Two FBI Whistleblowers Confirm Illegal Wiretapping of Govt Officials, Support Sibel Edmonds Claims

Sibel Edmonds has got her hands on an explosive official report from an FBI agent which demonstrates that the US Government was illegally spying on “high-profile U.S. public officials”

They were illegally using the rubber-stamping FISA court to do it (you know, FISA, the court they had to ignore in the illegal NSA wire-tapping case). FISA is supposed to be for “Foreign” persons only – not for domestic surveillance.

But here’s the thing: Sibel worked for this particular agent when she was at the FBI – so this illegal spying uncovered all of the criminal activity that Sibel knows about “large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder” – and to top it off, no action has been taken, no arrests, no idictments, and they buried the enitre case by gagging Sibel, and congress – by claiming ‘national security.’

The headline from Sibel’s press release is:

Two FBI Whistleblowers Confirm Illegal Wiretapping of Government Officials and Misuse of FISA

    State Secrets Privilege Was Used to Cover Up Corruption and Silence Whistleblowers

Details downstairs
The press release:

———————-

    Two FBI Whistleblowers Confirm Illegal Wiretapping of Government Officials and Misuse of FISA

    State Secrets Privilege Was Used to Cover Up Corruption and Silence Whistleblowers

    The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) has obtained a copy of an official complaint filed by a veteran FBI Special Agent, Gilbert Graham, with the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (DOJ-OIG). SA Graham’s protected disclosures report the violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in conducting electronic surveillance of high-profile U.S. public officials.

    Before his retirement in 2002, SA Gilbert Graham worked for the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO) Squad NS-24. One of the main areas of Mr. Graham’s counterintelligence investigations involved espionage activities by Turkish officials and agents in the United States. On April 2, 2002, Graham filed with the DOJ-OIG a classified protected disclosure, which provided a detailed account of FISA violations involving misuse of FISA warrants to engage in domestic surveillance. In his unclassified report SA Graham states:

        “It is the complainant’s reasonable belief that the request for ELSUR [electronic surveillance] coverage was a subterfuge to collect evidentiary information concerning public corruption matters.”

    Graham blew the whistle on this illegal behavior, but the actions were covered up by the Department of Justice and the Attorney General’s office.

    Click here (pdf) to read the unclassified version of SA Graham’s Official Report.

    The report filed by SA Graham bolsters another FBI whistleblower’s case that became public several months after Graham’s official filing with the Justice Department in 2002. Sibel Edmonds, former FBI Language Specialist, also worked for the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO), and her assignments included the translations of Turkish Counterintelligence documents and audiotapes, some of which were part of espionage investigations led by SA Graham. After she filed her complaint with the DOJ-OIG and Congress, she was retaliated against by the FBI and ultimately fired in March 2002. Court proceedings in Edmonds’ case were blocked by the assertion of the State Secrets Privilege by then Attorney General John Ashcroft, and the Congress gagged and prevented from investigating her case through retroactive re-classification of documents by DOJ. To read the timeline on Edmonds’ case Click here.

    Edmonds’ complaint included allegations of illegal activities by Turkish organizations and their agents in the United States, and the involvement of certain elected and appointed U.S. officials in the Department of State, Pentagon, and the U.S. Congress in these activities. In its September 2005 issue, Vanity Fair ran a comprehensive piece on Edmonds’ case by reporter David Rose, in which several former and current congressional and Justice Department officials identified former House Speaker Dennis Hastert as being involved in illegal activities with the Turkish organizations and personnel targeted in FBI investigations. In addition, Rose reported:

        “…much of what Edmonds reportedly heard seemed to concern not state espionage but criminal activity. There was talk, she told investigators, of laundering the profits of large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder.”

    In January 2005, DOJ-OIG released an unclassified summary of its investigation into Edmonds’ termination. The report concluded that Edmonds was fired for reporting serious security breaches and misconduct in the agency’s translation program, and that many of her allegations were supported by convincing evidence.

    Another Former Veteran FBI Counterintelligence and Espionage Specialist at FBI Headquarters in Washington DC also filed similar reports with DOJ-OIG and several congressional offices regarding violations of FISA implementation and the covering up of several espionage cases involving FBI Language Specialists and public corruption cases by the Bureau. The cases reported by this whistleblower corroborate those reported by SA Graham and Sibel Edmonds. In an interview with NSWBC investigators the former FBI Specialist, who wished to remain anonymous, stated:

        “…you are looking at covering up massive public corruption and espionage cases; to top that off you have major violations of FISA by the FBI Washington Field Office and HQ targeting these cases. Everyone involved has motive to cover up these reports and prevent investigation and public disclosure. No wonder they invoked the state secrets privilege in Edmonds’ case.”

    William Weaver, NSWBC Senior Advisor noted that,”These abuses of power are precisely why we must pay attention to whistleblowers. Preservation of the balance of powers between the branches of government increasingly relies on information provided by whistleblowers, especially in the face of aggressive and expanding executive power. Through illegal surveillance members of Congress and other officials may be controlled by the executive branch, thereby dissolving the matrix of our democracy. The abuse of two powers of secrecy, FISA and the state secrets privilege, are working hand in hand to subvert the Constitution. In an abominably perverse arrangement, the abuse of FISA is being covered up by abuse of the state secrets privilege. Only whistleblowers and the congressional and judicial oversight their revelations spawn can bring our system back into balance.”

    Several civil liberties and whistleblowers organizations have joined Edmonds and NSWBC in urging congress to hold public hearing on Edmonds’ case, including the supporting cases of SA Graham and other FBI witnesses, and the erroneous use of state secrets privilege by the executive branch to cover up its own illegal conduct. The petition endorsed by these groups is expected to be released to public in the next few days.

© Copyright 2006, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

———————-

How about that, then?

We’ll be calling on you in the next couple of days to help ‘urge congress’ to hold hearings.  Stay tuned.

If you want to know more about Sibel’s case, I gave an interview last week explaining ‘what it’s all about’.

(And a special treat for Sibel fans – a one minute youtube clip of a speech she gave, from the new movie Kill The Messenger)

cross-posted at wotisitgood4

————
Update – in case you were wondering how to contact some journos.
Anne Kornblut @ WaPo
Bob Drogin-LA Times (bob.drogin@latimes.com) ,
Jonathan Landay (jlanday@mcclatchydc.com)
or Eric Lichtblau, NY Times elichtblau@nytimes.com
Keith Olbermann countdown@msnbc.com
Dan Eggen : eggend@washpost.com
Blake Morrison: bmorrison@usatoday.com

Update: Digg it

Lukery explains the Sibel Edmonds story (interview)

This is a transcript from my interview from yesterday with Scott Horton about Sibel Edmonds.

I gave this interview as a backgrounder for those wanting to get up to speed on Sibel’s case.  We have some important news coming regarding her case in the next week – and we’ll need your help.  There will be a new push to get public, open hearings into Sibel’s case – and we’ll need some public pressure put on the relevant congressional offices. I’ll provide the details next week.
begin transcript
——-
Scott Horton:  For AntiWar.com, and KAOS Radio 95.9 fm in Austin Texas, I’m Scott Horton, and this is AntiWar Radio. When you have an empire, you get wars without enemies, and criminals in charge of enforcing the law – that’s just the way it works.

It’s really an amazing story, this poor lady was in the wrong place at the wrong time. After September 11, she was a patriotic American citizen, an immigrant who decided she’d get a job at the FBI helping them translate foreign languages in their counter-terrorism section – and she just so happened to stumble across something near the core of the crime syndicate that controls the USA. Of course, her name is Sibel Edmonds, and she’s got a gag order, and she can say some things that have already been revealed one way or other – she can reiterate them, but she has never really been able to tell her full story in public. The story has always been of interest to me, but it’s so complicated and convoluted that I always have a hard time keeping up and making sense of the story – so I always turn to my friend Luke Ryland. He writes the great blog wotisitgood4 and he’s basically my walking crib-sheet for cheating on the Sibel Edmonds test and keeping track of this story. Welcome to the show, Luke.

Lukery:  Thanks Scott – good to be here.

SH:  It’s good to talk to you my friend. Let’s start with the basics of the Sibel Edmonds story – as I said, she’s an immigrant, an American citizen, who after 911 decided to be a patriot and would go to the FBI and be a translator. She speaks Farsi, Azerbaijani and Turkish and a few other languages and she went to go be a patriotic American citizen and do her duty and as a result her whole world got turned upside down. Luke, what happened?

LR:  That’s right, Scott. She started working at the FBI the week after 911. She actually had an application in to work in a different department for them that she’d applied for two years earlier, and they’d lost her application. After 911 they must have run a new check and they found that they had Sibel’s application there and it had three languages on it – Turkish, Azerbaijani and Farsi and they thought she’d be pretty helpful in the translation unit in Washington to help them sort through the backlog of stuff that they had built up over the time. She started there and before long she realized that there was a whole bunch of shenanigans going on in the translation department including mistranslations and translations that were intentionally being falsified to coverup a whole bunch of different criminal activity. It was long before that, in early December, when one of her fellow translators and her husband knocked on Sibel’s door one Sunday morning and tried to recruit her basically to be a spy for a certain criminal network.

SH:  And this was the infamous Melek Can Dickerson, right? Who was this lady?

LR:  She was married to Major Doug Dickerson – actually he’s had a promotion since then, whatever his title is today, he’s an airforce Major who’d been involved in weapons procurement in Turkey going back a decade. So, the two of them turned up to Sibel’s house and tried to recruit Sibel. Sibel’s husband was there, and they were all having a friendly chat when Major Doug Dickerson said ‘Why don’t you come and join this organization – the American Turkish Council?’ And he basically said, ‘If you work for these guys, we’ll be able to get you in there, and you’ll never have to work again.’ He was basically trying to recruit Sibel to either mistranslate documents that were incriminating, or steal other documents that were in the building and feed them out to targets of the investigation so that the targets would know where the investigation was going.

SH:  Now this lady, Melek Can Dickerson was really giving Sibel problems in the translation unit – is that correct?

LR:  I don’t know that specifically – I’m not sure if that was true before the recruitment attempt, or only after the attempted recruiting had failed. Sibel rebuffed the espionage recruiting attempt and then reported it to her boss a day or two later.

SH:  Who’s her boss that she reported it to?

LR:  Sibel’s boss was a guy called Mike Feghali – he was in charge at that time of the Turkey desk. Dickerson was also Turkish – she actually joined the FBI after Sibel did. Sibel was actually the first and only Turkish translator in the FBI translation unit when she first joined. They didn’t have anyone else there.

SH:  They didn’t have anyone??

LR:  Nope. They recruited Sibel, and then Dickerson, and then another guy, Kevin Taskasen. It turns out that Dickerson was a spy, and Taskasen could speak neither Turkish nor English – so the FBI translation unit in Washington was just a disaster.

SH:  And what is this American Turkish Council that they tried to recruit Sibel Edmonds to join?

LR:  The ATC is basically a mini-AIPAC (ref) – in fact it was established using the AIPAC model, I believe. It had the same people on the board, common members etc. It is basically the Turkish version of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby group. The ATC is basically, as Sibel says (ref) “an association in name and in charter, the reality is that it and other affiliated associations are the U.S. government, lobbyists, foreign agents, and MIC.” So the members include people like the CEO of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, and Boeing, I presume (I’m not sure). So it’s basically a lobbying group for the military industrial complex.

SH:  I see – and there are a lot of common interests there – I guess you have the Iron Triangle, the Revolving Door, where the politicians get jobs working at the firms and the regulators and the lobbyists and they all go back and forth in these little circles, and also internationally, you keep bringing up Turkey here, and the American Turkish Council, it makes sense when you think of the fact that America has been a NATO ally with Turkey since World War Two and has armed them and supplied them all along, that the American contractors – I guess what you’re saying is that this is their forum to make sure that Turkey buys American planes with American dollars, specifically from these corporations. It’s that kind of networking, right?

LR:  Exactly. And there’s obviously a Turkish component there as well in terms of the membership of the ATC.

SH:  Yeah – but what’s criminal about that Luke? This is the American way, buddy.

LR:  There’s nothing criminal about that, per se. Although, there was an article in Vanity Fair by David Rose last year – a 10 page article about Sibel’s story – where the ATC is described as “a front for criminal activity.” So it’s not so much the ostensibly appropriate activities that go on at the ATC – but there are also a bunch of illegal activities that are operating under the guise of the ATC according to Vanity Fair and a few other articles that we can point to.

SH:  And what kind of illegal activities are we talking about then?

LR:  Well – it’s important to have a good understanding of Turkey so that we can understand what’s going on at the ATC. Turkey is ruled by, let me call it a ‘governing elite’, that is known as Deep State in Turkey – which is basically a collection of drug dealers, the Turkish military, Turkish police, and the politicians. The reason that we know about the Turkish Deep State is because there was a car crash in 1996 at a place called Susurluk. This crash exposed the Deep State for everyone to see. It happened in the middle of the night at Susurluk, and ‘Susurluk’ has now become shorthand for the Deep State.

SH:  Oh – I remember something about this – all the different people in the car shouldn’t have been in the car together, right?

LR:  Exactly. They refer to it as Turkey’s Watergate. There was an MP, a police chief, a beauty queen who was also an assassin and her lover, a top Turkish gangster and hitman called Abdullah Catli.

SH:  I think I’ve seen that movie!

LR:  Right! It sounds like a joke. In the car they found these machine guns and whatnot – plus false diplomatic passports for the terrorist drug traffickers types and it was a real mess. Someone gave an American analogy: “Imagine a car accident at, say, a hotel in WVA. Several people are killed, among them Jeff Gannon, Douglas Feith, Warren Christopher, and Osama bin Laden.” That’s sort of the equivalent. I told Sibel that one, she thought it was hysterical.

SH:  So basically what you’re saying is that the regime in Turkey is no less corrupt than the regime in the US – and that basically military thugs run the place, dope dealers run the place, right? And not the good kind of dope – we’re talking heroin here.

LR:  Right – Turkey is the major transit point for Afghan heroin. Five tons per week (Ed: correction – that should be ‘per month’)

SH:  Now, I remember, Luke, in the 1990s Bill Clinton took the side of the Kosovo Liberation Army which were nothing but basically Osama Bin Laden type narco-terrorists in Kosovo – is that right?

LR:  That is correct.

SH:  And this is the same pipeline for drugs that they talked about then, right? The Golden Crescent – where it’s grown in Afghanistan and ships across Central Asia into southern and central Europe and up through Bosnia to the rest of Western Europe and the US right?

LR:  Umm – correct – except you left out Turkey! (ed: so did the recent World Bank report that I documented here) 90% of it goes through Turkey

SH:  That’s the bridge between Central Europe and Central Asia there

LR:  Right – Turkey is either blessed or cursed by geography. That’s for sure.

SH:  And part of the result of that geography, I guess, is that the Turks are in a way kind of Western. As previously mentioned they’re members of the NATO alliance, they’re extremely friendly with the Israeli government and even though they are a Muslim country, they’re kind of the bridge, figuratively between East and West, right?

LR:  Exactly.

SH:  So no matter who you are – if you’re the Arab powers, or Israel, or the US, or the European Union, or Afghanistan drug lords, it’s all about Turkey, really.

LR:  It’s all about Turkey – and the Turkish military, and the MIT, which is the intelligence agency there, pretty much know exactly what is going on. I’m not sure it would be correct to call it a police state but when you’re moving that amount of heroin through the country, they’re basically aware of, and in control of, and “actively participating in” (ref) the distribution of heroin through the country.

SH:  Didn’t you tell me that the Turkish Generals are even in control of the drug trade all the way back to Afghanistan? It’s not like they’re just receiving it in Turkey – they’re basically in charge of the whole operation from the poppy field on?

LR:  Well – not from the farmers directly, but one or two levels above the small aggregators that run around and connect the stuff from the farm gate.

SH:  But on the ground, in Afghanistan?

LR:  As I understand it. And then it either goes through Iran and Pakistan to Turkey, or it goes up through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan etc and around that way into Turkey – and that’s where all the wholesaling is done, and the manufacturing of the product, and the packaging and warehousing – all of it is done in Turkey (ref). Turkey supplies something like 80% of all European heroin, and 15% of American heroin.

SH:  How much money are we talking about every year?

LR:  That’s $40 billion worth, more or less, every year, at street prices. So there’s a fair margin in there for the people involved – and as we were saying, this is the Turkish Deep State that is controlling this business.

SH:  How close is the tie, then, between these Turkish heroin-dealing Generals and say the American Turkish Council back here in the States?

