Rob Kall interviews Sibel Edmonds

Rob Kall of Op-Ed News interviewed Sibel on Wednesday. The audio ought to show up here at some point.

The following is a partial transcript. All errors, edits and omissions are mine.

Sibel Edmonds:
[SNIP]
We (NSWBC) stopped our activities for a while, and we are restarting them again, and I just launched my blog, www.123realchange.blogspot.com, and the first series that I'm posting there is on the mainstream media, and in the next few days, you're going to see more than 300 whistleblowers who are going to post their comments at the blog too, about their experiences with various people in the mainstream media.

So that's going to be the main discussion, because currently we review the mainstream media as the culprit, because if they were to do their jobs, they would put pressure on the people in the congress, because these people want to get re-elected, and therefore that pressure would act as a catalyst to get these things that we, the people, have been asking for - the real hearings and accountability. But without the mainstream media putting that pressure, going after them, well, they don’t have anything really to fear. You know, you have to have carrots, you have to have sticks, but there have been no sticks for these people. They get away with everything.

And even when we have some coverage, it only lasts for a couple of days, you don't get what you saw, let's say, with Watergate. You have to keep at it, and the mainstream media is not doing this. And the best example of this is the Harman case, it just popped out, and then in a couple of days it disappeared, and it has been buried.

[SNIP]

They never ask "Why State Secrets Privilege?" and that is what I always bring up with people

Rob Kall: Well, why is there the State Secrets Privilege?

SE: That is the question, right. There are people in the, I would not even say the alternative media, some good researchers in the blogosphere who have worked on it and have been able to at least answer some of that question.

RK: What were the answers?

SE: Well, the answer is, from 1996 to 2002, there were certain investigations under one file within the FBI, that involved criminal activities by US persons, and these are the US government people, whether elected or appointed - and I'm talking about criminal deeds with some severe consequences, and if my case were to be public - to go to court all the way, or have hearings in congress, and you have the FBI agents as witnesses come and testify, with other witnesses, and myself, you will see a lot of these people go to jail.

You will see immediately a Special Prosecutor in this case and you will see the trial for these people because you are looking at very, very serious issues, very, very serious illegal activities.

[SNIP]

SE: Vanity Fair ran the story on Dennis Hastert and the fact that he may have been one of the top targets of the FBI in this corruption and criminal matters involving Turkey, because of his relationship, and some of the illegal activities he was engaged with, with certain Turkish and Turkish American people...

[SNIP]

RK: What was the scandal regarding Turkey?

SE: Well, the fact that he was receiving suitcases full of cash from certain Turkish organizations, to do certain things in Congress, and in the Senate (?) for them, and that some of his activities involved, actually, narcotics in Chicago.

[SNIP]

As soon as Hastert came out of Congress, he goes and becomes an agent for Turkey, getting $35,000 per month for serving this interest, and most likely, his son will be replacing that service provided from the inside (if the son gets elected to Hastert's seat). That's how it works with Congress - even when they are out, they are not really out.

You see, before Dennis Hastert, OK, the person who was serving this interest (Turkey) in congress was Bob Livingston; he was the Speaker of the House. And I can not tell you whether the FBI had thick files on Bob Livingston or not. Well, Bob Livingston resigned, left the Congress in 1999, OK, Hastert replaced him. In 1999 when Bob Livingston left Congress, a few months later he, again, registered himself as the agent for the Turkish interests, under FARA, Foreign Agents Registration Act, under this company that he set up, The Livingston Group, and he received $1.5 million per year for eight years.

His boy, Dennis Hastert, was left behind and became Speaker of the House. Now, Dennis Hastert is out and receiving $35,000 per month serving the Turkish interests. I'm sure he has several boys left behind there who would be doing what Hastert did while he was inside, and then when they come out, they will get their $35,000 or $50,000. That's how it works. And it's not only with the Turkish Lobby; you see that a lot with the Israel Lobby. A lot of people know this, but as I said, we get these crusty people and then we keep re-electing them. Why? Because a lot of people don't know about this, and they don't know about it because the mainstream media is not reporting it.

RK: What did Turkey get in the deal?

SE: It is not the Turkish government - it only looks like it is the Turkish government, but these are certain entities, and again there is plenty of information out there, these are certain Turkish entities that are engaged in certain international activities, some of them legal, some of them illegal.

And again, there are many pieces written on this, one is by Phil Giraldi .... which talks about what these Turkish entities do, and who they are... He links these Turkish entities directly to Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and Eric Edelman and Marc Grossman and Dennis Hastert, and he makes those links fairly accurately... He is a pretty solid freelance writer, he's very good, and very intelligent, and also knowledgeable with direct information on certain angles on my case, because that is what he did, he did work in Turkey, and he was involved in operations that involved, basically, some of the same people.

[SNIP]

RK: So Turkey basically gets better treatment from the US, they get access to military technology, maybe they get to be a little nastier with the Kurds...

SE: Yes, and when you're getting into the military technology, or intelligence stuff, you're basically looking at espionage activities, and they can obtain information from the Pentagon and State Department or congress. Classified information that belongs to the American government that is not supposed to go to other countries, but they're able to get whatever they want because they have their people in place.

[SNIP]

RK: What do you think of AG Eric Holder?

SE: He's basically the same old dung, the same crap, putting it crudely. There is no difference between him and Ashcroft or Gonzales, and unfortunately every day that passes in these four years we are going to see that. We are already seeing this. They dropped the AIPAC court case. Who did it? Obama's Justice Department, his AG decided, despite all the evidence on these Israeli spies, that they were going to drop it. Even the Bush administration didn’t go that far - because some of the FBI agents were out there who would have screamed, and they did. Because that is why we got that CQ piece on Harman. So they said 'we will not go after you.' Obama's administration right now, they are pressuring the British government saying we don't want you to pursue this torture case in your courts because it involves some of our classified information, and we don’t want you to do that. It's not only that they are classifying things here, trying to cover up with secrecy, they're trying to do it overseas, with England! That is ridiculous. It's the same with torture. It is this administration, this Justice Department that is saying that everybody is going to get off the hook...

[SNIP]

RK: Now you have a new website. What is it?

SE: www.123realchange.blogspot.com . And my first series is going to be on the mainstream media... and there will be a surprise element, because in the next few days there will be an announcement there, and I believe that will bring a lot of attention from the mainstream media. It may turn the whole thing into a war zone but we'll see about that, so some exciting things are going to happen there. I hope we will get more visitors and I hope I'll find more ways to promote...

I hope people will cross-post what I write I'm hoping to get tons and tons of comments at the blog, and we'll have the surprise announcement in the next few days which will be good, because we have about 300+ members and sub-members for NSWBC - people from the NSA, FBI, CIA, DoD, people such as Russ Tice, and all these people are going to be active with the blog, posting comments, some anonymous, some with their pseudo-names. Keep following the blog - because when the attack comes, and they start doing it, the mainstream media, I'm going to need all the support I can get! Don't leave me alone there! And I'm also working on the next op-ed piece which is going to be on Obama with some of the stuff we just talked about... And anyone can take any of these articles and reprint them, absolutely. And if people can point back to my blog, because I'll need these people to come and comment, I'll need these supporters because the attacks will follow, I know it's going to come.

RK: What kind of attack? What are you talking about?

SE: Well, this is going to be a pretty interesting thing. You're going to find out in two days - so that's something to look forward to, because, in a way, us, the whistleblowers, are going to turn the table on the mainstream media.

In fact, to say the 'mainstream media is the culprit' in a way let's them off the hook, because it's just a general term, like saying 'congress' but when you start going individually after individuals, or individual papers with specific cases it becomes a different story... These are the things we are going to put on my blog, and I'm going to hit them. Name, paper, incident, cases.

Good interview as always.

Update your bookmarks

Sibel Edmonds has a new blog up and running, 123 Real Change. Congratulations.

Sibel is a great writer, and has lots of experience with the dysfunctionality of Congress, the Executive Branch, the Judiciary and the media. I'm sure that 123 Real Change will be a great blog.

Sibel Edmonds interview with Scott Horton

The always-excellent Scott Horton interviewed Sibel Edmonds for Antiwar Radio. Sibel was typically effective at highlighting the real issues. The audio is here, the transcript, including any errors, is mine.

