Against All Enemies

Peddling Peril, Peddling Lies

2010-03-30T07:02:00.002+11:00

David Albright, President of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), has a new book out (which I haven't read) about AQ Khan and the nuclear black market called Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America's Enemies.

Remarkably, one of the sources for the book was former #3 at the State Department Marc Grossman.
Grossman was named, under oath, by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds as a key participant in the nuclear black market. You can read the gory details over at Boiling Frogs Post, but basically Grossman:

1. Arranged visas and security clearances for nuclear labs like Sandia and Los Alamos
2. Facilitated blackmail of American officials with access to various secrets
3. Outed Brewster Jennings in 2001, two years before Robert Novak wrote his infamous article.

Why is Albright using Grossman as a source? Why isn't Grossman facing criminal charges?

Full article at Boiling Frogs Post

Official Docs Confirm Major Criminal Investigations of Turkish Operatives in Chicago

2010-03-18T06:21:00.002+11:00

I have a new article over at Sibel Edmonds' place, Boiling Frogs Post, discussing a new FBI FOIA release regarding one of the Chicago-based Turkish organizations that Sibel has been talking about for years.

The sub-title is "Newly Released FBI Documents Support Explosive Claims by Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds."

The article begins thusly:

Recently released FBI documents prove the existence of highly sensitive National Security and criminal investigations of "Turkish Activities" in Chicago prior to September 11, 2001. These documents add further support to many of the allegations that former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has been claimed, in public and in Congress, since 2002. The documents were released under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into an organization called the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (TACA), an organization repeatedly named by Ms. Edmonds as being complicit in the crimes that she became aware of when she was a translator at the FBI.

The documents released under FOIA are almost completely redacted, but they do support many of Edmonds’ claims, including:

1. There was a number of very serious FBI investigations into "Turkish activity in Chicago" involving a number of targets, including TACA
2. These investigations were related to "National Security" among other things.
3. These investigations were regarded as so sensitive that no files were to be uploaded to FBI's computer system.
4. Congressional corruption was involved.
5. The FBI repeatedly conducted actual "physical surveillance" against Turkish and American targets.
6. Some of these investigations were shut down in 2001.

I asked Ms Edmonds for a response to these new documents. She replied:

"Finally! I've been saying this for years, and now we finally have documented proof from the FBI of this Turkish criminal activity based in Chicago.

This is fantastic, but even this is only the tip of the iceberg. The main question is this: Why has the White House and the State Dept been so determined to shut these investigations down? They shut down these investigations at the FBI, they shut me down with the State Secrets Privilege.

What are they hiding? Chicago was the center of it all, Chicago was the center of the foreign espionage activity, and the center for money laundering, and also a major heroin distribution center. Celebi was a key player, but Dennis Hastert, Mayor Daley, Robert Creamer and other US officials also helped facilitate these activities. When will we see some accountability?"

This is great news for all of us who have been following Sibel's case through the years. See Boiling Frogs Post for the full article.

(Completely independent of the above news, Boiling Frogs Post is currently in fund-raising mode. Boiling Frogs Post is a fantastic site, and the objective is: "To establish a venue for investigative articles, editorials, analyses, discussions, and interviews on issues largely censored and blacked out by the media." I strongly suggest that you frequent Boiling Frogs Post, and contribute to the fund-raiser if you like what you see there.)

American Conservative: Sibel Edmonds

2009-09-22T19:12:00.002+10:00

American Conservative magazine has a new cover story interview with Sibel Edmonds. Congratulations to Phil Giraldi and Sibel.

From 2-4 Eastern, Tuesday, Scott Horton will interview Phil Giraldi, ~~David Rose~~ and Joe Lauria for Antiwar Radio. Listen live. (update: audio download available here)

Bradblog has been doing fantastic reporting on all aspects of this case recently, and will undoubtedly continue to be the number one go-to place for all the latest information - so be sure to check in regularly, and of course, Sibel's blog, 123 Real Change.

Also, don't miss Luke Rosiak's two excellent reports on the Turkish Lobby for the Sunlight Foundation (Part one, part two)

And make sure you read Mizgin's excellent pieces on Hittite Microwave (1, 2, 3)

Sibel Edmonds, under oath

2009-08-26T02:12:00.001+10:00

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has finally been given the opportunity to testify, under oath, about crimes that she became aware of during her work at the FBI.

The video and transcript of her deposition were released yesterday, and include details of "blackmail, bribery, espionage, infiltration, and criminal conspiracy by current and former members of the U.S. Congress, high-ranking State and Defense Department officials, and agents of the government of Turkey" according to Bradblog, who has done extensive reporting on this case.

The video and the transcript are available at Bradblog.

Bradblog reports:

The deposition included criminal allegations against specifically named members of Congress. Among those named by Edmonds as part of a broad criminal conspiracy: Reps. Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Dan Burton (R-IN), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Bob Livingston (R-LA), Stephen Solarz (D-NY), Tom Lantos (D-CA), as well as an unnamed, still-serving Congresswoman (D) said to have been secretly videotaped, for blackmail purposes, during a lesbian affair.

High-ranking officials from the Bush Administration named in her testimony, as part of the criminal conspiracy on behalf of agents of the Government of Turkey, include Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Grossman, and others.

According to the deposition, her case includes, but is not limited to, activities involving attempts by Turkish, Israeli and Pakistani operatives:

"to obtain very sensitive, classified, highly classified U.S. intelligence information, weapons technology information, classified congressional records, recruiting key U.S. individuals with access to highly sensitive information, blackmailing, bribery. "

For many years, Sibel has wanted the opportunity to testify in public, under oath. All of her previous attempts to expose the crimes that she is aware of have been buried in what she calls the 'black hole' of testimony behind closed doors, where information goes in but never escapes. Hopefully this will change now that (some of) the charges have now been made in public, under oath.

A list of the guilty parties is available here. Sibel's blog is 123 Real Change. Bradblog will continue covering the story.

US military planes carrying Afghanistan's heroin

2009-08-14T08:23:00.003+10:00

Craig Murray, former ambassador to Uzbekistan, writes:

There is an excellent interview with former head of the Pakistani intelligence service, General Hamid Gul, here. He makes some very strong points. It is undoubtedly true that it is warlords in the US-backed Karzai government who control 90% of the world heroin trade, and that the trade has expanded to its highest ever levels under coalition control. It is undoubtedly true that US foreign policy in the region is dictated by the desire to access Central Asian oil and gas. It is also undoubtedly true that the US works closely with Mossad and with India in Central Asia, and that many of its attacks appear calculated to stir up rather than ease conflict.

Read the whole interview. Here are a couple of snippets:

But what, I asked General Gul, in his view, were the true reasons for the invasion of Afghanistan, and why the U.S. is still there?

“A very good question,” he responded. “I think you have reached the point precisely.” It is a “principle of war,” he said, “that you never mix objectives. Because when you mix objectives then you end up with egg on your face. You face defeat. And here was a case where the objectives were mixed up. Ostensibly, it was to disperse al Qaeda, to get Osama bin Laden. But latently, the reasons for the offensive, for the attack on Afghanistan, were quite different.”

First, he says, the U.S. wanted to “reach out to the Central Asian oilfields” and “open the door there”, which “was a requirement of corporate America, because the Taliban had not complied with their desire to allow an oil and gas pipeline to pass through Afghanistan. UNOCAL is a case in point. They wanted to keep the Chinese out. They wanted to give a wider security shield to the state of Israel, and they wanted to include this region into that shield. And that’s why they were talking at that time very hotly about ‘greater Middle East’. They were redrawing the map.”

[...]

I pointed out to the former ISI chief that Afghan opium finds its way into Europe via Pakistan, via Iran and Turkey, and via the former Soviet republics. According to the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, convoys under General Rashid Dostum — who was reappointed last month to his government position as Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Afghan National Army by President Hamid Karzai — would truck the drugs over the border. And President Karzai’s own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has been accused of being a major drug lord. So I asked General Gul who was really responsible for the Afghan drug trade.

Note that NYTimes reporter James Risen recently noted that last year, Dostum "finally kind of left (Afghanistan) under a cloud to Turkey... the Turks have kind of been his sponsors."

Back to the interview with Gul:

Returning to the drug trade, General Gul named the brother of President Karzai, Abdul Wali Karzai. “Abdul Wali Karzai is the biggest drug baron of Afghanistan,” he stated bluntly. He added that the drug lords are also involved in arms trafficking, which is “a flourishing trade” in Afghanistan. “But what is most disturbing from my point of view is that the military aircraft, American military aircraft are also being used. You said very rightly that the drug routes are northward through the Central Asia republics and through some of the Russian territory, and then into Europe and beyond. But some of it is going directly. That is by the military aircraft. I have so many times in my interviews said, ‘Please listen to this information, because I am an aware person.’ We have Afghans still in Pakistan, and they sometimes contact and pass on the stories to me. And some of them are very authentic. I can judge that. So they are saying that the American military aircraft are being used for this purpose. So, if that is true, it is very, very disturbing indeed.”

Note that the claims about US military planes carrying Afghanistan's heroin are not new. This article (see also) is from February 2008:

Now Russia has joined the fray accusing the U.S. military of involvement in the heroin trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe. The Vesti channel’s report from Afghanistan said that drugs from Afghanistan were hauled by American transport aircraft to the U.S. airbases Ganci in Kyrgyzstan and Incirlik in Turkey.

Update: Also see this 2008 interview of Malalai Joya, former member of Afghanistan's national parliament, the Loya Jirga, and said to be The Bravest Woman in Afghanistan:

Joya: Corruption and drug trafficking have become a big issues. In my view, security is the biggest issue. After that it is corruption. The so-called international community which in fact is US government and its allies, has sent a lot of money. This amount was enough to build two instead of one Afghanistan. But even Karzai himself confesses that the money has ended up in the pockets of ministers, bureaucrats and member parliaments. On the other hand, one hears about a mother in Heart selling her daughter for ten dollars. And not merely the brother of Karzai is a drug lord, foreign troops have been allegedly involved.

Really? Any proof? Press reports?

Joya: Yes some press reports have pointed that out. For instance, Russian state TV has hinted at US troops involvement in drug trafficking. That was reported in the press here. But this is like an open secret. Karzai in one of his speeches last year said that it was not only Afghans who are involved in drug trafficking. He hinted at foreign connections. Though he did not name any country or troops but people in Afghanistan understood what he meant.

Some video

2009-08-13T18:59:00.007+10:00

Bradblog brings us video from outside the deposition.

There's some more here from Eric Larson

*

Brewster Jennings

2009-08-09T07:37:00.002+10:00

Some people seem to think that the Brewster Jennings revelations from today's testimony are very surprising.

I wrote about it in a 'review' post in March 2007 on the eve of Valerie Plame's senate testimony (I'm not sure when I first wrote about it.)

The story also appeared in the UK's Times in Jan 08 in an article called "Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe" (tho it has since disappeared from their website)

Final update

2009-08-09T06:58:00.002+10:00

Brad:

12:56pm (3:56pm ET) Okay, I believe this will be the final update. But it will end with a BANG. Big time...Read to the end...really...

The attorneys and Krikorian and Edmonds all had a media avail after the deposition completed.

Bruce Fein, the attorney for Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) --- who began all of this with her complaint at the Ohio Election Commission against David Krikorian, claiming he made "false statements" by alleging she took "blood money" from Turkish interests to suppress a vote in the U.S. House on the Armenian Genocide resolution --- was confronted by a reporter with Armenian TV who asked if it wasn't the "cornerstone of free speech for candidates to talk about freely about these matters.

Fein became very defensive, said that Krikorian "can say whatever he wants about the Armenian Genocide, but what he's not allowed to do is state lies. We don't want to close anybody's mouth when it comes to taking about the Armenian Genocide...What we're trying to do is promote freedom of speech. Some versions are trying to harass individuals who are trying to dispute history."

The reporter, Elizabeth Chouldjian, freelancing coverage today for Armenian Horizons TV, is also with Armenian National Committee of America, and she continue to press her points, and asked Fein if he didn't have a conflict of interest in this case. She had earlier told me that Fein was a Board member of the Turkish Coalition of America, Turkish American Legal Defense Fund and legal counsel for Assembly of Turkish American Associations. She wondered if it was appropriate for Fein to represent Schmidt, since he himself could be called to testify, as a witness on behalf of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations.

Chouldjian had told me that he's been flying around the country, essentially trying to deny that the genocide ever occurred, has sued the state of Massachusetts to put Armenian genocide "denialist" material in text books, is suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for putting out an article last year called "State of Denial" which, she says, focused on Turkish interests trying to block Armenian Genocide resolution from being passed.

Fein left very quickly thereafter, so I didn't get a chance to ask him if he, himself, recognized what he called, several times, "the Armenian genocide".

Chouldjian later told Edmonds of Fein's connections to those organizations, several of whom came up in the deposition apparently. Edmonds had no idea Fein was allied with those organizations.

Michael Kohn, Edmonds attorney, working on behalf of the National Whistleblower Center made his statement to say he's "glad her testimony has finally count out...It's been many years in the making. We're delighted that the Justice Department did not intervene and allowed the testimony to go forward." He said it was "a breath of fresh air from the previous administration." He didn't "think it would have happened with the previous administration."

He was not sure when the transcript of the session would be released. New information today, he said, including naming persons by name and with a great deal of specifics. NWC would review the testimony and disseminate publicly as soon as possible.

Krikorian stated: "We came here to get the sworn testimony of a very very credible witness in defense against a current Congresswoman. And then, beyond that, doing what is right for the country, which is why I'm running. I plan to win this case, and I plan to win this election," he said.

He said their is an Ohio Election Commission preliminary meeting on Aug. 13th, and a hearing on Sept 3rd, and that he would look at releasing both video and transcript thereafter.

Edmonds, however, seemed to suggest that the video tape, at least, might be released in full sooner.

Here comes a bombshell or two...

At the venue, Edmonds said that she named names and details on all of the Congress members noted on her "State Secrets Gallery" page. And then some.

She said she told them about "Mr. [Marc] Grossman and Brewster Jennings...And the real story about them, not the crap they got from the media."

I was unable to follow up that statement with a question, before she got into a cab, but was able to track her down on her cell thereafter.

First, I asked if she specified whether the sitting bi-sexual, married Congresswoman who had been taped sleeping with a woman, without knowing, and then bribed by Turkish interests with the tape, to vote against the Armenian Genocide resolution had been a Democrat or a Republican. She said she is a Democrat, and that she testified to that during her deposition. (See Krikorian's long statement above for more details on that woman.)

Second, I asked about the the "real" story on Brewster Jennings, as opposed to the "crap...from the media" as she mentioned at the venue.

"Basically," she said, "I told them how [third-ranking State Dept. official in the Bush Admin and former Ambassador to Turkey] Marc Grossman disclosed" that Brewster Jennings was a CIA front company] to the target of an FBI investigation. "And it was under oath and that some some lives may have been lost."

"Novak has nothing to do with it. Wilson has nothing to do with it. Valerie Plame has nothing to do with it. The whole operation has to do with something totally different and it had to do with the American Turkish Council and the Turkish clients who were about to hire Brewster Jennings as an analyst ... and Grossman found out about it, and tipped off his diplomatic contact who was a target of the FBI counter-intelligence, and that person notified the ISI [Pakistani intelligence agency], etc."

She says that Brewster Jenning was then "dismantled as soon as the FBI notified the CIA" after which "FBI requested CIA to do a damage assessment, to see if lives would be lost."

All of this, she re-iterated was "long before, three years before" Novak outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in his newspaper column.