LR: Well – if we consider that the Turkish folks at the ATC in the US are basically the Generals, the people dealing with the military-industrial players like Lockheed Martin etc – in other words, they’re basically the “same people” (ref). The ATC is basically a front organization that is basically running this heroin operation as well. And they’re also being played by the military contractors. You know, Phil Giraldi is an ex-CIA agent – he used to work in Turkey, he used to be based in Ankara – he wrote a terrific article recently in the American Conservative magazine.

SH: I actually interviewed Phil – in part about Sibel’s case.

LR:  I’m not familiar with that interview… In any case, he wrote an article about Sibel’s case, perhaps 6 months ago, Sibel said it “sums up the case very well… this one nails it 100%” and Giraldi describes how Sibel’s case provides “a major insight into how neoconservatives distort US foreign policy and enrich themselves at the same time.” He also talks about how the military industrial complex, and the neocons, get together at places like the ATC and deal with the Turkish General staff.

SH:  Right – and when I interviewed Sibel Edmonds before, she told me that she thought that the AIPAC scandal and the Scooter Libby/Valerie Plame story were all basically just one onion and we’ve just got to peel off the layers and figure out what is going on.

LR:  Right – and I think the reason that she said that is because, as Giraldi mentions in his article, Richard Perle and Doug Feith are literally agents of Turkey, they were registered lobbyists for them for five or so years. Larry Franklin of course worked directly under Douglas Feith – so I think that’s perhaps how she connects that particular AIPAC case. (Ed note: actually, I was bullshitting here – I have no idea how Sibel connects the two cases. I presume that Sibel has more reason to believe that the two cases are related beyond the fact that Franklin worked for Feith.) Similarly, she effectively suggests that AIPAC and the ATC are essentially are the same organization, or at least have the same roles, with the same people, so I think that’s part of the analogy that she’s drawing there.

SH:  Now which powerful Americans from the Bush administration, people whose names we’d recognize, are members of this ATC, Luke?

LR:  Ummmm. Members from the Bush administration? Actually, there are a bunch of people there that cover generations – Brent Scowcroft is the chairman there. I can’t really name them off the top of my head – it’s basically all of them (ed: what a dumb response. I kinda blanked a bit. The list is here)

SH:  Now Perle and Feith and Grossman are all members, right?

LR:  Grossman’s a member. In Giraldi’s article, he talks about neocon friends of Turkey – I’m not sure how many of them are literally ‘members’ of the ATC, but they all give speeches there, for example. Giraldi points to Perle, Feith and Grossman as you’ve mentioned. Grossman was the former number 3 at the State Dept under Richard Armitage, Eric Edelman is there, he now has Feith’s old job as Undersecretary of Defence for Policy. Edelman was previously the ambassador in Turkey, a role that Grossman also used to have in the past.

SH:  Now this guy Doug Dickerson who tried to recruit Sibel – wasn’t Grossman his boss for a long period of time?

LR:  Yeah – in Ankara in fact, when Grossman was the ambassador in Turkey, Dickerson worked under him. Dickerson worked in weapons procurement. Dickerson in fact was suspected of being corrupt back in those days as well. There was an investigation into him – but it didn’t go anywhere for one reason or other. And Dickerson went on to get promoted again and again – the same thing that seems to happen to a lot of these people. Giraldi mentions a couple of others in his article – Paul Wolfowitz who is now at the World Bank, and former congressman Steven Solarz – he’s a lobbyist for Turkey as well.

SH:  Luke – do you think that these people, Grossman, Feith, Perle, that they’re involved in dealing heroin and such?

LR:  Let me put it this way, the broad outline of Sibel’s case which she has repeated again and again is that her case involves illegal arms trafficking, heroin smuggling, money laundering, and terrorist activity. And she says that you can’t look at those elements separately – it’s basically the same group of people involved in each of those different elements once you get high enough up the food chain. So if we take that as gospel, then guys like Feith and Perle are involved in the heroin smuggling business at one level or other.

SH:  I’m imagining something like, maybe, they’re doing some arms dealing, and then the money is being laundered at the same place with a lot of drug money and then a lot of that money is ending up in the hands of terrorists… is it more direct than that?

LR:  Well – I’m sure that they know how to keep their hands clean, generally, yeah. But as Sibel says, it’s the “same people” who are involved in each of those activities – and they all seem to be at the core of her case. Exactly which tasks they personally have, I don’t really know. But we know in Turkey, for example, it’s all the same people. It’s the Turkish Deep State that is running the shop. (Ed: why would we be surprised that it’s any different in the US?)

SH:  One thing we know, too, even though we haven’t heard all that Sibel Edmonds has to say, we do know that the Dept of Justice Inspector General’s office says that she’s telling the truth, and I believe there are senators that are on the record as saying they’ve heard what she has to say in private, during secret session, and they believe every word of it!

LR:  Yep. Exactly. And the reason they believe it, they say, is because everyone at the FBI tells them that it’s true. And because it’s all documented, and they’ve seen the documents to back up exactly what she says. (Ed note: as Sibel says in the movie: “Put out those tapes. Put out those wiretaps. Put out those documents. Put out the truth. The truth is going to hurt them. The truth is going to set me free.”)

SH:  Right – so this is all corroborated even though we don’t have our hands on it, by hearsay, we are to understand that it’s corroborated, I guess.

LR:  Right. Exactly. I have a separate blog to the one you mentioned earlier at sibeledmonds.blogspot.com – one of my buddies, Miguel, wrote a post there recently, it’s almost at the top of the blog at the moment, called “The Incredibly, Credible Sibel”  – and he lists in that post all of the reasons why we should believe what Sibel says – including quotes from the two senators who she’s dealt with the most, Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican, and Senator Pat Leahy as well, have verified her story. She’s told her story to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, and also of course the 911 Commission, all behind closed doors – and as you say, there’s also the Inspector General’s report, and a bunch of other places. There’s a new movie about Sibel’s case – particularly the nuclear black market side of it called Kill The Messenger, and in the movie they talk to former veteran FBI counter-intelligence agent called John Cole who was in charge of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran (ed note – that should be ‘India’, not Iran) – and he tells the story that he heard about Sibel’s case, and he investigated internally in the FBI and he says in the movie that was Sibel was claiming is “a 100 percent accurate” – so that’s just another point of validation from him.

Obviously, because she is gagged, and because we’ve had to put the pieces together a little bit piecemeal, when you get my version of the story, it might not be exactly the same as her version of it because I have to fill in some of the gaps a little bit, so I can’t tell you that what I’m telling you is 100% accurate, but everyone says that what she says is 100% accurate.

SH:  I’m glad that you brought that up because this is the USA and around here the government is supposed to recognize that all individuals are naturally born with the right to say whatever the hell they want to, and the fact that the courts have invoked the ‘State Secrets Privilege’ that exists nowhere in law, that is directly contrary to the first amendment of the constitution, that’s why you and I are sitting here sounding like conspiracy kooks connecting a bunch of disparate dots is because we can’t just ask her to tell us the story – they won’t let her, they’ll put her in prison if she does. They’ll put her in prison for talking.

LR:  That’s right. There have been a couple of good articles that have come out recently that do shed a lot of light on her case. One is the Phil Giraldi article that I mentioned earlier – she says it “nails her case 100%” – and the other is a two part article called “Highjacking of a Nation” (part one, part two) – I recommend that people go read that, particularly part two, which really lays out a lot of the things I’ve been talking about in terms of the heroin dealing in Turkey and she basically lays out as much of her case as she can – so go to NSWBC.org and read them.

SH:  OK – and what am I going to have to do to see a copy of “Kill The Messenger”? When is it playing?

LR:  You’ll have to be patient on that one – I get that same question every day. Unfortunately I don’t really have a time frame for that. I have a copy of it – it’s terrific.

SH:  Has it been shown here at all?

LR:  It played a couple of weeks ago in DC – Sibel had a private screening of 100 people or so – with whistleblower organizations (and the media) – they had a panel afterwards with James Bamford, the directors of the movie, Robert Parry, and a couple of others talking about how tragic it is that Sibel is gagged, and also discussing the appalling US media, which has been completely absent from her case, and completely doesn’t understand it, as well (ed: I presume)

SH:  Right – which is part of the reason why they haven’t paid any attention because they haven’t the slightest idea what it means – they don’t know what to do with it.

LR:  I’m not exactly sure of the reason. It might be similar to the fact that it’s difficult to criticize, for example, Israel in the US press. Similarly, it’s difficult to criticize Turkey. The good news is that the US media is soon going to get a chance to prove itself again on this case. There’s likely to be some new information that’s related to Sibel’s case that will be released next week, as I understand it. Sibel tells me that it’s ‘newsworthy’ so hopefully your famous media agrees and we’ll actually see some articles about it – although, heavens knows, given the way her story has been covered up so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t read anything about it.

SH:  Do you have any indication about what this news is about?

LR:  No. But as I said, she says it’s going to be newsworthy and, you talked about her being gagged, she’s going to use any momentum from the news next week to announce a new call, a new petition, calling for her case to be re-opened. She wants to have public, open hearings, in the Senate (ed: actually, it’ll probably be the House). That call will go out in the next week or two, I believe. She has a lot of supporters who all agree that her case should be brought out in the open.

SH:  You can see how that would be problematic, Luke, if her story is that the US is run by a bunch of terrorist-financing heroin dealers.

LR:  That is a problem! But the truth is the truth, isn’t it? As we’ve discussed, Sibel has already told a number of Senators and committees, including the 911 Commission, and they all know exactly what is going on – so we either have all of Congress knowing all this and doing nothing, or we have open hearings and force some change.

SH:  That’s kind of the way it happens with some of these stories – they’re too big, because if you ever got into it, you’d have to tear down the government of the US and start all over again.

LR:  Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing, Scott.

SH:  You’ll get no argument from me, pal. I know I’m not supposed to agree with foreigners on stuff like that… but what the hell!

LR:  Well – Sibel’s not a foreigner, and she calls it “treason” as you know. I think she called it treason on your show, and if that’s what’s going on at the highest level, if nothing’s done about it, then the whole National Security is at risk, right?

SH:  Absolutely – and that’s a good segue to the Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson connection – what the hell do they have to do with all this and the ATC?

LR:  Valerie Plame worked for an organization called Brewster Jennings – which is a CIA front company that was doing due diligence, trying to work out what the hell was going on, particularly in relation to WMD. Brewster Jennings, going back to when Sibel was working at the FBI, and even years before then as I understand it – probably back to 1996 – were investigating the ATC, and Turkey. Valerie Plame went to Turkey a number of times – so the ATC was being scoped by Brewster Jennings, and I guess that’s how the FBI has all the wiretaps that Sibel translated. Sibel joined the FBI the week after 911 as we discussed, but 75% of the stuff that she translated pre-dated 911, from the archives, going back to 1996. So she had an archive of 5 years of this stuff which detailed all of these crimes that had been going on.

SH:  Now, didn’t David Rose in the Vanity Fair article verify with other agents that there was this investigation that she was involved with, and yes it did go back to the mid-nineties and that investigation had been shut down for political reasons?

LR:  There was an investigation through 96, 97 I think where the FBI picked up a lot of information about former Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert – and in 1999, Sibel says the Clinton administration tried to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate the case, looking into Hastert and a few other people. That case was shut down by Ashcroft in 2001 when Sibel started reporting her findings to Congress. I don’t think that Clinton ever got around to appointing a Special Prosecutor because it was sort of at the time of the impeachment, as I understand it, and then George Bush was elected, or became President at least, and Ashcroft shut down the case. The Hastert element is just one small part of the story – as I mentioned earlier, the main part of Sibel’s case is the weapons trafficking which has three components, the heroin trafficking, the money laundering, and the terrorism – and where those things intersect. When you phrase it in those terms, it sounds like a pretty big puzzle for everyone to put the pieces together – but there are really three elements of the weapons trafficking – so let’s go through each of those. As we mentioned earlier in the Giraldi article, there is what we might call the quote ‘legal’ weapons trafficking – where you have organisations like the ATC lobbying Congress to provide Turkey with military funding. In fact, I think Turkey is second only to Saudi Arabia in terms of military aid – most of it comes in the form of grants from the US taxpayer – I think 80% of it comes from the US taxpayer.

SH:  Doesn’t everything?

LR:  Right. Now, Sibel talks a lot about the lobbying – from various former members of congress, and the lobbying that goes on at the ATC – I suspect that the way that Turkey gets a lot of this military aid is that people at the ATC are bribing congressmen, and forcing them to vote for these weapons. The second element is that both Israel and Turkey, once they get US weapons technology, they re-export it to other countries which aren’t allowed to have US technology. Giraldi describes how they do that – the Defence ministries in both of those countries simply create what he calls ‘false end user certificates’ – which are basically documents that say, yep, it’s ok to get the technology from the US and then sell it to countries like China and India and other countries that are ostensibly enemies of the US.

SH:  Now, do the Americans who are selling these weapons know that’s what is going to happen to them?

LR:  Ummm – I presume that they know and don’t care – I don’t really know.

SH:  Ok – and the third aspect?

LR:  Right – and this is the focus of the movie Kill The Messenger – and that’s the nuclear black market – and that has a couple of components. Sibel’s case ties into the AQ Khan network on a number of different fronts. There’s a company in New Jersey called Giza Technologies – which is a supplier to the AQ Khan network. Sibel apparently heard some wiretaps from these guys – from the CEO, Zeki Bilmen. He exported the stuff to South Africa, and the minute it got to South Africa, his agent over there would turn it around and immediately send it to Pakistan. So that’s one problem – and the American company, Giza Technologies, is still floating along without a hiccup – Sibel says that it appears that somebody wants to protect this guy, and enable him to continue to sell these things into the AQ Khan network. She says business is going great there – there are boatloads of stuff going every day to places like South Africa and Dubai, I think, and other places.

SH:  OK – and for people who don’t know anything about the AQ Khan network, basically what we’re talking about is he is Pakistan’s heroic, “rogue”, scientist, ran this nuclear black market ring from the late 1980s through the early 1990s and it’s through him that the Iranians got a lot of their equipment and the Libyans as well, right?

LR:  And North Korea.

SH:  and North Korea didn’t enrich uranium with anything they got from him, despite all the accusations to the contrary, but what you’re saying is that American companies are involved in nuclear technology to countries where the technology is, or was, getting diverted immediately into this AQ Khan black market network that ultimately American officials are in on this, bribed to look the other way and so forth, and America is putting nuclear technology in the hands of our presumed enemies, basically?

LR:  Correct.

SH:  And is this why Sibel Edmonds is throwing around the word ‘treason’? Is she talking about these house-hold names, these high level people in the State and Defence Departments involved in this?

LR:  Again… well.. yes basically. The clients of AQ Khan, the DPRK, Iran and Libya – they’re the three that we know about – but it appears that there another 8 countries that were possibly clients – and we don’t publicly know who else has this technology.

SH:  OK – and I know that you haven’t published this yet, but you have a new interview with a former CIA guy stationed in Pakistan (ed: actually, he was the CIA exert in Pakistan’s nuclear program, Richard Barlow) who’s told you that the CIA and the American Govt knew all about AQ Khan all along – is that right?

LR:  Correct – they knew from 1976 when Khan first “acquired” the blueprints in Holland. It’s problematic, right – but if you look at Sibel’s case we see exactly the same thing – we have companies like Giza supplying the network, and nobody does anything. And we have also other Turkish companies who are major members of the ATC who are literally manufacturing components for AQ Khan and sending them either to Pakistan or to Dubai for repackaging so that they can skirt the import restrictions and re-export them.

SH:  Ok – how do I tie these elements together, Luke? This company in New Jersey, what does it have to do with the ATC and the neocons?

LR:  I don’t specifically know, other than Sibel overheard wiretaps with the CEO of Giza exporting this stuff to Pakistan to AQ Khan’s network, and the CEO is still walking free – so we have at least that information.

SH:  And you’re saying that there are other companies involved with this that you can tie to the ATC – is that right?

LR:  Correct – there are at least two companies. Sibel mentions them in her Hijacking of A Nation article, Part Two. One is called EKA, and I can’t remember the name of the other one – but Sibel mentions the guys, they’re actually friends of AQ Khan (ed: I’m not sure that they were friends – I should have said that they’d met repeatedly) – and they were shipping stuff to Khan, or they were shipping it straight to Libya. Some of the components were found in the Libya bust in 2003 – and again, all this has been going on for God knows how long, and the USG is doing nothing. There’s a third element in the nuclear black market story that Sibel talks about, and that is Turkish companies placing doctoral students at nuclear weapons labs, I guess Los Alamos and Sandia and wherever else – so that they can steal secrets.

SH:  Really? And she knows this from overhearing this on the FBI wiretaps?

LR:  I can only assume that’s where she learnt it

SH:  Didn’t she only work as a contract employee for the FBI for just a few months? Did she just stumble right into the rats nest or what?

