donations that Hastert during the same
period: $552,000…
“Edmonds reportedly added that the recordings contained repeated references to Hastert’s flip-flop in the fall of 2000,” Rose pens,
“over an issue which remains of intense concern to the Turkish government—the continuing campaign to have Congress designate the killings of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 a genocide. For many
years, attempts had been made to get the House to pass a genocide resolution, but they never got anywhere until August 2000, when Hastert, as Speaker, announced that he would give it his backing and see that it received a full House vote…Thanks to Hastert, the resolution, vehemently opposed by the Turks, passed… Then on October
19, minutes before the full House vote, Hastert withdrew it. He attributed it to a letter from President Clinton.
You can view a .pdf of the article here.
I find it interesting that Clay Shaw, who represents southern Florida, has more un-itemized personal donations than Dennis Hastert. Perhaps Shaw deserves a little scrutiny too.
We should be careful to note that Hastert’s voice is not heard on the tapes and that Edmonds allows for the possibility that the Turkish operatives were making ‘hollow boasts’. Hastert’s spokesperson has also denied the allegations.
However, if these allegations are true it could help explain why Sibel Edmonds was fired, and why she has been kept quiet.
Whatever the truth is, the information Sibel Edmonds uncovered is disturbing, and could have implications for the 9/11 investigation. Once again heroin trafficking appears as a tangential aspect of the 9/11 plot.
The owner of Huffman Aviation (where Atta and al-Shehhi trained) defended himself against allegations of heroin trafficking:
“The passenger went straight to jail. The pilot went straight to jail for about 15 hours. He may have been dumb, but it wasn’t illegal. It was a charter flight, and there was no way the pilot was guilty of anything, and I hadn’t been within 50 miles of the plane at the time.
Actually, they found over 40 pounds of heroin, and the plane had been making repeated trips to Venezuela in the months leading up to the bust. It also might be more than a coincidence that Clay Shaw represents Ft. Lauderdale. Or, it might not.
This is the kind of story the media usually won’t touch. I’m surprised Vanity Fair was willing to publish such serious allegations without any on-the-record sources. Good for them… maybe we’ll finally get some movement on uncovering answers to some of the lingering questions about 9/11.
I can’t get to part I or II of your Sibel Edmonds stories (though I could earlier, and have read them before).
But this should be the link to your ‘Part Trois’ of the Sibel Edmonds diaries, if they get their archived diaries working.
This is pretty much where the land of the tin-foil clashes with the fiefdom of reality, eh?
None of those links including yours are working.
From what I can tell, none of the diaries from before around mid-May of this year are currently unaccessible (I’ve tried several others).
For those (like me) who are impatient, I did find BooMan’s first 2 Sibel Edmonds diaries cached off at google:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three is not cached off, from what I have found, but if I find it I’ll post a link (if anyone else finds it, please reply to this with a link as well).
that should have read ‘none of the diaries are accessible‘. And more specifically, I meant on dKos, not here.
Testimony Huffman Aviation by CEO President Rudi Dekkers:
Atta and Alshehhi started their flying lessons on July 6th, 2000 in a Cessna 172, N734EE with flight instructor Thierry Leklou. Then in August Leklou went to the Chief Flight Instructor, Dan Purcell, to complain that Atta and Alshehhi had behavioral problems and that they were not following instructions, they also had bad attitudes. Purcell asked Dekkers if it would be okay to expel them from the program. Dekkers said that if necessary it would be acceptable to expel them from the program. Purcell had a meeting with both Atta and Alshehhi to let them know there had been complaints about their behavior and that if they would not conform they would have to leave the program. Their behavior changed and they were able to continue their lessons without any further problems throughout the course.
In August 2000, Huffman Aviation filed–on behalf of Atta and al-Shehhi–forms requesting that the INS switch the pair’s visa status from tourist to student, a change that allowed Atta and al-Shehhi to enroll in a professional pilot program. While those applications were granted last summer (July 17,2001), the formal notification of the approval was not sent until this month (March 2002). The INS blames a bureaucratic backlog, though others might come to another conclusion.
On Thursday, March 14th, 2002, President Bush gave a press conference and answered a question regarding the I-20M’s that had arrived at Huffman Aviation. He replied there would be a full investigation.
—————-
So much for that investigation. In August 2000, two hijackers who one would assume wanted to keep their heads down, nearly get expelled from their flight school and one month later that flight schools file requests to change their visa status? BTW – ABC interviews Rudi Dekkers and he says the course takes 3 to 6 months. So much for the Phoenix memo and the the FBI excuse that private flight school records were, you know, private.
didn’t really own Huffman though. Wallace Hilliard owned it, and the lear jet that was busted with 40 pounds of heroin on board.