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Scott Horton: I'm so excited to bring Sibel Edmonds back to the show. The precedent has been set, Sibel, you can tell me everything as long as you tell the Israeli embassy too. Go ahead!

Sibel Edmonds: (laughs) How are you Scott? Good to be on your show.

SH: I'm doing great. Welcome to the show. For people who don't know, Sibel Edmonds was a translator for the FBI, a contractor after September 11. Fluent in a few different languages there from the old world, and uncovered a bunch of scandals and corruption and got booted out and is founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Her website is JustACitizen.com. She is, according to the ACLU, the most gagged person in American history.

The government has invoked the State Secrets Privilege to prevent her from telling us about all of the criminality that she learnt about when working for the FBI, on penalty of prison. So, I kind of mean that, though. Steven Rosen gave classified information that he got from a Pentagon employee to the Israeli Embassy, and also to some journalists, and everybody hailed the charges being dropped against this spy because he gave it to some journalists too, so it became a First Amendment case.

I don't think I have an official press pass, but it seems like as long as you write a letter to the Israeli Embassy explaining all that you know Sibel, you ought to be in the free and clear now, am I confused?

SE: No, I think that you're right, and it did set a precedent here.

SH: So let's do it! Tell us all the things that you've been banned from saying all this time. It will be the biggest Antiwar Radio scoop ever.

SE: (Laughs) Scott, as you know, I just wrote a piece about this, and this was after, really sitting and simmering for a while after the case with Harman in Congress broke. And it was not only for the reasons such as my own personal case with the State Secrets Privilege etc, but what really got me extremely upset was the fact that in 2005 and 2006, my organization took several whistleblowers from the NSA and the Justice Department to certain offices in Congress including Harman's office and Pelosi's office, and now we are sitting here, feeling like fools.

SH: And you've argued all along from what you have been able to tell us that you kind of see all these different scandals tying together, as different layers of the same onion - seemingly from my perspective, all kind of going back to the Vice President's office of the previous administration, and the network of neocons that Larry Wilkerson calls the 'Cheney Cabal.' Do you think is about the right estimation?

SE: Well, one of the things that we've heard a lot was that getting this network and boiling it down into the five, six, seven faces of neocons - and I think that was one of the biggest mistakes we did commit, and we're still committing it. A lot of people are still doing that.

Again, I'm going to go back to this case with Harman. As soon as this piece came out on Harman, you heard so many people, and even the so-called progressive Democrats really screaming and saying that this is blackmail, and actually they ended up turning Harman into a victim.

SH: It really was incredible to see too, especially when... I don't know, I understand how people's political biases are, and they have a congresswoman that they like, and they see the evil, lurking, menacing, Gestapo-figure like Porter Goss involved and they want to figure out a way to use that fact, but Jeff Stein debunked all that immediately on his blog. He said 'No. Goss's only role in this was, he had to do his job under the protocol and inform congress, and then Gonzales stopped him. That's it. He's not the origin of this investigation. He didn't sic the FBI and the CIA onto Jane Harman. It's ridiculous.'

SE: Correct. And I want to emphasize one thing that you said, you said that the congressmen and women that they like, well let's take a look at this Congress-woman's record...

SH: I guess I shouldn't put those words in their mouths either, because what's to like about Jane Harman, really?

SE: But there was also a lot of confusion, or pretense of confusion, about whether this was an NSA tap, was she being tapped. And that is another issue that, if we have time today, I would like to explain, because while I was working with the FBI, I did exactly that.

Most of my translation work involved FISA on foreign entities here in the US, and yes, in several cases we did come across cases where we ended up with US persons getting involved with either espionage or criminal conduct, and therefore the procedure that was followed in some cases, to go after those US persons, not under FISA, but under separate procedures.

And it was mind-boggling to see that even a lot of journalists out there don't seem to understand the process, yet going and writing about this case and convoluting it, and making it a case that was not presented by Jeff Stein.

SH: Well, you know, you talked before about the FBI agents who were serious about doing their job, and how the bosses just will never let them do it, and that kind of thing, and I actually read something by Steven Rosen, who recently had the charges of espionage dropped, and he identified what, of course he called an anti-semitic group of terrible conspiracy theorists inside the Justice Department who were persecuting him...

SE: (laughs)

SH: ... but I kind of agree with him that, or I think, that there really is a group of counter-intelligence agents in the FBI who are serious about looking into this kind of criminality, no matter who it is even if it is people connected to the Israeli Lobby. Is that basically right?

SE: Absolutely. Absolutely. As for the agents who are doing their job 100% - I did not come across (and since NSWBC has been in place) I have not had a single case where the agents went about covering up a case, or going after a certain target for either certain political reasons, or personal beliefs. Absolutely.

But it's a different story when you're talking about the Department of Justice. And again, if we have time I want to give an example of how the process takes place from FISA to the US persons, to the criminal investigations / counter-espionage investigations.

SH: Please, go ahead.

SE: OK. So, what you have is, basically, you have under FISA - and for each country, for each language, for each target, you have a separate FISA obtained, and you have a separate division in the FBI, most of them, almost all of them, in the FBI's Washington Field Office, OK. So let's say, and I'm going to give you an example with my case, you are targeting under FISA, which is legal, certain diplomatic entities, whether they are Embassy people, or Consulate, or related, relevant, OK. So you have this pipeline that brings in all the information, all the communications that is coming to or going from this target, this organization, this entity.

SH: OK now, let me clarify my understanding here. You're talking about a warrant under FISA but it is still a Foreign Intelligence surveillance warrant which means it is not the same standard of evidence - probable cause - that is necessary for the government to legally tap an American. It is a lower standard of evidence, I guess 'reasonable suspicion' or some such, that the person being tapped is an agent of a foreign power, or a terrorist group, but then that brings up the conflict between whether any evidence obtained accidentally that way - like you're tapping an Israeli spy and you accidentally find an American congresswoman being bribed - then there's the whole difficulty of turning that over into a criminal investigation separate from an intelligence investigation.

SE: Absolutely. So let's say with the diplomatic community, the Justice Department doesn't even have to have any reason to get that warrant. I can tell you that except for one country, every single country - that includes all the European countries - diplomatic entities are being monitored, OK. That's a known fact - nobody wants to admit to it, but it's a known fact. You have French translators there, you have German translators there, for German language - so those are given. OK, every single diplomatic establishment is going through this FISA, and the first person who gets all this information daily is the language specialist.

A lot of people think the FBI agents get the information, and when it needs translation, he gives it to a translator. This is not the case. It is the opposite. Before it goes to the agent, a language specialist goes through it, because this is a foreign target under FISA, and it assumes that the communication is going to be mainly in that foreign language. So you as a language specialist get all this stuff, but of course thirty, forty, or even up to 50% of this communication ends up being in English, because the diplomatic target - let's say someone in the Israeli embassy, and that Israeli embassy has for example forty phone lines - all of them, let's say, are being monitored.

So you're going through that communication, and as you're going through that, well, a lot of these phone calls go to a US person, or from a US person, and it is in English. So the language specialist at this point has to stamp them as 'English only' and if it is pertinent, meaning, if it has to do with espionage, or receiving money, then has to mark it as 'extremely pertinent' and immediately forward it to the FBI agent.

So what happens in this case, as you're doing that, let's say you have a congressional member who is making or receiving a phone call from this diplomatic foreign entity that is being monitored, and the language specialist is listening, and the conversation is in English, and marks it as English, but it is important because they are discussing either giving certain money to this person, or the US person is going to give certain documents or information to this foreign entity, this is considered pertinent. At this point the language specialist says 'This is English. It is pertinent.' and because a certain operation is going to take place - let's say, receiving the money, or receiving the information, and therefore it may call for surveillance, meaning physical surveillance, let's say that this receiving of the money is going to take place the next day, so the agents have to get into their van, go and make sure that this transaction actually took place. So the translator has to go right away and inform the agents, telling them 'By the way, we received this information etc etc' Now, once you start collecting evidence or stuff like this from a congressional person or other types of US persons, or at the State Department or the Pentagon etc, now the agents start putting this evidence together. Here the 'target' is foreign, it is still under FISA, there is still no wiretap on that congressperson, or that US person.