LR:  It’s a hell of a story isn’t it? The answer to that – because she did uncover so much, some people are a bit sceptical that she could have possibly overheard all of that while she was there. But, as I understand it, the reason why she uncovered all of this important information is because the agents that she was dealing with knew that they had been getting shoddy translations in the past, and so they pointed Sibel to particular documents where they expected to find something significant, because of, say, the participants in the phone call, but when they got their ‘translations’ in the first instance, the translation said ‘oh – there’s nothing important here.’ As an example, let’s say there was a phone call between Osama and President Bush, and the agent got a report saying ‘There’s nothing interesting here – they were just talking about having coffee.’ And so when Sibel joined the FBI, immediately after 911, the agents were running around desperate to put the story together…

SH:  Right – these aren’t the spin masters, the political agents, these are the actual cops who want to solve the case…

LR: Exactly (ed: do I use that word a lot? or is it just that Horton always knows everything?) And Sibel says that they are all terrific. So they’re trying to solve these cases, and they ask Sibel (to re-translate) and she says “wow – this is important”

LR:  Exactly. In fact, this other translator, Melek Can Dickerson, even before Sibel reported the possible espionage, the field agent that she was working with, I think Dennis Saccer, had also suspected that Dickerson was involved in espionage. So – for one reason or other, he knew that the product that Dickerson was churning out was wrong. That’s why, I presume, he asked Sibel to re-translate, because he had a sense that the stuff that he was getting from Dickerson was nonsense.

SH:  Ok – Now is it the case that one of the things that she overheard was a call from the ATC to American officials to have some 911 suspects safely removed from the country?

LR:  A lot of people think that Sibel has the holy-grail regarding 911 – but that’s not the case, according to Sibel. She wrote a letter to the 911 Commission when their report came out and she says that basically all of the information that she knows about 911 is contained in that letter. She outlines a few things – one is the corruption in the translation unit involving Dickerson and her boss, Mike Feghali. The second thing that she mentions in the letter is that the FBI had information in April in 2001 that they had a long-term informant who used to be an Iranian intelligence agent who was in charge of Iran’s Afghan program – the FBI had been using him for at least a decade – and he told the FBI in April 2001 that Osama Bin Ladin was planning a major terrorist attack in the US, targeting four or five cities, and the attack was going to involve airplanes, that some of the individuals who were going to carry out this attack were already in place in the US, and that the attack was going to be carried out soon – in a few months. So they had all of this information and did nothing with it apparently.

SH:  Now – isn’t that the case over and over again? It seems like the pile of leads leading to those hijackers was getting pretty thick by the time those planes crashed, wasn’t it, Luke?

LR:  It certainly was – I do know that this information was passed up to Thomas Frields – at least to that level, immediately, after the interview with this Iranian guy took place.

SH:  And who’s he?

LR:  I forget his title – I think he was the counter-terrorism guy in Washington. (Ed note: correct. “Special Agent in Charge of Counterterrorism Thomas Frields at the FBI Washington Field Office”). As I mentioned before, Sibel testified to the 911 Commission and she told them all of this information, and none of it got into the report. As I understand it, the report listed a bunch of missed opportunities, but they didn’t include in that list the fact that they were told that Osama Bin Laden was about to hijack planes and use them as weapons, in 4 or 5 cities, in a few months, and that the hijackers were already place. That sounds like a “missed opportunity” right? It wasn’t included in the report. And there was other information that Sibel reported that was excluded from the report

SH:  and somebody at that ATC called Marc Grossman at the State Department and said ‘hey, I need you to spring my buddies from jail’?

LR:  Well – I’ll have to check the details on that. I’m not sure if it was a guy from the ATC necessarily, it may have been another target they were listening to, and it might have been a conversation between two targets saying ‘we need to call Grossman and get him to spring our buddies’ – but basically, yes, 3 of their buddies had been arrested in the post-911 sweep, and were presumably suspects for one reason or other, and because Grossman was asked, he made the relevant phone calls and freed these guys immediately.

SH:  But Ashcroft rounded up all kinds of people, so is there anything that says that these guys actually knew anything or were in on any of this?

LR:  Not that I know – but it’s outrageous that Grossman can do that at the drop of a hat. And let me repeat, these people that were having the conversation were apparently targets of the investigations, so we can presume that there’s at least some suspicion about them already – and if they want to call Grossman to get their friends out of jail, you know, it’s pretty dodgy.

SH:  There was something about blueprints being sent overseas – is that blueprints of the WTC towers?

LR:  Well, this is also from Sibel’s open letter to the 911 Commission. In, I think, June of 2001, there was an Iranian guy who was in jail on some narcotics charges – and they were concerned that he was involved with something more nefarious, so they wiretapped his phone in jail. He called one of his friends, as I understand, and asked his buddy to send blueprints, pictures, and the building composites – what the buildings were made of – for a number of different skyscrapers – and to send those blueprints to somewhere in the Middle East.

SH:  Did that include the WTC towers?

LR:  Ummm – I think that the description that I have from Sibel is that the buildings were “over 100 stories” tall.

SH:  Ok – so there aren’t too many of those… Was she just being coy there? Does the gag order get between her and saying the name of the buildings?

LR:  I presume so – but there aren’t many others – Sears Tower – but in any case, these blueprints were sent to the Mid East – but again, none of this information was included in the 911 Commission report – for one reason or other. It’s crazy.

SH:  Ok – we’re running out of time here – is there anything important I’m missing here Luke?

LR:  I think that’s about it, Scott – other than, as of next week, hopefully we can get everyone to support the new call for these hearings. I’ll have the details on my blog, of course, and I presume/hope you will as well. Hopefully we’ll see it on the front page of the major newspapers in your country.
—————
end transcript

New Sibel Edmonds Movie to Screen Feb 3, with Panel

On Saturday Feb 3, there will be a private screening of the movie about Sibel Edmonds’ case, ‘Kill the Messenger,’ in DC at Busboys & Poets. I can’t be there, unfortunately. Dammit.

After the movie there will be a moderated panel discussion covering the following topics: the current state of the U.S. Main media, unconstitutional government secrecy, and national security whistleblowers.

Details about the movie, the panel, and some other stuff downstairs.

From the invitation:
_______________
The panel will include experts on media, secrecy and whistleblowers; below is a list of confirmed panel members:

Mathieu Verboud, Film Director, Kill the Messenger- In 2005, Mathieu Verboud and Jean Robert Viallet co-directed “The Lost Children of Tranquility Bay,” an investigative documentary on ultra violent boot camps for troubled teens in the U.S. “Kill The Messenger,” “Une Femme a abattre,” is the second film co-directed by Verboud and Viallet. This exclusive investigative piece tells the story of Sibel Edmonds, an ex-FBI employee fighting to expose a major espionage case, and its subsequent cover-up by the US government.

James Bamford, Author, Investigative Journalist – Mr. Bamford is a bestselling author and one of the country’s leading writers on intelligence and national security issues. His books include The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets, the only two books on the ultrasecret National Security Agency, and most recently A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies, which Time called “probably the best one-volume companion to the harrowing events in the war on terrorism since 1996.” Mr. Bamford has also written for many magazines, including investigative cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine and The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and is a contributing writer for Rolling Stone. He recently won the 2006 National Magazine Award for Reporting, the highest honor in the magazine industry. He also spent a decade as the Washington Investigative Producer for the ABC News program, World News Tonight, and was a distinguished visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Robert Parry, Investigative Journalist, Consortium News- Mr. Parry is an investigative journalist. During the 1980’s he worked for Associated Press and Newsweek, and broke a number of Iran-Contra stories. He was the first journalist to report on Oliver North’s activities in the White House basement, and the first to describe the Nicaraguan Contras’ involvement with Cocaine traffickers. In 1995, he established Consortium News as an online publication dedicated to investigative journalism. Mr. Parry has written several books, including Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the press and “Project Truth” and Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.

Ben Wizner, Attorney, ACLU- Ben Wizner has been a staff attorney at the ACLU since 2001. He is counsel in the ACLU’s challenge to the rendition to torture of an innocent German citizen (El-Masri v. Tenet), as well as in the ACLU’s suits seeking to expose FBI and Pentagon surveillance of domestic groups and individuals. He was part of the legal team representing Sibel Edmonds in her suit challenging her unlawful termination by the FBI. Ben is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law.

Stephen Kohn, attorney, KK&C; Chairman of the Board, National Whistleblower Center- Mr. Kohn is one of the nation’s foremost experts in the area of whistleblower protection. Mr. Kohn wrote the first legal treatise on whistleblowing and has successfully litigated many of the nation’s landmark whistleblower cases, including Sibel Edmonds’ case. He is a former Clinical Supervisor at the Antioch School of Law. He has a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law, an M.A. in Political Science from Brown University, and a B.S. in Social Education from Boston University. Mr. Kohn is the author of numerous books and law review articles on whistleblowing and the rights of political dissidents.

Kristina Borjesson– An award-winning print and broadcast journalist for more than twenty-five years, Kristina Borjesson is a noted media critic and investigative journalist. Her latest book, Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11: Top Journalists Speak Out contains a series of candid conversations with leading US journalists, including national security and intelligence reporters, examining mainstream press coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war. Most recently, Borjesson has been producing an investigative documentary for HDNet’s Dan Rather Reports. The program focuses on key individuals in the US government responsible for generating and disseminating the false information used to take the US to war in Iraq.

Background: “Kill the Messenger,” a documentary produced by Zadig Productions, directed by French filmmakers Mathieu Verboud and Jean Robert Viallet, has been featured in prime time on Canal + in France and on Be TV in Belgium, and will also be aired in Australia, on SBS. The documentary explores the abuses behind the State Secrets Privilege as invoked in FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds’ case as well as highlighting the travails and persecution of US national security whistleblowers.

The filmmakers, Verboud and Viallet, spent nearly two years interviewing witnesses and researching the invocation and implementation of the state secrets privilege in Edmonds’ case. Based on their documented findings and interviews with experts such as David Albright, Philip Giraldi, John Cole, Joseph Trento, Glenn Fine, and others familiar with Edmonds’ case, the film presents a terrifying picture of Turkish networks’ activities in global nuclear black-market, narcotics and illegal arms trafficking activities in the United States, and examines the extraordinary efforts of officials within the US Government to insure that the secrecy surrounding Edmonds’ case be maintained at any cost – from Edmonds’ termination from the FBI, to invoking the State Secrets Privilege, to gagging the US Congress.

To view the trailer, an exclusive interview with the directors, background information, and more Click Here

_______________

The panel will be recorded, and I’ll post the video here when it becomes available.

I understand that there will be a number of journalists at the screening – with any luck, we will soon see some more articles written about Sibel’s case. About time, don’t you think?

In case you missed it, Jeff Stein wrote an article in Congressional Quarterly quoting the movie on Monday:

“I thought that I could be of some assistance to her,” (John M. Cole, a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent) says in “Kill the Messenger,” a new documentary film about her case, “because I knew she was doing the right thing. I knew because she was right.”

Cole tells how he had “talked to people who had read her file, who had read the investigative report, and they were telling me a totally different story” than FBI officials, who had only perfunctorily investigated her allegations.

“They were telling me that Sibel Edmonds was a 100 percent accurate, that management knew that she was correct.”

But they buried it.

In 2004, after months of harassment by superiors for his defense of Edmonds, Cole resigned.

John Cole was actually working on a related case to Sibel’s – and he too has reported the details of the case to both the Dept of Justice’s Inspector General and Congress.

From the Vanity Fair article about Sibel:

“Now 44, (John Cole) joined the F.B.I. in 1985. By the late 1990’s, he was running undercover operations in the Washington area, focusing on counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence. Later, while playing a key role in the 9/11 investigation, he became the F.B.I.’s national counter-intelligence program manager for India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. “

Did you catch that? The FBI drove their key counter-intelligence manager for Pakistan and Afghanistan (and 911) out of his job because he defended the “100% accurate” Sibel. Read that again, and then line up to see the movie when it gets released in the US.

In the meantime, we’ll have some action items for you in the coming weeks to help support Sibel. We have some good news on the way. Stay tuned.

Oh – and you can see the reviews of the movie from France here.

I’m going to be offline for 2 weeks immediately after the screening of the movie, but my buddy Miguel will be posting any media followup from the screening/panel at sibeledmonds.blogspot.com

Sibel Edmonds and the NSWBC are asking for your help

Sibel Edmonds’ group, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), is holding a fundraiser.

With the Democrats taking over Congress, we have a great opportunity to understand what the hell happened these last 6 years and to punish those responsible. We also have a opportunity to make sure that things don’t get any worse.

But this won’t happen by magic. We need whistleblowers, and whistleblowers need NSWBC, and the NSWBC needs our help. You can donate here.

details downstairs
Being a whistleblower sucks. A recent USA Today article described it thusly:

Even advocates have begun to dissuade some government employees from coming forward.

“When I get calls from people thinking of blowing the whistle, I tell them ‘Don’t do it,'” says William Weaver, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and a senior adviser to the National Security whistle-blowers Coalition. “Most of the time they go ahead and do it anyway and end up with their lives destroyed.”

Those who come forward often face harassment, investigation, character assassination and firing — not to mention the toll their whistle-blowing takes on their families.

The reason, I presume, that most whistleblowers “go ahead and do it anyway” is because they feel it’s their patriotic duty to do so, and they feel that fixing a particular problem is worth the cost.

Unfortunately, I presume that the reason Weaver often counsels against blowing the whistle is because more often than not, the problem doesn’t get fixed. Congress doesn’t hold hearings, and the perpetrators aren’t held accountable. Nothing happens – except the retaliation, resulting in the destruction of the whistleblower’s career, their family, and their sanity. It’s all pain, with no gain.

That’s why we, and the whistle-blowers, need the NSWBC. Among other things, the NSWBC helps mitigate the ‘pain’ and helps maximize the likelihood, and the magnitude, of the ‘gain.’

The NSWBC helps maximize the gain by publicizing cases, assisting whistle-blowers in ‘packaging’ their cases and ‘lobbying’  Congress to open investigations and hold oversight hearings etc.

And the NSWBC is helping to minimize the pain of whistleblowing by pushing for new legislation. The NSWBC has drafted  the “first ever meaningful whistleblowers’ protection model bill” and already has two congressional offices sponsoring the bill. The new year will see a new push to get this legislation passed – starting with a petition drive at the end of January (I’ll post the details as soon as they become available.)

We’re all looking forward to Henry Waxman and John Conyers and others holding hearings in 2007 – investigating the Iraq war, the illegal spying, and a long list of other crimes. Imagine how much more explosive, and effective, these hearing will be if whistleblowers feel comfortable, and protected, in coming forward. We’d have more whistleblowers, they’d be more forthcoming, and they’ll be treated appropriately. That’s why we need the Dems to pass the whistle-blower protection bill, and soon. And that’s why we need the NSWBC. And that’s why we should support them.

NSWBC already has an amazing list of members – among them, Daniel Ellsberg, Larry Johnson, Karen Kwiatkowski, Ray McGovern, Russ Tice, Robert Wright, and of course, Sibel Edmonds – with an average of over 20 years experience working to keep the country safe. Imagine how many other would-be whistleblowers there are out there, imagine how much more we could learn from them, and imagine how much safer we’d all be if we could entice more whistleblowers to come forward.  

We will be safer, and we will have more accoutability, if we can change the pain/gain equation for whistleblowers. That’s why we need the NSWBC. And that’s why we should support them. Do you agree?

Sibel describes how the funds will be used thusly:

Now, we are entering a new stage. For this stage we need resources to help us move forward. We need resources in getting help with research and legislative initiatives. We need resources to review all whistleblower applicants’ cases. We need resources for necessary travel and conference meetings. We need resources for the expansion of our website and publications.
We need your help to do this.

Please help us by donating to our collective cause, by informing all your friends, family members and supporters and asking for their support and donations. Here is the link:

http://nswbc.org/donation.htm

Please send this link to everyone you know, and ask them to support whistleblowers. Enable us to get our voices heard.

If you’d like to help Sibel, and the NSWBC, and all of us, you can donate here.

(and as I mentioned, there’ll be another chance to help at the end of January – with the petition to Congress to pass the whistleblower protection legislation.)

Sibel Edmonds & the Neocons’ Turkish Gravy-Train

Sibel Edmonds wrote a fantastic White Paper recently called “The Highjacking of a Nation- Part 2” which basically laid out the facts of her case for all to see.

In a chapter titled “The Real Lords of the Poppy Fields” she noted that

  1. most of Afghanistan’s heroin & opium is processed and trafficked  through Turkey
  2. “Heroin trafficking is also the main source of funding for the al-Qaeda terrorists “
  3. Turkey is a haven for (Al Qaeda’s) sources of funding.