Brewster Jennings was "absolutely" dismantled in August of 2001.

"Grossman and [Richard] Armitage, they are the only two people involved. Later on Cheney and his people may have used it, but it had nothing to do with those other things, [Brewster Jennings] was completely destroyed and gone by the summer of 2001."

Bombshell enough for ya? Let's see if anyone in the corporate media bothers to agree, and/or pick up on this --- now that it's officially "on the record" and, as Edmonds took pains to point out: under oath!

Here endeth today's live-blogging session. We hope to be hitting the road this afternoon (we were supposed to go on "vacation" today, but have had to put things off for this), so if anyone feels like tipping us some gas money, to make up for three hours sleep and today's marathon coverage, we'd much appreciate it!

You can donate to The BRAD BLOG here... and you should.

For more background on Fein, see my Bruce Fein, Turkey and the Armenian Genocide and Bruce Fein & Turkey

"THANK YOU BRADBLOG!""

2009-08-09T06:54:00.000+10:00

A tweet from Sibel:

"Thank you for all your support. I am back! Let's get this video soon...Also, THANK YOU BRADBLOG!"

Deposition over

2009-08-09T05:39:00.001+10:00

From Brad:

12:24pm PT (3:24pm ET) Apparently the proceedings are now wrapping up. It's believed that Edmonds and Krikorian and the attorneys will speak to whatever media is outside the NWC. Will cover...

Mark Geragos

2009-08-09T05:22:00.000+10:00

Mark Geragos is tweeting from the deposition - pointing to BradBlog!

liveblog update

2009-08-09T03:51:00.007+10:00

Update from Brad:

10:09am PT (1:09pm ET): Wow... just had lengthy conversation with Krikorian about Edmonds' testimony. Just wow... coming momentarily...

Spoke to Edmonds, who says she's "tired, gotta put some sugar into her system", but that she's satisfied with what's being put on the record so far. "Things we have never discussed outside before".

A lengthy conversation then, with Krikorian, may give you some idea of what she's referring to.

Here's Krikorian, directly quoted. Hang on to your seats...

"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.

(Which current members have been implicated?)

(Dan) Burton (R-IN), described as basically accepting bribes and involved in espionage for the Turkish government...she could not discuss the extremely illegal activities that Mr. Burton committed against U.S. interests, as she put it.

Also, a current female Democratic member of Congress who has been blackmailed by the Turkish Government...called a 'hooking exercise'...she's apparently bi-sexual and they bugged her apartment, she's married with children, and they set up a relationship with another female who went in and had sexual relationships with her. And they had all the episodes bugged within this current Representatives home and they blackmailed her. ... She wouldn't give her name, but her photograph (is the one with the question mark on it in the "Sibel Edmonds Rogue Gallery" ) .

The context of the discussion was that this particular Representative was amenable to passage of the Armenian Genocide Resolution. And then based on this 'hooking' operation, changed her position. She was reluctant to put this person's name on record.

(Other people implicated included) Livingston (R-TX), Hastert (R-IL), Dick Gephardt (D-MO), other non-Congressional members, people like Brent Scowcroft, other appointed members of the U.S. government...

(More shortly...)

Sibel actually mentioned this congresswoman in her recent interview with Russ Tice. I have been working on a database to shorten the list but haven't finished it yet, specifically, a congresswoman who is currently serving, who also served at some point between 1996 and 2002.

More from Brad, quoting Krikorian:

One of the reasons we sought her testimony is especially for these reasons. I can tell you that counsel for Schmidt has been objecting to much of the testimony. I stopped counting the number of objections that were raised. But, she's an extremely credible witness, she knows a lot about what happened. She's implicated Turkish organizations operating in the U.S. with both overt and covert operations.

[Q: Which ones?]

ATC, ATAA, TACO (Ed: TACA)...She talked about how she was recruited to join these operations, she talked about the fact that the Inspector General's report exonerated her, she talked about the circumstances around her dismissal, she talked about the fact that these the fact that these Turkish American operations were, she said in her words 'all receiving support from the Turkish government'.

She talks about one of the main lobby issues is suppressing U.S. media coverage of the Armenian Genocide and preventing the Armenian Genocide resolution in Congress from passing. She said very very strongly that is one of their major issues.

She also attested there is no credible opposition to the historical facts of the Armenian genocide, that it's only coming from Turkey.

[Ed note: Edmonds was raised in Turkey, though is a U.S. citizen. Krikorian is of Armenian dissent. Schmidt is neither, but she is co-chair of the Congressional Turkish Caucus.]

Did not have very flattering things to say about former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert. ... Actually, I stopped taking notes because I was o fascinated by what she was saying. ... She talked about the Rand Corp., Brewster-Jennings, nuclear secrets...

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.

[Q: Do you predict problems with Democrats whose support you will need when running against Schmidt as a Dem in 2010?]

Problem with Democrats...?

Well, Mr. Gephardt and Mr. Solarz are no longer Representatives of the U.S. House of Representatives. I think it would be extremely naive and the height of folly for the Democratic leadership to suggest for a moment that Democrats aren't also corrupt. I don't mean as an entirety, but that there aren't corrupt members of the Democrat caucus. I think there was a recent Democrat down south somewhere who was found with thirty thousand dollars cash in his freezer, or whatever.

If Democratic National Committee or the DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Comm.] came out and said, 'hey, we're entirely clean and there's no fault on us', I think the American public would laugh at them. So, this is not an indictment of one party or the other. This is about standing up for what's right for the country, and what is right for the citizens of our country.

Again, I ran as an independent last time [in 2008]. I'm running as a Democrat [in 2010] because I think right now they're probably the better of the two parties. But nevertheless, I don't necessarily buy into the fact that they're without blood on their hands...

[Q: Did she implicate any sitting Democrats?]

She did not indicate any names of any currently serving Democrats that I'm aware. [Though he wasn't certain if the unnamed female Representative was either Democratic or Republican].

Krikorian went on to say that he expects to release the video of the deposition, which, along with the transcript, is the property of his legal team. says "There will be...This could be a 10 part YouTube video segment, that we'll put out there."

He doesn't yet know when a transcript will be available.

The cross-testimony of Edmonds, by Schmidt's attorney Fein is still in progress...

Liveblogging!

2009-08-09T02:03:00.003+10:00

Brad is quasi-liveblogging the deposition here.

Sibel

" has been able to say "everything that she hasn't been able to say so far, implicating many member of Congress in a criminal conspiracy," according to interviews with Fein and others."

and:

"Edmonds told me in a brief phone conversation during the break: "Bruce Fein is raising objections to everything", though that's to be expected. She said she's been asked, and has answered, questions on Dan Burton (R-IN), Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Stephen Solarz (D-NY), and other questions on those high-ranking officials and lobbyists in her "State Secrets Gallery"."

Update from Brad:

Another break...Edmonds still being questioned under direct. Fein believes his questioning cross-examination will last two hours or so once he begins. They are now breaking for lunch. DoJ/FBI still did not show up.

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...

Margolis

2009-08-08T17:42:00.003+10:00

Scott Horton interviewed Eric Margolis again. In the interview, Scott asked Eric about my recent post "Bombshell: Bin Laden worked for US till 9/11" where I quoted Margolis. Margolis kinda sorta tried to distance himself from what he apparently said on previous interviews with Scott. I'll do a transcript in the next few days when things calm down.

In fairness, Scott has tried to pin Margolis down on the specifics in the past, and Margolis has kinda denied things that Scott has tried to attribute to him (Margolis).

Hopefully the new transcript will clear things up a bit - although, at first hearing, Margolis seems to be saying that there isn't any 'daylight' between what I quoted him as saying, and what he actually is saying.

Steve Aftergood

2009-08-08T14:20:00.000+10:00

Why isn't Steve Aftergood following the latest news re Sibel's case?

2009-08-08T14:12:00.001+10:00

I've been 'blocked' from posting at Twitter all day. (At least, I can't post there)

(again, I don't think there is a conspiracy)

DoJ intercedes to block testimony.

2009-08-08T13:16:00.000+10:00

Bradblog has the latest:

DoJ Intercedes With Ohio Commission in Effort to Block Edmonds Testimony

Brad writes:

In short, the DoJ has informed the (Ohio Election Commission ) that Edmonds has "not complied with the procedures for obtaining authorization from the FBI, her former employer, prior to making any disclosure relating to information that she acquired in the course of her work for the FBI. Therefore, she is not authorized to testify at the deposition."

[]
The DoJ further claims in their letter that the OEC's subpoena is not enforceable, because the deposition is to take place outside of Ohio.

In response, the OEC has said they will not enforce the subpoena, but they have not withdrawn it either. Thus, it seems, Krikorian is still within his rights to carry out the deposition at this time, and Edmonds tells The BRAD BLOG she plans on being there in the morning to answer it.
[]
In a brief conversation with Edmonds moments ago, she re-iterated her belief that the "MSM will be a no-show tomorrow", and therefore says "citizen journalists are needed" to cover what may happen at the deposition. Both she and Krikorian, as well as attorneys from all sides, will be available to answer questions from media --- both corporate and citizen --- before and after the scheduled deposition tomorrow. It is slated to begin at 10:30am Saturday morning (8/8/09) at the National Whistleblowers Center, 3238 P St. NW, in Washington D.C..

What happens next?

DoJ pressure to withdraw subpoena

2009-08-08T12:09:00.001+10:00

Sibel just tweeted this:

UPDATE: DOJ Pressures Ohio Elections Commission to immediately withdraw their subpoena order because DC is not within their jurisdiction...

It isn't clear yet whether that pressure has been successful.

Sibel Edmonds Fights to Testify

2009-08-08T08:24:00.003+10:00

Bradblog has the latest.

The FBI and the Dept of Justice are trying to block Sibel from testifying, asserting that:

Edmonds is under “no compulsion” to testify in the Krikorian case and the FBI asserted that she, “does not have approval for any disclosure of any information.”

Sibel's lawyers responded that:

"the objections raised so far by the agency are not sufficient to block Edmonds' from "truthfully answer[ing] questions while under oath pursuant to a lawful subpoena" on Saturday morning in D.C. as scheduled.

Their press release [PDF], to be issued publicly later today, accuses the FBI and DoJ of attempting "censorship" and trying to "silence [a] whistleblower"."

Bradblog reports:

Edmonds told The BRAD BLOG today that she "absolutely intends to answer any questions, unless it's about intelligence gathering or informants." But, since "that has nothing to do with this case," she didn't anticipate any such questions.

She did say, however, that she was "obligated to respond to any questions that come out about any of the people in the 'State Secrets Privilege Gallery'". The "State Secrets Privilege Gallery" referenced is a webpage of unnamed photographs --- featuring current and former Congressmembers, high-ranking State and Defense Dept. officials, as well as lobbyists and agents from Turkish public interest groups --- which Edmonds posted in 2007. The names of most of those officials, and their ties to Edmonds own whistleblower case, has been detailed by Edmonds expert Luke Ryland here. Some of the names, said to have been illegally tied to Turkish influences, include former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Congressmen Dan Burton (R-IN), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Stephen Solarz (D-NY), as well as Bush Administration officials such as Richard Perle, Marc Grossman, Douglas Feith and others.

Bradblog continues:

Edmonds told The BRAD BLOG this afternoon that she believes she has an obligation to respond to questions raised during the deposition.

"This is not about being idealistic or heroic," she told us. "I am responsible to inform the citizens, and these people's constituents about who they're voting for. I'm responsible to the citizens of this country and the Constitution. I'm going to do my best answer to those citizens, especially when it comes to important issues of the Constitution."

The DoJ and the FBI have a few possible options, including re-invoking the State Secrets Privilege. Unless they actively move to block the testimony, it is scheduled to proceed at 10.30AM Saturday.

Dept of bad timing

2009-08-07T19:04:00.003+10:00

Sibel has been locked out of her blog and can't post anything there at the moment. I suspect that it is a coincidence more than a nefarious plot, but the timing is awful given her upcoming deposition.

Sibel obviously won't be able to post any updates there until that problem gets rectified, but Sibel has other ways of publishing any important messages. I will re-publish them at Against All Enemies.

The Defenders of Democracy

2009-08-07T09:36:00.002+10:00

Mizgin, who writes the superb blog, Rasti, has a regular guest spot called Mizgin's Desk at 123 Real Change.

Her latest piece uses the hook of the recent elections in Kyrgyzstan to discuss US efforts to Islamicize Central Asia, spearheaded by Fethullah Gulen. Read the whole thing. A typically great piece by Mizgin. Well done.

For more background, read these two pieces of mine from July, 2008:
Court Documents Shed Light on CIA Illegal Operations in Central Asia Using Islam & Madrassas and
The Central Asia Islamization Cocktail: Mosques, Madrassas, Heroin & Terrorism

Sibel Edmonds to break gag order

2009-08-06T19:26:00.005+10:00

Update: Sibel's deposition will now be closed to the press & public, although the deposition will eventually be available on video.

Bradblog has the full story on the latest Sibel Edmonds news. Here is the intro:

FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Subpoenaed, Set to 'Break' Gag Order Unless DoJ Intercedes

Former agency translator called to testify in Ohio election case this Saturday on Turkish infiltration of U.S. government...

Unless the Dept. of Justice re-invokes their twice-invoked "state secrets privilege" claim in order to once again gag former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, her attorneys have notified the department by hand-delivered, sworn letter of declaration [PDF] this week, that she intends to give a public deposition, open to the media, in response to a subpoena this Saturday in Washington D.C..

Edmonds has confirmed her intentions to answer any questions asked of her during the sworn proceedings, fully and publicly, during conversations with The BRAD BLOG this week. She notes that her agreement with her former employer, the FBI --- who fired her illegally after she filed whistleblower allegations about corruption and foreign infiltration in the linguistics department --- includes certain non-disclosure requirements. However, those requirements do not preclude her answering to a legally issued court subpoena.

The subpoena and request for sworn deposition is part of a case now pending before the Ohio Elections Commission in which Ohio's Republican U.S. Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-2nd District) has filed a complaint against her 2008 independent challenger, David Krikorian who Schmidt has charged distributed false statements about her during last year's campaign.

The resulting testimony, if it indeed occurs this weekend, could be far more explosive than either Schmidt or Krikorian might have ever guessed...

Read the rest at BradBlog

Sibel is playing a very high-stakes game of 'chicken' with the Justice Department. I hope that she 'wins'. If not, we may have to send Bill Clinton in to secure her freedom...

Turkey and Turkish agents

2009-08-06T12:39:00.002+10:00

Sibel Edmonds is still expecting to give her deposition on Saturday in Schmidt v. Krikorian.

The Krikorian campaign has issued a press release stating:

Ms. Edmonds is prepared to testify this Saturday in an open to the media deposition in Washington DC that during the time she was employed by the FBI she obtained evidence that:
1. The Government of Turkey had illegally infiltrated and influenced various U.S. government institutions and officials, including the Department of State, the Department of Defense and individual members of the United States Congress

2. The Government of Turkey had engaged in practices and policies that were inimical to American interests and had in fact resulted in both the direct and indirect loss of American lives

3. Turkish American cultural and business groups conduct operations with direct and indirect support from the Government of Turkey

The Krikorian campaign needs to be careful to differentiate between the Government of Turkey and other entities. Sibel's own statement says that her sworn declaration describes:

How certain Turkish entities had illegally infiltrated and influenced various U.S. government agencies and officials, including but not limited to the Department of State, the Department of Defense and individual members of the United States Congress.

How certain Turkish American cultural and business lobby groups conduct their illegal operations with direct and indirect support from the foreign governments.

