Sibel Edmonds re-emerges - finally - with a book

i've posted a great deal in the past about sibel edmonds (see here) but it's been nearly three years since my last post... the constraints of her gag order coupled with personal threats have been severely detrimental in getting her story out... now i see that she has a book which lays out everything and i can only hope that her re-emergence and renewed visibility will be sufficient to shield her from any unexplained, coincidental "accidents"...
 
first this from rt and the alyona show...

Sibel Edmonds has called the most classified woman in US history. But now, after a long battle with government secrecy, the full story has finally been written. She faced a nearly yearlong FBI campaign to prevent its publication. She joins the show to tell us about her memoir, "Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story".

here's david swanson...

Sibel Edmonds' new book, "Classified Woman," is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence.

The experiences she recounts resemble K.'s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity.

I've read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government that referred to them as "page-turners" and "gripping dramas," but I had never read a book that actually fit that description until now.

The F.B.I., the Justice Department, the White House, the Congress, the courts, the media, and the nonprofit industrial complex put Sibel Edmonds through hell.  This book is her triumph over it all, and part of her contribution toward fixing the problems she uncovered and lived through.

Edmonds took a job as a translator at the FBI shortly after 9-11.  She considered it her duty.  Her goal was to prevent any more terrorist attacks.  That's where her thinking was at the time, although it has now changed dramatically.  It's rarely the people who sign up for a paycheck and healthcare who end up resisting or blowing a whistle.

Edmonds found at the FBI translation unit almost entirely two types of people. The first group was corrupt sociopaths, foreign spies, cheats and schemers indifferent to or working against U.S. national security.  The second group was fearful bureaucrats unwilling to make waves.  The ordinary competent person with good intentions who risks their job to "say something if you see something" is the rarest commodity.  Hence the elite category that Edmonds found herself almost alone in: whistleblowers.

[N]o branch of our government has lifted its little finger to fix the problem of secrecy and the corruption it breeds, which Edmonds argues has grown far worse under President Obama.  That's why this book should be spread far and wide, and read aloud to our misrepresentatives in Congress if necessary.  This book is a masterpiece that reveals both the details and the broader pattern of corruption and unaccountability in Washington, D.C.  Edmonds has not exposed bad apples, but a rotten barrel of toxic waste that will sooner or later infect us all -- not just the whistleblowers like Sibel and the thousands of people in our government who see something and dare not say something for fear that we will not have their back.

now, if our brain-dead media could just manage to sit up and take notice of what sibel is exposing, we just might be able to shed some light on all the creepy-crawlies that infest even the highest reaches of our government...  

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Sibel Edmonds story picked up by Military.com

besides the articles from last year in the uk times (i've posted extensively on sibel - see here for the full list), this is some of the first exposure edmonds has gotten in the u.s. from other than weblogs and alternative news media, altho' i'm not sure military.com exactly qualifies as "traditional" news media...

anywayz...

In sworn testimony to attorneys on Aug. 8, Sibel Edmonds described a Pentagon where key personnel helped pass defense secrets to foreign agents or provided them names of knowledgeable officials who were vulnerable to blackmail or co-option.

And firmly rooted in this espionage program in the 1990s, according to Edmonds’ deposition, were two men who, with the election of George W. Bush as president in 2000, found themselves in the Pentagon: Douglas Feith, who would head the Office of Special Plans, and Richard Perle, who would become chairman of the Defense Advisory Board.

"They were 100 percent directly involved," Edmonds told Military.com. "They were not in the Pentagon [in the late 1990s] but they had their people inside the Pentagon." One of those people, she said, was Larry Franklin, an Air Force officer assigned to the Office of Special Plans who, in 2003, passed classified information to representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Office, or AIPAC. By then Feith was leading the OSP.

Edmonds cautioned that she does not know if these practices are continuing, since she was fired by the FBI in April 2002 after pressing for an investigation into an attempt by a colleague to recruit her for an organization that was itself a target of FBI surveillance.