Once the agent believes he or she has enough to expose it - there are so many cases, including the surveillance proving that the transaction took place - the agents write the report (and these are the agents from counterintelligence under FISA), submit it to the FBI headquarters, and says 'We need to get direct wiretaps on this US person because here is the evidence, and they have been involved in this and this and this, and here are all the transactions, and all the communications whether on the espionage front or the corruption front.' The FBI headquarters takes this information, gives it the Justice Department. The Justice Department attorneys, and the head of Justice Department at that point sit and look at this information, and they have a choice: either go to court, show the evidence to a specific judge, and get warrants, not under FISA - either under criminal or counter-espionage - to directly wiretap the US person, or not to do anything. Now, it is at this stage that certain things become political. Let’s say you are looking at 1999, and you're looking at several people in congress, let's say people such as Hastert, and people at the State Department...

SH: Let me just interject here real quick. 'Such as Hastert' who you can read about in David Rose's article in Vanity Fair concerning your case called An Inconvenient Patriot.

SE: Correct.

SH: I don’t want that to just be out in the air as though there's nothing really behind it or anything.

SE: OK - I hope you can provide the link to the last piece that I wrote. But in this case, the head of the Justice Department, the Attorney General, at this point, when he gets the evidence from the agents, looks at this information and says 'Ooh la la! I need to inform my boss, the President in the White House, and the President's advisors because this is getting dicey.' Because it is not Iran or Syria we are talking about. Let's say we are talking about Turkey, an important ally, or Pakistan, or Israel.

And some of these US persons, or the US persons are the ones that they collected this evidence on happen to be one of us. So he's not going to put himself in this really horrible position by doing his job and going to court and get it, allowing that. At this point the briefing occurs: the Justice Department either briefs certain people in the State Department, or the White House, saying 'Oh man, look, we got this! Our agents got this, and we are now in this position.' So, in some cases, they never go to the court to obtain the warrant to go and wiretap the person, and this has been the case many, many, many, many times. It is not only recently.

It has been the case a lot for political reasons, for the partisan reasons, for what they consider 'sensitive diplomatic relations' reasons. And in some cases, in some cases, if the evidence is really, really, really bad for the US person, and if some of the agents in the FBI headquarters are feeling very, very strong about it, like you're seeing in this APIAC case, they finally say "OK. We are going to get the warrant and go after the US person." The original target was, let's say, the Israeli Embassy, not AIPAC initially, but the Israeli Embassy, and we're looking at even mid-to-late 1990s, moving into AIPAC, and then from AIPAC with this evidence in early 2000, having the warrant to actually go and pursue the US persons.

SH: Right, and that's how they came across Larry Franklin.

SE: Correct.

SH: And the New York Times is reporting, late last week, they said that the FBI agents, the career, gum-shoe cops, they're still very angry. They thought they had a real case against Rosen and Weissman, and can't understand why it was taken out from under them like.

SE: Of course they did. And this is exactly the point I tried to make in this piece, because you have certain wanna-be journalists in the blogosphere taking this and giving this a conspiracy flavour, saying that the timing of this has to do with Goss, and getting back at Harman, and these agents have some other motives and agendas. I'll tell you what their agenda was - they did their job, and they knew this case was going to be dropped, it was dropped two weeks after the CQ article but they knew it was going to be dropped months before this, at least one and a half months before this. So this was in desperation to say 'This is wrong! We are letting the criminals go, these US persons who have been committing crimes against the US national interest.' So they did talk to this journalist, it doesn't go to some conspiracy, motive, that some of these wanna-be journalists in the blogosphere are trying to make.

SH: So, this is a case that people have heard of, maybe at least - they can go read Justin Raimondo all about it - but the Dennis Hastert thing, this is something that is very opaque, it was reported in the one Vanity Fair article and picked up by basically nobody in the mainstream press...

SE: No-one. Absolutely no-one.

SH: And the Times of London did a three piece special on some of the things, but I think for the most part people... well, you're referring to investigations that fall apart before they ever start, but that go on all the time, that include the most powerful people. You've often referred to high level people in the State Department and the Defense Department, you're talking about all these congress-people being on the make. I mean, tell the American people, what did you overhear, Sibel. What is it that you know?

SE: Let's take one name that has been public, because just my case alone involves several people in congress, we are looking about six or seven people just in congress, elected officials. It involves several people in the State Department and several people in the Pentagon. Now as for the congress, Dennis Hastert's name happened to come out because it was one of the main cases...

SH: That's former Speaker of the House of Representatives

SE: Correct. And just, as you mentioned, no-one covered this story. No real denial came from Hastert’s office, or Hastert's attorney. If it were me, if I was innocent, I would be going after Vanity Fair, I would do everything to clear my name. They didn't, so they were vindicated. Not only that, only about a month ago, we get this press release that Hastert is now officially working for the Lobby that represents Turkey, and is officially announced that he is getting $35,000 per month, registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, receiving $35,000 per month from Turkey.

If this is not a vindication, if no denial was not a vindication, if the fact that the 2006 Inspector General report was not a vindication, and if some testimony from congressional members such as Grassley and Leahy is not vindication, then I don't know what is. The mainstream media reported Hastert's newly acquired job, the former Speaker of the House now works for the government of Turkey - and there is no tie-in saying 'Three years ago, this and this and this and this was made known to the American people.'

SH: Right, anybody can listen to Daniel Ellsberg on this show or on Democracy Now explaining briefcases full of cash money being delivered to the Speaker of the House to thwart a resolution of no matter what description...

SE: There were a lot of different types of things that Hastert fulfilled for foreign entities. That was one of them. But what does it take for a congressman or woman to guarantee that kind of money - like $35,000 per month - from a foreign government when he leaves his or her job in congress? It doesn't happen overnight after you leave congress. You need to do what you have to do, serving those people's interest - even if it involves certain illegal interests - and that goes into your IOU column, and then you get out, and you get officially paid. While you're in congress, you get unofficially reimbursed for some of these things that you're doing, and that is through the campaign contributions etc, but the real payback comes when you finish and get out. Now, Hastert was exposed in 2005, and he is bold enough - because he sees himself, and doing this, so untouchable that he felt so bold to get this job, and in fact publicly announced it - that he can look us in the eye and say 'What are you going to do about it?' And that is the question, Scott - What do you do about it?

SH: I don’t know. I just do a little radio show, it's the best idea I can come up with, and it doesn't do any good. Let me ask you this, and I mean this in all seriousness. Now that the Rosen and Weissman case has been dropped, that really is a blow to the underhanded policy of, you know, the back-door Official Secrets Act that we have in this country known as the court-invented State Secrets Privilege, can you not get with you ACLU lawyers and just sit down and write a book and tell us every single incriminating thing you learned, classified or otherwise to whatever degree, and damn-the-consequences and bring-it-on? Come on, Sibel.

SE: Scott, believe me or not, I would do that whether the question of can-you-or can't-you is answered or not. But you've got to find one organization, and find one mainstream media, and that includes a publishing house, who is willing to do it. Just find one for me and I tell you what, I'm going on the record right now here, I will do it.

SH: All I’ve got to do is find you a publishing house? I mean, that doesn't seem impossible.

SE: Well, it's not only a publishing house, because what happens is, regardless of the State Secrets Privilege, all these people who have worked for the FBI, anyone, the agents, the attorneys, the language specialists, as part of getting that job, you sign documents saying that in the future, if you ever write anything, whether there is the State Secrets Privilege or classification, you have to submit your work for pre-publication review.

I need to do that, OK, I have already gone through several law firms and said 'Here it is, and they looked at it and said 'Even the most innocent stuff there, you are facing 60-70% of this manuscript - which is ready! It has been ready for quite a while - which will be blacked out. Now once you get the blacked out version not a single person will publish it. What are you going to publish?' Look at my Inspector General report - 90% of it is blacked out. Nobody is going to publish a blacked-out book! Then, you are in this position of going to court, and start fighting, line-by-line, everything that has been blacked out, saying this was not correct, this is not truly classification, and challenging it.

That's why I'm telling you, find any organization that would be willing to represent this because they look at me and say 'Sibel, this is impossible. Especially with your case, this is impossible. It is a fight that you won't win.'