Sibel has previously made it clear that the Turkish government is not paying the bills for Turkish lobbying firms such as former Speaker Bob Livingston's The Livingston Group. Livingston is featured in Sibel's Rogues Gallery. Livingston's actual clients are believed to be the American Turkish Council (ATC) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA). The same is presumably true for former congressman Stephen Solarz's various lobbying firms.

Similarly, as Sibel stated in a recent interview with Brad Friedman, it was the ATAA and/or the ATC that bribed former Speaker Dennis Hastert. Again, the same is probably true for the other congressional members in Sibel's Rogues Gallery: Tom Lantos, Roy Blunt, Dan Burton and another unidentified female member (married, two adult children, still serving).

Further, it is these private groups, representatives of the military-industrial-complex, that have infiltrated the State Department and the Pentagon. Some reports, such as CBS 60 Minutes, and the New York Observer, suggested that a "Turkish intelligence officer" working out of the Turkish Embassy had spies inside the State Department and the Pentagon, however Sibel cleared up that issue, stating that this individual was not an "official" and that he worked "on behalf of a semi-legitimate organization," namely, the American Turkish Council.

Of course, the Turkish government has historically been involved in some of these activities, particularly under former PM Tansu Ciller, but note that Sibel refers to "foreign governments" in the plural, which includes Israel, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as well.

In other news, the Krikorian legal team, featuring Mark Geragos, already has Sibel's written declaration. If the government somehow blocks Sibel's deposition on Saturday, will they also gag Geragos? Or is the cat out of the bag?

Who amongst us is so brave?

2009-08-05T21:07:00.004+10:00

In recent interviews, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds suggested that all channels were apparently closed in her particular case because it appeared that she had exhausted her options within the Judiciary (and both Congress and the Corporate Media refuse to offer her a forum to disclose what she knows about malfeasance at the Pentagon and State Department)

That all changed today, as Sibel outlines in a 'BREAKING NEWS' item at her blog. Because of an unlikely set of circumstances, Sibel's sworn deposition and affidavit testimony was requested in a case involving the Ohio Election Commission involving Ohio Congresswoman Jean Schmidt. Schmidt has been accused by her electoral opponent of being on the payroll of Turkish interests, and her opponent, David Krikorian, sought Sibel's testimony about:

How certain Turkish entities had illegally infiltrated and influenced various U.S. government agencies and officials, including but not limited to the Department of State, the Department of Defense and individual members of the United States Congress.

How certain Turkish American cultural and business lobby groups conduct their illegal operations with direct and indirect support from the foreign governments.

Politico's story about the saga is here, Congressional Quarterly followed up here.

Sibel's lawyers challenge AG Holder to do the right thing:

"The state secrets privilege has stifled Ms. Edmonds for the past seven years, and this deposition will be the first time that she will put her knowledge on the record.

Given the pendency of this case and the request for her testimony, the National Whistleblowers Legal Defense and Education Fund requested that the Attorney General immediately and independently review the basis upon which that privilege was initially invoked, and formally and in writing withdraw that privilege."

It appears that there is currently a standoff/ultimatum: unless AG Holder specifically re-invokes the State Secrets Privilege in this case, Sibel will fulfill her duties and respond to the deposition as she is legally required to do.

Sibel's deposition is:

scheduled for Saturday, August 8, 2009, at 10:30am. It will be held at the National Whistleblowers Center at 3238 P. St. NW, Washington, DC. The event is open to the press.

I suggest that the press corp might serve themselves well by attending.

Relatedly, Sibel recently said in an interview that:

"I've been trying to go to the criminal court, and they are not taking me there..."

Sibel notes that there is an Executive Order which forbids the use of classification and secrecy of illegal activity.

Who amongst us is so brave? Sibel wants to tell her story, and she dares the US media to report it, and she dares the US government to criminally charge her with disclosure.

Stand by: Saturday, 10.30am

Who amongst us is so brave?

Bombshell: Bin Laden worked for US till 9/11

2009-07-31T21:47:00.002+10:00

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds dropped a bombshell on the Mike Malloy radio show, guest-hosted by Brad Friedman (audio, partial transcript).

In the interview, Sibel says that the US maintained 'intimate relations' with Bin Laden, and the Taliban, "all the way until that day of September 11."

These 'intimate relations' included using Bin Laden for 'operations' in Central Asia, including Xinjiang, China. These 'operations' involved using al Qaeda and the Taliban in the same manner "as we did during the Afghan and Soviet conflict," that is, fighting 'enemies' via proxies.

As Sibel has previously described, and as she reiterates in this latest interview, this process involved using Turkey (with assistance from 'actors from Pakistan, and Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia') as a proxy, which in turn used Bin Laden and the Taliban and others as a proxy terrorist army.

Control of Central Asia
The goals of the American 'statesmen' directing these activities included control of Central Asia's vast energy supplies and new markets for military products.

The Americans had a problem, though. They needed to keep their fingerprints off these operations to avoid a) popular revolt in Central Asia ( Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan), and b) serious repercussions from China and Russia. They found an ingenious solution: Use their puppet-state Turkey as a proxy, and appeal to both pan-Turkic and pan-Islam sensibilities.

Turkey, a NATO ally, has a lot more credibility in the region than the US and, with the history of the Ottoman Empire, could appeal to pan-Turkic dreams of a wider sphere of influence. The majority of the Central Asian population shares the same heritage, language and religion as the Turks.

In turn, the Turks used the Taliban and al Qaeda, appealing to their dreams of a pan-Islamic caliphate (Presumably. Or maybe the Turks/US just paid very well.)

According to Sibel:

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

Uighurs
Sibel was recently asked to write about the recent situation with the Uighurs in Xinjiang, but she declined, apart from saying that "our fingerprint is all over it."

Of course, Sibel isn't the first or only person to recognize any of this. Eric Margolis, one of the best reporters in the West on matters of Central Asia, stated that the Uighurs in the training camps in Afghanistan up to 2001:

"were being trained by Bin Laden to go and fight the communist Chinese in Xinjiang, and this was not only with the knowledge, but with the support of the CIA, because they thought they might use them if war ever broke out with China."

And also that:

"Afghanistan was not a hotbed of terrorism, these were commando groups, guerrilla groups, being trained for specific purposes in Central Asia."

In a separate interview, Margolis said:

"That illustrates Henry Kissinger's bon mot that the only thing more dangerous than being America's enemy is being an ally, because these people were paid by the CIA, they were armed by the US, these Chinese Muslims from Xinjiang, the most-Western province.

The CIA was going to use them in the event of a war with China, or just to raise hell there, and they were trained and supported out of Afghanistan, some of them with Osama Bin Laden's collaboration. The Americans were up to their ears with this."

Rogues Gallery
Last year, Sibel came up with a brilliant idea to expose some of the criminal activity that she is forbidden to speak about: she published eighteen photos, titled "Sibel Edmonds’ State Secrets Privilege Gallery," of people involved the operations that she has been trying to expose. One of those people is Anwar Yusuf Turani, the so-called 'President-in-exile' of East Turkistan (Xinjiang). This so-called 'government-in-exile' was 'established' on Capitol Hill in September, 2004, drawing a sharp rebuke from China.

Also featured in Sibel's Rogues Gallery was 'former' spook Graham Fuller, who was instrumental in the establishment of Turani's 'government-in-exile' of East Turkistan. Fuller has written extensively on Xinjiang, and his "Xinjiang Project" for Rand Corp is apparently the blueprint for Turani's government-in-exile. Sibel has openly stated her contempt for Mr. Fuller.

Susurluk
The Turkish establishment has a long history of mingling matters of state with terrorism, drug trafficking and other criminal activity, best exemplified by the 1996 Susurluk incident which exposed the so-called Deep State.

Sibel states that "a few main Susurluk actors also ended up in Chicago where they centered 'certain' aspects of their operations (Especially East Turkistan-Uighurs)."

One of the main Deep State actors, Mehmet Eymur, former Chief of Counter-Terrorism for Turkey's intelligence agency, the MIT, features in Sibel's Rogues Gallery. Eymur was given exile in the US. Another member of Sibel's gallery, Marc Grossman was Ambassador to Turkey at the time that the Susurluk incident exposed the Deep State. He was recalled shortly after, prior to the end of his assignment, as was Grossman's underling, Major Douglas Dickerson, who later tried to recruit Sibel into the spying ring.

The modus operandi of the Susurluk gang is the same as the activities that Sibel describes as taking place in Central Asia, the only difference is that this activity was exposed in Turkey a decade ago, whereas the organs of the state in the US, including the corporate media, have successfully suppressed this story.

Chechnya, Albania & Kosovo
Central Asia is not the only place where American foreign policy makers have shared interests with Bin Laden. Consider the war in Chechnya. As I documented here, Richard Perle and Stephen Solarz (both in Sibel's gallery) joined other leading neocon luminaries such as Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, Frank Gaffney, Michael Ledeen, James Woolsey, and Morton Abramowitz in a group called the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). For his part, Bin Laden donated $25 million to the cause, as well as numerous fighters, and technical expertise, establishing training camps.

US interests also converged with those of al-Qaeda in Kosovo and Albania.

Of course, it is not uncommon for circumstances to arise where 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend.' On the other hand, in a transparent democracy, we expect a full accounting of the circumstances leading up to a tragic event like 9/11. The 9/11 Commission was supposed to provide exactly that.

State Secrets
Sibel has famously been dubbed the most gagged woman in America, having the State Secrets Privilege imposed on her twice. Her 3.5 hour testimony to the 9/11 Commission has been entirely suppressed, reduced to a single footnote which refers readers to her classified testimony.

In the interview, she says that the information that was classified in her case specifically identifies that the US was using Bin Laden and the Taliban in Central Asia, including Xinjiang. In the interview, Sibel reiterates that when invoking the gag orders, the US government claims that it is protecting " 'sensitive diplomatic relations,' protecting Turkey, protecting Israel, protecting Pakistan, protecting Saudi Arabia..." This is no doubt partially true, but it is also true that they are protecting themselves too, and it is a crime in the US to use classification and secrecy to cover up crimes.

As Sibel says in the interview:

I have information about things that our government has lied to us about... those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.

Summary
The bombshell here is obviously that certain people in the US were using Bin Laden up to September 11, 2001.

It is important to understand why: the US outsourced terror operations to al Qaeda and the Taliban for many years, promoting the Islamization of Central Asia in an attempt to personally profit off military sales as well as oil and gas concessions.

The silence by the US government on these matters is deafening. So, too, is the blowback.

US trained Uighur terrorists

2009-07-31T20:11:00.005+10:00

Following are two partial transcriptions of interviews with Eric Margolis (EM)and Scott Horton (SH).

The first is from November 08, available here.

EM: In fact, you know, when the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they claimed that there were over twenty 'terrorist training camps' as they called them, they were all training terrorists to go and attack America. Well, this is an absolute lie. One among many.

Most of the training camps, 90% of the people in the training camps were either Kashmiris being trained by Pakistani Intelligence Service, the ISI, with full American knowledge, to go an fight in Kashmir against Indian rule. That was the biggest group, and the second biggest group were people from Central Asia, mainly Uzbekistan and Khazakistan and Tajikistan who were being organized and trained to go and fight these dreadful communist regimes of Central Asia, again with full American knowledge.

And finally there were a group of Uighurs - Chinese muslims from Xinjiang province in Western China who were being trained by Bin Laden to go and fight the communist Chinese in Xinjiang, and this was not only with the knowledge, but with the support of the CIA, because they thought they might use them if war ever broke out with China.

SH: As late as when?

EM: Oh, this is in 2001.

SH: In 2001, with CIA backing, Bin Laden himself, not just ISI-types or whatever, but actually Al-Qaeda, was working with the CIA and training these anti-Chinese Muslims?

EM: Well, I wouldn't go that far. I would say that they knew what Bin Laden was doing, and they were encouraging him through third parties, probably the Saudis, but the minute 9/11 happened... well, you remember Washington was giving money to the Taliban until four months before 9/11. The reason for that was they thought they would enlist the Taliban to go and overthrow the Central Asian communist regimes, and even attack China. But of course when 9/11 happened, this dirty little secret was covered up, the files were burned, and anybody involved in it was sent off to purgatory.

SH: Yeah, I think there was even a plot, somewhere in 2000 or something by the British to use Bin Laden types to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya.

EM: That's exactly right, and in fact the British used them to shoot off a bomb in Tripoli that killed about eighty civilians, so there are a lot of dirty hands there. The point is that Afghanistan was not a hotbed of terrorism, these were commando groups, guerrilla groups, being trained for specific purposes in Central Asia.

This April 09 interview is available here

SH: I'd like to ask you if you could expand on something that you've mentioned on this show before, which is that the Americans - I don't know, the military or the CIA or both or what - during maybe the late part of the Clinton term, early part of the Bush term, were either turning a blind eye, or were actually helping the Uighurs, the Chinese Islamic dissidents, that were training in the camps in Afghanistan, and going back to China.

They're famous now because some of them are being held in Guantanamo Bay, and won't be released even though there are no charges against them and what have you. But, here again, was America backing jihadists apparently against the Chinese.

EM: Well, yes. That illustrates Henry Kissinger's bon mot that the only thing more dangerous than being America's enemy is being an ally, because these people were paid by the CIA, they were armed by the US, these Chinese muslims from Xinjiang, the most-Western province.

The CIA was going to use them in the event of a war with China, or just to raise hell there, and they were trained and supported out of Afghanistan, some of them with Osama bin Laden's collaboration. The Americans were up to their ears with this.

9/11: a can of worms

2009-07-28T20:13:00.003+10:00

Here is some more from the Boiling Frogs interview with Sibel Edmonds and James Bamford.

Sibel Edmonds: Jim, you also mentioned the 9/11 Commission and the fact that they did not interview two very important FBI agents who were assigned to the bin Laden unit (ed: Alec Station), and these were Agents Rossini and Doug Miller. Did you find out why, and how that happened?

James Bamford: Well, I thought the Commission did a horrible job.

I spent a lot of time looking at what the Commission was doing, and I was just astonished at how poor a job they did. They not only did not interview Mark Rossini and his partner at the CIA, I mean, I can't think of two more people you'd want to interview than the two FBI agents who were in the CIA's Bin Laden Center at the time everything was happening. They didn't interview them, and I also discovered that they never investigated NSA's role in the entire 9/11.

My book was reviewed in the Washington Post by Bob Kerrey, former Senator from Nebraska who was on the 9/11 Commission, and he said my book went well beyond what the Commission investigated, and what other investigative reporters had come up with thus far. So, I mean, you know, the fact that an author can just, out there on his own, can come up with more than what the entire Commission was able to do, with all the millions of dollars they had, and the enormous staff... Apparently what happened was the Commission had no interest in the NSA whatsoever.

Sibel Edmonds: Of course not.

James Bamford: (Unintelligible) tried to get the staff to look at NSA records, and they just only had an interest in looking at the CIA. The staffers had mentioned that they thought that looking at the CIA was a sexy thing to look at, and looking at the NSA was a lot of people with computers, and they didn't really understand it. So, I mean, it was a terrible investigation.

I actually interviewed Lee Hamilton, the co-Chair of the Commission, and I asked him if he ever interviewed Mike Hayden, the head of the NSA, and he couldn't even remember if he interviewed him! He's the head of the largest intelligence agency in the country, and the co-Chair of the 9/11 Commission couldn't remember if they interviewed or not. It was just extraordinary.

A proper investigation would open up a can of worms. More on that soon.