Perle, today a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and board member for or adviser to other think tanks, including the National Institute for Neareast Affairs and the Center for Security Policy, emphatically denied Edmonds’ claims in an interview with Military.com.

“This woman is a nutcase. Certifiable,” Perle said. “She makes wild accusations. She was fired from her job, and has been on a vendetta against … imagined demons ever since.”

Feith, in an email to Military.com, said: “What I’ve read on the Internet about Ms. Edmonds’s claims about me is wildly false and bizarre.”

"nutcase"...
"certifiable"...
"wild accusations"...
"imagined demons"...
"wildly false"...
"bizarre"...

interesting terms from two of the most vicious neocon nuts to ever fall from the wingnut tree...

edmonds obviously knows something of value or she wouldn't have been slapped with a "state secrets" gag order after her firing... she also has a very credible corroborator who is still working in the system...

One of Edmonds’ believers is John M. Cole, a former FBI counterintelligence analyst and author of “While America Sleeps: An FBI Whistleblower's Story.” Cole, who worked for the bureau 18 years and now works for the Defense Intelligence Agency at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., said the pattern of espionage described by Edmonds is familiar to him.

“In the 1990s I was responsible for Western Europe and Israel [counterintelligence cases],” Cole told Military.com. “We did have ongoing investigations of officials in the State Department and also the Department of Defense.” And he said cases did extend outside the Pentagon, to various Air Force Bases and the RAND Corp. – something Edmonds also stated in her testimony.

one of these days, this is going to pop open like the festering sore it is, preferably sooner than later...

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Brad Blog is liveblogging Sibel Edmonds testimony under deposition

worth checking out...

LIVE BLOG: Deposition of Sibel Edmonds Underway, DoJ a 'No Show', All Questions Being Answered...

here's some comments brad solicited from david krikorian, sibel's attorney...

From my opinion, if I'm some of the current members of Congress, I'd be very very worried about the information that's going to come out of this. There are current members of Congress that she has implicated in bribery, espionage. It's not good. It's crazy, it's absolutely crazy. For people in power situations in the United States, who know about this information, if they don't take action against it, in my opinion, it's negligence.

[...]

Frankly it's disappointing that things like this are happening in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Is it a huge surprise? No. Should it be tolerated? Absolutely not. I can't imagine George Washington and Thomas Jefferson allowing this sort of thing to go on in the Republic that they created. I cannot imagine it.

We're talking about High Crimes against the United States government. If the Government is aware of these High Crimes and doesn't prosecute them, I'm not sure what can be said about this.

from all indications, there's some pretty explosive stuff going on the record... brad is hopeful that a videotape of the testimony will be available for release...

The deposition is being videotaped and Edmonds hopes that it can be released as soon as possible after the deposition, though there has been some objections about releasing the video tape...

we've all been waiting a long time for this...

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Sibel Edmonds keeps on talking... Is anybody listening...?

to openly steal from atrios' "simple answers to simple questions"... uh, that would a a "no"...

still worth reading, if for nothing else than to keep your frustration and disgust factor, if not your blood pressure, high...

Those who have been elected to represent the people and their interests cannot pursue their own greed and ambitions by engaging in criminal or unethical activities against the interests of the same people they've sworn to represent, and then be given a pass.

[...]

[O]ur system is rotten at it's core; that in many cases we have been trying to deal with the symptoms rather than the cause.

I, like many others, believed that changing the Congressional majority in 2006 was going to bring about some of the needed changes; the pursuit of accountability being one. We were proven wrong. In 2008, many genuinely bought in to the promise of change, and thus far, they've been let down.