Sibel then notes that

“It is puzzling to observe that in reporting this major artery (Turkey) of terrorists’ funding, the U.S. mainstream media and political machine do not dare to go beyond the poppy fields of Afghanistan and the fairly insignificant low level Afghan warlords overseeing the crops.”

I was therefore curious to see how the World Bank’s recent report on the heroin industry would deal with Turkey’s role – particularly given that Paul Wolfowitz and most of the other neocons have substantial financial incentives in supporting Turkey.

The dog didn’t bark. Again.

Details downstairs.
Sibel Edmonds recently wrote a fantastic White Paper called “The Highjacking of a Nation- Part 2: The Auctioning of Former Statesmen & Dime a Dozen Generals” which basically laid out the facts of her case for all to see.

Sibel then notes that

“It is puzzling to observe that in reporting this major artery (Turkey) of terrorists’ funding, the U.S. mainstream media and political machine do not dare to go beyond the poppy fields of Afghanistan and the fairly insignificant low level Afghan warlords overseeing the crops.”

I was therefore curious to see how the World Bank’s recent comprehensive 228 page report “Afghanistan’s Drug Industry: Structure, Functioning, Dynamics, and Implications for Counter-Narcotics Policy” would deal with Turkey’s role – particularly given that World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz and most of the other neocons have substantial financial incentives for  supporting Turkey.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the dog didn’t bark. Again.

Let’s have a closer look at the title of the World Bank report: “Afghanistan’s Drug Industry: Structure, Functioning, Dynamics, and Implications for Counter-Narcotics Policy”

Note that this isn’t a report ‘about Afghanistan’ – but about the INDUSTRY – and given that Afghanistan supplies 90% of the global heroin market, we might expect to read in the report at least something about the major purchasers of Afghani product.We might even expect to learn something about the major traffickers. We might even expect to learn something about the major trafficking routes. Right?

In fact, the title of the report promises to look at the “Structure, Functioning, Dynamics, and Implications for Counter-Narcotics Policy” – and the report does pretend to cover many of these issues, using fancy terms like ‘value chain analysis,’ ‘vertical price structure’ and ‘price
margins at different stages’ and so on – all the things that you’d expect to find in an industry analysis. However, the analysis is conducted primarily (with some notable, and telling, exceptions) on an ‘in-country’ basis – which is essentially meaningless for analysing a global industry. This World Bank report is akin to an attempt to understand the global soft-drink market by looking really, really closely at the logistics around Atlanta – and as Sibel suggests, the ‘frame of reference’ of this report is unlikely to be an accident, and is most likely an intentional attempt to whitewash Turkey’s role in the heroin industry.

According to the State Deparment’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs’ 2006 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Turkey is a key player in this industry:

Turkey

I. Summary.

Turkey is a major transit route for Southwest Asian opiates to Europe, and serves as a base and refining center for major narcotics traffickers and brokers…. While most of the heroin trafficked via Turkey is marketed in Western Europe, an increasing amount of heroin and opium also is smuggled from Turkey to the U.S., but not in quantities sufficient to have a significant impact on the U.S.

II. Status of Country

Turkey is a major transshipment point. Turkey is also a base of operations for international narcotics traffickers and associates trafficking in opium, morphine base, heroin, precursor chemicals and other drugs. The majority of these opiates originate in Afghanistan, and are ultimately trafficked to Western Europe. A smaller but still not insignificant amount of heroin is trafficked to the U.S. via Turkey… Turkish authorities continue to seize large amounts of heroin and precursor chemicals, such as acetic anhydride. It is estimated that multi-ton amounts of heroin are smuggled through Turkey each month. Some heroin is still being refined in Turkey.

[SNIP]

Drug Flow/Transit. Turkey remains a major route, refining center and storage, production and staging area, for the flow of heroin to Europe. Turkish-based traffickers and brokers operate in conjunction with narcotics smugglers, laboratory operators, and money launderers in and outside Turkey. They finance and control the smuggling of opiates to and from Turkey. Afghanistan is the source of most of the opiates reaching Turkey. Morphine and heroin base are smuggled overland from Afghanistan and Pakistan via Iran. Opiates and hashish also are smuggled to Turkey overland from Afghanistan via Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Traffickers in Turkey illegally acquire the heroin precursor chemical, acetic anhydride, from sources in Western Europe, the Balkans and Russia. For fiscal year 2004, 2,304 liters of acetic anhydride were seized in, or destined for, Turkey. Some criminal elements in Turkey reportedly have interests in heroin laboratories operating near the Iranian-Turkish border in Iran. Turkish-based traffickers control much of the heroin marketed to Western Europe.

That’s quite straightforward – Turkey is a key player up and down the value chain – yet the comprehensive 228 page report from Paul Wolfowitz’ World Bank essentially ignores Turkey’s role using various mechanisms of sophistry and mendacity – just as Sibel predicted.

At least three quarters of all heroin sold in Western Europe comes from Turkey – 4 to 6 tons every month – yet the World Bank report mentions Turkey exactly… once!

Here’s the reference, in all it’s glory:

The large dealers in both Lashkar Gah city and Kandahar claimed that they deal directly with buyers in Pakistan, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

That single reference to Turkey is all that the report could muster.

Why would Wolfowitz want to erase any mention of Turkey from his report?

Sibel says:

It is puzzling to observe that in reporting this major artery (Turkey) of terrorists’ funding, the U.S. mainstream media and political machine do not dare to go beyond the poppy fields of Afghanistan and the fairly insignificant low level Afghan warlords overseeing the crops. Think about it; we are talking about nearly $40 billion worth of products in the final stage. Do you believe that those primitive Afghan warlords, clad in shalvars, sporting long ragged beards, and walking with long sticks handle transportation, lab processing, more transportation, distribution, and sophisticated laundering of the proceeds? If yes, then think again. This multi billion-dollar industry requires highly sophisticated networks and people. So, who are the real lords of Afghanistan’s poppy fields?

[SNIP]

Since the 1950s Turkey has played a key role in channeling into Europe and the U.S. heroin produced in the “Golden Triangle” comprised of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. These operations are run by mafia groups closely controlled by the MIT (Turkish Intelligence Agency) and the military. According to statistics compiled in 1998, Turkey’s heroin trafficking brought in $25 billion in 1995 and $37.5 billion in 1996. That amount makes up nearly a quarter of Turkey’s GDP. Only criminal networks working in close cooperation with the police and the army could possibly organize trafficking on such a scale. The Turkish government, MIT and the Turkish military, not only sanctions, but also actively participates in and oversees the narcotics activities and networks.

[SNIP]

We know that Al Qaeda and Taliban’s main source of funding is the illegal sale of narcotics. Based on all the reports, facts, and expert statements, we know that Turkey is a major, if not the top, player in the transportation, processing, and distribution of all the narcotics derived from the Afghan poppies, and as a result, it is the major contributing country to Al Qaeda. Yet, to date, more than five years into our over exhaustive ‘war on terror’ propaganda, have we heard any mentioning of, any tough message to, any sanction against, or any threat that was issued and targeted at Turkey?

In other words, the Turkish ‘Deep State’ – which includes the Turkish government, mafia-types, terrorist types (including al-Qaeda), the Turkish military and the Turkish Intelligence Agency – are major players in the highly-profitable heroin trafficking business. These same Deep-State players are also in a key position to profit from military sales – and have ‘co-opted’ a bunch of neocons, congressmen, former congressmen, lobbyists, and ‘dime-a-dozen generals’ in the US.

Phil Giraldi carries the story a little further:

Turkey benefits from the relationship (with Israel & US)  by securing general benevolence and increased aid from the US Congress – as well as access to otherwise unattainable military technology. The Turkish General Staff has a particular interest because much of the military spending is channeled through companies in which the generals have a financial stake, making for a very cozy and comfortable business arrangement. The commercial interest has also fostered close political ties, with the American Turkish Council, American Turkish Cultural Alliance and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations all developing warm relationships with AIPAC and other Jewish and Israel advocacy groups throughout the US.

Someone has to be in the middle to keep the happy affair going, so enter the neocons, intent on securing Israel against all comers and also keen to turn a dollar. In fact the neocons seem to have a deep and abiding interest in Turkey, which, under other circumstances, might be difficult to explain. Doug Feith’s International Advisors Inc, a registered agent for Turkey in 1989 – 1994, netted $600,000 per year from Turkey, with Richard Perle taking $48,000 annually as a consultant. Other noted neoconservatives linked to Turkey are former State Department number three, Marc Grossman, current Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz and former congressman Stephen Solarz. The money involved does not appear to come from the Turkish government, and FBI investigators are trying to determine its source and how it is distributed. Some of it may come from criminal activity, possibly drug trafficking, but much more might come from arms dealing. Contracts in the hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars provide considerable fat for those well placed to benefit.

Investigators are also looking at Israel’s particular expertise in the illegal sale of US military technology to countries like China and India. Fraudulent end-user certificates produced by Defense Ministries in Israel and Turkey are all that is needed to divert military technology to other, less benign, consumers. The military-industrial-complex/neocon network is also well attested. Doug Feith has been associated with Northrup Grumman for years, while defense contractors fund many neocon-linked think tanks and “information” services. Feith, Perle and a number of other neocons have long had beneficial relationships with various Israeli defense contractors.

It appears that Mr Wolfowitz is interested in maintaining the neocon Turkish-gravy train. As Giraldi notes, the source of the gravy is apparently part heroin trafficking, part Military- Industrial- Complex (MIC). In fact, it might be difficult to disentangle these two sources of gravy – Turkey receives billions of dollars in military aid every year from the US, and the Turkish military and intelligence services “actively participates in and oversees the narcotics activities.”

Wolfowitz, of course, has strong ties to many of the neocons who are directly on Turkey’s payroll. He first teamed up with Richard Perle in 1969 to sell the antiballistic missile (ABM) system to Congress, before Wolfowitz joined Perle in Scoop Jackson’s office in the 70s.

Both Wolfowitz and Feith have previously worked at MIC giant, Northrop Grumman.
When Wolfowitz was appointed Deputy Secretary at DoD in 2001, he convinced Rumsfeld to appoint Douglas Feith as Undersecretary for Policy (a position that Wolfowitz himself held from 1989-93), and then installed Feith as the head of the Office of Special Plans. (Perle & Feith have been working together since 1982)

Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith have all been investigated for leaking classified information to Israel – primarily to assist defense contractors in illegal arms sales. Perle’s first foray was in 1969, Feith’s was in 1972, and Wolfowitz’ in 1978.

In fact, Perle, Wolfowitz and Feith (and other neocons such as Ledeen and Stephen Bryen) appear to have made ‘secondary’ careers out of trying to either eliminate arms controls treaties (e.g. Feith),  or finding legal and other ways of circumventing export restrictions – such as by using fraudulent end-user certificates, or simply lying to Congress to ensure that the military sales continue as they did with Pakistan in Richard Barlow’s case.

Curiously, this behaviour of the neocons – selling weapons to Pakistan, China and other ‘enemy’ countries – appears to run counter to the purported neocon goal of maintaining and extending American military supremacy. However, their actions always appear to dovetail quite closely with the desires of their MIC paymasters.

How does the report manage to ignore Turkey?

One trick used in the report is to simply ring-fence the analysis at Afghanistan’s borders (and only selected borders at that) – for example, we learn that:

The border price for opium… was estimated as follows :

  • estimated share of opium going to Iran: around 90 %
  • estimates share of opium going to Pakistan: 6 %
  • estimated share of opium going to Tajikistan: 4 %

The border price for heroin… is calculated as follows:

  • estimated share of heroin going to Iran: 30 %
  • estimated share of heroin going first to Pakistan (much of it onward to Iran): 50 %
  • estimated share of heroin going to Tajikistan: 20 %

This is remarkable for a number of reasons.

Firstly, note that it’s OK for the report to mention that the export of heroin to Pakistan is merely in transit to Iran, but apparently it’s not OK to mention that the product in Iran is merely on it’s way to safe-haven in Turkey where it will move into the ‘industrialisation’ phase to be processed and stored and prepared for mass export with the help of NATO in Belgium, and the Turkish Consulates in England, in Chicago, and elsewhere.

Again, from the State Department’s own International Narcotics Control Strategy Report

A large share of the opiates smuggled into Iran from Afghanistan is smuggled to neighboring countries for further processing and transportation to Europe. Turkey is the main processing destination for these opiates, most of which are bound for consumption in Russia and Europe. Essentially all of the morphine base… in Iran, is likely moving towards Turkey…

Secondly, it’s interesting that the World Bank report has 100% of the heroin being exported through Iran, Pakistan and Tajikistan. There’s no mention of Uzbekistan, or Turkmenistan – which “are vital transit countries” according to Interpol. In fact, Sibel says that much of the heroin travels to Turkey from Afghanistan through the Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan).

Another handy trick that the report uses to sidestep the issue of Turkey’s involvement is to magically put most of the ‘value chain’ in a black box – whereby all transactions and ‘value capture’ between Afghanistan’s borders and the wholesale level in the destination country are opaque.

IV. THE VERTICAL STRUCTURE OF OPIATE PRICES
Opium and its products dramatically increase in price along the “value chain” from
raw opium produced on rural farms in Afghanistan to local markets, wholesale trade, processing into heroin or morphine, trade in neighboring countries, transit to distant consuming countries, and ultimately wholesale and retail prices in these countries. The “vertical” structure of prices can provide clues about how the drug industry is organized and its evolution over time…

Vertical Price Structure
Although price data are relatively weak for the parts of the opium “value chain” after the farm-gate level and before reaching prices in distant consuming countries, it is possible to piece together a rough picture of the vertical price structure and in particular the price margins at different stages…

Indeed – a lot of that information would be very helpful. The price margins at each stage would demonstrate the obscene profits of ‘The Real Lords of the Poppy Fields’ – those who control the value-chain steps between the ‘price takers’ at the farm gate and those who supply the street dealers. But if the World Bank included that information in their report, they’d have to shine a light on Wolfowitz’ friends in Turkey.  We can’t have that, of course, so instead we get ‘analysis’ which ignores all of the value-adding activity conducted in places like Turkey. For example:

Notice how the 7000% mark-up in between the first two steps is simply ignored – it almost appears to be a wilfull omission.

The report does acknowledge, in passing, that there might be some ‘high pay-offs’ in looking at the major players in between the farmers and retail end dealers – before deciding not to look at the major players:

The value chain for opium/opiates, while anchored in price-taking behavior at either end, appears to involve much more active price setting in the middle stages, where flexible adjustments to shocks (including law enforcement shocks) appear to be the norm. This is not surprising in view of the very large profit margins and relatively smaller number of actors at these stages. It would appear that, however difficult, attacking and disrupting the more secretive and concentrated middle stages of the value chain could have high pay-offs.

Of course, these ‘middle stages’ aren’t really ‘secretive’ – and in fact are well known to both the UK and US governments (at least).

As Sibel notes:

In fact, our government would rather move heaven and earth, gag ‘whistleblowers’ with direct knowledge of these facts, classify congressional and other investigative reports, create a media black-out on these ‘allies’ terrorist supporting activities, than do the right thing; do what it really takes to counter terrorism.

And British journalist Adrian Gatton described the British awareness thusly:

The British authorities are well aware of Turkey’s role in the drugs trade. In a story I broke in The Guardian earlier this year, I explained how in the 1990s Baybasin told British Customs and Excise investigators about state collusion in the drugs trade. After initial meetings in London, according to a source, these two drug liaison officers – whose names are known to Druglink – later travelled regularly to Holland to meet Baybasin.

According to a witness statement given to an immigration case involving Baybasin’s family, Huseyin agreed to provide investigators with information about what he knew of the role of Turkish politicians and officials in the heroin trade. The contents of the discussions are not known in detail, but in a string of newspaper and TV interviews, he claimed he was assisted by Turkish officers working for NATO in Belgium. “The government kept all doors open for us,” he said. “We could do as we pleased.”

[SNIP]

Discussions with such a vital ally about its heroin problem have been tricky. When, for example, in 1997, Tom Sackville, the then UK Home Office minister, accused the Turkish government of being neck-deep in the drugs trade, he got a stiff demarche from the Turkish embassy (Sackville was speaking off-the-cuff and not following government policy). Our Foreign Office, rather than backing the minister, vented its fury on his department for meddling in foreign affairs, according to a source familiar with the row.

Sackville’s foray aside, the British government’s reluctance to publicly condemn Turkey has frustrated investigators. We got a rare public glimpse of this when, in 2001, Chris Harrison, a senior Customs officer in Manchester, told veteran crime reporter Martin Short in his TV series Godfathers, that Customs could not get at the Turkish kingpins because they are “protected” at a high level.