Blackmailing congress

2009-07-28T19:09:00.002+10:00

In the first podcast of Boiling Frogs, Sibel Edmonds and Peter B Collins interview investigative reporter extraordinaire, Jim Bamford. It is interesting throughout, unsurprisingly, but I wanted to focus on one particular element in this post.

Sibel Edmonds: Jim, speaking of Israel, there is this information that I came across that most people don't know about. I'm talking about two companies that happen to serve our two large telecoms, and both of them have this very interesting Israel connection. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

James Bamford: Sure. One of the things in my research for the book, looking exactly at how the NSA actually does it's eavesdropping, I was really amazed that the fact that there are private companies that sort of act as go-betweens between the NSA and the telecom companies.

The telecoms companies such as AT&T don't actually do the eavesdropping themselves. What they do is they have a facility in their switching building, such as the one is San Francisco, that is a very secret room that is put there by the NSA. In that room is equipment, software and hardware, that is put there by a private company. In San Francisco, the name of the company is Naris. The company that does similar type of work that acts as a sort of a buffer between the NSA and Verizon is, um, I can't think of the name...

Sibel Edmonds: Verint and Naris.

James Bamford: Yes, Verint is the company that works with Verizon, and Naris does the work with AT&T. One of the interesting things about those companies is they both have ties to Israel. They were both founded by Israelis, and it's very worrisome, I think, when you have companies with ties to foreign countries working in a very secret capacity to eavesdrop on lots of communication and then have that communication be transmitted to NSA.

But I was very surprised to find that virtually nobody in Congress knew that there were private companies, that originated with foreign countries, with foreign ties. [...]
One of the big dangers here, which is something I also found out by discovering an Australian document, it was actually a transcript of a very secret meeting that took place in Australia where they were discussing the whole of issue of Verint's co-operation with Australia’s eavesdropping organization - Verint is being used there, just like they are being used in the US.

What really shocked the Australian govt officials was the fact that the Australians were having a very difficult time accessing the intercepted communications in their own database, yet they discovered that Verint was able to access that same information, from outside the country, presumably from Israel. And the meeting was to decide whether they were going to get rid of Verint or not. They called Verint employees and asked them about it, and because of the protests of the Australian govt, and they didn’t want to lose the contract, they said that they were not going to do that anymore, not going to access the database from outside the country any more.

So, it's very worrying, if they can do it in Australia, they might be able to do it in the United States, and again, we're dealing with very sensitive information that should not be so easily accessible to foreign countries...
[...]
Peter B Collins: Jim Bamford, in your book you sum it up in a single sentence: "Thus, virtually the entire American telecommunications system is bugged by two Israeli-formed companies, with possible ties to Israel's eavesdropping agency, with no oversight by Congress."

It is interesting that Sibel "came across" these companies. There have been many articles exposing these companies, so maybe she came across them that way. Or maybe she came across these companies during her work at the FBI. Sibel has previously asked whether congressional acquiescence is the result of

"...possible use of blackmail by the Executive Branch against Congressional representatives, as if the days of J. Edgar Hoover were never over?"

Bamford's subsequent discussion about the Australian experience, where Verint employees in Israel had access to information that the Australian government couldn't access might provide a clue. It is possible that the use of blackmail by the Executive Branch is the least we have to worry about - blackmail by a foreign country is infinitely more dangerous. It would certainly explain why Pat Buchanan once described Congress as “Israeli-occupied territory.” It would also explain how "senior officials in the Pentagon had helped Israeli and Turkish agents" by providing lists of potential moles which

"contained all their ‘hooking points’, which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to."

Very worrisome indeed.

Offensive Information Warfare

2009-07-28T18:37:00.003+10:00

Sibel Edmonds now has her own radio show / podcast called Boiling Frogs, with Peter B. Collins. On Thursday, she will publish an interview with Russ Tice.

Last month, Sibel got the scoop that while at the NSA and DIA, Tice “worked as an Intelligence Analyst & Capabilities Operations Officer specializing in all aspects of OFFENSIVE INFORMATION WARFARE (O-IW).”

Sibel adds:

"I had a meeting with James Bamford and got a ‘real’ education on how alarming this really is."

The fact that Tice worked on the 'offensive' side of the equation sheds new light on some of his concerns, although I doubt that we'll learn too much about his actual work, given that he has previously said that "there's no way the programs I want to talk to Congress about should be public ever, unless maybe in 200 years they want to declassify them. You should never learn about it." Sibel says that the interview includes "the latest NSA related developments, US Congress, his Kafkaesque journey as a whistleblower, and more."

On the other hand, the fact that he worked on the 'offensive' side ought to put an end to the speculation that Tice was merely talking about the domestic implementation of Echelon - a point that I tried to emphasize here.

Relatedly, when Sibel offered to tell her story to a mainstream outlet, some people said that she should make a youtube video outlining the crimes that she is aware of. Sibel argued that if she did that, she would be subjecting herself to various sanctions without any likelihood of any justice or accountability for the criminals. Russ Tice, obviously itching to tell his story, appeared on the Keith Olbermann show the day after Obama's inauguration, to tell the world that the US government was spying on all citizens, with a particular focus on journalists, and his story was completely ignored, even by journalists. Sibel's decision to avoid the youtube route is completely vindicated - even as her offer to do even a mainstream media interview looks increasingly like even that might not have had the desired impact.

Tinners free at last? Swiss Judiciary: Not so fast

2009-07-23T18:48:00.002+10:00

Though it looked as though the Swiss government would succeed in destroying, again, all of the evidence of the Tinners' involvement with the CIA in supplying the nuclear black market, the Swiss Judiciary and Swiss Parliament have been fighting back.

In remarkable scenes earlier this month, unimaginable in the US, Swiss Federal judges raided a federal building and seized a safe which contained the key to the filing cabinet which contains the documents.

Earlier this week came news that a 'compromise' had been reached:

"The Swiss federal council has agreed to hold back on the destruction of documents related to the St. Gallen family Tinner, allegedly implicated in an international nuclear proliferation network. In an agreement with the Control Commission Delegation (CD), the Swiss parliament’s investigative branch for national security issues, Justice minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, agreed to allow certain of the documents to be made available to the judicial investigation and for the Tinner family defense attorneys."

Of course, you won't read about this anywhere in the US media - despite the fact that black-market nuclear proliferation is purportedly an ongoing concern, and despite the fact that this constitutional crisis in Switzerland is largely the result of US involvement in Switzerland's internal affairs.

As even the New York Times' William Broad and David Sanger reported in their 5 page piece inAugust, 08:

"Over four years, ... operatives of the CIA paid the Tinners as much as $10 million, some of it delivered in a suitcase stuffed with cash.
[]
Officials say the CIA feared that a trial would not just reveal the Tinners' relationship with the United States — and perhaps raise questions about American dealings with atomic smugglers — but would also imperil efforts to recruit new spies at a time of grave concern over Iran's nuclear program. Destruction of the files, CIA officials suspected, would undermine the case and could set their informants free.

"We were very happy they were destroyed," a senior intelligence official in Washington said of the files."

So why the silence from the US Corporate Media regarding these dramatic events in Switzerland? Sibel highlighted some pertinent 'forces' in her Dissecting the Mainstream Media series (part 2):

‘Pressure’ is one of those buzzwords you hear in almost all discussions involving the mainstream media and related topics: Government Pressure, Corporate Pressure, Special Interest & Lobby Pressure, Management Pressure, Colleagues Pressure…It’s always pressure - whether its pressure placed directly on the reporter, editor, or on the board and or ownership…So how does it work? How much pressure? What methods are used? Of course, the answer largely depends on ‘who’ the pressure comes from (government or corporate or …), ‘who’ is the target of the pressure (is it the source, the reporter, etc.).

We know that Broad and Sanger are mouthpieces for their masters (see my previous analysis of their August article 1, 2, 3, 4), but who are their masters? And what do their masters want? Why are they applying pressure to avoid exposure of this story?

Relatedly, we saw the same media silence when Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigator, and AQ Khan expert, Douglas Frantz was threatened with criminal charges by the Swiss for attempting to meet with the Tinners.

Why?

2009-07-19T01:25:00.000+10:00

Happy birthday, LB.

Urs Tinner et al, Free at last

2009-06-27T15:53:00.001+10:00

AP via NYT:

"The Swiss government on Wednesday ordered the quick destruction of about 100 pages of evidence linked to an investigation of three Swiss engineers suspected of smuggling nuclear weapons technology. The cabinet said the documents were “the most explosive” material in a file of more than 1,000 pages related to the case against the Tinner family, which is suspected of links to the smuggling network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, one of the creators of Pakistan’s atomic bomb. The documents are copies of files destroyed in 2007 under a previous order that had led to protests from lawmakers and legal experts, who said the government had undermined the prosecution in the smuggling case. Citing security concerns and its legal obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the cabinet said that about 100 pages dealing with atomic weapons designs would be shredded shortly to keep them out of “the wrong hands.”"

Larry Franklin, Free at Last

2009-06-19T09:35:00.003+10:00

Giraldi:

"For those who missed it (because it is not being reported in the MSM) Larry Franklin, the Pentagon AIPAC spy who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to twelve years in prison, has had his sentence reduced to probation and ten months of community confinement, which is presumed to be some kind of halfway house or possibly freedom to stay at home with some kind of monitoring bracelet. The adjustment was made last night by the same judge who let Rosen and Weissman go free in the AIPAC trial that was recently terminated without a conviction. Franklin did zero prison time as he was allowed to stay out of jail because of his willingness to testify in the trial. According to Franklin’s lawyer, Plato Cacheris the poor man has been having a rough time lately as no one wants to hire him… Cacheris ain’t cheap. Wonder who paid the bill?"

Politico:

"(Larry Franklin) didn't know at the time that Rosen and Weissman worked for the pro-Israel lobbying group (AIPAC)."

Too funny for words.

On the road

2009-06-08T22:17:00.001+10:00

I'm still traveling. Blogging will be light for a few weeks.

What was Douglas Franz looking for?

2009-06-08T00:00:00.004+10:00

Further to my recent post where I asked why John Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations Committee wanted Doug Frantz to meet the lawyers of Urs Tinner in Switzerland regarding AQ Khan's nuclear black market...

CQ's Jeff Stein asks the right question: What Nuclear Secret Was Kerry Aide Looking for in Switzerland?

Unfortunately, he doesn't get close to an answer, and his article ends weakly - or at least curiously - in my opinion:

But what was Franz looking for?

"I wonder what political ends Kerry is seeking by digging into this," the intelligence operative, who worked on the nuclear black market, said. "Taking down AQ Khan is one of the agency's few public successes in the last decade."

Let's hope Stein continues his reporting on this.

(h/t Kingfisher)

Project Expose MSM: Michael Isikoff

2009-06-03T23:20:00.003+10:00

Sibel outs Newsweek's Michael Isikoff.

Isikoff's response:

"Sibel-
sorry. No comment.
Regards,
Mike"

I suspect he won't be the last.

Free Roxana

2009-06-02T20:23:00.004+10:00

Sibel:

I can tell you one thing with certainty: (American Journalist Roxana Saberi) Saberi was/is indeed CIA asset.

Greenwald:

Saberi's imprisonment in January became a cause célèbre among American journalists, who -- along with the U.S. Government -- rallied to demand her release.

Sibel:

I think the best place to start would be the breakthrough article by Carl Bernstein, THE CIA AND THE MEDIA , on how America’s most powerful news media worked hand in glove with the CIA.. Bernstein revealed that over 400 US journalists, over a twenty-five year period, had been employed by the CIA, as both freelancers and actual under cover CIA officers. Almost every major US news organization had CIA agents on their payroll with the full knowledge and cooperation of top management.

So many reports that are still entirely classified

2009-06-01T23:51:00.003+10:00

New York Times, Justice Dept. Backs Saudi Royal Family on 9/11 Lawsuit:

The Obama administration is supporting efforts by the Saudi royal family to defeat a long-running lawsuit seeking to hold it liable for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
[...]
The government’s position comes less than a week before President Obama is scheduled to meet in Saudi Arabia with King Abdullah as part of a trip to the Middle East and Europe intended to reach out to the Muslim world.
[....]
But family members of several Sept. 11 victims said they were deeply disappointed and questioned whether the decision was made to appease an important ally in the Middle East. The Saudis have aggressively lobbied both the Bush and Obama administrations to have the lawsuit dismissed, government officials say.

“I find this reprehensible,” said Kristen Breitweiser, a leader of the Sept. 11 families, whose husband was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. “One would have hoped that the Obama administration would have taken a different stance than the Bush administration, and you wonder what message this sends to victims of terrorism around the world.”

Sibel Edmonds:

Well, again, I am just one part of a lot of different things as far as this whole issue of 9/11 goes, and my point has been, OK, we had this 911 Commission Report, we had this Joint Enquiry by the Senate & House, yet currently there are so many reports that are still entirely classified.

There is another report by the Department of Justice's Inspector General's Office titled "FBI and 911 Foreknowledge" which you can see on their website. That report was completed in July 2004, and it dealt with my case, Coleen Rowley's case, the Phoenix Memo, and even more, yet that report is entirely classified, OK.

There is another IG report on CIA, that report is entirely classified. Then there is that 28 pages that Senator Graham was referring to, that dealt with certain foreign countries and their roles, those 28 pages, even today, after all the campaigns by the 911 family members, remains classified.

If you have done the investigations, if you have told the truth, if you have a clean conscience, why don’t you come out and make this information public? What are you trying to cover up so hard? Going out of your way by gagging the congress, by stopping court procedures? They are going as far as just disregarding the constitution completely, total disregard for our system of checks and balances, the separation of powers has disappeared, why? Why are they trying to hard to hold back, and what are they holding back? Do they really come across as people with clean consciences? Honest people? I mean, the notion of the government of people, by the people, for the people, how many Americans actually believe in that notion today? They would laugh at you, you know why? Because when you look at it, it seems like a separate entity, with all this secrecy, and this power within power, totally removed from the American people.

More mafiosi than 'mandate.'

2009-06-01T23:05:00.005+10:00

Gretchen Peters has a new book: Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda. It looks very interesting - I hope to get a copy soon.

Gretchen Peters recently wrote a piece at Foreign Policy: The criminals running the Af-Pak border: Want to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban? Stop thinking of them as terrorists. (hat-tip: Kingfisher)

Gretchen Peters writes:

The Obama administration has promised "a new way of thinking about the challenges" facing the United States in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it's also high time it starts thinking in a new way about America's enemies themselves. The Taliban and al Qaeda have long portrayed themselves as holy warriors, battling under the flag of Islam. Most people in the West have accepted this characterization, imagining them as long-bearded fanatics, while Washington constantly refers to them as "terrorists" and "extremists." No doubt they are. But, having studied their operations at the village level in Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than three years, another descriptor also seems useful to me: criminal. When you examine the day-to-day activities keeping their networks financially afloat and probe how they interact with local communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban and al Qaeda start to look a lot more mafiosi than mujahideen.

I don't pretend to be an expert on these matters - but I strongly suspect that this is the best way to characterize the 'mujahideen'. Similarly, we should characterize US politicians (and career professionals) the same way: more mafiosi than 'mandate.' Money and power always seems to over-ride actual representation of the people.

This has been my core operating principle since I started blogging. There is no such thing as liberal vs conservative, or republican vs democrat, or Islamist vs Christianist. For the people in power (and even those not in power) the only issue is self-interest.

As Sibel says, much of Bin Laden's support is not because of ideological reasons. They only support him, and 'terrorism,' because it is profitable.

Elsewhere (I can't find the link at the moment) Peters has researched counterinsurgencies and says that 'wars' that are essentially criminal-based last a lot longer than other 'wars.' It makes sense because people in power are making lot of money from/during the war - why should we expect it to stop soon?