These experiences are disheartening, surely, but they are also eye-opening. I do see many vigilant activists who continue the fight. As long as that's the case, there is hope. More people realize that real change will require not replacing one or two or three, but many more. More people are coming to understand that the road to achieving government of the people passes through a Congress, but not the one currently occupied by the many crusty charlatans who represent only self-interest --- achieved by representing the interests of the few, rather than the majority of the people of this nation.

sigh... and now, over 100 days into the obama administration, what can we point to as real change...? nothing, i'm afraid, but happy talk and cosmetics... once again, we've been taken in by the old bait-and-switch...

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Just in case you'd forgotten about Sibel Edmonds

here's a "little" (52 min.) reminder...

Sibel Edmonds, a 32-year-old Turkish-American, was hired as a translator by the FBI shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 because of her knowledge of Middle Eastern languages. She was fired less than a year later in March 2002 for reporting shoddy work and security breaches to her supervisors that could have prevented those attacks.

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The nuclear black market and the myth of so-called U.S. "news"

yes, most everyone reading this blog is fully aware of the sad reality of what passes for "news" in the united states... however, it's always nice to have that truth validated in such an articulate fashion...

Centrism is the philosophy of the American media - and that essentially backs the status quo, when you're a centrist, and this game of objectivity that they play is really limited by parameters that you're allowed to ask questions and to investigate and in a sense then you're transmitting these assumptions, and reinforcing every day that the US is really a functioning democracy...

[...]

The mindset of the American mainstream press does not allow certain ideas to easily filter through: the idea that high-ranking US officials might actually be facilitating this [nuclear black market]... It's entertainment all the time, the presidential campaign is entertainment, and do you actually think that these guys would actually go in there and make changes, whoever wins, when behind this wall of entertainment put forward by news media and the entertainment industry is a murky world of terrorism, nuclear procurement ring, of CIA, of the FBI working - and this rarely breaks through to the mainstream press...

They rarely look at the entire system being rotten, not just one official here or there being rotten, and they pat themselves on the back. And when I say the entire system being rotten, I mean Congress that is enthralled to corporate backers, and approving their aggressive foreign policy that enriches themselves, and does nothing to secure the American people or the interests of most American people. That is not even in the discussion in the mainstream press...

this is part of an interview conducted by scott horton of joseph luria (audio here, full transcript here), one of the london sunday times investigators who is still working on the sibel edmonds story... luke ryland has one of his usual highly informative, thorough posts up on daily kos that captures the whole thing...

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Dallas Morning News breaks the Sibel story

yes, it's phil giraldi, and yes, it's on the op-ed page, but, hey... at least it's a major u.s. paper...

Philip Giraldi: What FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds found in translation

FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds has spilled her secrets, says PHILIP GIRALDI. Why is her story being covered up?

12:00 AM CST on Sunday, February 17, 2008

Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they never will.

The former FBI translator turned whistle-blower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington's highest levels – sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage. She may be a first-rate fabulist, but Ms. Edmonds' account is full of dates, places and names. And if she is to be believed, a treasonous plot to embed moles in American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli, Pakistani and Turkish sources was facilitated by figures in the upper echelons of the State and Defense Departments. Her charges could be easily confirmed or dismissed if classified government documents were made available to investigators.

But Congress has refused to act, and the Justice Department has shrouded Ms. Edmonds' case in the state-secrets privilege, a rarely used measure so sweeping that it precludes even a closed hearing attended only by officials with top-secret security clearances. According to the Department of Justice, such an investigation "could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the foreign policy and national security of the United States."

After five years of thwarted legal challenges and fruitless attempts to launch a congressional investigation, Sibel Edmonds is telling her story, though her defiance could land her in jail. After reading its November piece about Louai al-Sakka, an al-Qaeda terrorist who trained 9/11 hijackers in Turkey, Ms. Edmonds approached the Sunday Times of London. On Jan. 6, the Times, a Rupert Murdoch-owned paper that does not normally encourage exposés damaging to the Bush administration, featured a long article. The news quickly spread around the world – but not in the United States.

why should getting the REALLY important stuff out in the public eye be like trying to shove a camel through the eye of a needle...?

