I was reading about how the French went and pissed off the Turks by passing a parliamentary vote that would make it a crime to deny that the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians. Then I remembered how Sibel Edmonds had overheard wiretaps of Turkish officials boasting about their guy ‘Denny-Boy’ Hastert and how he could be relied on to quash any efforts by Congress to pass a resolution attesting to the truth of the Armenian genocide. Here is the relevant excerpt from the August 2005 Vanity Fair article.
If you haven’t ever seen this before, it’s an excellent, excellent article about what happens to whistleblowers in this country.
But the main point in my bringing this up now is the combination of Dennis Hastert being on the political ropes and the whole French/Turkish thing, where both countries are competing to see who can be a bigger asshole. But that’s a subject for another diary. Enjoy.
Vanity Fair has established that around the time the Dickersons visited the Edmondses, in December 2001, Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, contacted Sibel and asked her to review some wiretaps. Some were several years old, others more recent; all had been generated by a counter-intelligence that had its start in 1997. “It began in D.C.,” says an F.B.I. counter-intelligence official who is familiar with the case file. “It became apparent that Chicago was actually the center of what was going on.”
Its subject was explosive; what sounded like attempts to bribe elected members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican. “There was pressure within the bureau for a special prosecutor to be appointed and take the case on, “the official says. Instead, his colleagues were told to alter the thrust of their investigation – away from elected politicians and toward appointed officials. “This is the reason why Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme fashion,” he says “It was to keep this from coming out.”
In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing. In all, says a source who was present, she managed to listen to more than 40 of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I. target at the city’s large Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associates.
Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes. To a person who knew nothing about their context, the details were confusing and it wasn’t always clear what might be significant. 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 F.B.I.’s targets had arranged for tens of 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 in the recordings, Edmonds told investigators, and it is possible that the claims of covert payments were hollow boasts. 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 Committee amounted to $483,000. In contrast, un-itemized contributions in 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 in un-itemized donations than Hastert over the same period: $552,000.
Edmonds reportedly added that the recordings also contained repeated references to Hastert’s flip-flop, in the fall of 2000, over an issue which remains of intense concern to the Turkish government – the continuing campaign to have Congress designate the killings of Armenians in Turkey 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. He had a clear political reason, as analysts noted at the time: a California Republican incumbent, locked in a tight congressional race, was looking to win over his district’s large Armenian community. Thanks to Hastert, the resolution, vehemently opposed by the Turks, passed the International Relations Committee by a large majority. Then, on October 19, minutes before the full House vote, Hastert withdrew it.
the French or anyone else passing laws to restrict what individuals can say. But then again the French have an election coming up and there are quite number of voters of Armenian extraction, so I guess a bit of pandering is needed, and we shouldnt forget that the French are vehemently opposed to Turkey joining the EU, so putting a wrench in the works of that is probably enjoyable for them.
Oh and when will they pass the law making it illegal to deny the Belgian holocaust in the Congo, which is generally regarded as the biggest holocaust in modern history although it is little known as all of those slaughtered and starved were balck and African. Then again maybe they should make their own actions in slaughtering the Huguenots legally undeniable, and then we shouldnt forget the Catholic led mass slaughter of the indiginous peoples of southern America. This little lot should keep the French parliament going for a few years yet.
Wikipedia’s front page has a link to the Turkish winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, Orhan Pamuk. The entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orhan_Pamuk explains the legal case brought against him for speaking out about the massacre of Kurds and Armenians. This history was purged over time, but the steps leading to membership in the European Union had the positive effect that the story cannot be suppressed any longer.
Possibly this news of Turkish perfidy against a leading author can be construed to illustrate why their suppression of the genocide also led to the US Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Hastert has much going against him, from his presiding over the bribery and predator scandals, to being Bush’s go-to guy, to local hinky land deals that made him millions, and on and on. His history as a pro-genocide in-house lobbyist adds even more heat to an already raging inferno of corruption, lies, and betrayal.
When a poll finally came out for IL-14 this week it showed Hastert up 52-42. Which sounds bad, but is in fact remarkable considering that the Dem challenger, John Laesch, has been studiously ignored by the Dem Party, the netroots, the all the rest of the Dem/liberal establishment. His contributions have shot up dramatically over the past week or so, but still hover around the $160,000 mark (vs unlimited dirty money for Hastert). This race was written off because Hastert historically wins with numbers in the 70% range.
This year Hastert is vulnerable: all it will take is reinforcing his abundant negatives and offering a vision of a renewed America. Laesch is the guy who can do it. He’s the precise anti-Hastert: an earnest young vet of modest means who found the courage to stand up to a goliath when nobody else wanted to “waste their efforts”. The momentum is on his side. All he needs is the money to get the message out. This is a rare chance to stick a knife into the very heart of the GOP cabal of corruption. Help make it happen.
http://www.john06.com/
When Bush was merely a presidential candidate in February 2000 he wrote Armenian Americans he would ensure proper recognition of the Armenian victims of a “genocidal campaign.” Once elected, though, he backpedaled. Not surprisingly, in 2004, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) endorsed John Kerry, who promised to continue to fight against denying the genocide.
Bush joins Clinton and the first Pres. Bush in intervening to quash Congressional resolutions. From the UCLA International Institute, “The People Who Cover Up Genocide”
Following the recall of Ambassador Evans for publicly speaking of the genocide, Bush nominated Richard Hoagland to be the next ambassador to Armenia. Because Hoagland refuses to acknowledge the genocide, his nomination has been held up by Sen. Robert Menendez, NJ.
In 1987, Bob Dole was frustrated that so many of the original cosigners of his bill about the genocide had withdrawn their names.
Here’s the text of the most recent Congressional Resolution, same subject, submitted November 2005.
American governments may succumb to Turkish pressure, but not France, evidently. Le jour de gloire est arrive.