Who in the US government is profiting from the current wars? Can we expect them to want to create peace?

Update - NPR interview with Peters here

John Kerry + Doug Frantz = Zero

2009-06-01T22:47:00.004+10:00

Sibel recently made fun of John Kerry, and rightly so.

Nonetheless, Bloomberg is reporting:

(John Kerry) is wielding his gavel with an investigative zeal, and plans to take on Iran’s nuclear program, gun-running on the Mexican border, terrorism, narcotics and human trafficking, all through the prism of money laundering. He has hired a former investigative reporter, an ex-CIA agent and a one-time managing director of Bear Stearns Cos. LLC to help him.

“There are lots of big pieces out there that depend on money moving,” he said in an interview in his office in the Senate, where he is serving his 24th year.

If he wants to be a hero, good on him. I look forward to some actual evidence. I doubt I'll see it. If he needs some help, he can call me.

Given Kerry's history, he needs to either knock it out of the ballpark, or stay at home. On the positive side, I can't imagine why he might even take this on unless he really wants to solve some problems. I can't imagine him impressing me - but at least his mandate does.

Two other targets of other counter-terrorism related investigations

2009-06-01T21:30:00.005+10:00

I transcribed an old (2005) Scott Horton interview with Sibel that hasn't been put in text before (shame on me) - you can read it over at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak.

I want to highlight a few statements.

Here's Sibel:

There are criminal and terrorist-related cases that our government chooses not to investigate, hypocritically, because it may affect certain sensitive diplomatic relations

And:

(Melek Can Dickerson) had ongoing relationships with two *other* targets of *other* counter-terrorism related investigations

And:

Now, not only that, now the FBI is saying that they are now starting to investigate it, but look, those targets of investigations, those people involved in those criminal activities, most of them left the country as late as February 2002, after I reported these issues.

I've made this point before, but it really is important. Two people who were heavily involved in the 911 plot were allowed to leave the country in Feb 02 without any repercussions. These people were Turkish 'intelligence officers' who left their posts in the aftermath of 9/11 before their contracts had ended because there was too much heat on them.

Who are these people? Why don't we know who they are?

I have written about these people before, but have not been able to find out who they are. Real journalists should be interested though, right?

More later.

Ben-Ami Kadish, free at last

2009-05-30T11:08:00.003+10:00

Phil Giraldi, Justice Denied?:

Ben-Ami Kadish, the US Army engineer who spied for Israel in the same ring that included Jonathan Pollard, was finally sentenced today in New York City. Kadish had pleaded guilty after his arrest in December but for reasons not entirely clear his sentencing was repeatedly postponed. He received no prison sentence and only a $50,000 fine. The only time he spent in jail was the day he was arrested. The judge said that he had done a very bad thing but that the government had only sought to convict him on reduced charges instead of espionage, hence the slap on the wrist. I would note in passing that Kadish probably has a substantial pension from the US Army - almost certainly more than the fine - which he appears to retain. The ultimate insult on top of injury - getting a pension for working for the US government while spying for someone else. American justice works in strange ways.

Reuters:

An 85-year-old former civilian employee of the U.S. Army was fined but avoided prison time on Friday after earlier pleading guilty to giving classified documents to Israel in the 1980s in a case the sentencing judge said was "shrouded in mystery."
[...]
"Why it took the government 23 years to charge Mr. Kadish is shrouded in mystery," U.S. District Judge William Pauley said during the sentencing hearing in Manhattan federal court. "It is clear the (U.S.) government could have charged Mr. Kadish with far more serious crimes."

Giraldi, June 08:

"(Kadish's) arrest revived suspicions that Israeli agents might still be operating inside the U.S., most particularly “Mega,” whose cover name was revealed in an NSA-intercepted conversation between two Israeli intelligence officers. “Mega” was clearly at the policymaker level, as Kadish and Pollard frequently sought files by name or number. Someone more senior in Washington appeared to be directing the Israeli handlers toward sensitive information. Whoever “Mega” was, he is still at large."

Me, April 09, Who is Israeli spy MEGA?

Project Expose MSM

2009-05-29T16:29:00.003+10:00

Over at her blog, Sibel Edmonds has announced Project Expose MSM.

I'm happy to present an experimental project, Project Expose MSM, created to provide readers with specific mainstream media blackout and/or misinformation cases based on the documented and credible first-hand experiences of legitimate sources and whistleblowers.123 Real Change is inviting all members of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), other active (covert or overt) government whistleblowers, and even reporters themselves, to publish their experiences in regard to their own first-hand dealings with the media, where their legit disclosures were either intentionally censored, blacked out or tainted.

Yes, we will be naming names -- myself included.

To launch the project, Sibel kicks off with the example of Retired Supervisory Special Agent/Covert Operations Specialist, DEA, Mike Levine.

I was interviewed by Levine in March 2007. Hour One, Hour Two. If you listen to that, you'll learn quite a bit about Mike's own case, as well as a little about Sibel's case. (The interview was at 4am my time, as usual, so I sound a little groggy.)

Levine has also interviewed Sibel when the Vanity Fair article was released - part one, two, three.

Coleen Rowley has announced that she will join the project:

"This is a good idea if only for history's sake. I've got a story involving "60 Minutes" which I'll get down and out this way."

More sunlight please.

Who do you think is lying? FBI ?

2009-05-26T20:37:00.001+10:00

Back in March 2009, I filed a FOIA request with the FBI regarding the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) for "all records related to any FBI investigations, including counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism and criminal investigations" regarding the ATAA and "any sub-chapters / subsidiaries" of the ATAA, noting that the ATAA is an "umbrella organization representing 57 organizations."

The ATAA was mentioned in David Rose's 2005 Vanity Fair article about Sibel Edmonds:

"Vanity Fair has established that ... in December 2001, Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, contacted Sibel and asked her to review some wiretaps. Some were several years old, others more recent; all had been generated by a counter-intelligence that had its start in 1997. “It began in D.C.,” says an F.B.I. counter-intelligence official who is familiar with the case file. “It became apparent that Chicago was actually the center of what was going on.”

Its subject was explosive; what sounded like attempts to bribe elected members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican...

In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing. In all, says a source who was present, she managed to listen to more than 40 of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I. target at the city’s large Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associates [ATAA].

The ATAA also came up in an August 2005 interview of Sibel by Scott Horton, and again in a 2006 article by Phil Giraldi on Sibel's case.

In an interview in April of this year with Electric Politics, Sibel stated that the criminal network at the center of her claims:

(A)lso 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.

(The ATAA is an umbrella organization, with the various regional ATAs as subchapters.)

Similarly, in a recent interview with Rob Kall of Op-Ed News, Kall asked Sibel about some specifics regarding the scandal. Sibel replied:

Well, the fact that (Dennis Hastert) was receiving suitcases full of cash from certain Turkish organizations, to do certain things in Congress..., and that some of his activities involved, actually, narcotics in Chicago.

(These 'certain Turkish organizations' include the American Turkish Council (ATC), ATAA and TACA - the Turkish American Cultural Alliance.)

Today I got a response from the FBI stating:

Based on the information you provided, we conducted a search of the indices to our central records system at FBI Headquarters and all FBI field offices. We were unable to identify responsive records. If you have additional information pertaining to the subject and you believe it was (sic) of investigative interest to the Bureau, please provide us the details and we will conduct an additional search.

(You may file an appeal blah blah)"

To be clear, in my request I simply asked for "all records related to any FBI investigations" into the ATAA, or any of the subchapters. The request was intentionally as broad as possible - so when the response from the FBI says "Based on the information you provided..." the only information I provided was the name of the group (and a reference to the subsidiaries) - the FBI can't legitimately be parsing here. (For the record, my request also offered an "Additional Comments" section in which I linked to references in the media (Rose, Giraldi))

Similarly, my request specifically noted that the ATAA had 57 chapters across the nation, and that my FOIA request pertained to all of these sub-chapters. Sibel specifically refers to the ATA-DC and ATA-Chicago. The FBI's response notes that they queried databases at "FBI Headquarters and all FBI field offices" - so they aren't parsing there either.

Who do you think is lying - Sibel, Phil Giraldi and all of David Roses' sources? Or the FBI?

This is not the first time the FBI has lied when responding to FOIA requests regarding Sibel's case. In January 2008, the UK's Times reported:

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.
[...]
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”.

Again, who do you think is lying - Sibel and Phil Giraldi and Roses' sources and Joe Lauria etc? Or the FBI?

-----------
Notes In the Margin

1. Yes, I will appeal the FOIA response. If anybody has any suggestions about how to respond, or if anyone can see any holes in my request, or knows how to appeal, please let me know.
2. Yes, I have filed a bunch of FOIA requests since we got our new Hopey president. I'll keep you informed.

"Nazis, dictators and shady businessmen"

2009-05-25T18:42:00.004+10:00

Following up on my recent post, CIA and the Nuclear Black Market, Mark Hosenball has a curious little two-paragraph piece at Newsweek, The Swiss Say Get Out And Stay Out.

The set-up is in the first paragraph:

For decades Switzerland's banks have provided a haven for the ill-gotten wealth of Nazis, dictators and shady businessmen. But after 9/11, as U.S. investigators hunted for terrorist assets, the Swiss government promised to cooperate. For the first time, they opened some of their books. But that good will was fleeting. Swiss bankers and politicians have come to resent what they see as a squeeze on their most vital industry.

The second paragraph:

The strain is starting to show. This month, NEWSWEEK has learned, Swiss authorities threatened to throw a top U.S. congressional aide in jail as a spy if he tried to enter the country on official business. Douglas Frantz, chief investigator of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, contacted the Swiss Embassy to set up meetings regarding a family facing trial for alleged nuke smuggling. As it turned out, the CIA had secretly recruited members of the family as informants, infuriating the Swiss. According to a U.S. official familiar with the matter who asked for anonymity when discussing a sensitive issue, Switzerland's police chief warned Frantz in an e-mail that he'd face arrest on espionage charges. Frantz, who declined to comment, canceled his trip. A Swiss spokesman said Frantz was turned away due to "ongoing" investigations, but that U.S.-Swiss relations remain "excellent."

(hat-tip to Kingfisher)

I shouldn't really complain too much that Newsweek has actually reported on this story, given that I complained in my previous piece about the silence in the US media about this story, but... What.The.Heck?

Why did Hosenball give this 'U.S. official familiar with the matter' anonymity to tell us what has already been reported in Switzerland? Presumably it was this same anonymous source who gave Hosenball the spin that this was somehow related Swiss politicians' love of "Nazis, dictators and shady businessmen."

And, no, the Swiss were not infuriated that the CIA turned Urs Tinner as far as I can tell. As far as I can tell, the Swiss Justice Dept is infuriated that the US government somehow exported their famous 'unitary executive' concept to Switzerland and somehow convinced/bribed/blackmailed the Swiss president to destroy all the evidence in the case (even though that apparently failed.)

Also note Hosenball's use of scare quotes around "ongoing" investigations. The investigation is clearly ongoing, although the investigation suffered an incredible setback thanks to the US ~~demand~~ request to destroy all the evidence.

If Hosenball actually believes in the thesis of his own article, he will soon write an article highlighting how Obama's crackdown on money laundering centers is threatening world peace because it blocks investigations into Iran's nuclear weapons program and Israel will therefore be wiped off the face of the Earth. Or something. But Hosenball won't write that, because he doesn't believe it. But he will write snippy pieces about the Nazi-loving Swiss politicians if they suit the purposes of his anonymous US government sources.

Let's hope we see more reporting on this.

Update: Here is a new AP story on the matter. There's no mention of Swiss banking laws!

Cowboy words in a lawyer's voice.

2009-05-25T17:33:00.004+10:00

Sibel has a new post up at her blog, Two Sides of the Same Coin... Heads-Heads, about Obama's positions on the State Secret Privilege, warrantless wiretapping, accountability on torture, the military commissions and the war in Afghanistan.

Sibel's post ends thusly:

What I want the readers to do is to read the extremely important cases above, step back in time to those un-ending campaign trail days, and answer the following questions:

How would Senator McCain have acted on these same issues if he had been elected? How would Senator Hilary Clinton? Do you believe there would have been any major differences? Weren't their records almost identical to Senator Obama's on these issues? If you are like me, and answer 'same,' 'same,' 'no,' and 'yes,' then, why do you think we ended up with these exact same candidates, those deemed 'viable' and sold to us as such?

With too much at stake, too many unfinished agendas for the course of our nation, and too many skeletons in the closet in need of hiding for self-preservation, the 'permanent establishment' made certain that they took no risk by giving the public, via their MSM tentacles, a coin that no matter how many times flipped would come up the same - Heads, Heads.

The Daily Show touched on this on Friday. Regarding Obama's mimicking of Bush's actions (and rhetoric), Jon Stewart says

"Obama has got a good trick: the trick is to use cowboy words in a lawyer's voice"

Check out 2.00 to 3.00 in this video

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

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Douglas Frantz and Nuclear Black Market

2009-05-21T19:56:00.003+10:00

A couple of extra notes regarding my earlier post, CIA and the Nuclear Black Market. I was going to post them in that piece, but didn't want to cover too many issues at once.

Well Regarded
By all accounts, the SFRC's Douglas Frantz is a good investigator and well-regarded. His 2007 book (co-written with his wife) on AQ Khan, The Man from Pakistan: The True Story of the World's Most Dangerous Nuclear Smuggler, was well-received (also see Adrian Levy's Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, and William Langewiesche's The Atomic Bazaar: Dispatches from the Underground World of Nuclear Trafficking).

From memory, Frantz' book did a reasonable job covering Turkey's role in the nuclear black market in terms of publicly-available facts, noting the role of Selim Alquadis and Gunes Cires in supplying Libya, Iran and Pakistan. He also noted that some of the equipment from Turkey that was supposed to be on the ship, BBC China, when it was intercepted in 2003 on the way to Libya, went missing.

Some Questions
On the other hand, Frantz did not mention some important information regarding Zeki Bilmen and his New Jersey-based company, Giza Technologies. Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds overheard Zeki Bilmen on wiretaps, apparently organizing the sale and/or delivery of nuclear hardware with the Turkish embassy in Washington DC. Bilmen and Giza were finally exposed in 2003 , years after Sibel overheard them, when they were caught sending illegal nuclear hardware to the AQ Khan network.

Sibel emphasized to me the Turkish nature of Bilmen and Giza:

"Giza Technologies (Zeki Bilmen), HQ in New Jersey, is a Turkish company (with all Turkish employees), they have offices in Turkey, Dubai, & Spain. "

In 2004, Josh Meyer wrote an article in the LA Times about the deal that exposed Bilmen and Giza, but he did not really focus on Bilmen and Giza, nor did he mention the Turkish angle.

Last year, Sibel told me:

"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."

At the time of Josh Meyer's article, Douglas Frantz was working for the LA Times in Istanbul, Turkey (he was previously the New York Times bureau chief in Turkey). The LA Times Editor at the time was Frantz' "close friend" Dean Baquet. Baquet later promoted Frantz to Managing Editor. (Sibel recently excoriated Baquet for telling DNI Negroponte and NSA Director Michael Hayden about ATT whistleblower Mark Klein's allegations and then killing the story at their request. Baquet is now NY Times' Washington Bureau Chief.)

You still with me? Good.

Turkish Lobby?
Here's where it gets interesting (!) Frantz was forced to resign from the LA Times in 2007 after a scandal where he was accused of "obstructing an article on the Armenian Genocide" among other related matters. Denial of the Armenian genocide is a key issue for the Turkish Lobby - to the extent that they have reportedly bribed congressmen. (Frantz moved back to Istanbul after he resigned.)