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Hillary, the narcotics trade, high-level bribery, Dennis Hastert, and the Turkish "deep" state

yet more damning info that says hillary should just drop out...

luke ryland at let sibel edmonds speak...

Key Clinton Backer Guilty in Sibel Edmonds Case

The UK's Times has already run three bombshell articles on the nuclear black market element in the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds this year, and we are expecting more fallout in the near future as new evidence and witnesses come forward.

In the meantime, another important angle to Edmonds' case has opened up. Earlier this week, the New York Post ran a Page 6 piece, ODD FILM BY HILLARY BACKER, which highlights the close relationship between Hillary Clinton and Chicago-based Turkish businessman Mehmet Celebi.

Celebi, "one of the national leaders of the Turkish-American community in the US," is a key fundraiser for Clinton, and is one of Clinton's Chicago delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Celebi was also heavily involved in the controversial 2006 movie "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" which has been widely regarded as "anti-Semitic, anti-American, conspiratorial agitprop."

Mehmet Celebi is also a key figure in the Sibel Edmonds case - he is heavily involved in the narcotics trade in the US and the corruption and bribery of high-level US officials.

According to Celebi's bio:

He has been serving as the President of the Turkish-American Cultural Alliance (TACA) since 2000, and as Member of the Board/Vice-President of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations (ATAA), a Washington, D.C. based umbrella organization representing 57 organizations.

The Chicago-based Turkish-American Cultural Alliance (TACA) and the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations (ATAA) both figure prominently in Sibel Edmonds' case. Both are reported to be front groups for criminal activity involving illegal weapons sales, narcotics trafficking, and the bribery and corruption of high level US officials.

[...]

Why is Hillary Clinton involved with such a character? The claims against him are well documented, and extend back to her husband's presidency, including steps in place to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Celebi and the bribery of Hastert's and others.

[...]

Has Hillary forgotten all this? Or is she too for sale to the highest bidder? We are all well aware of George Bush's fund-raising giants, the Rangers and Pioneers, which resulted in many a scandal and prosecution including Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff and Brent Wilkes - yet here is Hillary Clinton engaging in the exact same behaviour, taking large sums of money from corrupt interests, and appointing these people to positions of political power. How can we even hope that a Clinton presidency will be an improvement over the last 8 years?

The right-wing blogs are already beginning to pick up this story of Celebi and Clinton - Debbie Schlussel, National Review Online, Gateway Pundit - focusing solely on Celebi's involvement with the movie "Valley of the Wolves." The Right-Wing-Noise-Machine will no doubt go into overdrive if Hillary wins the nomination to be the next president. This information needs to be made public immediately.

[...]

The FBI's Chicago Field Office has investigative files relating to Mehmet Celebi's involvement in the trafficking of narcotics as well as the corruption of high-level US officials. We need to recruit some prominent 'good government' groups, of any political persuasion, to file a FOIA request with the FBI's Chicago Field Office (CFO) for all information relating to Mehmet Celebi and this criminal activity. I expect that the CFO will deny and stonewall, but as we saw with the recent UK Times article, false denials can lead to other frustrated whistleblowers coming forward with documents and other evidence which can prove the case. Please contact me if you can prepare, file, and follow-up the FOIA request.

keep it comin', luke...

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"Sibel Edmonds must be heard"

phil geraldi in the huffpo...