Nonetheless, Wolfowitz’ report on the “Structure, Functioning, Dynamics, and Implications for Counter-Narcotics Policy” somehow managed to ignore Turkey’s role despite the fact that Turkey is integral to each of those components.

How odd.

I’ll let Sibel have the last word:

Curiously enough, despite these highly publicized reports and acknowledgements of Turkey’s role in these activities, Turkey continues to receive billions of dollars of aid and assistance annually from the United States. With its highly placed co-conspirators and connections within the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Congress, Turkey never has to fear potential sanctions or meaningful scrutiny; just like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The criminal Turkish networks continue their global criminal activities right under the nose of their protector, the United States, and neither the catastrophe falling upon the U.S. on September Eleven, nor their direct and indirect role and ties to this terrorist attack, diminish their role and participation in the shady worlds of narcotics, money laundering and illegal arms transfer.

Sibel doesn’t choose her words lightly.

Listen up.

Sibel Edmonds: The Highjacking of a Nation. Part 2

In this stunning White Paper (downstairs), Sibel Edmonds lays out her case for all to see. It is a tale of the corruption of the Ship of State.

She details the ‘who’ & the ‘why’ & and the ‘how’ of, not only her case, but also the Highjacking of a Nation.

Read it, weep, and take action.

Action items downstairs.
from here, posted with permission.

The Highjacking of a Nation

Part 2: The Auctioning of Former Statesmen & Dime a Dozen Generals

“The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.” – Felix Frankfurter

It used to be the three branches – congress, the executive, and the courts – that we considered the make-up of our nation’s federal government. And some would point to the press as a possible fourth branch, due to the virtue of its influence in shaping our policies. Today, more and more people have come to view corporate and foreign lobby firms, with their preponderant clout and enormous power, as the official fourth branch of our nation’s government. Not only do I agree with them, I would even take it a step further and give it a higher status it certainly deserves.

Operating invisibly under the radar of media and public scrutiny, lobby groups and foreign agents have become the ‘epicenter’ of our government, where former statesmen and ‘dime a dozen generals’ cash in on their connections and peddle their enormous influence to the highest bidders turned clients. These groups’ activities shape our nation’s policies and determine the direction of the flow of its taxpayer driven wealth, while to them the interests of the majority are considered irrelevant, and the security of the nation is perceived as inconsequential.

Part1 of this series I used Saudi influence via its lobby and foreign agents by default as a case to illustrate how certain foreign interests, combined with their U.S. agents and benefactors, override the interests and security of the entire nation. This illustrative model case involved three major elements: the purchasing of a few ‘dime a dozen generals,’ bidding high in the auctioning of ‘former statesmen,’ and buying one or two ex-congressmen turned lobbyists. In addition, the piece emphasized the importance of the “Military Industrial Complex (MIC),” which became a de facto ‘foreign agent’ by the universally recognized principle of ‘mutual benefit.’

This article will attempt to illustrate the functioning of the above model in the case of another country, the Republic of Turkey, and its set of agents and operators in the U.S. In doing so, I want to emphasize the importance of separating the populace of example nations – Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Pakistan… – from their regimes and select key participating actors. As is the case with our nation, they too suffer the consequences of their regime’s self-serving policies and conduct. Not only that, they also have to endure what they consider ‘U.S. imposed policies’ that further the interests of only a few. Think of it this way, the majority of us in the States do not see the infamous and powerful neocon cabal as the chosen and accepted representatives of our nation’s values and objectives. We do not want to be perceived and judged based on the actions of a few at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. The same is valid for these nations’ citizenry; so let not their corrupt and criminal regimes be the basis of our judgment of them.

Moreover, as we all know, those subject to criticism in these articles have mastered the art of spinning when it comes to the media and propaganda. The Israeli lobby is quick to stamp all factually backed criticism as ‘anti-Semitic’ and attack it as such. The Turkish lobby, in this regard, as with everything else, follows its Israeli mentors; they label all dissent and criticism as anti-Turkey, or, Kurdish or Armenian propaganda; while the Saudi lobby goes around kicking and screaming ‘anti-Muslim propaganda.’ I am not known to be ‘politically correct’ and am often criticized for it. I readily accept that and all responsibilities associated with it. I am not seeking a position as a diplomat, neither am I serving any business, organization, or media channel furthering a particular ideology. This is me, saying it as I see it; no more, no less. By the end of this series it should be obvious, at least for many, that the selection of the nations encompasses varied sides and affiliations. Moreover, the main purpose, and the target of these commentaries, goes to the heart of our own government and its epicenter; lobbyists and the MIC.

*****

Many Americans, due to the effective propaganda and spin machine of Turkey’s agents in the U.S., and relentless efforts by high-level officials and lobbying groups on Turkish networks’ payroll, do not know much about Turkey; its position and importance in the areas of terrorism, money laundering, illegal arms sales, industrial and military espionage, and the nuclear black-market. Not many people in the States would name Turkey among those nations that threaten global security, the fight against terrorism, nuclear proliferation, or the war on drugs. For the purpose of this article it is necessary to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of Turkey, its strategic location within global criminal networks, its various networks and entities operating behind seemingly legitimate fronts, and its connection to the military and political machine in the U.S.

For many Americans Turkey is one of the closest allies of the United States; a most important member of NATO; a candidate for EU membership; and the only Middle-Eastern close ally and partner of Israel. Some acknowledge Turkey’s highly prized status in the United States due to its location as the artery connecting Europe to Asia, its cross borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria to its East and South, with the Balkan states to its west, and with the Central Asian nations to its north and northeast. Others may recognize the country as one of the top U.S. customers for military technology and weapons.

Interestingly enough, these same qualities and characteristics which make Turkey an important ally and strategic partner for the nation states, make it extremely crucial and attractive to global criminal networks active in transferring illegal arms and nuclear technology to rogue states; in transporting Eastern Narcotics, mainly from Afghanistan through the Central Asian states into Turkey, where it is processed, and then through the Balkan states into Western Europe and the U.S.; and in laundering the proceeds of these illegal operations via its banks and those on the neighboring island of Cyprus.

The Real Lords of the Poppy Fields

It is a known fact that there often is a nexus between terrorism and organized crime. Terrorists use Narco-traficking and international crime to support their activities. Frequently, the same criminal gangs involved in narcotics smuggling have links to other criminal activities, such as illegal arms sales, and to terrorist groups. The Taliban’s link to the drug trade is irrefutable. In 2001, a report by the U.N. Committee of Experts on Resolution 1333 for sanctions against the Taliban stated that “funds raised from the production and trade of opium and heroin are used by the Taliban to buy arms and war materials and to finance the training of terrorists and support the operation of extremists in neighboring countries and beyond.”

Afghanistan supplies almost 90% of the world’s heroin, which  is the country’s main cash crop, contributing over $3 billion a year in illegal revenues to the Afghan economy, which equals 50% of the gross national product. In 2004, according to the U.S. state department 206,000 hectares were cultivated, a half a million acres, producing 4,000 tons of opium. “It is not only the largest heroin producer in the world, 206,000 hectares is the largest amount of heroin or of any drug that I think has ever been produced by any one country in any given year,” says Robert Charles, former assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, overseeing anti-drug operations in Afghanistan.

Heroin trafficking is also the main source of funding for the al-Qaeda terrorists. A Time Magazine article in August 2004 reported that al-Qaeda has established a smuggling network that is peddling Afghan heroin to buyers across the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, and in turn is using the drug revenues to purchase weapons and explosives. The article states: “…al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies are increasingly financing operations with opium sales. Anti-drug officials in Afghanistan have no hard figures on how much al-Qaeda and the Taliban are earning from drugs, but conservative estimates run into tens of millions of dollars.” Anti-drug officials saythe only way to cut off al-Qaeda’s pipeline is to attack it at the source: by destroying the poppy farms themselves. This year, Afghanistan’s opium harvest is expected to exceed 3,600 tons—enough to produce street heroin worth $36 billion.

Key congressional leaders have been pressing the Pentagon to crack down on the major drug traffickers in Afghanistan upon learning that Al Qaeda is relying more than ever on illicit proceeds from the heroin trade. Congressional investigators who returned from the region in 2004 found that traffickers are providing Osama bin Laden and other terrorists with heroin as funds from Saudi Arabia and other sources dry up. “We now know Al Qaeda’s dominant source of funding is the illegal sale of narcotics,” said Rep. Kirk-IL, a member of the House Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, as reported by Washington Times. Rep. Kirk added that Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terror organization is reaping $28 million a year in illicit heroin sales.

It is puzzling to observe that in reporting this major artery of terrorists’ funding, the U.S. mainstream media and political machine do not dare to go beyond the poppy fields of Afghanistan and the fairly insignificant low level Afghan warlords overseeing the crops. Think about it; we are talking about nearly $40 billion worth of products in the final stage. Do you believe that those primitive Afghan warlords, clad in shalvars, sporting long ragged beards, and walking with long sticks handle transportation, lab processing, more transportation, distribution, and sophisticated laundering of the proceeds? If yes, then think again. This multi billion-dollar industry requires highly sophisticated networks and people. So, who are the real lords of Afghanistan’s poppy fields?

For Al Qaeda’s network Turkey is a haven for its sources of funding. Turkish networks, along with Russians’, are the main players in these fields; they purchase the opium from Afghanistan and transport it through several Turkic speaking Central Asian states into Turkey, where the raw opium is processed into popular byproducts; then the network transports the final product into Western European and American markets via their partner networks in Albania. The networks’ banking arrangements in Turkey, Cyprus and Dubai are used to launder and recycle the proceeds, and various Turkish companies in Turkey and Central Asia are used to make this possible and seem legitimate. The Al Qaeda network also uses Turkey to obtain and transfer arms to its Central Asian bases, including Chechnya.

Since the 1950s Turkey has played a key role in channeling into Europe and the U.S. heroin produced in the “Golden Triangle” comprised of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. These operations are run by mafia groups closely controlled by the MIT (Turkish Intelligence Agency) and the military. According to statistics compiled in 1998, Turkey’s heroin trafficking brought in $25 billion in 1995 and $37.5 billion in 1996. That amount makes up nearly a quarter of Turkey’s GDP. Only criminal networks working in close cooperation with the police and the army could possibly organize trafficking on such a scale. The Turkish government, MIT and the Turkish military, not only sanctions, but also actively participates in and oversees the narcotics activities and networks.

In July 1998, Le Monde Diplomatique reported that in an explosive document made public at a press conference in Istanbul, the MIT, Turkish Intelligence Agency, accused Turkey’s national police, of having “provided police identity cards and diplomatic passports to members of a group which, in the guise of anti-terrorist activities, traveled to Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Hungary and Azerbaijan to engage in drug trafficking”. MIT provided a list of names of some of the traffickers operating under the protection of the police. The Turkish police returned the compliment and handed over a list of named drug traffickers employed by the MIT!

In January 1997, Tom Sackville, minister of state at the British Home Office, stated that 80% of the heroin seized in Britain came from Turkey, and that his government was concerned by reports that members of the Turkish police, and even of the Turkish government, were involved in drug trafficking.

In an article published in Drug Link Magazine, Adrian Gatton cites the case of Huseyin Baybasin, the famous Turkish heroin kingpin now in jail in Holland. Baybasin explains: “I handled the drugs which came through the channel of the Turkish Consulate in England,” and he adds: “I was with the Mafia but I was carrying this out with the same Mafia group in which the rulers of Turkey were part.” The article also cites a witness statement given to a UK immigration case involving Baybasin’s clan, and states that Huseyin Baybasin had agreed to provide investigators with information about what he knew of the role of Turkish politicians and officials in the heroin trade. The article quotes Mark Galeotti, a former UK intelligence officer and expert on the Turkish mafia, “Since the 1970s, Turkey has accounted for between 75 and 90 per cent of all heroin in the UK. The key traffickers are Turks or criminals who operate along that route using Turkish contacts.” In 2001, Chris Harrison, a senior UK Customs officer in Manchester, told veteran crime reporter Martin Short that Customs could not get at the Turkish kingpins because they are “protected” at a high level.

In 1998, the highly official International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) of the U.S. State Department, revealed that “about 75% of the heroin seized in Europe is either produced in, or derives from, Turkey”, that “4 to 6 tons of heroin arrive from there every month, heading for Western Europe” and that “a number of laboratories for the purification of the opium used in transforming the basic morphine into heroin are located on Turkish soil”. The report stresses that Turkey is one of the countries most affected by money-laundering, which takes place particularly via the countries of the ex-Soviet Union, such as Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan, through the medium of casinos, the construction industry, and tourism. INCSR’s 2006 report cites Turkey as a major transshipment point and base of operations for international narcotics traffickers and associates trafficking in opium, morphine base, heroin, precursor chemicals and other drugs.

We know that Al Qaeda and Taliban’s main source of funding is the illegal sale of narcotics. Based on all the reports, facts, and expert statements, we know that Turkey is a major, if not the top, player in the transportation, processing, and distribution of all the narcotics derived from the Afghan poppies, and as a result, it is the major contributing country to Al Qaeda. Yet, to date, more than five years into our over exhaustive ‘war on terror propaganda’, have we heard any mentioning of, any tough message to, any sanction against, or any threat that was issued and targeted at Turkey?

We all know of our president’s ‘selective evilization’ of countries that have been ‘chosen’ to be on our hit list. But how many of us know of our government’s ‘selective go free cards’ that have been issued to those ‘ally countries’ that directly fund and support the terrorist networks? In fact, our government would rather move heaven and earth, gag ‘whistleblowers’ with direct knowledge of these facts, classify congressional and other investigative reports, create a media black-out on these ‘allies’ terrorist supporting activities, than do the right thing; do what it really takes to counter terrorism.

…and the WMDs we actually located & have known about

In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush declared he would keep “the world’s most destructive weapons” from Al Qaeda and its allies by keeping those weapons from evil governments. Later he told a campaign audience in Pennsylvania, “We had to take a hard look at every place where terrorists might get those weapons and one regime stood out: the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.” Well, the Iraqi WMD that never was!

Here is what CIA Director Porter Goss said bluntly before the Senate Intelligence Committee in February 2004, “It may be only a matter of time before Al Qaeda or other groups attempt to use chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons. We must focus on that.” And we know that he knows; has known for the longest time!

Seymour Hersh in his March 2003 article quotes Robert Gallucci, a former United Nations weapons inspector who is now dean of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, “Bad as it is with Iran, North Korea, and Libya having nuclear-weapons material, the worst part is that they could transfer it to a non-state group. That’s the biggest concern, and the scariest thing about all this. There’s nothing more important than stopping terrorist groups from getting nuclear weapons.”

Although numerous prestigious reports by agencies and organizations such as IAEA, and news articles in the European media, have clearly established Turkey, and various international networks operating in and out of Turkey, as major players within the global nuclear black-market and illegal arms sales, the relevant agencies and main media in the U.S. have maintained a completely silent and hands off position.

Nuclear black-market related activities depend on Turkey for manufacturing nuclear components, and on its strategic location as a transit point to move goods and technology to nations such as Iran, Pakistan, and others. Not only that, Turkey’s status and close relationship with the U.S. enables it to obtain (steal) technology and information from the U.S.

Lying at the crossroads not only between Europe and Asia, but also between the former Soviet Union and the Middle East, Turkey is already a well-established transit zone for illicit goods, including nuclear material and illegal weapons sales. According to a report by Turkish Atomic Energy Authority (TAEA), at least 104nuclear smuggling incidents had occurred in the past eight years in Turkey. For instance, in September 1999, 5 Kilograms of Uranium enriched to 4.6 percent were confiscated from an international smuggling ring in Turkey, which included four Turkish, one Azerbaijani, and three Kazakhstani citizens. The report cites over one hundred incidents like this, and these are only cases that have been intercepted and reported.

Turkey played a major role in Pakistan and Libya’s illicit activities in obtaining nuclear technologies. In June 2004, Stephen Fidler, a reporter for Financial Times  reported that in 2003, Turkish centrifuge motors and converters destined Libya’s  nuclear weapons program turned up in Tripoli aboard a ship that had sailed from Dubai. One of those detained individuals in this incident, a ‘respected and successful’ Turkish Businessman, Selim Alguadis, was cited in a public report from the Malaysian inspector-general of police into the Malaysian end of a Pakistani-led clandestine network that supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea with nuclear weapons technologies, designs and expertise. According to the report, “he supplied these materials to Libya.” Mr. Alguadis also confessed that he had on several occasions met A Q Khan, the disgraced Pakistani scientist who has admitted transmitting nuclear expertise to the three countries. Selim Alguadis remains a successful businessman in Turkey with companies in several other countries. He was released immediately after being turned over to Turkish authorities. His partner, another well-known and internationally recognized wealthy businessman, Gunes Cire, also actively participated in transferring nuclear technology and parts to Iran, Pakistan and North Korea. Although under investigation by several international communities, Alguadis and his partners continued to roam free in Turkey and conduct their illegitimate operations via their ‘legit international business’ front companies.