I don't want to be unfair to Frantz, I frankly don't know enough about him, so I'm just pointing out some circumstantial evidence here:
1. Sibel accused the LA Times of censoring Turkey's role in the nuclear black market.
2. Frantz has repeatedly lived in Turkey.
3. Frantz did not even mention Zeki Bilmen and Giza in his book
4. Frantz was forced to resign from the LA Times for illegal activity (violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act) involving the denial of the Armenian genocide, a key issue of the Turkish Lobby.

Key Question
The key question then, is if Douglas Frantz is compromised by the Turkish Lobby, and by implication, the Israeli Lobby, then what of his role at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC)? Why did they hire him? His focus is reported to be nuclear proliferation, with an emphasis on the Iranian nuclear program. Will his 'investigations' be tainted? Will he continue to cover-up the role of Turkey and their pursuit of nuclear weapons?

According to the Times:

"One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. "

Will Frantz focus on this, or will he simply focus on Iran, taking direction from the Israel Lobby?

Yesterday I wondered why Frantz wanted to meet with Urs Tinner's lawyer, and whether he wanted to ask questions, or if he wanted to deliver a message. And I wondered on whose behalf he was delivering a message. Perhaps we have an answer.

CIA and the Nuclear Black Market

2009-05-21T09:44:00.005+10:00

In June 2008, I wrote about the destruction of evidence in a nuclear black market case involving A.Q. Khan, the CIA, and the Swiss government. Now we have some more interesting news.

Background
One of AQ Khan's key suppliers to his nuclear black market (as well as the Pakistani bomb) was a Swiss family - Urs, Marco and Friedrik Tinner. Urs Tinner was under investigation by the French authorities and the CIA told Tinner that they could make his French problems, and any other problems, go away if Tinner became an agent for the CIA.

Tinner agreed to inform for the CIA, and fed them some information when he was working for AQ Khan in Malaysia, building Libya's nuclear weapons program, but when the CIA eventually exposed the AQ Khan network, Tinner kept a digital copy of the 'nuclear blueprints' which he could then sell on the nuclear black market for his personal profit.

In 2004, Tinner was arrested in Germany, along with his brother and father, and extradited to Switzerland. In May 2008, while Urs Tinner was in jail awaiting prosecution, the Swiss President announced that, six months earlier, he had destroyed ALL files related to the Tinners case. These files included not just the nuclear blueprints, but also any evidence that the Tinners had been working with the CIA. This caused an uproar in Switzerland, with the Swiss courts and Swiss parliament outraged that the President apparently made this decision unilaterally. The President claimed that he destroyed the documents so that they didn't fall into the hands of terrorists, a patently nonsensical claim. Most observers agreed that the Swiss President was actually doing the bidding of the CIA.

At the time, I noted the amazing silence in the US media about this story, particularly given headlines such as in the Guardian: "Nuclear bomb blueprints for sale on world black market, experts fear."

Destroyed Nuclear Weapons Blueprints Found
Last month, the leading Swiss newspaper Le Temps reported (google translation from the French is here) that:

(C)opies of some files removed, including that contained plans for a new generation atomic weapon had simply escaped the destruction and slept in the archives of the Office of the Attorney General.

This remarkable news was also completely ignored by the US corporate media.

Swiss Block US Investigation
Now we learn that the Swiss is refusing to allow US access to the Tinners.

Douglas Frantz, former Managing Editor at the LA Times, wrote one of the better books on the AQ Khan network, and was the first to report that the CIA had recruited Urs Tinner. Frantz is among those who believes that the Swiss President destroyed the Tinner documents to hide the CIA's relationship with the network. Earlier this year, Frantz became the chief investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) under Senator John Kerry, focussing on nuclear proliferation.

Frantz wants to speak to Urs Tinner's lawyer, however Frantz received a letter from the Swiss Justice Department last week forbidding any meeting between the two, and threatening Frantz with three years in prison if he fails to comply.

Again, this news has not been reported in the English language media.

Murky
What is going on here? It's difficult to tell, not least because there is so little reporting on the matter.

After the Swiss President caved to US requests to destroy all the evidence, infuriating the Swiss Parliament and Justice Department, it is possible that the Swiss Justice Department is wresting back control of the case (the Swiss criminal case against the Tinner family is still pending.) If this hypothesis is true, then it is not surprising that the Swiss Justice Department is nervous about any discussions between the US and the Tinners. A possible compromise would be if the Swiss authorities sit in on the discussions between Frantz and Tinner's lawyer, but neither side appears to have made that offer...

It is not clear why Frantz wants to talk to Tinner's lawyer. Frantz's main focus appears to be the Iranian nuclear program, and it is possible that he wants to ask Tinner about Iranian procurement activities, but then why would he want to speak to Tinner's lawyer, rather than Tinner? (Perhaps that isn't possible for other reasons?) But if Frantz isn't there to ask questions, why is he there? Is he there to give Tinner a message? If so, is the message from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? That sounds unlikely. Is the message from the CIA? Since when does the Senate offer cover for the CIA?

Ironic?
It would be somewhat ironic -if that's the correct word - if the US was unable to get important inside information about the Iranian nuclear procurement program because the Swiss are upset that the CIA forced them to destroy all evidence of US activity in the same network nuclear black market...

---
Update: see here

Larry Franklin, Still free.

2009-05-20T11:34:00.001+10:00

Phil Giraldi:

"The third reason to oppose AIPAC is the corruption of the U.S. political system by the Lobby’s money and power, resulting in a bought-and-paid-for Congress and a rule of law for everyone except those guilty of crimes on behalf of Israel. Even when one is caught red-handed and confesses to spying for Israel, it is apparently no big deal, aside from the cost of a lawyer. Israel runs an extremely aggressive espionage program inside the United States involving hundreds of operatives and agents, but the only Israeli spy to be arrested, charged, and imprisoned is Jonathan Pollard, and that was over 20 years ago. Even Larry Franklin, the Pentagon "Iran expert" who spied for Israel because he believed AIPAC would get him a better job on the National Security Council, is not actually in jail in spite of his 12-year sentence. He is reportedly free due to his service as a witness in the recently terminated AIPAC Steve Rosen-Keith Weissman espionage trial.

Ben-Ami Kadish, former engineer at the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, who was part of the same network that recruited Pollard, pleaded guilty to reduced charges in December after supplying advanced nuclear and ballistic technology to Israel. He was supposed to be sentenced in February. That did not take place, and there have been repeated delays in his court appearance. He is now supposed to be sentenced later this month, but prosecutors reportedly will not demand any jail time. He will go free, as have Rosen and Weissman, after a politically tainted prosecution that wasted millions of dollars and went nowhere. It is undeniable that the two men passed information that they knew to be classified to the Israeli embassy. Former government officials Kenneth Pollack and David Satterfield, who were identified in the indictment as having also passed classified information to AIPAC, were not even charged with a crime. Pollack, formerly on the National Security Council, is the director of research at the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution. The media suspended its coverage of the AIPAC story two days after the dismissal of charges.

Another AIPAC favorite, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), was caught on the phone trading favors with an agent working for Israeli intelligence. Her misbehavior has been completely free of consequence. A cooperative media dropped the story five days after it surfaced, and neither Democrats nor Republicans seem interested in one of their own who may have been spying for Tel Aviv. The only congressional anger over the incident is being directed at the FBI, which is in the hot seat for its alleged violation of Harman’s privacy through its completely legal wiretap."

Compare and Contrast: Speakers of the House

2009-05-20T10:19:00.003+10:00

In Britain:
The Speaker of the House of Commons, Michael Martin, has resigned in disgrace "because of his failure of leadership over an expenses scandal" involving mostly other MPs fudging their own expenses.

In the US:
The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, did not resign when he was caught on FBI counter-intelligence wiretaps in the late 1990s, "receiving suitcases full of cash from certain Turkish organizations, to do certain things... for them, and that some of his activities involved, actually, narcotics in Chicago."

The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, did not resign in 2005 when he "pushed for federal funding for a proposed highway in northeastern Illinois so he and his wife could reap about $1.8 million from land deals."

The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, did not resign when, in 2005, he was found to be the "top recipient of campaign contributions from (indicted felon Jack) Abramoff and associates."

The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, resigned of his own accord in 2006 when his party last control of the House.

I am not going to piss off my source

2009-05-19T17:13:00.003+10:00

Sibel has a another must-read post up at her blog: Dissecting the Mainstream Media: Part 2- Pressure Points.

Sibel describes some of the various ways that the government can stop production and publication of various stories, including using legal threats and threatening to cut off a reporter's access.

Sibel tells a remarkable story from her own case:

I am going to provide you with another first-hand witnessed and documented incident. The only reason I am not naming ‘the well-known reporter & publication’ is to protect the source who obtained and passed on the incriminating documented evidence - the communication that occurred in writing between him and this particular ‘reporter.’

The individual who dealt with the congressional and press side of my case during the early stages of my whistleblowing journey wrote an e-mail to a well-known and well-placed journalist, saying, ‘Man, I can’t believe you guys did not cover this!!! Ashcroft comes out and invokes the State Secrets Privilege, first time ever asserted by the Bush administration, and you don’t write about it?! What the hell, man?! What’s the deal? I sent you the press release and attached a bunch of documents on that e-mail…’

Here is the response from that well-known journalist, and stupidly enough in writing:
‘I was going to call you. A few months ago I finally got this big DOJ guy, I mean BIG! Our deal-exclusive. You can’t do better than that in Washington. Anyhow, he doesn’t want us to touch Edmonds’ story. Period. I am not going to piss off my source for some God Damn translator whistleblower…’

There you have the problem in a nutshell.

Another example of 'pressure' from Sibel's case that she doesn't mention in her post is that the FBI made a "formal complaint" with the UK's Times when American journalist Joe Lauria was investigating the story.

Incidentally, I have filed a FOIA request with the FBI for information about this incident, and any other similar examples where the FBI used any form of pressure to attempt to stop or otherwise influence any reporting about Sibel's case. They've been messing me around, of course, but hopefully we'll get something interesting. They have to give me the Joe Lauria records, presumably, or at least tell me which exception they are claiming, and now we have another reference point to judge whether the FBI is being responsive.

------

See also: They knowingly sent unqualified, incompetent translators to GITMO from yesterday and CIA and the Nuclear Black Market from today

They knowingly sent unqualified, incompetent translators to GITMO

2009-05-19T12:56:00.004+10:00

With the renewed emphasis on torture and interrogation, and the increasing evidence that the 'interrogations' were often just a pretense to get pre-determined 'evidence,' it's important to remember that one of the elements of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds' case is the willful use of incompetent, unqualified translators at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

One of Sibel's co-workers in the FBI translation office was Kevin Taskasen. He failed the FBI's language proficiency exams in both English and Turkish (his supposed speciality.)

Sibel's 2004 Open Letter to 911 Commission Head Thomas Kean explains:

Over two years ago, and after two unclassified sessions with FBI officials, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent letters to Director Mueller, Attorney General Ashcroft, and Inspector General Glenn Fine regarding the existence of unqualified translators in charge of translating high-level sensitive intelligence. The FBI confirmed at least one case: Kevin Taskesen, a Turkish translator, had been given a job as an FBI translator, despite the fact that he had failed all FBI language proficiency tests. In fact, Kevin could not understand or speak even elementary-level English. He had failed English proficiency tests and did not even score sufficiently in the target language.

Still, Kevin Taskesen was hired, not due to a lack of other qualified translator candidates, but because his wife worked at FBI HQ as a language proficiency exam administrator. Almost everyone at FBI HQ and the FBI Washington Field Office knew about Kevin. Yet, Kevin was given the task of translating the most sensitive terrorist-related information, and he was sent to Guantanamo Bay to translate the interrogation of and information for all Turkic language detainees (Turks, Uzbeks, Turkmens, etc.).

The FBI was supposed to be trying to obtain information regarding possible future attack plans from these detainees, yet the FBI knowingly sent unqualified translators to gather and translate this information. Furthermore, these detainees were either released, detained or prosecuted based on translations by unqualified translators knowingly sent there by the FBI.

Sen. Grassley and Sen. Leahy publicly confirmed Kevin Taskesen's case (please refer to Senate letters and documents provided to your investigators in January-February 2004). The program 60 Minutes showed Kevin's picture and listed him as one of the unqualified translators sent to Guantanamo Bay, as confirmed by the FBI.
[...]
After over two years since Kevin Taskesen's case was publicly confirmed, and after almost two years since 60 Minutes broadcast Taskesen's case, Kevin Taskesen remains in his position as sole Turkish and Turkic language translator for the FBI Washington Field Office. After admitting that Kevin Taskesen was not qualified to translate sensitive intelligence and investigation of terrorist activities, the FBI still keeps him in charge of translating highly sensitive documents and leads.

Here is a part of the transcript of the 60 Minutes episode:

(Host ED BRADLEY): (Voiceover) The FBI has conceded that some people in the language department are unable to adequately speak English or the language they're supposed to be translating. Kevin Taskasen was assigned to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to translate interrogations of Turkish-speaking al-Qaida members who had been captured after September 11. The FBI admits that he was not fully qualified to do the job.

Ms. EDMONDS: He neither passed the English nor the Turkish side of this language proficiency test.

BRADLEY: So that means if, for example, you had a--a terrorist detained at--at Guantanamo who had information about an attack being planned in the future against the United States, that person would not have been in a position to translate that?

Ms. EDMONDS: Correct. He wouldn't.

BRADLEY: I mean, that's hard to imagine.

Ms. EDMONDS: But that's the case.

They knowingly sent unqualified, incompetent translators to Guantanamo Bay.

Think about that.

Graham Fuller: For Islamization before he was against it

2009-05-17T19:24:00.003+10:00

Phil Giraldi recommends a post by Graham Fuller at the Huffington Post as "must reading" on AfPak. Fuller's lede is:

"For all the talk of "smart power," President Obama is pressing down the same path of failure in Pakistan marked out by George Bush. The realities suggest need for drastic revision of U.S. strategic thinking."

Fuller says:

"Only the withdrawal of American and NATO boots on the ground will begin to allow the process of near-frantic emotions to subside within Pakistan, and for the region to start to cool down. Pakistan is experienced in governance and is well able to deal with its own Islamists and tribalists under normal circumstances; until recently, Pakistani Islamists had one of the lowest rates of electoral success in the Muslim world.

But U.S. policies have now driven local nationalism, xenophobia and Islamism to combined fever pitch. As Washington demands that Pakistan redeem failed American policies in Afghanistan, Islamabad can no longer manage its domestic crisis.

The Pakistani army is more than capable of maintaining state power against tribal militias and to defend its own nukes. Only a convulsive nationalist revolutionary spirit could change that -- something most Pakistanis do not want. But Washington can still succeed in destabilizing Pakistan if it perpetuates its present hard-line strategies. A new chapter of military rule -- not what Pakistan needs -- will be the likely result, and even then Islamabad's basic policies will not change, except at the cosmetic level.

In the end, only moderate Islamists themselves can prevail over the radicals whose main source of legitimacy comes from inciting popular resistance against the external invader. Sadly, U.S. forces and Islamist radicals are now approaching a state of co-dependency."

Like Giraldi, I agree with what Fuller says. Fuller is a former CIA station chief in Kabul - and is obviously familiar with the terrain.

Fuller is also in Sibel's Rogues Gallery, and so I question his motivations (this appears to be his first post at HuffPo.) For Fuller to decry that radical Islamists and the US government are becoming co-dependent is sickening.