Sibel Edmonds is the FBI translator turned whistleblower who decided to go public late in 2002 and has been seeking to tell her story about high level corruption in the United States government involving Turkey and Israel. What makes her story particularly compelling is that the corruption relates to the theft and sale of United States defense secrets, most particularly nuclear technology. Sibel obtained her information while translating Turkish language telephone intercepts directed against several Turkish lobbying groups who had contact with senior officials in the Bush Administration, both at the Pentagon and in the State Department. Many of the officials involved are apparently the same neoconservatives who cooked the books to enable the rush to war against Iraq and who are continuing to urge more wars in the Middle East, most notably against Iran and Syria. Several of them are close allies of leading Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

To stop Sibel from telling her story, then Attorney General John Ashcroft subjected her to a state secrets privilege gag order after her appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes in October 2002 that not only forbade her providing details of her employment with FBI but also made the ban retroactive so that anything relating to her case would be considered a state secret. Edmonds had been discouraged by her experience with CBS as her most important points wound up on the cutting room floor. Then came the gag order, which she has observed while working assiduously to get bits and pieces of her story out in various ways. In October 2007 she decided to tell all without regard for the consequences, stating that she would provide details of her allegations to any American media outlet that would let her collaborate in the final edit so that her message would not be lost. There were no takers. Last month, The Sunday Times of London decided to pick up her story and has now produced a long feature article called "For Sale: the West's Deadliest Nuclear Secrets" plus two follow-ups. The story was picked up and replayed all over the world, but not by the mainstream media in the United States.

Why should Sibel be heard? Mostly because her story, if true, involves corruption at the highest levels of government coupled with the sale of secrets vital to the security of the United States.

goddam it... will a major u.s. news outlet PLEASE give her a forum...? PLEASE...?

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Sibel Edmonds: "I have one message for the US media: If they think this is over, it's not over."

luke ryland interviews sibel...

Luke Ryland: Why has the US failed on this story so dramatically for 6 years?

Sibel Edmonds: [...] With the US media, it appears as though if there is no clear partisan angle, then there's no story. As you know, this case is spread over two administrations, and that appears to make it difficult for the reporters to cover the story. Even within one news organization you might have one journalist who wants to use the story to indict Clinton, and another who wants to use the story to bash Bush, and in the end neither of them write about the story because it doesn't fit their partisanship, their 'narrative', so they just drop it altogether.

I had such high hopes for the alternative press, and they do a lot of good work, but partisanship repeatedly gets in the way there too, on both sides.

[...]

The other major problem in the US is the focus on symptoms, rather than root causes.

[...]

I have one message for the US media: If they think this is over, it's not over. Much more will come out. They won't be able to ignore it any longer, and so I hope they get over any reluctance they might have.

sibel articulates my own view of the alternative press and the so-called "liberal," "progressive" blogosphere in both of her accusations, partisanship AND looking at symptoms rather than causes...

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Sibel Edmonds claims now tied to Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings

for the third sunday, beginning on january 6 (previous articles here and here), the uk london sunday times continues to not only scoop every u.s. news outlet on the sibel edmonds story, but also to hurl a gale-force wind at the bush house of cards...

AN investigation into the illicit sale of American nuclear secrets was compromised by a senior official in the State Department, a former FBI employee has claimed.

The official is said to have tipped off a foreign contact about a bogus CIA company used to investigate the sale of nuclear secrets.

The firm, Brewster Jennings & Associates, was a front for Valerie Plame, the former CIA agent. Her public outing two years later in 2003 by White House officials became a cause célèbre.

The claims that a State Department official blew the investigation into a nuclear smuggling ring have been made by Sibel Edmonds, 38, a former Turkish language translator in the FBI’s Washington field office.

Edmonds had been employed to translate hundreds of hours of intercepted recordings made during a six-year FBI inquiry into the nuclear smuggling ring.

She has previously told The Sunday Times she heard evidence that foreign intelligence agents had enlisted US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Her latest claims relate to a number of intercepted recordings believed to have been made between the summer and autumn of 2001. At that time, foreign agents were actively attempting to acquire the West’s nuclear secrets and technology.

luke ryland, who has been on top of the sibel story for nearly two years, offers this disturbing update on apparent bush administration reaction to the recent media attention...

