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:

Chris Deliso: Hmm, well I know you can’t name names, but can you tell me if any specific officials will suffer if your testimony comes out?

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:

“Edmonds has given confidential testimony inside a secure Sensitive
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:

“I once owned a Lear jet that was chartered by a pilot in Fort Lauderdale,” Hilliard said. “He had a customer in Venezuela and made a few regular trips back and forth. On one trip, it cleared customs and flew to Orlando on the way to Washington, D.C. When they got to Orlando, he was greeted by the DEA. They searched the luggage of the passenger and found heroin.

“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.

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