Why did Fuller write this article?

How do you know they'll print it?

2009-05-17T18:39:00.003+10:00

Sibel has a post about the movie Three Days of Condor, and how it relates to our current situation.

She asks if you can remember the dialogue in the final scene.

Here is the scene:

I look forward to the turning the tables on the mainstream media this week

Antiwar.com fundraiser

2009-05-17T18:16:00.003+10:00

Antiwar.com is having a fundraising drive. The front page currently reads:

When Antiwar Radio started in 2007, we didn't know what to expect. Sure, we had veteran radio personality Scott Horton at the helm, but would big-shot reporters, pundits, academics, and government officials make time for an upstart Internet radio program?
They certainly have. Rep. Ron Paul, Noam Chomsky, John Cusack, Juan Cole, Frida Berrigan, Chris Floyd, Lew Rockwell, Patrick Cockburn, Andrew Bacevich, Russell Means, Scott Ritter, Philip Weiss, Lawrence Wilkerson, James Bamford, Sibel Edmonds, Robert Pape, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Kathy Kelly… the hits keep coming.

Chalmers Johnson, author of the Blowback trilogy, says that "Antiwar Radio has been one of the few media in which power considerations and domestic U.S. politics have not had their pull on the programming and the commentator. ... Scott Horton has established a very high standard for truly original points of view on American foreign policy and critical analysis of the failures of the American establishment."

Journalist James Bovard calls Horton "one of the best-read, hardest-hitting hosts in the biz." As the Austin Chronicle put it when giving us their award for "Best Iraq War Insight and Play-by-Play":

"Antiwar Radio offers high-caliber commentary and guest interviews on the ongoing Mideast misadventure. Host Scott Horton, armed to the teeth with little-reported news and info, jettisons the pleasantries and PC radio lingo and tells listeners how it really is. As an added bonus, Horton often verbally lays waste to those seeking to prolong the billion-dollar bloodbath."

But for all its acclaim and promise, Antiwar Radio could end. If we can't pay the bills, then we'll have to start downsizing our already overworked staff.

We can't make it another quarter without your help, and we believe we've earned it. Are you willing to give up Antiwar Radio – and perhaps even more? If not, then don't delay.

Frankly, I think this pitch totally under-sells how awesome Scott actually is, but if you have some spare change, Antiwar.com always deserves it.

Presidential secrecy

2009-05-16T19:52:00.002+10:00

In the previous post, I mentioned Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver's book Presidential Secrecy and the Law.

In a brief book review, Steve Aftergood writes:

Presidential secrecy is best understood not as an expression of executive strength but as a sign of weakness and insecurity, according to a provocative new book on the subject.

In related news, Greenwald offers up this accurate and devastating summation of the Obama administration today:

Along with warrantless eavesdropping, indefinite detention, extreme secrecy doctrines, concealment of torture evidence, rendition, and blocking judicial review of executive lawbreaking, one can now add Bush's military commission system, albeit in modified form, to the growing list of despised Bush Terrorism policies that are now policies of Barack Obama.

They spy on judges, too.

2009-05-16T18:12:00.000+10:00

Over the last 9 years, particularly, it has been painfully obvious that major institutions in the US are broken. Most of the attention has been focused on the apparent lock that the executive branch has on congress and the media. The executive branch is able to do this successfully through two mechanisms. Firstly, they have their embeds in these institutions, and secondly, they spy on everyone, looking for dissenters.

Sibel has a post up discussing the embeds in the media, not only propagandists like Judy Miller, but also editors who control what gets published. Russ Tice, NSA analyst, went on Keith Olbermann on January 10, the day after Obama's inauguration, and told the public that the NSA was spying on all Americans, and that journalists were specifically targeted. (Incidentally, Tice's explosive claims were completely ignored by the media.)

It isn't difficult to imagine that one of the 'benefits' of spying on journalists is for blackmail purposes. Of course, when they find something illegal or embarassing, they can then 'turn' the journalist, and use him or her for their own purposes, whether that means turning them into a propagandist, or outing a whistleblower/source, or spying around the newsroom.

The same is true in Congress. We know that they spy on members of congress, sometimes legally, and sometimes illegally. Sometimes they find evidence of corruption, and on other occasions they might find "financial or sexual pressure points." According to FBI sources, this information may be used "to actually blackmail people within Congress." No surprises there. We've seen exactly that in the Jane Harman and Dennis Hastert cases, at a minimum, and we've seen indirect evidence of it in congressional voting records for the last 9 years.

For the Executive Branch to close the loop, they also need to control the Judiciary. In fact, it would be surprising if they weren't also spying on judges. Controlling the judges would give the government enormous power in terms of both 'throwing' cases and 'judge-shopping.' We have long suspected that this was actually happening, of course, but we have only had indirect evidence of this. In Sibel Edmonds' cases, for example, she kept getting assigned and reassigned, "with no explanation," to Judge Reggie Walton. Judge Walton, who was also the judge in the related case of Scooter Libby, granted the government's motion to dismiss Sibel's case based on the government's claim of State Secrets.

Spying on Judges
Now it seems that we actually have proof that the government was spying on judges too. In their 2007 book, Presidential Secrecy and the Law, political science professors Robert M. Pallitto and William G. Weaver write (pg 173) that a former FBI agent and electronic surveillance manager told the authors that FISA wiretaps were used to "surveil members of congress and judges."

I haven't been able to find any other reference to this particular claim - but it is remarkable, although not surprising.

The passage in the book is a little unclear as to the identity of this FBI agent, but two sentences later, they quote former Special Agent Gilbert Graham about FISA abuse. It isn't exactly clear whether Graham is the source of the information regarding the spying on judges.

Gilbert Graham, one of Sibel's bosses, who worked on "counterintelligence investigations involv(ing) espionage activities by Turkish officials and agents in the United States." In early 2002, he filed a protected disclosure (pdf) stating that "unreliable source information" was used to obtain FISA approval for spying on public officials. His official report states that the FISA request "was a subterfuge to collect evidentiary information concerning public corruption matters." In other words, they just made stuff up so that they could spy on public officials, and illegally used the rubber-stamp FISA court to get 'permission' to spy domestically on public officials, including judges.

James Bamford had a good overview of the situation in an interview with Sibel and Scott Horton:

" Well, I think (Gilbert Graham is) a very courageous whistleblower. He worked at the FBI in the counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism area and he worked on a very sensitive political investigation involving Turkey, corruption within the Bush administration and people that were dealing with Turkey, and money being passed and so forth. The FBI was investigating this, and he realized that the FBI was asking for warrants that were known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance warrants. These warrants, known as FISA warrants are very easy to get, it doesn’t require much in the way of evidentiary information to get them, and they were using those very easy-to-get FISA warrants in order to avoid having to show probable cause to get a regular warrant, a criminal-type warrant.

So he complained to the Inspector General’s office that this was illegal, and it is. That was the whole reason that they originally set up those two types of warrants, you have the easier warrants, the FISA warrant, in order to get intelligence information, but if you’re trying to look into a criminal case, you need a probable-cause warrant. And the FBI decided to try the easy warrant to avoid going the legal route - so he complained about that and that was a part of the case that Sibel was involved in. What makes it very interesting is the fact that the government used the State Secrets Privilege to try to hide what was going on, which was obviously illegality and used it against Sibel so she couldn’t bring any of that illegality out in her case."

As Weaver and Pallitto drily note in their book:

Presumably such activity, if it occurs, is done secretly without informing the FISA judges.

In fact, Judge Reggie Walton was no doubt aware of all of this. He was chosen, repeatedly, to adjudicate Sibel's cases because he was known to be 'friendly' to the government's desires. Judge Walton was appointed to the FISA Court in 2007 - which will no doubt ensure that the rubber-stamping will continue (The FISA court has approved all but five of 20,000 applications.)

Just as the media and congress have been compromised by spying and blackmail, so has the judiciary. Why is it never discussed?

-----------------------
Notes in the margin

1. William Weaver, one of the authors of the book mentioned above, is on the Board of Sibel's organization, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

2. I'm not entirely convinced that Gilbert Graham is Weaver's source that the executive branch is spying on judges. I've never heard Sibel mention anything about spying on judges.

3, Current Attorney General Eric Holder was a judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Is he also being blackmailed by the same people?

Sibel gave her opinion of Eric Holder this week:

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.

4. Weaver's co-author Robert Pallitto was on the Daily Show in 2007 discussing the book, Presidential Secrecy.

Larry Franklin free for another month

2009-05-16T13:47:00.001+10:00

This is from PACER

Date Filed	#	Docket Text
05/14/2009	893	NOTICE OF HEARING ON MOTION in case as to Lawrence Anthony Franklin 892 SEALED MOTION: Motion Hearing set for 6/12/2009 at 09:00 AM before District Judge T. S. Ellis III. (jlan) (Entered: 05/15/2009)
05/14/2009	892	SEALED MOTION by USA as to Lawrence Anthony Franklin. (jlan) (Entered: 05/15/2009)

I'd love a glimpse at the sealed motion.

Turning the tables on the mainstream media

2009-05-15T21:01:00.002+10:00

Rob Kall interviewed Sibel on Wednesday - the transcript is here.

Sibel predicts that there will be a 'warzone' at her new blog next week, with many of her team of whistleblowers exposing journalists in the mainstream media. Apparently the plan is to 'out' journalists and media establishments by saying 'Whistleblower X went to Journalist Y and told them ABC, and gave them documents DEF and the reporters did ZERO.' Or as Sibel says in the interview:

"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."

Sibel asks that you be ready to support her, and the other whistleblowers, at her blog, when these stories start hitting the fan - perhaps on Friday, or on Monday. Sibel has hinted at doing something like this for a couple of years. I'll let you know when the battle begins.

I recommend that you read the 'entire' partial (!) transcript here (please note that I've only selected elements that are somewhat new, or at least interesting to those who have followed Sibel's case extensively). For example, I think this is the first time that Sibel has mentioned two things:

"Well, the fact that (Hastert) 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."

These have been reported elsewhere, of course - but it is interesting to see Sibel mention them herself.

Sibel also states, for the second time, that although the financing of Hastert and Livingston and others appears to come from the Govt of Turkey, it is actually coming from "certain Turkish entities that are engaged in certain international activities, some of them legal, some of them illegal."

Update your bookmarks

2009-05-14T14:21:00.002+10:00

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

The first post is an introduction to the blog, the second post updates and clarifies some points from the recent op-ed, In Congress We Trust…Not. Sibel writes:

"There are those who argued that it wasn’t fair to ‘write off’ President Obama’s change so soon, about 100 days or so into his presidency.

I understand their point, and I must say I envy their purity and optimism, but I differ. In fact, I can turn that ‘only 100 days’ logic and make the opposite point. If in a hundred days, give or take, he’s done so much to either continue (stay) or expand upon the previous administration’s abuses, how much more damage is he going to do in ‘(4 X 365)-100’ days?! I am talking about Obama not only continuing but actually expanding upon the State Secrets Privilege to gag and bury information; completely forgoing accountability on torture - first starting with the torturers, then the previous White House cabal, and now extending it to those who drafted it; sustaining the illegal NSA wiretapping; deciding to bring back the Bush style military commission…just don’t get me started on this. Currently I am working on my next piece, exactly on this particular point, so, more on this, soon."

Indeed.

The third and most recent post, Dissecting the US Mainstream Media, lists 6 of "the usual theories we hear out there on the mainstream media’s current state," and Sibel is asking for reader contributions/comments as to which mix of those theories describes the problems with the corporate media. In the coming days Sibel will publish a multi-part essay on the problems with the media and wants to incorporate some thoughts from her readers.

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.

Larry Franklin to report to prison

2009-05-12T15:25:00.003+10:00

Josh Gerstein @ Politico:

What was more interesting is that (Judge T.S. Ellis III) said he is expecting some kind of action from the government regarding Larry Franklin, a Pentagon analyst who pled guilty early on in the case.

Ellis sentenced Franklin in 2006 to more than 12 years in prison for disclosing classified information to Rosen, Weissman and others. However, Franklin agreed to cooperate with the government and never reported to jail.

"It is further ordered that the government is directed to advise the Court, by 5:00 p.m., Thursday May 14, 2009, regarding when it contemplates filing an appropriate motion with respect to defendant Franklin," Ellis's new order says.

Lawyers involved in the case expected Franklin to seek a reduction in his sentence once the trial against Rosen and Weissman was complete. Now that the trial will never happen, it's an open question of how much of a sentence reduction Franklin will get. Presumably, it's not his fault the case was abandoned. In any event, Ellis will have to rule on any sentence reduction. The judge may have to make a hypothetical judgment about how much Franklin's testimony may have helped in a trial that will never take place.

(h/t RP)

As I asked last week, what happens to any of the other information he told the FBI since his guilty plea?

sibel and scott again. Congress is a failed channel for whistleblowers.

2009-05-11T20:15:00.003+10:00

There is a new Sibel Edmonds - Scott Horton interview at Antiwar Radio. Audio here, transcript here. The interviews with Scott have typically been the most informative interviews that Sibel has given.

Sibel contributes a wealth of valuable 'process' information for those who are trying to understand the Harman / AIPAC / Goss story, as well as those of you still trying to get your head around Sibel's case. I recommend that you read the whole thing.

I also want to highlight one particular issue that Sibel raises, namely that her organization, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), received important information about certain abuses of power by the Executive Branch, and the NSWBC attempted to assist these whistleblowers by helping them air their particular issues within the relevant channels available to whistleblowers - specifically, Congress:

"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 (about the latest Harman stories) 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."

Basically, these whistleblowers risked their careers so that Harman and others could feather their own political nests with the information provided to them by legitimate whistleblowers. It's no wonder that the entire US political system is broken.

2009-05-10T22:10:00.000+10:00

Happy mother's day.

Who is protecting Afghanistan's Heroin production?

2009-05-08T20:14:00.002+10:00

Peter Dale Scott has a typically solid article at Global Research (reference links at the original).

In 2007, Afghanistan supplied 93% of the world's opium, according to the U.S. State Department. Illicit poppy production, meanwhile, brings $4 billion into Afghanistan,[12] or more than half the country’s total economy of $7.5 billion, according to the United Nations Office of Drug Control (UNODC).[13] It also represents about half of the economy of Pakistan, and of the ISI in particular.[14]

Destroying the labs has always been an obvious option, but for years America refused to do so for political reasons. In 2001 the Taliban and bin Laden were estimated by the CIA to be earning up to 10 per cent of Afghanistan’s drug revenues, then estimated at between 6.5 and 10 billion U.S. dollars a year.[15] This income of perhaps $1 billion was less than that earned by Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI, parts of which had become the key to the drug trade in Central Asia. The UN Drug Control Program (UNDCP) estimated in 1999 that the ISI made around $2.5 billion annually from the sale of illegal drugs.[16]

At the start of the U.S. offensive in 2001, according to Ahmed Rashid, "The Pentagon had a list of twenty-five or more drug labs and warehouses in Afghanistan but refused to bomb them because some belonged to the CIA's new NA [Northern Alliance] allies."[17] Rashid was "told by UNODC officials that the Americans knew far more about the drug labs than they claimed to know, and the failure to bomb them was a major setback to the counter-narcotics effort."[18] James Risen reports that the ongoing refusal to pursue the targeted drug labs came from neocons at the top of America’s national security bureaucracy, including Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, and their patron Donald Rumsfeld.[19]

Prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, most of these labs were in Turkey, but production has mostly moved to Afghanistan - although they are still controlled by the same networks.