Significantly, since the Times began this series three weeks ago, the White House has quietly moved to legalize the sale of nuclear technology to Turkey in an apparent attempt to 'Exonerate Neocon Criminals' who have been illegally selling this technology for a decade. Congress has 90 days to block this legislation, otherwise it becomes law. If Turkey wants and deserves nuclear technology, this decision should be made openly and transparently, not the result of stealth decisions made by this administration to hide crimes of senior US officials.

We need public open hearings to determine which officials have been supplying the nuclear black market before this becomes law.

it's more than astounding that our complicit u.s. news media continue to stonewall this story when it's creating tidal waves of reaction everwhere outside the u.s... 'course, look at how long they were able to delay reporting the downing street memo...

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Luke has a new post on Sibel following up from yesterday

Sibel Edmonds case: What was found in the translations

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Volunteers needed to give traitor Marc Grossman hell when he testifies before Congress tomorrow

things are definitely heating up... this is the third post from luke yet this evening...

This is an action alert for those in the DC area. Please try to recruit friends to attend.

Marc Grossman will be attending a congressional committee hearing on Wednesday January 23 (tomorrow) at 10am, at Room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

Grossman will be appearing in front of the National Security and Foreign Affairs subcommittee of the Oversight Committee on an unrelated matter.

Marc Grossman is a traitor.

We want volunteers to go to the hearing and give Grossman hell,

We want you to hand out flyers and two recent articles to the various Congressmen, their staff, and attendant media. [Flyer here - PDF]

We want you to take video cameras and capture the whole thing.

Marc Grossman – Traitor

UK Times, January 6, 2008:

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one
well-known senior official [MARC GROSSMAN] in the US State Department was
being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to
black market buyers, including Pakistan.

[…]

“He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

American Conservative Magazine, January 2008

Found in Translation. FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds spills her secrets

Marc Grossman was recorded by FBI

• tipping off criminal suspects regarding CIA’s WMD cover company Brewster Jennings in 2001
• planting criminals in US Nuclear labs to steal secrets
• picking up $15,000 cash bribe
• setting free four 9/11 suspects without interrogation

DEMAND OPEN PUBLIC HEARINGS NOW

Marc Grossman is a traitor and needs to be held to account.

Contact Henry Waxman: 2157 Rayburn House Office Building, (202) 225-5051

Grossman will be at National Security & Foreign Affairs Hearing Room
Jan 23, 10am, 2154, Rayburn House Office Building.

With the absence of true media...
time for Citizen Journalism

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Luke offers still more on Sibel from Phil Giraldi [UPDATE TO PREVIOUS POST]

there's some momentum building here...

Ex-CIA officer Phil Giraldi has a new strong article out in American Conservative, and we're trying to keep the heat on as much as possible this week

Found in Translation. FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds spills her secrets.

It opens like this:

"Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they never will. The former FBI translator turned whistleblower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington's highest levels—sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage. She may be a first-rate fabulist, but Edmonds's account is full of dates, places, and names. And if she is to be believed, a treasonous plot to embed moles in American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli, Pakistani, and Turkish sources was facilitated by figures in the upper echelons of the State and Defense Departments. Her charges could be easily confirmed or dismissed if classified government documents were made available to investigators"

and ends like this:

Sibel Edmonds makes a number of accusations about specific criminal behavior that appear to be extraordinary but are credible enough to warrant official investigation. Her allegations are documentable: an existing FBI file should determine whether they are accurate. It's true that she probably knows only part of the story, but if that part is correct, Congress and the Justice Department should have no higher priority. Nothing deserves more attention than the possibility of ongoing national-security failures and the proliferation of nuclear weapons with the connivance of corrupt senior government officials.

keep it crankin'...

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More on Sibel Edmonds: our worthless AND complicit U.S. news media

i've been convinced for some time that there may be nothing more important than getting a full public hearing for sibel edmonds... you can go here to see my efforts...

the real hero, however, is luke ryland... here's his most recent post at let sibel edmonds speak...