David Albright and Corey Hinderstein of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) identify Turkey’s major role in the nuclear black-market. According to their report, workshops in Turkey made the centrifuge motor and frequency converters used to drive the motor and spin the rotor to high speeds. These workshops imported subcomponents from Europe, and they assembled these centrifuge items in Turkey. Under false end-user certificates, these components were shipped from Turkey to Dubai for repackaging and shipment to Libya.

Turkey’s illegal arms smuggling activities are not limited to Europe and the Middle East; many of these activities reach U.S. soil. According to a report published by the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, in April 2004 the Italian police searched a container destined for the port of New York onboard a Turkish ship at the port of Tauro during a routine customs inspection, sparked by discrepancies between the various customs declarations. Inside the container more than 8,000 AK47 assault rifles, 11 submachine guns, and magazines worth over seven million dollars were discovered.

Our tough talking president works very hard to sound convincing when he says ‘we have to take a hard look at every place where terrorists might get those weapons;’ in fact, he has succeeded in fooling many into believing those words. However, while he was determined to move heaven and earth to get our nation into a war and a quagmire with a country that did NOT possess ‘those weapons,’ he refused and continues to refuse to look at his own ‘allies-packed backyard’ where he would find a few that not only do possess ‘those weapons,’ but also distribute and sell them to the highest bidders no matter what their affiliation.

*****

Curiously enough, despite these highly publicized reports and acknowledgements of Turkey’s role in these activities, Turkey continues to receive billions of dollars of aid and assistance annually from the United States. With its highly placed co-conspirators and connections within the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Congress, Turkey never has to fear potential sanctions or meaningful scrutiny; just like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The criminal Turkish networks continue their global criminal activities right under the nose of their protector, the United States, and neither the catastrophe falling upon the U.S. on September Eleven, nor their direct and indirect role and ties to this terrorist attack, diminish their role and participation in the shady worlds of narcotics, money laundering and illegal arms transfer.

The ‘respectable’ Turkish companies established and operate bases in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and other similar former soviet states. Many of these front companies, disguised under construction and tourism entities, have received millions of dollars in grants from the U.S. government, allocated to them by the U.S. congress, to establish and operate criminal networks throughout the region; among their networking partners are Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Albanian Mafia. While the U.S. government painted Islamic charity organizations as the main financial source for Al Qaeda terrorists, it was hard at work trying to cover up the terrorists’ main financial source: narcotics and illegal arms sales. Why?

For years and years, information and evidence being collected by the counterintelligence operations of certain U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies has been prevented from being transferred to criminal and narcotics divisions, and from being shared with the Drug Enforcement Agency and others with prosecutorial power. Those with direct knowledge have been prevented from making this information available and public by various gag orders and invocation of the State Secrets Privilege. Why?

Is this due to the fact that the existence and survival of many U.S. allies; Turkey, almost all Central Asian nations, and after the September Eleven attack, Afghanistan; greatly depend on cultivating, processing, transporting, and distributing these illegal substances? Is it caused by the fact that a major source of income for those who procure U.S. weapons and technology, our military industrial complex’s bread and butter, is being generated from this illegal production and illegal dealings? Or, is it the fear of exposing our own financial institutions, lobbying firms, and certain elected and appointed officials, as beneficiaries?

When it comes to criminal and shady global networks most people envision either Mafiosi like entities who keep to themselves and are separated from society, or, street level gangster-like criminals. Contrary to these expectations, the top tier Turkish criminal networks consist mainly of respectable looking businessmen, some of whom are among the top international businessmen, diplomats, politicians, and scholarly individuals. Their U.S. counterparts are equally respected and recognizable; some of whom are high-level appointed bureaucrats within the State Department and the Pentagon; some are elected officials, and others consist of the combination of the two who have now set up their own companies and lobbying groups.

The American Turkish Council (ATC)

Operating tax-free and under the radar is one of the most powerful “non-profit” associations in the U.S., the American Turkish Council (ATC). Some who are familiar with its operations and players describe it as ‘Mini AIPAC;’ this description aces it. ATC followed the AIPAC model; with the direct help of AIPAC & JINSA, it created a base out of which to stretch its tentacles, reaching the highest echelons of our government. While the ATC is an association in name and in charter, the reality is that it and other affiliated associations are the U.S. government, lobbyists, foreign agents, and MIC. Investigative journalist, John Stanton, correctly describes the ATC as an extraordinary group of elite and interconnected Republicans, Democrats and corporate and military heavyweights who are spearheading one of the most ambitious strategic gambits in U.S. history.

Included in ATC’s management, board of directors, and advisors; in addition to Turkish individuals of ‘interest;’ is a dizzying array of U.S. individuals. The ATC is led by Ret. General Brent Scowcroft, who serves as Chairman of the Board; George Perlman of Lockheed Martin, the Executive Vice President; other board members include: Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, Ret. General Elmer Pendleton, Ret. General Joseph Ralston, Ret. Col. Preston Hughes, Alan Colegrove of Northrop Grumman, Frank Carlucci of Carlyle Group, Christine Vick of Cohen Group, Representative Robert Wexler, Former Rep. Ed Whitfield…Basically many formers; statesmen, ‘dime a dozen generals,’ and representatives.

On the members – paying clients – side; their list includes all the MIC’s who’s who, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman; the Washington Lobby scene’s who’s who; The Cohen Group, The Livingston Group, Washington Group International…

Of course, there are also many Turkish companies that are members of the ATC. Most of these companies have branches and operations in Libya, Dubai, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. Although the official listings of their businesses are cited as ‘construction,’ ‘real estate’, ‘manufacturing,’ and ‘tourism’; the main activities of these businesses are known to be related to global illegal arms sales and narcotic processing and trafficking. These companies provide necessary fronts and channels to launder proceeds. Curiously enough, hundreds of millions of dollars have been granted by the United States government, approved by the congress, to these Turkish companies under the guise of various ‘U.S. Central Asian development programs;’ and ‘Iraq & Afghanistan reconstruction programs.’

Stanton notes: ‘ATC is joined in the creation of the New EuroAsia by the American Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (AACC). AACC’s Honorary Council of Advisors just happens to have General Scowcroft and the following persons of significance: Henry Kissinger and James Baker III. Former Council members include Dick Cheney and Richard Armitage, and Board of Trustee members include media-overkill subject Richard Perle of AEI, and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas.’

The MIC Factor

In part1 we discussed the MIC as ‘agents by default;’ marriages and loyalties based on ‘mutual benefit;’ our previous example was Saudi Arabia, top customer of U.S. weaponry. Well, Turkey only tails the Saudis slightly in that category; between 1992 and 1996, Turkey was the second largest importer of weaponry, spending more than $7 billion in four years. A report by the World Policy Institute shows that Turkey is the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid, behind Israel and Egypt. Between 1994 and 2003, Turkey took delivery of more than $6.8 billion in U.S. weaponry and services.

In fiscal year 1989, U.S. aid to Turkey was $563,500,000. According to a Multi National Monitor Report, in 1991, Turkey received more than $800 million in U.S. aid, “an exceptional return” on its $3.8 million investment in Washington lobbyists. At the time, International Advisors, INC. (Douglas Feith & Richard Perle lobbying firm as registered agents for Turkey) was paid more than $1 million for representing Turkey in the U.S. for the purpose of securing these types of deals. In 2003, Turkey received a $1 billion aid package. During this period their registered and known lobbyists were the Livingston Group, headed by the former Speaker of the House Bob Livingston, and Solarz Associates, headed by a formerly powerful Representative, Stephen Solarz. Turkey, from 2000 to 2004, for only four years, paid Livingston $9 million for his lobbying services. What did the Republic of Turkey get for its $2 million per year investment in Ex-Congressman Livingston’s services?

A Joint Report by the Federation of American Scientists and the World Policy Institute found that the vast majority of U.S. arms transfers to Turkey were subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. In many cases, these taxpayer funds are supporting military production and employment in Turkey, not in the United States. Of the $10.5 billion in U.S. weaponry delivered to Turkey since 1984, $8 billion in all has been directly or indirectly financed by grants and subsidized loans provided by the U.S. government. Many of the largest deals – such as Lockheed Martin’s sale of 240 F-16s to the Turkish air force and the FMC Corporation’s provision of 1,698 armored vehicles to the Turkish army – involve co-production and offset provisions which steer investments, jobs, and production to Turkey as a condition of the sale. For example, Turkey’s F-16 assembly plant in Ankara – a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) – employs 2,000 production workers, almost entirely paid for with U.S. tax dollars.

Let’s recap the above data: Not only does our government, actually, our taxpayers, subsidize $8 billion of Turkey’s $10 billion weapons purchases; the production of this weaponry and the associated employment occurs not in the U.S., but overseas, in Turkey. We, the taxpayers, are subsidizing these purchases; our nation readily transfers its technology to a country that ranks high in global narcotics, terrorist and WMD related activities; while a select few MIC related firms such as Lockheed and the pimping middlemen, the lobbyists, get fatter and richer.

One Stop Shop: The Cohen Group

Like many other former statesmen, William Cohen, former Secretary of Defense, dived into the business of lobbying and consulting, and created his own Washington firm, The Cohen Group, which works for some of the largest companies in the defense industry, such as Lockheed Martin, and serves numerous foreign players. The Cohen Group is one of the primary and most active members of the American Turkish Council (ATC). Cohen’s client, Lockheed Martin, happens to be on the board of ATC, in addition to being listed as ATC’s top paying client.

The group claims on its Website that its principals have “a century and a half of combined experience in the Congress, the Defense Department, the State Department, the White House, and state and local governments” and that they “have developed extensive expertise and relationships with key international political, economic, and business leaders and acquired invaluable experiences with the individuals and institutions that affect our clients’ success abroad.” Abroad indeed. With a few ‘dime a dozen generals’ and former statesmen, the firm owes its phenomenal speedy success to interests ‘abroad’ and of course, the MIC! Let’s look, with great amazement, I hope, at how this ingenious lobby venture serves as foreign agent for several influences without having to register as such; with complete immunity against any scrutiny.

According to Intelligence Online, in its March 27, 2006 issue, Cohen accompanied Bush on his trip to India and Pakistan in March 2006. The Cohen Group is very active in India; Joseph Ralston, Cohen’s Vice Chairman, led two delegations of U.S. Defense Chiefs to India the previous year. The trips were organized in conjunction with the U.S. India Business Council; among the participants were Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing.

On June 9, 2006, Intelligence Online reports ‘already operating in India, the Cohen Group headed by William Cohen, has just opened an office in Beijing… Since 2003 the Cohen Group has equally been employing Christine Vick. She is a former Vice President of Kissinger Associates; the consultancy founded by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and had been in charge of the firm’s Chinese business.’

Prior to the October 2005 release of Paul Volcker’s report on violations of the United Nations’ Iraq oil-for-food program, the Australian wheat exporter AWB Limited hired Cohen’s firm. AWB paid approximately $A300 million in trucking fees on its wheat contracts to a Jordanian company, Alia, which owns no trucks! The funds were funnelled to Saddam’s regime. AWB hired Cohen Group as part of its ‘strategy, ’ code-named ‘Project Rose’, to deal with the UN inquiry headed by Paul Volcker and corruption allegations made against it by U.S. wheat farmers and hostile US politicians.’ Cohen Group is not a law firm; what kind of services and representation is it providing for this criminal case?

So who are the key players at Cohen’s lobby firm, giving it its value? Well of course, a handful of powerful formers; in addition to Cohen as the top principal we have former Undersecretary of State Mark Grossman, and two formerly high-level ‘dime a dozen generals:’ General Joseph Ralston and General Paul Kern; let’s briefly look at them; shall we?

Ret. General Paul Kern
Cohen Group senior counselor is retired general Paul J. Kern, a former head of the Army Materiel Command, who recently served on a panel convened by the Defense Department to recommend improvements in how it acquires weapons systems; of course, a topic of great interest to Cohen clients.

Pentagon’s Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment Panel , DAPAP, was created to recommend changes in the awarding of military contracts. Over half of this panel is executives of large defense corporations. Among the Committee’s six members are Frank Cappuccio, VP of Lockheed Martin, and retired General Kern, who is the Senior Counselor of the Cohen Group!

When the Pentagon is informed of wasteful practices, it commonly ignores them. Congressman Walter Jones, (R-N.C.) is quoted as understating, “We’ve got an agency that is not doing its job of being a watchdog for the taxpayers.” Retired Army Reserve officer Paul Fellencer Sr. complained to the Pentagon’s fraud hot line last year about $200-million worth of outrageous overpayments for ordinary supplies. Pentagon investigators never bothered to call him and dismissed his tip as “unsubstantiated,” the news service said.

One wonders how many American citizens are aware of the fact that a ‘dime a dozen general’ such as Kern, who happens to be a Senior Counsel of a lobby firm with foreign interests and MIC representation, who happens to sit on the board of Lockheed Martin, gets to sit on a panel that monitors and advises on awarding military contracts to the private MIC companies by the Pentagon. Would it take an absolute genius to figure out that this is ‘putting a fox in charge of the hen house’? If not, then how could this get past the decision makers at the Pentagon? How come our lawmakers, those in charge of ensuring the checks and balances in our government, those we consider our representatives, sit there either unaware or unbothered by this red flag visible from a hundred miles away? What happened to ‘investigative journalists with good noses;’ were they all inflicted by congested sinuses at the same time?

Fmr. Gen. Joseph Ralston
General Joseph Ralston, one of Cohen Group’s Vice Chairmen, is on the board of Lockheed Martin, which paid the Cohen Group $550,000 in 2005, according to a Lockheed filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Ralston is also a member of the 2006 Advisory Board of the American Turkish Council (ATC), and one of Turkey’s top advocates. If you think this ‘dime a dozen general’ ended one career and removed himself from the U.S. government by becoming ‘the foreign agent man,’ think again after reading the following.

On August 28, 2006, the U.S. State Department appointed the former U.S. Air Force General, current Vice Chairman of the Cohen Group, board member of American Turkish Council, registered lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, Joseph Ralston, as a “Special Envoy” for countering the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK)! Lo and behold, Ralston’s appointment came as Turkey was finalizing the purchase of 30 new Lockheed Martin F-16 aircraft valued at $3 billion, and as Turkey was due to make its decision on the $10 billion purchase of the new Lockheed Martin F-35 JSF aircraft. Coincidentally, the U.S. Congress approved the sale of the F-16s to Turkey in October 2006, shortly after Ralston’s return from Turkey.

While the implications of Ralston’s appointment caused a major stir within the Kurdish community and organizations, mainly pointing to Ralston’s position with the Turkish lobby in the U.S. (he is on the board of ATC), and within Turkey’s own communities, pointing to Ralston’s position with Lockheed Martin (he is on the board of Lockheed Martin), our own media, watchdog organizations, and congress let this gargantuan conflict of interest pass under the radar.

Our government sent this man, Ralston, as a special envoy to help resolve the highly critical Northern Iraq situation with possible dire consequences in the near future. Considering Ralston’s livelihood and his loyalties, as a member of the board of the directors of Lockheed Martin, as the vice chairman of a lobbying firm with foreign interests, as an advisor and board member for the most powerful Turkish Lobby group, ATC, who did this man represent while in Turkey as the special envoy? What interests did he really represent; Iraq’s situation, Lockheed’s livelihood, which depends on further conflicts and bloodshed; the corrupt and criminal government of Turkey and its representation via ATC; or, the furthering of the Cohen Group’s future pimping opportunities?

Why in the world did no one within the U.S. mainstream media give even the slightest coverage of this conflict of interest? Why did no one, Democrat or Republican, in our congress make a peep? Why haven’t we heard anyone asking Ralston the most important question, in dire need of an answer: ‘Who’s your daddy Ralston; boy?’ Ralston’s position is no different than what is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as: “A person conceived and born out of wedlock.” With the possibility of any one of four daddies, and without the benefit of a DNA test, how do we go about determining Ralston’s real daddy?

Fmr. Undersecretary Marc Grossman
The second Vice Chairman of Cohen’s firm is Marc Grossman, who was the U.S. Undersecretary for Political Affairs in the State Department from 2001 until 2005. From November 1994 to June 1997, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey. In January 2005 Grossman resigned from his position and joined the Cohen Group. In late December 2005, Grossman joined Ihlas Holding, a large and alleged shady Turkish company which is also active in several Central Asian countries. Grossman is reported to receive $100,000 per month for his advisory position with Ihlas.’ Most and foremost, Grossman is known for his extraordinarily cozy relationship with Turkey and Israel; followed by Pakistan.