And I'm going to remind you: I have got so many emails from the people, in fact I started getting these before the election, saying, 'Just wait, if we have Obama as president...' or 'Now that Obama is president, you should be able to do this and that' and we need to remind people - not your listeners, because they already know - but the State Secrets Privilege not only has not been eliminated, it has been expanded under the new Obama administration.

SH: Right

SE: And you saw what they did with the NSA warrantless wiretapping case. And now you see it was Obama's Justice Department that made the final decision dropping the AIPAC espionage case.

SH: Well, let me ask you this, was there not classified material, things that you weren't supposed to say but you did anyway in the series for the Times of London?

SE: With the UK, the London piece, you're looking at a piece that was written not only based on a conversation, an interview, with me, but with several other people, and those people they still want to remain anonymous because obviously things have not changed. Because, no matter what, even with the Vanity Fair article, in fact, their legal department, their lawyers, instead of their usual requirement of three sources, they said to David Rose 'You need to have minimum of five sources' because of the kind of case it is, the State Secrets Privilege. So he had to have a minimum of five sources, and instead of once double-checking, they did the triple double-checking, and each double-checking occurred under a different department because they wanted to make sure that they were protected, both against the government, and also against libel. So that piece came out not only based on Sibel Edmonds providing some information, it was done via five sources, and triple-fact-checking, and obviously nobody dared go after them. How could they?

SH: Well, as much of the story as we know, there sure seems like a hell of a lot, and I know there are real good reporters in this country, not an over-abundance of them, but there are really good journalists, and I don’t know why this whole story hasn’t been broken wide-open yet, and I don’t know what it would take to get the modern day Johnny Cochrane to represent you to actually get this thing done, but I sure wish you the best of luck, and you're welcome to come back on the show and keep us updated with the story any time, Sibel.

SE: Thank you Scott. It is always a pleasure to be on your show.

SH: That is Sibel Edmonds everybody. The website is JustACitizen.com. Former FBI translator, whistleblower, founder of NSWBC.

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Some extra thoughts here

Members of Congress: literally criminals

Sibel Edmonds has a new op-ed over at BradBlog.

Brad's introduction reads:

The former FBI translator and whistleblower suggests blackmail may be at the heart of Congressional refusal to bring accountability and oversight to its own members - such as both Hastert and Harman - in matters of espionage and national security.

Read it all.

Some thoughts here

Sibel Edmonds interviewed by Electric Politics

Sibel gave a 75-min interview to Electric Politics on April 10. You can listen to it here. Mizgin has an overview of the interview here. A partial transcript follows:

Heroin, money-laundering and terrorism

Sibel Edmonds: First of all, it has been documented in the past several decades, the importance of narcotics in the Turkish economy, but also the role of Turkish MIT - that is Turkish Intelligence - and the military having an active role. But you're also looking at the increased role of certain Central Asian countries and the Caucuses, and if you look at some of these regimes, these are the regimes that we have been supporting. Their economies also have become dependent on narcotics, because they have become a major transit - and in some places, for certain countries such as Azerbaijan, they have become major production centers.

After they shut down the casinos in Turkey - around 1998 - many of the large casinos in Turkey which were used to launder a lot of money, that also had to do with the narcotics, they actually moved and relocated to Azerbaijan, and there were several that went to Kazakhstan. So if you go through some of those Central Asian countries and you look at the list of the casinos, and you look at the ownership, you will see mainly Turkish ownership, and these are Turkish holding companies that relocated in 1998 to those countries.

George Kenney: Would that be for narcotics destined for Russia and former Soviet states?

SE: Well, even after the narcotics are processed they still go through Turkey, but then from Turkey they have several routes. The major route, at least until 2002, was the Balkan route, and it was jointly with partnership with the Albanians. So the Albanians and Turks from that point had a partnership, and from there it went mainly to Holland, and some to Germany and then from there to the UK and elsewhere.

GK: Well, if a loosely organized group of people that have semi-official status are taking in money on this scale, they have to do something with it. And I guess it is natural that they would be interested in putting it in the United States.

SE: Correct, and in fact, they did, and I can talk about one bank, one Turkish bank, that played a major role, and it was in partnership with certain US government people, and also with certain US-based organizations. And their center is in Cyprus, and it is called First Merchant Bank, and again, based on my information, but also public documents, I can tell you that between 1996 and 2002, First Merchant Bank was one of the top banks used for these banking transactions and laundering this money. And you would see about $40-$45 million deposited there, and again this is public record, you can find it - I had to make sure that they were before I was able to actually mention or talk about this. And one of them was the president of Kazakhstan in forms of certain Kazakhstan bonds, and then you're looking at the brother of (President) Aliyev from Azerbaijan, who deposited more than $8 million there, transferred money there.

So what happened was, this was very well known in the US, and this bank was also used, actively, by certain government agencies in the US, with certain operations dealing with Central Asia. After Sep 11, I believe in 2004, you can go and find congressional records and a report by Treasury that they just announced that they have blacklisted First Merchant Bank, and basically they list First Merchant Bank as one of the top banks dealing in narcotics and narco-dollars. And the fact that First Merchant Bank conducted a lot of business and transactions with certain US institutions including banking institutions. But they did this in 2004 - up until 2004, at least until 2002 - our government directly, or certain agencies within our government, directly dealt with First Merchant Bank in Cyprus.

So anyway, they blacklisted and we don’t have any more banking relationships with First Merchant Bank, they are listed internationally, but First Merchant Bank still is operating, and if you look at the ownership of First Merchant Bank you're going to see the brother of one of the Turkish presidents, Süleyman Demirel, and you will also see certain familiar names - they won't sound really familiar here in the US, but globally they will sound familiar because of the incident you and I discussed over email, and that has to do with the Susurluk scandal.

So that's just one example of it and we are looking at again this bank, that until 2004 was actively dealing, doing business with, both US government agencies, and also certain non-profit organizations in the US, and was declared in 2004 as a top money-laundering narco-dollar center, and a bank that also had been involved in certain terrorism financing, which is very interesting.

The Turkish / Israeli Lobby

GK: ...It seems that the Turkish lobbying effort has copied the model of the Israeli Lobby

SE: Well, the Turkish lobby in the US was set up - at least the largest and most successful one - the American Turkish Council (ATC) was actually set up by the neocons. In either 1987 or 1988, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle went to Turkey and had some high-level meetings there, and then they came back to the US and they set up this lobbying firm called International Advisors Inc, IAI. It was also registered under FARA - Foreign Agents Registration Act - and they were representing the government of Turkey.

And the office of this lobby was located next to one of the main Israeli lobby groups, in the same building, on the same floor. And Richard Perle and Douglas Feith were actually working with both offices. In fact, the rent - and this was referred to in an article, I believe by the Wall Street Journal in 1993, 1994 - was paid by this particular Israeli lobby group. Then after this was exposed by the Wall Street Journal, because I believe at the time Richard Perle either had some advisory position with the Defense Department, it kind of became scandalous after the story came out, so they shut it down.

They shut down IAI in 1994, and in 1994 they got together with several other well-known neocons, and they set up the American Turkish Council instead. So from that date on, you would constantly see Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and even at that time, Larry Franklin, as familiar figures in ATC's meetings, and this was again in their first year, 1994.

And even as far as the accounting firms are concerned, both AIPAC and the ATC used the same financial advisors for their accounting. And then of course, you go and look at their members, and things become even more clear. So, 'Yes' to answer your question, you will see the same people involved both with the Israel lobby, the neocons, and also with the Turkish lobby, the center of which is the ATC. And just like the Israeli lobby, they were very smart, and they were modeled the same way. Because in addition to the ATC, they also set up another organization called ATA - the Association of Turkish Americans, with chapters in every 50 states, and more than several offices in each state in different cities, and if you go and look at their websites they have ATA-DC, ATA-Chicago, and so on, which again is modeled after the same Israeli lobby. And a lot of their - I would refer to it as - less than clean, the dirty activities actually are carried out through ATA and their chapters and their branches that have basically established themselves all over the country.

GK: That would be very similar to the way that AIPAC works with other big Israeli lobbying groups where a lot of the arm-twisting takes place from members at local levels.

SE: Correct.

GK: Are there a whole lot of other kinds of subsidiary groups than ATA? Does this spread out more extensively than that?