The UK's Guardian is running a piece, "US journalists ignore Sunday Times scoop on FBI nuclear scandal," criticizing the US media for not picking up on the latest revelations by their competitor, the UK's Times, in the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds.

The author of the piece is the Guardian's media commentator, Roy Greenslade, a Professor of Journalism and former Managing Editor of the Times. He writes:

It looks to me as though the Sunday Times has landed a genuine world exclusive that should surely have been broken ages ago by US-based reporters.

I agree entirely. Consider what any journalist in the US has known, or should have known, for years.

Sibel's case broke as an espionage story in June 2002 in the Washington Post and an October 2002 CBS' 60 Minutes segment (youtube) where we learnt that foreign operatives had spies working for them in both the Pentagon and the State Department.

Simply following the names and associations of the people known to be involved, any journalist should have been able to piece together the broad outlines of the story simply from public sources.

[...]

Roy Greenslade, Professor of Journalism and the Guardian's media commentator, first notes that the story "should surely have been broken ages ago by US-based reporters" then adds that the latest revelations in the Times's latest series (1, 2):

.. looks to me like a very hot story indeed that should surely have been taken up by mainstream newspapers in the United States

not only is our media a laughingstock in the rest of the world, they're also a huge embarrassment to themselves...

btw, the above is only a small excerpt...

in the full post, luke offers this speculation...

US journalists have been either too lazy, or complicit, to report on anything but the most trivial of Sibel's claims...

[...]

For one reason or other - incompetence or complicity - not a single American journalist followed up on the important issues in the 60 Minutes report and the Washington Post, and we didn't learn about any of this in the US media in 2002. Instead, we are 'learning' it in 2008 from the British press - and still the US media refuses to publish it, which leads me to believe that the American media is not 'incompetent' but rather 'complicit.'

i passed the point of no return on "complicity" quite some time ago, pretty much the same time i came to the conclusion that "incompetence" on the part of the bush administration was nothing but an acceptable myth, helping us avoid the most unpleasant reality that our government is deliberately trying to screw us to the wall...

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Daniel Ellsberg on Sibel Edmonds: "the entire U.S. press has let itself be scooped" and "is participating in a cover-up"

i've been doing my part in keeping the sibel edmonds story visible... you can go here to see my efforts...

today we have daniel ellsberg, writing in the bradblog, courtesy of luke ryland and let sibel edmonds speak...

For the second time in two weeks, the entire U.S. press has let itself be scooped by Rupert Murdoch's London Sunday Times on a dynamite story of criminal activities by corrupt U.S. officials promoting nuclear proliferation. But there is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped, and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the U.S. Congress and the courts.

For the last two weeks --- one could say, for years --- the major American media have been guilty of ignoring entirely the allegations of the courageous and highly credible source Sibel Edmonds, quoted in the London Times on January 6, 2008 in a front-page story that was front-page news in much of the rest of the world but was not reported in a single American newspaper or network. It is up to readers to demand that this culpable silent treatment end.

Just as important, there must be pressure by the public on Congressional committee chairpersons, in particular Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Patrick Leahy. Both have been sitting for years on classified, sworn testimony by Edmonds --- as she revealed in the Times' new story on Sunday --- along with documentation, in their possession, confirming parts of her account. Pressure must be brought for them to hold public hearings to investigate her accusations of widespread criminal activities, over several administrations, that endanger national security. They should call for open testimony under oath by Edmonds --- as she has urged for five years --- and by other FBI officials she has named to them, as cited anonymously in the first Times' story.

It's a measure of how far the New York Times and Washington Post have fallen from their responsibilities...since I gave them the Pentagon Papers in 1971. They printed them then. Would they today?

And this is the time for those who have so far creditably leaked to the Times of London to come forward, accepting personal risks, to offer their testimony --- and new documents --- both to the Congress and to the American press. I would say to them: Don't do what I did and waste months of precious time trying to get Congressional committees to act as they should in the absence of journalistic pressure. Do your best to inform the American public directly, first, through the major American media.

here's a youtube of few clips of ellsberg commenting on sibel edmonds as put together by luke...



i will repeat my fervent plea... can we PLEASE get on with getting the truth out and bringing our lawless government down...?