Now, it’s true that Hilliard cannot be held responsible for what is carried on his lear jet when he is leasing it out.
However, I think it is a safe bet that his jet was used to smuggle heroin from Venezuela for quite some time before it was busted.
These connections should be investigated.
Yes, Hilliard can be held responsible for what’s carried on his lear jet while he’s leasing it out. Just depends on what he knew or should have known. Were that not the case, we could all claim ignorance. “Gee, I didn’t know they were renting my house as meth lab, I just rented it to them.”
Should be investigated.
Just google Mohammed Atta and see what you get. This for example: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/atta_9-11.html
Atta has a stripper girlfriend who says he loved pork and drinking. Not exactly your average Islamic religious fundamentalist. And all the “evidence” after the fact with the pictures of them at various locations and the stuff found in the car, etc. It’s just a little too convenient.
This Atta and Co. story reminds me of Lee Harvey Oswald. Just like he was able to travel back and forth to the USSR during the cold war and had all these connections to CIA front operations, so these Al Quaeda people have similar suspicious freedom of movement, access and connections.
And yet if you talk about it, people put a tinfoil hat on you …
As for the archives at Kos not working. Well, maybe that is all it is. But I’ll just note that several times recently, when I try to click on a current diary, the link goes nowhere — the diary seems to have disappeared. I can’t help but also notice that this problem only seems to be occuring with certain types of diaries, those whose title suggests that they would be addressing various of the forbidden conspiratorial topics.
when using Hopsicker as a source. I’m not saying his work is wrong, but it’s sloppy and often poorly sourced when there is no need for him to be poorly sourced.
Amanda Keller is an interesting sidenote, but I cannot verify her story from any source other than Hopsicker.
If anyone knows Amanda Keller and where she can be contacted, let me know. I’m dying to speak to her.
The Sibel case is a little outside my bailiwick but I do note that Dennis Hastert was the man who withdrew the bill saying the Turks had committed genocide against the Armenians after enormous pressure from Turkey to do so.
No idea if this is related or not. Seems to me like Wolfowitz was a much better friend of Turkey than Hastert.
Pax
that is specifically mentioned, and one of the tapes has a man speculating that the cost of getting Hastert to withdraw the bill must have exceeded $50,000.
Oops my fault for not reading what you wrote 🙂 And Boo really come on you don’t need DailyKos’ search or whatever to find your old articles.
Click here and here.
Pax
you know, I can’t even find part three in the wayback machine. Part three had the the serial numbers of the planes Atta flew to Georgia, as well as the chain of custody of those planes.
I’m starting to get a little paranoid about why Part Three has been scrubbed out of existence.
Do you remember the exact date you posted it?
Check out this to see if perhaps that info matches what you originally reported.
Pax
Boo, how does Sibel Edmonds retain so much information from a job years ago? Did she make notes?
testified about it, talked to lawyers who took notes, etc. I’m sure she has a good contemporaneous record to refer to.
And when you hear information like this about major political figures, you tend to retain it for quite a while.
…here, BooMan. While you provide ample caveats regarding Hastert’s not being heard on the tapes, your headline doesn’t reflect those caveats. One might even call it inflammatory.
I’m guilty as charged. I did put a question mark. And I do think the headline gets to the heart of the Vanity Fair piece. Perhaps their decision to run this story is inflammatory?
Clay Shaw represents Ft. Lauderdale
Clay Shaw that figures prominently in multitudes of conspiracy (and some, perhaps, not so) sites regarding the JFK case? Or is it just a serendipitous similary of name?
a different Clay Shaw.
That’s probably just as well. It’s getting so crowded in here with all the old Iran-Contra guys back in government that there’s barely room to turn around some days. Any more “coincidences” and recycled crooks and I’ll run out of tinfoil.
After RawStory ran the piece on Sibel Edmonds, the ACLU released a statement to Raw, some of which follows:
The Court created the so-called state secrets privilege more than 50 years ago but has not considered it since. The need for clarification of the doctrine is acute, the ACLU said, because the government is increasingly using the privilege to cover up its own wrongdoing and to keep legitimate cases out of court.
“Edmonds’ case is not an isolated incident,” said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson. “The federal government is routinely retaliating against government employees who uncover weaknesses in our ability to prevent terrorist attacks or protect public safety.”
The states secrets privilege, Beeson said, “should be used a shield for sensitive evidence, not a sword the government can use at will to cut off argument in a case before the evidence can be presented. We are urging the Supreme Court, which has not directly addressed this issue in 50 years, to rein in the government’s misuse of this privilege.”
Apparently, Booman, you’re not the only one who is haunted by Sibel’s words. Read the entire rawstory article here