SE: Sure. I'm aware of several. And again, I will talk about some that have been publicly mentioned, and known. One of them is called TACA - Turkish American Cultural Alliance. This is based in Chicago, and they have been very, very active there, and they basically say that they are there to promote the cultural ties between the US and Turkey, such as they bring, a couple of times a year, some folklore groups from Turkey to perform here so the Americans in Chicago will get to see them. Well, that is what they have been saying, but that's not what they have been doing. Most of their activities are political in other areas, and their other activities that, easily, can be considered illegal, with investigative files on them for years and years and years within the FBI.

And it's interesting, there was a documentary made on my case called Kill The Messenger, and the producers, the directors were here and they went to Chicago, they wanted to interview some people at TACA. They had a pretty large budget, so they found the office for TACA and it looked like a little warehouse there, with broken windows and a little Turkish flag, and for days they just sat in front of that building, and nobody came in, nobody left. It was just like a symbolic office there that is like a warehouse, with nobody working there. But then if you were to look at their budget, and look at the money moving from them to various other recipients, and their activities, they seem to be a pretty active organization. So that's just one example.

In fact, the president of TACA, his name came up during the primaries here because he was able to raise $100,000 for Hillary Clinton during the primaries, and Hillary Clinton gave him this position in her campaign. And then that itself actually got into the newspapers because certain Armenian groups found out about this guy's background, and the $100,000 was questionable, and then there was the question whether or not Hillary Clinton returned that money. And this was very recent if you were to go and put TACA's president's name and Hillary Clinton in Google there are even some mainstream media articles about that. So again, this is an organization with a little broken-window warehouse with no employees working in it, with a large budget, who were able to raise $100,000 for Hillary Clinton in a few days.

Bipartisan Coverup: The US Deep State

GK: When was the last time that you had any contact with Waxman's office?

SE: That would be, having real conversation/contact was before the election in 2006, but in March 2007, I spoke with one of his staff people... and he said the congressman was very serious about having these hearings. But just as he was planning on scheduling a hearing for my case - this is the State Secrets Privilege and the whole FBI case - he was called into a hearing with Nancy Pelosi, they went into a meeting for about 30 minutes, Chairman Waxman came out and told his staff that they were not going to have these hearings, including my case.

And interestingly, this was during a time that they were putting together this junket, this trip, to several countries, the first one being Israel, and Chairman Waxman was not on that list. After this meeting, two or three days later, his name was added to the list. I don't know if that means anything or not, if it was a coincidence, I don’t know. That was the last time.

GK: Sibel, do you suppose that there are any currently serving members of congress who would be affected by an open hearing?

SE: Yes. Yes. This is the point that I wanted to bring up when you asked the question. When I went inside the SCIF, with Congressman Waxman's staff, all the people who attended had clearance, so I started going through the facts because I can disclose to the appropriate committee, people with clearance etc, and I can talk about details.

So, as I started talking about congressional members, or certain appointed officials under both administrations who were involved in certain activities that were targeted by the FBI at one point, the legal counsel with clearance for congressman Waxman stopped me and said "I need to stop you right here and ask you a question. How many Democrats are involved here in the House or the Senate?" and I answered the question, I said "Concretely to answer that, the ones that I know for sure would be three." And he looked at his watch, and said "OK I think we have enough, we don't want to hear any more. What we would like to do is we want to receive the classified version of the Inspector General's report, which we never got, and after that we will contact you and ask you to continue."

Basically they said they didn’t want to hear it because if they heard it they would be responsible. So the meeting ended there - this was the SCIF meeting, and again, this was witnessed because I got the report from the Capitol police that came and declared that the room was secured, the date... so the fact that I went inside the SCIF with them, who I met, everything has been recorded, but this is how it went.

GK: That's fascinating. Let me ask you a related question, Sibel. Do you think that there are any currently serving officials in the administration who would be affected by open hearings?

SE: Yes. Absolutely. Because a lot of these people are recycled as you know. I'm sure you're aware of it because, it's very easy, and this is one of the fallacies from the Left groups, and that is they like to boil down all the bad and evil into maybe three or four or five faces, whether it's Wolfowitz, ok, Cheney, ok, the big bad evil people, and limit it to these people and say 'OK. These are the evil-doers, and we want to see them gone.' Well, it's much deeper than that. You really need to look at those people who keep getting recycled.

GK: So what this begins to look like is the Deep State that Peter Dale Scott talks about...

SE: Absolutely

GK: ...having transferred from Turkey over here to the US.

SE: Correct, because they usually refer to that term in Turkey. It's a very known term - in fact, even if you go to Wikipedia if you look even a lot of even international perspective in Turkey, it is a Deep State, and that is, Deep State consists of the military and intelligence and their involvement in a lot of criminal activities - part of it is narcotics, the other ones have to do with certain money laundering activities.

But within the US we have a much bigger, much more important, much more influential Deep State. I mean, I'm just going to throw a name - look at people like Henry Kissinger. Name one administration that has not had Henry Kissinger as a White House advisor.

And another one, because this is public. Now, if you look at the Chairman of ATC, you will see Brent Scowcroft, OK. Well just recently, President Obama appointed him as a special - whatever - envoy and now he is actually working for the Obama administration. But he's still residing as chairman of ATC. I mean nobody is even talking about conflict of interest.

Why the States Secrets Privilege? Grossman, Dickerson and Susurluk

GK: Now when you separated from the FBI, my guess is that you knew that there were a lot of different threads out there, but it probably took you a while to make sense of the bigger picture? Or did it?

SE: Yes, it did. Actually, while I was working there, and here is another interesting angle of this case, is that the case came out and was known publicly as the espionage case, and this is the angle that has already been confirmed by Congress, by the IG report: the Dickersons case.

Well, here is the interesting thing, as this espionage case angle came out in the New York Times and Washington Post and CBS 60 Minutes, yet no-one, not a single reporter ever asked 'Who the hell are these Dickersons?' Not one! Nobody even looked at it. Just a simple check on the Dickersons would have brought out so much information and the stuff that they are considering State Secrets Privilege.

When you look at Dickerson - Melek Can Dickerson - US citizen, Turkish born, her husband at the time, an Air Force Major, although he worked for DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, Douglas Dickerson. If they looked at Douglas Dickerson, they would have seen on the record that Douglas Dickerson was stationed in Turkey between 1992 and early 1997, and worked directly under Ambassador Marc Grossman in Ankara in the military attaché.

And then they would see that Marc Grossman and Douglas Dickerson were pulled out of their positions in Turkey at the same time, removed from Turkey, even though Grossman's term still had some time left, and the same thing with Douglas Dickerson, and this was right after the Susurluk scandal, OK? And then they would see that Douglas Dickerson, at the end of 2001, started working for Douglas Feith's office, dealing with certain Central Asian countries including Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Well, nobody ever looked, or wanted to look, or wanted to see this.

Richard Barlow, Pakistan and Afghanistan

SE: There's this very interesting case, in fact it's another State Secrets Privilege case that has to do with Richard Barlow. He used to work for the DIA and his position was in the department where he was the top analyst for Pakistan, and he was chasing this whole nuclear procurement for Pakistan, and he was the person who was asked by Congress to go and brief certain congressional members on the status on what was happening with Pakistan.

So he went there and did his job right, and he told them what was happening, and this basically caused outrage because the same congressional members were briefed by various Pentagon and State Dept officials and they were told that nothing concrete was there, they didn’t have any concrete evidence that Pakistan was procuring nuclear weapons etc etc.

Well he became the whistleblower... and he didn’t even think he was blowing the whistle, he didn’t even know that congress was lied to, he just went there and told them what he had found through his position, and this is what happened to him, and interestingly his case ended up being slapped by the same State Secrets Privilege. And his case is very, very close to mine, but again, there we were looking at Pakistan, we were looking at our activities there, and even our activities in Afghanistan during those years with the Mujaheddin there, with Bin Laden, and all those things we didn’t want to be known. And when I say 'we' I mean the government. Again, it's the same thing. It's very, very similar. That is a fact.

US Media: 'That's not how we do things'

GK: Now, Sibel, you offered recently to mainstream American media to CBS 60 Minutes or to any of the others that if they wanted to sit down and do a full interview with you that you would just tell them everything you knew.