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Sibel Edmonds: FBI cover-up

the hits just keep on comin'...

luke offers up another explosive story from the uk london sunday times about sibel edmonds...

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.

Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.

“I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations,” she said.

The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.

The letter says: “You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office.”

It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file – many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.

cripes... when is this going to blow down the goddam house of cards...? soon...? please...?

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Luke's follow-up on the UK Sunday Times Sibel story

i posted a couple of weeks ago on the london sunday times article on sibel edmonds and the u.s. covert sale of nuclear weapons technology... luke, as usual, doing a critical service for us all, offers a follow-up...

Sibel has previously said that from her experience:

"The Department of State is easily the most corrupted of the major government agencies."

[G]uilty people are allowed to walk free, and Western governments go to great lengths to cover up the facts.

all in the name of "national secrets"...

[T]he Guardian last Friday noted:

National security is being invoked not to protect us but to shield politicians from embarrassment

[...]

There are genuine threats to national security and to our public and personal safety. It is a dangerous abuse if a government hoists the flag of national security and deploys the Official Secrets Act when all it is really trying to do is protect itself from embarrassment.

In the US, we've recently seen the State Secrets card played to cover up illegal spying, torture, and any number of other crimes - including complicity in the spread of nuclear weapons to our purported enemies.

Enough is enough.

enough HAS been enough for a very long time now, but the merry band of criminals keeps on a'rollin'...

p.s. i haven't excerpted the meat, so i suggest visiting luke's sibel site and reading it all...

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The Sibel Edmonds story is picking up some momentum

every time somebody picks up on the sibel edmonds story, it becomes just a little bit more likely that the truth may eventually hit the mainstream... as i've noted repeatedly, luke ryland has been the prime mover of this effort, but it's gratifying to see the likes of brad friedman, the london sunday times, and now chris floyd weighing in...

This week, the Sunday Times lifted the lid on one of the most important stories of the last quarter-century: how American officials sold nuclear arms technology to illegal proliferators -- including ideological allies of al Qaeda -- in return for bribes and other inducements. This widespread corruption has been protected from exposure by the highest levels of the U.S. government, which has gone to enormous lengths to protect the truth from coming out. The entire planet has been put at grave risk by the greed -- and geopolitical gamesmanship -- that lies behind this criminal enterprise, which actually is even more extensive, and goes back further in time, than the newspaper's remarkable revelations.

The Sunday Times story is based on the evidence provided by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who has been subjected to an unprecedented campaign of state-enforced muzzling by the Bush Administration since she first tried to speak out about the corrupt connections between American officials and foreign agents she discovered when reviewing transcripts associated with the 9/11 investigation. As even the leaders of the whitewashing 9/11 Commission themselves now admit, that investigation was deliberately sabotaged by the Bush Administration – in part to cover up the nuclear proliferation network that has directly or indirectly enriched so many in the American elite over the past decades – including the sitting president of the United States, George W. Bush.

there's a lot more...

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The London Sunday Times picks up on Sibel Edmonds

hot damn... this is GREAT news...! i bet luke is dancing a jig... i started to say that it's amazing that the lead establishment newspaper in the uk is the one to pick up on this when NOT A SINGLE MAJOR NEWS OUTLET IN THE U.S. has done so, but, sadly, i guess it's not really so amazing at all, now is it...?

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.

luke has a recommended-list diary up on kos expanding on this story, and he doesn't hesitate to name the "well-known senior official"...

[H]e is Marc Grossman, former #3 at the State Department, former ambassador to Turkey, and current Vice President at The Cohen Group, the lobbying company run by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen.

the times has a characteristically comprehensive, well-written, and quite lengthy article... you need to go read it all...

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