Here is Grossman as the key speaker at an ATC conference in March 2002; while Undersecretary of State; and here it is followed by Grossman’s visit to Turkey in December 2002, to approve the $3 billion U.S. aid to Turkey for the Iraq Cooperation deal. There he goes again, Grossman back to Turkey in December 2003 re: approval of Turkey’s eligibility to participate in tenders for Iraq’s reconstruction! Here is Grossman as the key speaker at an ATC Conference held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in December 2004, while Undersecretary. Here is Grossman as the guest of honor and key speaker at the American Turkish Society dinner in New York in February 2005, while Undersecretary. Here he is again, at the lavish Turkish Ottoman Dinner Gala in November 2005. Here is Grossman at the award dinner gala by the Turkish lobby group, the Assembly of American Turkish Association (ATAA), in Chicago, receiving his award in November 2005. Here is Grossman as the key speaker at the ATC annual conference in March 2006, and later, in June 2006, at the MERIA Conference to discuss Turkey’s importance to the U.S. & Israel. This list can go on for pages and pages; but I believe you all get it; right?

Here is a comment by Wolfowitz during his visit to Turkey: ”I’m delighted to be back in Turkey and so is my colleague Marc Grossman, who feels like Turkey is a second home.” Second home indeed, Mr. Grossman!

Please do not make the grave and naive mistake of assuming that Grossman found and obtained his highly lucrative and questionable positions after his resignation in January 2005. Within two months after his confident resignation, this boy got the vice chairmanship of the Cohen Group. Only six months later, Grossman ended up securing a ‘special advisory’ position for a foreign company that reported his monthly fee at $100,000 a month. The industrious Grossman seems to be juggling so many balls simultaneously: numerous foreign sponsored dinner speeches, the demanding pimping activities of Cohen’s firm, the very ‘special advising’ of a shady foreign company…

We all have a pretty good idea how long and how much work it takes to secure that level of income and those positions. Did Grossman beat the odds and get lucky as soon as he got out of the State Department? Did he hit the jackpot? Or, did he diligently and industriously work at it, while in his position as the ambassador to Turkey and as Deputy Secretary of State? Did he sell his soul while under his oath of office? Did he sell our government’s soul? Did he sell our nation and its interests? If so; for what and how much?

*****

Long gone are the days when generals were content to retire and go back home where they held their heads high as honorable patriots and heroes who had served their nation; where they marched in their towns’ parades as proud distinguished men and women who had fulfilled their duty to the people. Today, as we clearly see, they perceive themselves and their authority as a commodity; they go about marketing their worth (nationally and internationally; foreign and domestic) long before they leave their positions as public servants.

The same goes for many of our statesmen. While in office, Grossman and others like him appear to have one objective in mind and in action: to make sure that their future employer who is waiting for them on the other side of the revolving door will receive special and lucrative arrangements so that they can be compensated handsomely later.

In Part1, we briefly described the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), established to insure that the American public and its lawmakers know the source of propaganda intended to sway public opinion, policy, and laws; and the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) of 1995, which was passed to make the regulation and disclosure of lobbying the federal government more effective. The article emphasized that both of these cosmetic laws are filled with exemptions and loopholes that allow minimization of, and in some cases complete escape from, warranted scrutiny, and have serious loopholes and limitations

The Cohen Group is an excellent case, illustrating the futility of FARA, since the firm does not have to be registered. They can claim that Turkey is not their ‘direct’ client; they can argue that they are not getting paid ‘directly’ by the government of Turkey or any other foreign entity or government. They certainly can; no matter that Grossman receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from a dubious Turkish company. Does Cohen discount Grossman’s Vice Chairmanship salary accordingly? No matter that half a million dollars per year from their client Lockheed Martin is mainly for services provided to Turkey, and having the group’s second chairman serve on Lockheed’s board is another way to get around all restrictions. The incestuous relationship twists and turns: The Cohen Group on the board of ATC, The Cohen Group a paying member client of ATC, The Cohen Group as Lockheed’s lobbyist, Cohen’s men on the board of Lockheed, Lockheed on the board of ATC, Lockheed also a paying client of ATC…How is your head; spinning yet?

We are proud of the large turnout at the ballot box for the midterm elections a few weeks ago; a sign of participatory citizenship. Perhaps we’ll be repeating this phenomenon, if not increasing it, for the presidential elections in two years; another means to demonstrate our ‘democratic government process in action’ for badly needed change. But who really runs our country? Who really shapes our public policies and determines the flow of our hard-earned tax money entrusted to our government? If you had the patience to go through this article, which sheds light on only a fragment of what really takes place behind our backs, within the halls of our government, in all three branches, you would start questioning your significance as a voter and taxpayer, and you would begin wondering whether you are governed by who you think you are.

The foreign influence, the lobbyists, the current highly positioned civil servants who are determined future ‘wanna be’ lobbyists, and the fat cats of the Military Industrial Complex, operate successfully under the radar, with unlimited reach and power, with no scrutiny, while selling your interests, benefiting from your tax money, and serving the highest bidders regardless of what or who they may be. This deep state seems to operate at all levels of our government; from the President’s office to Congress, from the military quarters to the civil servants’ offices. Let’s let Marcus Cicero’s timeless warning from over two thousand years ago put the finishing touch on this article:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder[er] is less to fear.

*****

Sibel Edmonds is the founder and director of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). Ms. Edmonds worked as a language specialist for the FBI. During her work with the bureau, she discovered and reported serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence that had national security implications. After she reported these acts to FBI management, she was retaliated against by the FBI and ultimately fired in March 2002. Since that time, court proceedings on her case have been blocked by the assertion of “State Secret Privilege”; the Congress of the United States has been gagged and prevented from any discussion of her case through retroactive re-classification by the Department of Justice. Ms. Edmonds is fluent in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani; and has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, and a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University. PEN American Center awarded Ms. Edmonds the 2006 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award.

© Copyright 2006, National Security Whistleblowers CoalitionInformation in this release may be freely distributed and published provided that all such distributions make appropriate attribution to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

Contact your friendly media by clicking here to use to the Spotlight Project.

Please sign Sibel’s petition to get Congress to re-open the case.

Thoughts on Sibel Edmonds’ ‘Hijacking’ Article

I wanted to make a few comments about Sibel Edmond’s White Paper “Hijacking of a Nation.  Part 1: The Foreign Agent Factor” from last week before Part 2 of her White Paper is published (I’ll publish it on Wednesday)

  1. Sibel described how Saudi Arabia was able to whitewash their involvement in 9/11 in the original congressional inquiry report. What isn’t widely known is that Pakistan reportedly whitewashed their own involvement in the 911 Commission Report.
  2.  Sibel notes that both the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA)  are inadequate. Scott Ritter recently had some choice words to say about Israel & AIPAC on that front.
  3. We’ll take a closer look at some of the ‘lobbying’ efforts by Turkey involving Dennis Hastert and Bob Livingston as they pertain to Sibel’s case

As a refresher, here’s the nub of Sibel’s paper:

“Foreign governments and foreign-owned private interests have long sought to influence U.S. public policy. Several have accomplished this goal; those who are able and willing to pay what it takes. Those who buy themselves a few strategic middlemen, commonly known as pimps, while in DC circles referred to as foreign registered agents and lobbyists, who facilitate and bring about desired transactions. These successful foreign entities have mastered the art of ‘covering all the bases’ when it comes to buying influence in Washington DC. They have the required recipe down pat: get yourself a few ‘Dime a Dozen Generals,’ bid high in the ‘former statesmen lobby auction’, and put in your pocket one or two ‘ex-congressmen turned lobbyists’ who know the ropes when it comes to pocketing a few dozen who still serve.

The most important facet of this influence to consider is what happens when the active and powerful foreign entities’ objectives are in direct conflict with our nation’s objectives and its interests and security; and when this is the case, who pays the ultimate price and how. There is no need for assumptions of hypothetical situations to answer these questions, since throughout recent history we have repeatedly faced the dire consequences of the highjacking of our foreign and domestic policies by these so-called foreign agents of foreign influence.”

In Sibel’s paper, she used the example of the Saudis whitewashing-via-redaction of the initial inquiry into 9/11, quoting Senator Bob Graham: “It was as if the President’s loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America’s safety.”

Sibel then notes that “While Saudi Arabia has been specifically pointed to by Graham, other countries involved have yet to be identified.” It appears that one of those countries is Pakistan which was apparently able to whitewash the 911 Commission report with some last minute ‘lobbying’:

Pakistan gave tens of thousands of dollars through its lobbyists in the United States to members of the 9/11 inquiry commission to ‘convince’ them to drop some anti-Pakistan findings in the report.

[…]
According to the FO (Foreign Office) official, ‘dramatic changes’ were made in the final draft of the inquiry commission report after Pakistani lobbyists arranged meetings with members of the Commission and convinced them to remove anti-Pakistan findings. This information is also given in the PAC records available with TFT and reveals that Pakistan won over the sympathies of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard the interests of Pakistan in the United States.
[…]
According to Sadiq, a few days before the completion of the inquiry report, US lobbyists told embassy officials that they had inside information that the inquiry commission had damaging findings on Pakistan`s role in 9/11. Meetings were hence arranged with commission members who were convinced to drop this information.”

For the record, I can’t prove that this is true. However, it was reported both in Pakistan and India and the reports claim that the expenditure is documented in offical records in Pakistan.  I’ve detailed Pakistan’s (registered) lobbying firms from the relevant timeframe here.

We don’t know whether Pakistan was using any unregistered lobbying firms which brings me to my second issue – the inadequacies of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA).

As Sibel notes in her piece:

There are a number of exemptions (for FARA) . For example, persons whose activities are of a purely commercial nature or of a religious, academic, and charitable nature are exempt. Any agent who is engaged in lobbying activities and is registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) is exempt.

AIPAC, for example, is not registered under FARA. In a speech last month (youtube, transcript), Scott Ritter explained why this might be a problem:

“One of the big problems – and here comes the grenade – is Israel. The second you mention the word ‘Israel’, the nation of Israel, the concept of Israel, many in the American press become very defensive. We’re not allowed to be highly critical of the state of Israel.

The other thing we’re not allowed to do is discuss the notion that Israel, and the notion of Israeli interests, may in fact be dictating what America is doing. That what we’re doing in the Midle East may not be to the benefit of America’s National Security, but to Israel’s National Security.
But we don’t want to talk about that – because one of the great success stories out there is the pro-Israel Lobby which has successfully enabled themselves to blend the two together – so that when we speak of Israeli interests, they say ‘No – we’re speaking of American interests’

It’s interesting that AIPAC and other elements of the Israeli Lobby don’t have to register as agents of a foreign government. It’d be nice if they did, because then we’d know when they’re advocating on behalf of Israel, and when they’re advocating on behalf of the USA.

I’d challenge the New York Times to sit down and do a critical story on Israel, on the role that Israel plays in influencing American foreign policy. There’s nothing wrong with Israel trying to influence American foreign policy – let me make that clear. The British seek to influence our foreign policy. The French seek to influence our foreign policy. The Saudis seek to influence our foreign policy. The difference is that when they do it, and they bring American citizens into play, these Americans, once they take the money of a foreign government, and they advocate on behalf of a foreign government, they register themselves as an agent of that govt so we know where they’re coming from. That’s all I’m asking the Israelis to do – let us know where you’re coming from. Stop confusing the American public that Israel’s interests are necessarily America’s interests.”

Another major ‘lobbying’ group which is not registered under FARA is the American Turkish Council (ATC) – an organization which is at the heart of Sibel’s case.

Sibel briefly described Turkey’s centrality to her case in her White Paper:

I won’t get into the details and history of my own case, where the government invoked the state secrets privilege to gag my case and the congress in order to ‘protect certain sensitive diplomatic relations.’ The country, the foreign influence, in this case was the Republic of Turkey. The U.S. government did so despite the far reaching consequences of burying the facts involved, and disregarded the interests and security of the nation; all to protect a quasi ally engaged in numerous illegitimate activities within the global terrorist networks, nuclear black-market and narcotics activities; an ally who happens to be another compulsive and loyal buyer of the Military Industrial Complex; an ally who happens to be another savvy player in recruiting top U.S. players as its foreign agents and spending million of dollars per year to the lobbying groups headed by many ‘formers.’ Turkey’s agent list includes generals such as Joseph Ralston and Brent Scowcroft, former statesmen such as William Cohen and Marc Grossman, and of course famous ex-congressmen such as Bob Livingston and Stephen Solarz. Turkey too seems to have all its bases covered.

All of the people that Sibel mention here in relation to her case, a case about Turkey’s foreign influence, are active in the ATC – yet the ATC isn’t registered as an agent of foreign influence.

The ATC features in Sibel’s case in a number of (apparently) different ways:

  1. The FBI’s Counter-Intelligence unit was actively monitoring the ATC (perhaps going back to 1996) because the ATC ‘was engaged in illegal activities and illegal campaign donations.’
  2. The FBI translator who tried to ‘recruit’ Sibel previously worked at the ATC, lied about it on her job application form, and rearranged the internal FBI work processes so that she alone translated all of the ATC wiretaps.
  3. It appears that at least some of the bribes that Dennis Hastert received were handled by the ATC (or it’s sub-organizations) and/or were discussed on ATC wiretaps.
  4. Sibel says that Bob Livingston’s multi-million-dollar contract from ‘Turkey’ is not actually with the Republic of Turkey, despite his FARA filings. Is the ATC paying Livingston?

Let’s take a closer look at Hastert.

The Vanity Fair article details 3 different types of bribes, as detailed on the wiretaps (Sibel isn’t the source for these claims) : a) illegal campaign donations b) ‘tens of thousands of dollars… for political favors and information’ c) $500,000 for withdrawing a bill. Many of these wiretapped phone conversations were between officials at the Turkish embassy and the ATC.

The ATC is regarded as one of the most powerful lobbies in DC – yet when Hastert was asked by Vanity Fair about the A.T.C. and other groups mentioned in the wiretaps, his spokesman replied: “(Hastert) does not know these organizations.”

Sibel wasn’t impressed with Hastert’s claims that he doesn’t know these organtizations – she wrote:

a. Please refer to Mr. Hastert’s trips to Turkey (all trips that took place- 1996- 2002); its sponsors…they are self evident. Now how can he claim not knowing these entities (very intimately)?

b. Also, should we refer to Mr. Hastert’s dealing with the named foreign organization via [former House Speaker] Bob Livingston’s lobbying firm (Livingston Group)?

She’s basically calling Hastert a liar – and threatening him with more revelations regarding Hastert, Livingston, and the ATC

Let’s take a closer look at Bob Livingston.

Public Citizen did a report in June 05 called “Congressional Revolving Doors: The Journey from Congress to K Street” and they took a close look at Bob Livingston, particularly his relationship with Turkey:

Since 2000, Livingston has taken in more than $11 million from foreign governments and the vast majority of that money, $9 million, has come from Turkey, with $1 million more each from Morocco and the Cayman Islands.

Livingston actually registers his work with FARA, as required – identifying the client as “Republic of Turkey, Embassy” – however in an interview in January, Sibel said:

“(Livingston) is charging $1.2m – He’s charging Turkey – and this is not the government of Turkish Republic, this is ummm… Who are these people who are paying him $1.2m per year? To do what? That is the question.”

I don’t know who is paying Livingston, or why, but violating FARA is a criminal offence – so if Livingston says that the Republic of Turkey is the client, and Sibel says the client is someone or something else, then Livingston might be in trouble (I suspect that FARA is the least of his problems)

On a final note, this is from an interview Sibel gave in May 04.

Jim Hogue: Here’s a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?

Sibel Edmonds: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it’s extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it’s what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don’t hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It’s extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap– money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That’s what I’m trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it’s getting into somebody’s political campaign, and somebody’s lobbying.

Curiously, I suspect that if Hogue had asked Sibel “What is the American Turkish Council?” – her answer might have been quite similar.

Sibel has put out a challenge:

 “Put out those tapes. Put out those wiretaps. Put out those documents. Put out the truth. The truth is going to hurt them. The truth is going to set me free.”

I agree. Release the tapes.

If you agree, please sign her petition.

(and drop by on Wednesday for Part 2 of Sibel’s “Hijacking of a Nation” which will focus on Turkey and the ATC)

sibel edmonds: "shoddy reporting" & "shoddy translations"

USA Today has just published a series of three articles about whistleblowers – including Sibel Edmonds, Russ Tice, Mike German, and Coleen Rowley – and the costs they endure for trying to do their duty, including banishment, humiliation, and often their careers, homes and marriages.