SE: Yes, I did. And this was after actively fighting this case via so-called 'appropriate channels'
[...]
So, I said 'OK - here, I'll put the word out, but it will come with certain conditions' because I have dealt with the mainstream media for 5 or 6 years and I know how things go. I said I want either a) to do it live, unedited, or b) if it is going to be an interview that is pre-recorded, I want it to be witnessed and recorded by a third party.

GK: What about something like Keith Olbermann? Aren’t those shows ok?

SE: I would have gone on Keith Olbermann in a second. Absolutely. And in fact his show was bombarded - even if you go look when the press release went out - the fact that I would talk - all the letters and emails that were sent and the things posted on Olbermann's show, 'Please here it is, and here is someone who has been found to be credible by the IG blah blah', and nothing.

I didn’t get anything from Keith Olbermann, and there were others who came and sent their producers to say 'Yeah, we would like to do this, however we will not meet these conditions. It won't be live, it will be pre-recorded, and you can't have a third-party recording it, because that is not how we do things with the networks.' I said 'OK, so you record this, and I go on the record and talk about these criminal activities, and divulging criminal activity...' (If the US government classifies something in order to cover up criminal activities, then that classification doesn’t hold anyway, and this is based on laws - not that it matters any longer here in this country.)

They said 'No, we won't do it.' I said 'Well, OK, so you record this, and then what are you going to do with it? You're going to try to get comments, a response, from the Justice Dept and the FBI?' Of course, they said 'Yes.' I said 'And you are going to present them with what I've been saying?' And they said 'Yes, that is what we have to do.' I said 'OK - let's say they hear what I have said and they confiscate the tape, put a hold on it, and come and grab me and throw me in jail, with a closed court session, which has already happened several times in my case. I would be in jail, nobody would know what was being covered up, the criminal activities. That would be idiotic!'

Why the State Secrets Privilege?

SE: My case twice made it to the cover page of the New York Times, when they did the gag order on Congress, the retroactive classification, and when they did the State Secrets Privilege for the second time. Now, those stories, Washington Post, New York Times, all the mainstream media. NOT ONCE has any reporter asked 'Why the State Secrets Privilege?'

It's been all about this poor little whistleblower, and she was wronged, and they slapped her with States Secrets Privilege, and they are doing this excessive secrecy. Period. That's the story. You know, (journalists should) try to answer: Who? What? Why? But nobody, you will not see a single article, a single piece, a single news piece that says 'Why? We want to dig and find out why they were invoking the States Secrets Privilege. Why did they invoke it?'

GK: You had a couple of pieces in the London Times that sort of started to get at the story.

SE: Correct, and they did a pretty good job. Their stories were angled, and focused on, Pakistan. They were working on stories that had to do with Pakistan, and they had other sources, so there is a certain small aspect of my case that touches that area that they wrote about, directly, but it's not the main part of my case. But they covered that area, absolutely, and they did a good job. And as you said, it's the London Times, and you have David Rose from England coming here and writing this piece for Vanity Fair - and nobody else would do it here because they said if they didn’t have lots of documents etc, they would be sued by Hastert. Well guess what! This piece came out, and Hastert did not do anything. How could he?

GK: That's interesting. So nobody who might have threatened or anything actually did anything?

SE: No.

Interesting interview, as usual. I recommend that you listen to all of it.

See here for some of my thoughts on the interview.

New Interview

Sibel gave an interview to Electric Politics last week (75 minutes).

Mizgin has an overview here.

Sibel made a few important points. I might be able to highlight some of them with a partial transcript next week.

NY Times confirms US involvement in Nuclear Black Market

In last Monday's New York Times, David Sanger and William Broad wrote a front-page article about the CIA's involvement in the nuclear black market.

The article demonstrates (again) that the New York Times, Sanger & Broad in particular, has simply become a mouthpiece for the government (see my previous articles 1, 2, 3) but they did let one fact slip through to the readership. I can only presume that the slip was accidental, because they don't appear to have understood the ramifications of what they reported:
The US Government is covering up the fact that US citizens and entities are involved in the nuclear black market.



Background
Three members of the Tinner family in Switzerland were key suppliers to AQ Khan's nuclear black market ring. They were arrested in 2004 and have been awaiting trial but the US government has been trying to sabotage the Swiss trial because "compromising and embarrassing information about the CIA's activities with the Khan network" would be exposed if the trial were to proceed.

High-Level Visit
The New York Times reported that in July 2007, the Swiss Justice Minister came to the US to discuss the case with high-level US officials, apparently to find a mutually-acceptable arrangement regarding how to deal with the Tinner case.

According to an anonymous former Bush administration official:

"The State Department wanted the bomb plans destroyed as a way to stem nuclear proliferation, while the C.I.A. wanted to protect its methods for combating illicit nuclear trade."

Whether those two things are true or not I don't know - but the NY Times also notes, without elaboration, that the Swiss Justice Minister met with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller (and Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence).

Domestic US Involvement
The US Dept of Justice and FBI have exclusively domestic jurisdiction. Why would the Swiss Justice Minister meet with Mueller and Gonzales regarding the planned destruction of evidence in a Swiss case involving the nuclear black market? The only logical explanation is that the case also involves US persons and US entities who have yet to be named and indicted. I presume that Gonzales and Mueller desperately argued that the Swiss needed to derail the Tinners' trial by destroying all the evidence because the FBI had an 'ongoing investigation' which would otherwise be exposed. What else could they have argued? Of course, there is no 'ongoing investigation, and there will not be any forthcoming indictments.

The AQ Khan network was officially exposed in 2003. Now we have proof that the Bush administration is well aware of the involvement of US persons and entities, and is apparently refusing to bring indictments against these people.

Sibel Edmonds Case
We know from the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds that the FBI has long been aware of nuclear black market activities within the US and has failed to do anything about it, going to such extraordinary lengths to gag Sibel using the State Secrets Privilege, and to illegally gag congress involving Sibel's case.

We know that high-level US officials were directly involved in these activities. We know that the Pentagon and State Department actively shut down the investigations that Sibel was involved with, and they also actively facilitated the gagging of Sibel.

We even know at least 3 of the US persons/groups that were actively involved in the nuclear black market:

Marc Grossman
Former #3 at the State Dept, Marc Grossman, was heard on FBI wiretaps facilitating the theft of nuclear secrets "from every nuclear agency in the United States." Other participants in the ring include officials from Pakistan, Turkey and Israel who were operating out of their respective embassies. Once the ring stole these secrets they were sold to the highest bidders on the nuclear black market.

Could it be that the US government was desperate to sabotage the Swiss case because they were afraid that Grossman's role in criminal activity would finally be exposed?

American Turkish Council (ATC)
The ATC is a powerful Military-Industrial-Complex lobby, home to some of the most pwerful people and companies in the US. It is also the "nexus" of nuclear black market activity in the US.

We also know that the CIA, via Valerie Plame's cover company Brewster Jennings, was investigating the ATC for its role in illegal nuclear proliferation.

Sibel Edmonds heard wiretaps of phone traffic between the Turkish embassy and the American Turkish Council involving dealings in the nuclear black market.

Could it be that the US government was desperate to sabotage the Swiss case because they were afraid that the ATC's role in criminal activity would finally be exposed?Zeki Bilmen & Giza Technologies
Turkish businessman and US citizen, Zeki Bilmen, illegally supplied nuclear hardware to Pakistan's military program via Asher Karni, an Isaeli businessman in South Africa. Karni was indicted, but Bilmen was never charged, and his company, New Jersey-based Giza Technologies, continues operating to this day, with shipments to and from from proliferation hotspots "like Dubai, Spain, South Africa, Turkey."

Bilmen was also heard organizing the transfer of nuclear technology on wiretaps translated by Sibel, meaning that his FBI file is at least seven years old.

Could it be that the US government was desperate to sabotage the Swiss case because they were afraid that Zeki Bilmen's role in criminal activity would finally be exposed?

Summary

Former CIA official Phil Giraldi:

"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."

The involvement of domestic US agencies in the decision to destroy evidence in the Tinner case in Switzerland proves that there is a domestic US component to the nuclear black market. Five years after the public exposure of the AQ Khan network, the US government still refuses to bring indictments against a number of criminal US participants.

Why not?


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(Email me if you want to be added to my Sibel email list. Subject: 'Sibel email list')

NY Times does it again: More 'Judy Miller' tapdancing (Pt3)

A front page article "In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals" in last Monday's New York Times by David Sanger and William Broad details the destruction of evidence by the US government in a case involving the nuclear black market.

The article highlights again that the New York Times continues to engage in 'Judy Miller reporting' by warmongering and acting as a mouthpiece for the government.

This is the third article in a multi-part series. This article will focus on the NY Times' appalling reliance on government-friendly sources, the lack of any actual investigative reporting, the lack of supporting evidence, and the absence of any dissenting views. (The first piece of the series focused on the players in the AQ Khan / BSA Tahir nuclear smuggling ring, the second article focused on the countries involved.)

Given the New York Times recent history of being used and abused by their anonymous government sources you might think they ought to be a little more diligent when reporting a story such as this, but apparently they haven't learnt their lesson from the recent debacles such as Iraq/WMD or Anthrax/Hatfill.

David Sanger and William Broad need look no further back than their early reporting on this same story to see how badly they are getting spun - although given their performance, it appears that they don't even care.

As just one example, that previous article was a transparent attempt to spin the story away from the fact that the US government bailed out members of the AQ Khan nuclear proliferation network. The article noted that the AQ Khan had nuclear "blueprints" which are "rapidly reproducible for creating a weapon that is relatively small and easy to hide" which makes these weapons "attractive to terrorists."

Now Sanger and Broad tell us in their current article that these plans are "sketchy and incomplete" which have "little or no value for a terrorist..." There was no correction, no apology, no remorse or embarrassment, and apparently no lessons learned.

Despite this history, Broad and Sanger again spoke to "five current and former Bush administration officials" - presumably the same sources as their previous article - and gave them the cover of anonymity to again spread transparent nonsense. Apparently Sanger and Broad didn't even wonder why a handful of Bush administration officials were willing to talk to them about these 'classified' operations, and it surely won't occur to them to ask why the Bush administration hasn't opened up a leak investigation either.

Corroboration?
Last month, investigative journalist Joe Lauria joked that American journalists need five sources for something personally witnessed by the journalist. This is true for whistle-blowers, but there is a double-standard when it comes to official government sources. This kid-glove treatment of US officials is remarkable given the lies that we have been fed, particularly over the past seven years.

Did Sanger and Broad actually do anything to corroborate the story apart from speak to the five Bush officials who were all singing off the same hymn-sheet? Did they interview Richard Barlow, expert on Pakistan's nuclear program for his thoughts? Did they ask decorated British customs agent Atif Amin whether the story made any sense? Or former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds? Of course not.

Perhaps Sanger and Broad could have, for example, asked 'Dr Brian Jones, a former defence intelligence WMD specialist,' for his opinion. He was quoted in the Guardian on this very story back in June saying that he was "suspicious that the disclosure might be politically motivated." But that sort of thing would never get published in a US newspaper - unless it was a government source trying to undermine a whistle-blower.

Standard of Proof
If a whistle-blower tries to shed some light on government wrongdoing, then the Corporate Press in the US demands documents and multiple points of corroboration, and even then often don't run the story. They will question his or her motives, or they will argue that it is too difficult to establish the legitimacy of the whistle-blower case, or simply accept the government's denials.

In many cases, this standard of proof is legitimate, but it is applied so inconsistently that it turns the newspapers into organs of the government. The US corporate media will publish just about anything the government says, despite the Bush administration's documented history of lying to the press and the public. On the other hand, it is nearly impossible to get the US press to write about important matters that are not government-approved.

Again, take the case of Sibel Edmonds. Despite the fact that senators from both major parties reported that the case is credible, despite the fact that the FBI confirmed a lot of the case, despite the Justice Department's Inspector General's report, despite the State Secrets Privilege, despite the fact that there has not been a single substantial denial, despite the corroboration by Phil Giraldi, a CIA agent based in Turkey, despite the corroboration from veteran FBI agents John Cole and Gilbert Graham, the US media still can't report on the story.

I asked Sibel for a quote on this story, she said:

"You see this over and over again, and I'm not just talking about my case. As you know, my organization represents nearly 150 National Security whistle-blowers, and dealing with the US mainstream media, both the networks and print, we have faced the same double standards and bias consistently. Even if you get a high-ranking National Security whistle-blower with an impeccable record and no agenda, the response from the US media is "We need at least 2 or 3 more independent witnesses, as well as hard documents."

The same media reports the government propaganda & agenda-driven leaks as undisputed fact, based on a statement from a spokesperson from one of the agencies; no request for documents, no request for independent witnesses...

Another interesting thing with the whistle-blower cases is that the MSM always use words such as 'allegations' but when they act as government mouthpieces, you rarely see any evidence of doubt or phrases like that."

We've heard from numerous sources that the US government warned reporters off writing about Sibel's story earlier this year after the UK's Times published their series on the case. The reporters were told that they would be compromising a sting operation and harming national security if they published any information about this case - and they all fell for it! The same is true of the alternate media including the blogosphere to a large extent. Steve Clemons, respected by many, apparently spoke to some of his State Dept friends before deciding that Sibel must have been only seen the ""raw intel", unprocessed, or coordinated" communications of a sting operation - despite the corroboration of the FBI agents involved in the operation.

US Press vs Foreign Press
Sibel has another example involving the nuclear black market and the US press:

"Let me give you one other example, Luke. In 2004 when Josh Meyer of the LA Times did a long but incomplete story on the Karni case, it was reported to him that one of the most important actors and angles in his article was that of Zeki Bilmen & Giza Technology. Bilmen's role and nationality were conveniently censored in the article.

Despite my efforts to get Meyer to report the relevance and significance of the Bilmen angle, and the FBI's files on him, Meyer bought in to the government's protection of Turkey and the Turkish angle. Of course, later, other outlets (mostly foreign) picked up Bilmen's significance, but still not a peep or follow-up to this day from the LA Times on this important story."

Somehow, in the logic of the US corporate press, it is more legitimate to print unsubstantiated claims of a warmongering administration, with a history of lying in order to go to war, than the substantiated claims of Sibel Edmonds who has consistently demonstrated a clean, agenda-free, non-partisan, track record of trying to expose high-level officials whose activities endanger us all.

The foreign press is much better in these matters. The Guardian's reporting on the nuclear black market has been way ahead of the pack. Their May 31 article on the destruction of evidence in the Tinner case was 3 months ahead of this latest nonsense from the NY Times (which also calls into question the timing of this later Sanger/broad article), they have also reported on the case of Atif Amin, and shown appropriate skepticism regarding the leaks and spin on the Tinner case. Germany's Der Spiegel has also done great reporting on this nuclear black market ring.

"Make-Believe Journalism
For this article, I also interviewed Joe Lauria who was co-author of the UK's Sunday Times series on Sibel's case. I'll quote him extensively here:

"Obviously I believe that government sources must be held up to the same scrutiny as critics of government. Both need supporting evidence to back up their claims. When an official says something it might be "official" but it's not necessarily true. The role of corporate media as stenographer for government has grown in recent years, with Judy Miller's case being the most prominent. But I believe the dictates of careerism and the desire to be included in the "inner circle", especially in Washington, coupled with a vicarious sense of power, leads mainstream journalists to uncritically report the statements of government officials...

There was a brief period when American journalism fulfilled its promised, during the Watergate scandal. But today the vast majority of corporate reporters essentially fulfill the role of a state-owned press. Since we live in a corporatist state, it's not far off from the truth. I also think there is an element of naivete here. Many journalists really believe that government officials are working in the people's interests and not, more often, working for their own interests and those of their elite backers...

The result of all this is that American news reporting creates a “make-believe”, almost childish view of America’s role in the world. It transmits the American myth of the nobility of America’s foreign policy and use of the military to spread democracy, or look for weapons of mass destruction, never entertaining that America could be the aggressor. The media is still rooted in America’s role in the Second World War as liberator, not explaining that that has diametrically changed. The reason for this is simple: it is a corporate press providing this “make-believe” cover for corporate and government agendas. Behind this media-created buffer or curtain between the people and the power is US involvement in the shadows with drug dealing, nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Even a suspicion of these dealings never gets through the curtain of news and entertainment distraction to reach the American people. The leading presidential candidates and the conventions of both parties of course uphold these myths, never leveling with the American people. Therefore they do not know that there is only so much money to pay for a military empire or for social services at home. And the press never explains it in these stark terms."