The government’s best and only strawman argument is:
“When classified information is printed in the newspapers, it’s not just Americans who read it… It’s also America’s enemies.”

Of course, most whistleblowing is done INTERNALLY and only bursts out into the public domain when all other channels are exhausted.

Thanks to USA Today for at least publishing this series – but see if you spot the difference between their description of Sibel’s whistleblowing (“shoddy translations”) and Sibel’s description (narcotic activities, illegal arms sales, money laundering, and terrorism related activities overlap and become one including espionage and the senior members of congress, State Dept and the Pentagon)

USAToday:

Whistle-blowers tell of cost of conscience

In 2002, decorated FBI Special Agent Mike German was investigating meetings between terrorism suspects. When he discovered other officers had jeopardized the investigation by violating wiretapping regulations, he reported what he found to his supervisors, in accordance with FBI policy.

At the time, Coleen Rowley, the FBI agent who had raised concerns about how the pre-9/11 arrest of al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was handled, was being hailed as a national hero. German says he had also just received a mass e-mail from FBI Director Robert Mueller, urging other whistle-blowers to come forward.

“I was assuming he’d protect me,” German says.

Instead, German says his accusations were ignored, his reputation ruined and his career obliterated. Although the Justice Department’s inspector general confirmed German’s allegations that the FBI had “mishandled and mismanaged” the terrorism investigation, he says he was barred from further undercover work and eventually compelled to resign. FBI spokesman Bill Carter declined to comment.

The experience is familiar to other government employees who have blown the whistle on matters of national security since 9/11.
[..]
“I’m one of the last people who survived,” says Rowley, the former FBI whistle-blower and Time magazine “Person of the Year” who recently lost her bid for a U.S. congressional seat in Minnesota. She says widespread, favorable media coverage saved her FBI career

“But is that the important story here — that one person in the country has been fired or is not being used to their fullest potential?” she asks. “It’s the country that’s going to suffer from a lack of whistle-blower protections.”

* USAToday:

‘They treat a whistle-blower like a virus’

Most people first heard about Russell Tice last December when the former National Security Agency intelligence analyst asked to testify before Congress about NSA programs he claims are illegal.

But his confrontation with his employer began much earlier. In 2001, Tice reported suspicions that an employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which oversees the NSA and other intelligence-gathering agencies, was spying for China.

When he followed up on the allegations several years later, Tice was ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation. Although he had passed his regular exam nine months earlier, the in-house psychologist conducting the latest evaluation decided Tice had psychotic paranoia.

After almost 20 years in intelligence, Tice’s security clearance was revoked. He was transferred to a maintenance position at the NSA vehicle pool, and then to a government furniture warehouse.

* USAToday:

‘State secrets privilege’ blocks fired translator from suing FBI

Sibel Edmonds, who formed the 100-plus member National Security whistle-blowers Coalition in 2002, began working as a linguist for the FBI the week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

Several months into her contract, she discovered “shoddy” translations relevant to 9/11 created by translators who had “failed the proficiency exams,” she says.

A report by the Justice Department’s inspector general subsequently confirmed that at least one translator had failed the FBI’s language proficiency exams. Edmonds says the translator was sent to Guantanamo Bay to translate “the most sensitive terrorist-related information” from interviews of detainees.

Edmonds also notified her superiors that a co-worker was responsible for translating wiretaps of a company the latter used to work for. The co-worker “was blocking the intelligence coming from her family members and friends,” Edmonds says.

I could spend a thousand words explaining why the article about Sibel is completely inadequate – in fact, I could probably spill a thousand words explaining why the headline (“‘State secrets privilege’ blocks fired translator from suing FBI”) to the article is very, very wrong – but that would probably be a waste of four thousand letters.

Let’s try to keep this positive – and use USA Today’s series to argue for better protection for whistleblowers, and also as a hook to get reporters to actually look more closely at the individual cases – Sibel, Russ Tice, and others.

be polite: editor@usatoday.com  

update: there’s another article in the USAToday series: “Ex-employee says FAA warned before 9/11”

Sibel Edmonds movie/director interview, part 6: 911 and FBI Incompetence

This is part 6 of my interview with Mathieu Verboud, co-director of the film about Sibel Edmonds, Kill the Messenger. (see Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five))

Here we talk about 9/11 (a little) & FBI incompetence.

Details downstairs.

———————————————————————–

Luke Ryland: Right – speaking of terrible consequences – you mentioned earlier that the first thing that you heard about Sibel ‘s case was that it had something to do with 911.  What do you know about the connections between her case and 911?

Mathieu Verboud: Some small things and some bigger things. The small things are more precise, and the larger issues are more diluted. From some private conversations with Sibel, it’s our understanding that during her time at the FBI, she may have heard things, let’s say about the existence of certain tapes related to Bin Laden. I won’t go into further details and quite frankly, as far as 9/11 goes, the event, and the preparation – that’s all I know.

But there are other issues related to 9/11. First is WHY was 9/11 possible. Sibel’s story helps us find an answer…

9/11 happened because the jihad needed new targets. Again, this is the backfiring component of the 1980s alliance between the U.S and Pakistan. Then, you wonder HOW 9/11 was possible. Well, you have a whole set of answers to that and these are domestic issues: lack of preparedness, complacency, incompetence, risk aversity. And it went to such absurd extremes!

Look for example at the case of Bob Wright from the counter-terrorism division of the FBI, based in Chicago. His managers refused to crack down a Hamas cell because that meant closing a case and when a case is closed,  FBI agents have to open new ones to get a promotion. The thing is the FBI counter-terrorism squad in Chicago didn’t have any case waiting to be opened, maybe because Hamas was the only terrorist threat in town. Anyway, the result is the Hamas cell was just… ignored!

When you see that, you understand Bob Wright’s frustration and you wonder whether the Executive Branch, be it under Clinton or Bush, ever assessed the risk, however remote, of a major terrorist attack with commercial airliners. Everyone seemed to have forgotten that the WTC had already been bombed by Islamists in 1993. Or maybe no one cared.  And 9/11 happened. Did the U.S have foreknowledge of the attacks ? Yes. Did the U.S have foreknowledge of the date? I don’t know. Did the U.S plan the attacks? I don’t know. Maybe ineptitude, indifference explain it all.

Then, with Bush, things got even worse : the lie to the nation about WMD’s, Iraq rather than Bin Laden,  the politization of the intelligence community and of the judiciary, the insatiable appetite for classification, the obsene carpet-bagging in Iraq with big weapon companies calling the shots from behind the scene. And this is freedom? No, it’s a recipe for the elimination of freedom.

LR: Ok – and where does the heroin trafficking fit into Sibel’s story?

Mathieu: Well, the poppy trade is interesting, but we don’t have very specific knowledge about the connections to Sibel. All we know is that for the last 30 years, Turkey has been the leading country in the world in terms of processing heroin and also that the drug business is just another business for many players in this country. It helps make money, fund illegal activities.

But again, this started a long time ago.

LR:  Getting back to the film – who did you interview?

MV: Well, there are a lot of people whom we interviewed but didn’t make it to the final cut of the film, because we needed to focus on Sibel’s line of operations.

First, we have the “supporters.” Coming first as a a great introduction to Sibel, is John Cole who was a Counter-Intelligence officer at the FBI in the nineties – his case is linked to Sibel’s since the very begining. The first ever articleon Sibel (the Washington Post dated June 19, 2002) mentions his name as a possible co-witness. John was indeed a precious witness for us. He was born in France (laughs)… he is a true U.S patriot. He always wanted ‘to do what’s right’. John often comes back to the same point: “As a public servant, I took an oath of office to protect the country from its enemies, both foreign and domestic. So did Sibel.” Well, obviously many people within the neocon community fit the portrait of a domestic enemy. John was also one of many intelligence whistle-blowers who described the risk-averse mentality, the sheer incompetence of many people in mid-management positions in the agencies.

Then, we have Ann Beeson and Ben Wizner (the two ACLU lawyers) and some prominent members of the NSWBC, the national security whisle-blowers coalition Sibel created in 2004. We also include in this group of supporters this very nice musician whom we filmed in a New York club performing the song he wrote on Sibel: Gary Hood (youtube). Gary is an early fan.

Then, we have the “experts” coming in. Their role in the film is to expose Sibel’s secret…

————————————

Next Up: When the truth comes out from the CIA…. Probably on Monday.

crossposted at sibeledmonds.blogspot.com

Sibel Edmonds movie/director interview, part 5: Valerie Plame and Sibel Edmonds

This is part 5 of my interview with Mathieu Verboud, co-director of the film about Sibel Edmonds, Kill the Messenger. (see Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four)

In this part of the interview, Marc Grossman denies ever hearing of Valerie Plame and Sibel Edmonds – in 2006!

and quote of the interview: “Put a Neocon on top of a nuclear case and you’ll always have a smoking gun!”

more downstairs.
Valerie Plame and Sibel Edmonds

Mathieu Verboud: But let me go back to how we found about a key point in Sibel’s case : its connection to the Plame case. Around May 2005, we discovered Plame’s story in a Vanity Fair article. We knew nothing about it. We learnt that Plame was Ambassador Wilson’s wife. But a few months later, we also learnt that she had been working in counter-proliferation at the CIA. And that looked odd to us. After Barlow in the 80s, then Sibel, another U.S intelligence officer, another public servant knowledgable about nuclear black market was facing the intimidation tactics from the government. Could that just be coïncidence? Particularly since Grossman was publicly known to be involved in the Plame case along with… guess whom? Steve Hadley! The man who sealed Barlow’s fate.

In November 2005, we learnt from the Turkish paper Hurriyet that Plame was investigating Turkey, but not only that: she was investigating the ATC! Our intuition had proved right.

Later, in April 2006, we confronted Sibel with this set of facts and ask her to go on the record. Sibel’s line about Plame and Brewster Jennings is just gold. She said: “During my time at the FBI, I never heard the name Valerie Plame – but if you are asking me about Brewster Jennings, that’s another story, a story that I cannot comment on because I cannot talk about anything that I did at the FBI – and the targets and the details of the investigations.” The message is crystal clear: there are mentions of Brewster Jennings on the wiretaps! Praises to Sibel to be so smart in front of a camera.

Coming back to Grossman, exposing his role would have been interesting for the film, but the guy being what he is, there was no way that he would have given an interview if we had brought up any kind of charges. So we decided to just let him talk, give us his vision of Turkey. This man has nerves! Turkey, for example, was known to him as being a transit point for drugs but not as the biggest opium processing country in the world. In his always soft manners, he repeatedly tried to make us look like we had ‘caricatural views’ of Turkey.

Then we tested him – we asked him about Valerie Plame – and it was amazing to see his face change! He had the nerves to say that he didn’t know anything about Valerie Plame, or about Brewster Jennings – which is simply false! As mentioned earlier, his name had already  appeared publicly in the Valerie Plame’s case! Anyway, we didn’t point out to that simple fact and fended off.

Next, we just mentioned that there was this little woman of Turkish origin whose name was mentioned in an article in Vanity Fair speaking about FBI and Turkey… His face changed again, and he came up with this answer: “Vanity Fair? I am afraid it is not a magazine I read!”  We then asked him directly about Sibel Edmonds and he said that he didn’t know anything about her. Even the name was “unfamiliar”.

Luke Ryland: That’s hysterical. When was that interview?

MV: early May 2006.

LR: (laughs) Oh that’s great. And he’s never heard of Sibel Edmonds and Valerie Plame. That’s fantastic. I’d love to see that footage.

MV: Well – if we ever sell this film in the U.S, we will consider adding a small chapter on him. But you know, it can backfire at us – because in the end somebody might say that there is too much speculation. And it is true that we have no factual evidence of his involvement in the case.

That’s the irony of our film. We have no proof, none! But at the same time, everything we say is documented. Every single fact, every date, is accurate – and it’s always troubling. Someone might say:  ‘OK the facts are all good – but the way you put things together is just mere speculation, it’s just coincidence’ – well this is up for a debate of course. For us, these are not coincidences.

LR: What about the connection between Sibel Edmonds and Valerie Plame – what can you tell us about that?

MV: Apart from the complexities of these matters, we have something wonderful here: a PATTERN! Richard Barlow knows too much about nuclear stuff. Hadley goes after him. Plame knows too much about nuclear stuff. Grossman and Hadley go after her. Edmonds knows too much about nuclear stuff. Did Grossman, as some believe, go after her? Well.. anything is possible.

Marc Grossman and Steve Hadley! With these two guys, we’re not faraway from the Neocon little Mafia at the Pentagon, those people who called the shots about the war in Iraq, namely Perle and Feith. Feith and his infamous Office of Special Plans. The very place from which the latest big spy case involving Israel happened in 2005. I am speaking of the Lawrence Franklin case, an assistant to Feith arrested by the FBI for having leaked highly classified Pentagon documents describing U.S policy towards Iran and its nuclear intentions to the Israeli embassy, via his friends at AIPAC. The word ‘nuclear’ appears once again in this case!

Each time we have tried to decompartmentalize information, a global picture started emerging. Some observers believe that one of the reasons why the Americans and the Israelis cajoled Turkey in the 90s – beside the corruption and all that – was the perspective of being granted an airspace in the Anatolia highlands. It was seen as vitally important in the case of a military confrontation with Iran. Now, this is geopolitics, big time!

At the end of the day, you end up thinking ‘Put a Neocon on top of a nuclear case and you’ll always have a smoking gun! Same activities, same networks, same people, over the years. A bunch of maybe just ten guys. All Neocons, all longtime supporters of Israel and to a lesser extent of Turkey.

In Sibel’s case, as I said before, all roads start and end in Islamabad but we have stop overs in exotic places like Washington DC, the Balkans, Chechnya, South Africa, Israel, Dubaï, and more than often the Black Sea. And let me tell you, the Black Sea fish is hard to catch.

LR: So why do you think they went after Valerie Plame?

MV: Let me ask the question: did they go after Plame because she was investigating the American Turkish Council? That’s one tempting and plausible hypothesis! In any case, the chance that they went after her because of what she was doing at the CIA cannot be ruled out – for many reasons. Barlow’s case has shown that the U.S nuclear counterproliferation policy has been ‘sabotaged’ from the inside for decades now. History shows that whoever speaks out about these issues, whoever knows too much, shall be gagged. By the way, Barlow has also found the coïncidences between his case and the Plame case absolutely “remarkable”.

Well now, thanks to whistle-blowers like Barlow, Edmonds, Cole, and patriots like Giraldi, Plame, or journalists like David Rose, Paul Sperry, Chris Deliso, the American public learns that some top U.S officials are indeed been involved in nuclear black market activities, probably to the benefit of the worst enemies of the American democracy.

Did you know that in the mid-90s Halliburton, then headed by Dick Cheney, was fined by the government for illegal dealings with Libya? Halliburton had sold equipment used for the drilling industry that could be of dual use: nuclear and non nuclear. Between 1990 to 2001, Rumsfeld, one of the Bush administration’s most strident “hardliners” on North Korea, was on the board of a Swiss firm, ABB. In 2000, ABB netted a $200 million contract with North Korea. The contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations. By the way, in the 1980s, Rumsfeld was busy selling U.S weapons to Saddam Hussein. They were filmed together in Iraq.

When we finished investigating, we noticed we had found nothing on Richard Armitage (laughs)…. Without him, the work looked unfinished (laughs)… As you may know, Armitage, who served at the Pentagon under Reagan, then as Deputy Secretary of State during President George W. Bush’s first term, is known for his large circle of friends in the Pakistani military and ISI, as well as his connections to the Iran-Contra affair. Guess what? We recently learnt from the press that Armitage has admitted that he was among the sources of the leak of Valerie Plame!

I do believe their is more to dig about Brewster Jennings and Valerie Plame. One day, we will know the full story and we will see that Plame’s case was only connected say, one percent to Sibel‘s- but only a year ago, nobody thought that there was any connection at all. Well, after talking with David Albright, I am convinced there is at least one, and that is Turkey.

LR: Right – speaking of terrible consequences – you mentioned earlier that the first thing that you heard about Sibel ‘s case was that it had something to do with 911.  What do you know about the connections between her case and 911?

MV: Some small things and some bigger things. The small things are more precise, and the larger issues are more diluted. From some private conversations with Sibel, it’s our understanding that during her time at the FBI, she may have heard things, let’s say, about the existence of certain tapes related to Bin Laden. I won’t go into further details and quite frankly, as far as 9/11 goes, the event, and the preparation – that’s all I know.

But there are other issues related to 9/11. First is WHY was 9/11 possible. Sibel’s story helps us find an answer…
____________
NEXT UP: Sibel & 9/11… – friday or saturday

(cross-posted at sibeledmonds.blogspot.com)