Summary
David Sanger & William Broad continue to promote the "make-believe" view of American foreign policy, hiding anything of significance from the American people.

They might serve a useful purpose for their government masters, but their function certainly isn't as 'journalists.' Whatever the reason for the Times to provide the government's preferred spin on this case, David Sanger and William Broad have earned their place in the Judy Miller Hall of Fame.

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NY Times does it again: More 'Judy Miller' tapdancing (Pt2)

A front page article "In Nuclear Net’s Undoing, a Web of Shadowy Deals" in Monday's New York Times by David Sanger and William Broad details the destruction of evidence by the US government in a case involving the nuclear black market.

The article highlights again that the New York Times continues to engage in 'Judy Miller reporting' by warmongering and acting as a mouthpiece for the government.

This is the second article in a multi-part series. This article will focus on the countries involved, and how and why the NY Times continues to act as a government mouthpiece by focusing attention on, and warmongering toward, Iran, and minimizing the role of so-called allies such as Turkey and Dubai. (The first piece of the series focused on the players in the AQ Khan / BSA Tahir nuclear smuggling ring.)


The Sanger/Broad article is obviously designed to drum up support for a war against Iran. Without evidence or support, they write that Iran is "presumably racing for the capability to build a bomb." They say this despite the fact that the US Intelligence Community's 2007 National Intelligence Estimate states that "Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen."

The Sanger/Broad article quotes government-friendly sources stating that there were two 'successful' 'sting' operations against the Iranian nuclear program, without noting that at least one of the so-called stings in 2006 was against the nuclear power program, not a weapons program.

The entire premise of the destruction of evidence in the prosecution case against the Tinner family, key suppliers to the AQ Khan network, in Switzerland is that the Tinners were supplying "electronic blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon on computers."

These blueprints were destroyed, we were told, so that they wouldn't get into "the hands of a terrorist organization or an unauthorized state." It isn't until the final page of a four-page article that Broad and Sanger inform us that the IAEA has "no evidence that Iran had acquired the bomb plans." (please see Broad and Sanger's previous article on this and note how they were played for a fiddle by their government sources. No correction has been made to the article.)

Ignoring Other Countries
By focusing on Iran, and cherry-picked elements of the Tinner case, the New York Times journalists, acting as government mouthpieces, chose to ignore the other countries involved in the network, countries who are not members of the Axis of Evil.

The article notes that the list of customers "may extend further" than Iran, North Korea and Libya, but does not question why these other customers have not been made public. Could it be that these countries are allies of the United States?

We know that:

"The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort. But rather than shut it down, investigations by law enforcement bodies such as the FBI and Britain’s Revenue & Customs have been aborted to preserve diplomatic relations."

In the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, we know that the same excuse - "sensitive diplomatic relations" - was used to gag her and all the details behind her case. Which diplomatic relations are we referring to here? In 2005, Sibel noted that these 'diplomatic relations' are "not named since obviously our officials are ashamed of admitting to these relations."

How is it possible that these relationships outweigh the very serious implications of the spread of nuclear weapons?

Turkey
Turkey's role in the nuclear black market has been well documented, though poorly reported in the US. Turkey acted (and may continue to act) as both a manufacturing base for nuclear hardware, as well as a trans-shipment point for goods on their way to the end-customers such as Libya and Pakistan.

In 2000, Bill Clinton signed an order to allow Turkey access to US nuclear technology, but this order was blocked because, according to President Bush, certain Turkish entities were actively engaged in "certain activities directly relating to nuclear proliferation."

Note the timing here. Turkey was known to have been involved in the nuclear black market at least three years prior to the 'official' outing of the AQ Khan ring when a ship containing nuclear hardware, from Turkey and elsewhere, was intercepted on its way to Libya.

President Bush recently re-signed Clinton's order allowing Turkey access to US nuclear technology, although there is no evidence that Turkey has rectified any of these problems.

Turkish Procurement
According to IAEA investigators, the nuclear hardware supplied by Turkey to the AQ Khan ring - including 7000 centrifuge motors - "could be used in manufacturing enough enriched uranium to produce 7 nuclear weapons a year."

In fact, the entire deal to supply Libya with a nuclear weapons program began in Turkey with a meeting in 1997 involving AQ Khan, his Chief Operating Officer BSA Tahir, and Libyan representatives.

The known Turkish suppliers to the network, Selim Alguadis and Gunes Cire, were not indicted for their criminal participation in the ring, and their companies, EKA and ETI Elektroteknik, continue to operate freely today.

Further, Turkish businessman Zeki Bilmen and his US based company Giza Technologies, was caught supplying nuclear hardware to Pakistan's military program in 2003 via South African-based Israeli Asher Karni.

Bilmen was also overheard on wiretaps translated by Sibel Edmonds prior to 2002 organizing nuclear shipments, apparently with members of the Turkish and Israeli military and diplomatic community in Washington DC. According to Sibel, Bilmen was shipping product to and from other hotspots in the Khan/Tahir network such as Turkey, Dubai, South Africa and Spain.

Zeki Bilmen was not indicted, and his company continues to operate freely.

Marco Tinner, a member of the Tinner family that was effectively pardoned by the Bush administration's destruction of evidence, was also recommended for indictment in Turkey in 2005. He faced 32 years in prison in Turkey but that case also appears to have disappeared in the same manner as the Swiss prosecution case.

A Turkish Bomb?
Although there has been no official proof that Turkey is actively building a nuclear weapons, some experts on Turkey's nuclear program have recounted their support, suspicious that the energy program is a cover for a weapons program. In 2006, Mustafa Kibaroglu, a nuclear proliferation expert in Turkey told the Washington Post:

"I'm not supporting Turkey's nuclear energy program anymore because I'm not clear about what the real intention is. Let's put it that way."

Of course, David Sanger and William Broad chose not to mention any of this in their article despite the direct link to the Tinner case, preferring to cherry-pick information in order to facilitate the agenda of their government masters. This pattern is consistent with the whitewashing of Turkey's involvement in nefarious activity. Turkey's role in terrorism is a "best kept secret," Turkey's role in narcotics smuggling is a 'best kept secret,' and with the able assistance of the New York Times, Turkey's involvement in the nuclear black market will remain another 'best kept secret.'

Dubai
According to the US State Department, Dubai is a major center for the trans-shipment of narcotics and the associated money-laundering. The same is true for nuclear hardware and the laundering of the profits of the nuclear black market. It is also considered a major US ally.

Chief Operating Officer of the nuclear procurement ring, BSA Tahir, was based in Dubai, as was one of his main suppliers, Briton Peter Griffin. Most of the hardware supplied to the network was sent to Dubai, and sometimes via Turkey, on its way to the end-customers. Nuclear hardware from the Tinners, and also Turkish operatives, Alguadis and Cire, was sent to Dubai from where it was dispatched to Libya on board the BBC China.

Interestingly, the official report regarding the exposure of the AQ Khan / Libya deal appeared to imply that the shipments from Turkey had some semi-official blessing, noting that "it is surprising" that the consignment from Turkish businessman Gunes Cire to Libya was "allowed without any action" and also that the consignment from Selim Alguadis "arrived in Libya without any obstruction and this is unusual."

Pardoned
As I documented in my previous article, virtually all of the participants in this procurement ring have been allowed to walk free, without paying any penalty for these very serious crimes. The same can be said for the different countries that actively supported the network, such as Turkey and Dubai - as well as the US, the UK, and Pakistan. Iran is the only country feeling the heat. Why is that?


Summary
By focusing on, and misrepresenting, the Iranian angle, Broad and Sanger again have shown themselves to be lapdogs for the US government. For one reason or other, none of them flattering, Broad and Sanger chose to selectively sanitize the role of other countries who are more culpable than Iran in matters of nuclear weapons proliferation.

Whatever the reason for the Times to provide the government's preferred spin on the case, David Sanger and William Broad will remain in the Judy Miller Hall of Fame.

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Notes in the margin:
I was interviewed by Scott Horton on this topic yesterday. The interview can be downloaded here. An June interview regarding the Tinners is here.

Cross-posted at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

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