As Sibel frequently points out, the 'face' of the heroin industry is always the Afghan poppy farmers, and the policy dispute is always described as 'To eradicate or not eradicate,' and whether Afghani farmers have any better options for feeding their families, and whether poppy destruction will drive farmers into the protective arms of the Taliban etc. When the issue is framed like that, 'reasonable people' can disagree about the correct approach. The next level of the discussion, infrequently discussed, is whether or not to target the production facilities, the drug labs and the warehouses. Even here, Peter Dale Scott, quoting Ahmed Rashid, only refers to the 2001 situation when the Northern Alliance was still in business.

I can't remember a single story in the eight years since the invasion of an attack - air or ground - on one of these drug labs or warehouses - so whatever arguments Feith, Wolfowitz, Khalilzad and Rumsfeld were relying on back then are now presumably inoperative. (see my "Sibel Edmonds & the Neocons' Turkish Gravy-Train" for more.) And, of course, those guys have all been out of the US government for years, so there are presumably others who have taken their place in who are following the same policy. Who? And Why?

But there is another important element - beyond the options of going after the poppy farmers and the drug labs - that is almost never discussed (putting aside for current purposes Sibel's emphasis on the fact that there are a group of people who manage this $50 billion industry and the necessary money-laundering etc.) That is, now that these drug labs are located within Afghanistan, a country occupied by the US/NATO, these labs need so-called 'precursor chemicals' to produce heroin - and lots of them, tanker loads.

A July 2008 AP report, carried by Boston Globe, and not many others, quotes Christina Oguz, country representative for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, saying that only 1% of these precursor chemicals are ever seized - even though these chemicals are all imported by the tanker-load, and have no 'dual-use' justification. Reading between the lines in the article, Oguz's 'frustration' is palpable:

She urged the international community to share more information on known smugglers of the chemicals, many of whom were "long-established and based in neighboring countries."

These chemicals are not coming into Afghanistan on the backs of mules - as the media often presents Afghanistan's export of heroin -they are coming through major transit points.

Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, made the same point in his 2007 article "Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time." Murray writes:

(Afghanistan) now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.
[...]
My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched ... the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.

Let me emphasize - the US government/NATO might have arguably legitimate reasons to 'protect' the poppy farmers, they might even have reason not to attack the drug labs. But what possible excuse is there for allowing tanker after tanker of requisite heroin precursor chemicals for entering Afghanistan? Who does that help?

For comparison, I mentioned Bashir Noorzai recently. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for heroin-related charges last week. One of the charges against him in his indictment was:

In or about 1997, Taliban authorities in Afghanistan seized a truckload of morphine base that was owned by BASHIR NOORZAI, a/k/a "Haji Bashir Noorzai," the defendant. Shortly thereafter, Taliban authorities returned the seized morphine base to NOORZAI with personal apologies from Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of the Taliban.

Is it categorically better or worse to seize and release a 'truckload' of morphine base, or to knowingly allow many truckloads of heroin precursor chemicals to enter a country that you occupy and to effectively create a 'green zone' for heroin labs? Shouldn't Feith, Wolfowitz, and the others be subject to the same punishment of life imprisonment?

I'll finish with some more from Peter Dale Scott's important article:

It follows that there are many players with a much larger financial stake in the Afghan drug traffic than local Afghan drug lords, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. Sibel Edmonds has charged that Pakistani and Turkish intelligence, working together, utilize the resources of the international networks transmitting Afghan heroin.[30] Others have also written about the ties between U.S. intelligence and the Turkish narco-intelligence connection.[31]

Loretta Napoleoni has argued that there is an ISI-backed Islamist drug route of al Qaeda allies across North Central Asia, reaching from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan through Azerbaijan and Turkey to Kosovo.[32] Dennis Dayle, a former top-level DEA agent in the Middle East, has corroborated the CIA interest in that region’s drug connection. I was present when he told an anti-drug conference that "In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA."[33]
[...]
The UNODC Executive Director, Antonio Maria Costa, has reported that "money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis."[34]
[...]
The global drug traffic itself will continue to benefit from the protracted conflict generated by "full-spectrum dominance" in Afghanistan, and some of the beneficiaries may have been secretly lobbying for it.

Obama's tax havens.

2009-05-07T19:33:00.005+10:00

President Obama called out the use of tax havens by US corporations. Good on him.

Will he also forbid the use of the same tax havens by "US government agencies," "certain US government people," "certain non-profit organizations in the US," "certain US institutions including banking institutions," and "certain US-based organizations" to launder and distribute money'?

Will he investigate the source, and use, of dirty money in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus? Malta? Dubai? Cayman Islands?

Will he ask why former-House-Speaker, and Turkey's lobbyist Bob Livingston, was receiving $1m per year from the Cayman Islands?

Will he wonder why Bruce Fein is working for one of the worst money laundering places on the planet, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus?

Will he investigate "Fethullah Gulen's $25 billion madrassa-and-mosque-establishment efforts throughout the Central Asian region and the Balkans?"

Or will it be business as usual?

Bruce Fein, Turkey and the Armenian Genocide.

2009-05-06T19:50:00.002+10:00

Last week I wrote an article highlighting the fact that the otherwise respected Bruce Fein is in the pay (and company) of the Turkish Lobby, and that he is apparently willing to write articles denouncing the notion of the Armenian genocide for money.

Now comes news via Inside Higher Ed, that one of Fein's organizations, the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund, has launched a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for having the audacity to criticize a book by genocide-denier, Guenter Lewy.

The SPLC is known "for its studies of hate groups -- a focus that has led the center to criticize Holocaust deniers" - and as far as I know, is highly regarded (although there may be some evidence to the contrary).

The Inside Higher Ed article states that:

"Two quotes in the Southern Poverty Law Center article are cited as defamatory. One states: "Lewy is one of the most active members of a network of American scholars, influence peddlers and website operators, financed by hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from the government of Turkey, who promote the denial of the Armenian genocide. ...”

The other states: “Lewy makes similar revisionist claims in his 2005 book The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide and in frequent lectures at university campuses across the country. ... Revisionist historians who conjure doubt about the Armenian genocide and are paid by the Turkish government provided politicians with the intellectual cover they needed to claim they were refusing to dictate history rather than caving in to a foreign government’s present-day interests.
[]
Further the suit says that the statements "individually and taken as a whole in context of the article ... are defamatory because they falsely impute to Plaintiff academic corruption, fraud and deceit. ..." As a result of the accusations, the suit says that Lewy has had his "scholarly credibility" hurt and has lost book sales and speaking engagements.

"The acute stigma attached to failures to disclose the receipt of money or its equivalent that could distort academic or professional judgments finds expression in a welter of government conflict-of-interest regulations and financial disclosure standards...”

Funny. Yes, there is an acute stigma about failure to disclose the receipt of money. And there's a good reason for it. Inside Higher Ed asked Fein whether Lewy ever received money from the Turkish government or its subsidiaries, and Fein said he didn't know the answer... Inside Higher Ed should have asked the same question of Fein himself. How much is Fein getting from the Turkish government and its subsidiaries?

You might remember from my previous article that Fein is co-founder and Chairman of a group called the American Freedom Agenda. One of their ten founding articles is "Stopping threats to prosecuting journalists under the Espionage Act of 1917." This is obviously a defense of AIPAC's Rosen and Weissman - but there is a certain irony in the fact that while Fein is keen on defending journalists, he is also filing multi-million dollar harassment suits against journalists.

One further point: the Inside Higher Ed article notes that:

"In an interview two years ago, Lewy said that (his) book -- which was criticized by some scholars of genocide -- had been rejected by 11 publishers, including 4 university presses, before the University of Utah Press published it."

Lo and behold, the University of Utah recently announced a "new Turkish studies project titled "The Origins of Modern Ethnic Cleansing: The Collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Emergence of Nation States in the Balkans and Caucasus."" The four year project will be "funded in part by the Turkish Coalition of America."

As I discussed in my previous article, Bruce Fein is 'resident scholar' at the Turkish Coalition of America, which incidentally shares an address with Bruce Fein & Associates. The president of TCA is Lincoln McCurdy who headed the American Turkish Council (ATC) for fifteen years. The ATC is at the heart of Sibel Edmonds' claims about Turkish corruption in the US.

In a related issue, Inside Higher Ed reminds us that when a scholar at the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University dared to mention 'genocide,' he was forced to quit, at risk of the Institute of Turkish Studies being shut down. As a reminder, the Executive Director of the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University is Sabri Sayari, named in Sibel Edmonds' Rogues Gallery.

Don't expect the University of Utah to publish anything critical of Turkey in the near future.

Summary
Bruce Fein is on the Turkish payroll. He wants to defend journalists (and, implicitly, lobbyists) when it comes to Israel, but he files spurious multi-million dollar lawsuits against those who criticize Israel's second-best friend, Turkey. This frivolous lawsuit against an anti-hate group, the SPLC, argues that it is wrong to allege that people like Lewy receive money from the Turkish government who deny the Armenian genocide, while the Turkish government, through Fein's TCA, gives money to the only university willing to publish Lewy's denialist book. And Lewy & Fein have the audacity to claim that criticizing his denial hurts his book sales!

The evil temptations of lobbyists

2009-05-05T10:52:00.003+10:00

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.

Sibel criticizes those on the left and the right, in the corporate media and alternative press, Democratic and Republican, who have either ignored the Harman/AIPAC story, or have attempted to spin the story in various directions, echoing Jeff Stein's recent criticisms of "some wild imaginations... in the blogarama coverage."

Sibel notes that the Harman case, at first glance:

"may appear to involve blackmailing --- or a milder version, exploitation of Congress by the Executive Branch --- deeper analysis would suggest even further implications, where Congressional members themselves use the incriminating information against each other to prevent pursuit or investigation of cases that they may be directly or indirectly involved in."

Regarding Harman, and those spinning the story, Sibel says:

"But, let's not forget, the misuse of incriminating information, for the purpose of blackmail, does not turn the practitioner of the wrongful deed into a victim, nor does it make the wrongful criminal deed less wrong. Instead of spinning the story, taking away attention from the facts in hand, and making Harman a victim, we must focus on this case, on Harman, as an example of a very serious disease that has infected our Congress for far too long. Those who have been entrusted with the oversight and accountability of our government cannot do so if they are vulnerable to such blackmail from the very same people they are overseeing…Period."

That is, if Harman is guilty, her guilt is independent of any motives of those targeting and/or blackmailing her, and the only way of cleaning up the system is to stand up against the 'blackmail,' whether hard or soft.

Not surprisingly, Sibel points to the direct parallels between the Harman case and the Hastert case. As far as has been publicly reported, we only 'know' that Harman was picked up on wiretaps that targeted other suspected Israeli agents, but Sibel makes clear that in the Hastert case, Hastert himself was specifically "targeted by FBI counterintelligence and counterespionage investigations."

In fact, as Sibel has repeatedly said, in 1998/9, there was so much evidence against Hastert that there were substantial steps taken to appoint a Special Prosecutor - apparently derailed by the Clinton impeachment (which incidentally led to the rise of Turkey's clients, Bob Livingston and then Hastert, to Speaker of the House.) As Sibel has repeatedly emphasized, when the Executive Branch finds evidence of illegal activity by Americans on FISA wiretaps, they can and should then open up criminal cases against the perpetrators - whether counter-narcotics, counter-espionage or whatever - and this is apparently exactly what they did in the case of Hastert, and others.

The 'debate' about what to do in the Harman case has always essentially assumed that the FBI can do exactly that; transfer something learned during a counter-intelligence investigation to somewhere that it can be acted upon. So I was very surprised to see TPM Muckraker 'report' today that:

"And Melvin Goodman, a former CIA analyst who's now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, underlined the extent to which a leak of this nature would violate national security protocol. "When American names came up on these intercepts, they were handled very carefully," Goodman told TPMuckraker. "The names would be blacked out.""

Now, I generally like the work of TPM Muckraker, but they (and others) have (correctly) been named by Jeff Stein as leading the 'Harman -was-framed' pushback.

I'm also a fan of Mel Goodman, so I suspect that his comments here have been mis-characterized, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him walking-back certain elements of his on-the-record comments. (At the end of the column, he notes that "some within the FBI were "incredibly bitter about the way [Attorney General Eric] Holder dropped the case."")

I am not an expert on FISA and minimization procedures, but if Goodman is correct that Harman's name should have been blacked out on a FISA wiretap, then perhaps this was an abuse of power (although, as Sibel says, that doesn't forgive the underlying crime), or perhaps Harman was, in fact, the target of these wiretaps. Perhaps the wiretaps were legitimately the result of a FISA investigation, and that might explain why her name was not minimized? Again, I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about here, but that might explain some of the discrepancies about the reporting here. As I noted here, for some reason, "Hastert seems keen to emphasize... that the wiretap was a "legally authorized wiretap")

I'm getting a bit off-track.

Make sure you read Sibel's whole piece.

Sibel ends by quoting Will Rogers:

"If we have Senators and Congressmen there that can't protect themselves against the evil temptations of lobbyists, we don't need to change our lobbies, we need to change our representatives."

So true, and yet weirdly discomforting. Is it possible?

Bruce Fein & Turkey

2009-05-02T21:13:00.001+10:00

There was a great discussion on Bill Moyer's Journal on Friday regarding torture. The guests were Mark Danner and Bruce Fein. As you probably know, Danner recently wrote a terrific article in the NYRB on torture and the Red Cross report, and Bruce Fein has been an elequent Republican voice on the constitution and rule of law, and called for the impeachment of George Bush way back when. Fein was also associate deputy attorney general under the Regan Administration. As it happens, I was looking into Fein earlier this week.

Fein is Chairman and co-founder (with Bob Barr, David Keene and Richard Viguerie) of a group called the American Freedom Agenda which was founded in March 2007.

The ten points of the American Freedom Agenda pledge are:

No military commissions except on the battlefield.
No evidence extracted by torture or coercion.
No detaining citizens as unlawful enemy combatants.
Restoring habeas corpus for suspected alien enemy combatants.
Prohibiting warrantless spying by the National Security Agency in violation of law.
Renouncing presidential signing statements.
Ending secret government by invoking State Secrets Privilege.
Stopping extraordinary rendition by the United States.
Stopping threats to prosecuting journalists under the Espionage Act of 1917.
Ending the listing of individuals or organizations as terrorists based on secret evidence.

All of those are admirable, of course, although the events of the last 24 hours warrant that item #9 deserves to be highlighted. That item has an odd specificity to it.

You see, Bruce Fein is now in private practice as a lobbyist. He has one company called Fein & Fein with his son Bruce which provides "premium appellate, trial, regulatory, and media services." He has another at the same address called The Lichfield Group with only two principals, the other being a Mathilde Fein, presumably a family member. The 'Expertise' page on Lichfield's website claims a lot of things.

Under a category called "United States and Canada" they claim, among other things, "high level connections with the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and the Central Intelligence Agency, on the one hand, to The New York Times, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal."

Under "Central and Eastern Europe," they claim, among other things, that their services "reach constitutional reform, oil and gas, NATO and European Union membership, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and OPIC, relations with the Hague Tribunal, WTO problems."

Under "South America," they claim, among other things, to provide consulting regarding "drug trafficking, money laundering, and thickening ties with the United States Congress, the Executive Branch, and law and regulatory enforcement agencies."

Under "The Middle East and North Africa" they note that "The Group offers consulting in areas of major concern:... terrorism; nuclear and missile proliferation money laundering; free trade agreements with the United States; oil and gas exploration, refining, and transportation."

Also, Mathilde Fein was "recently invited by the Foreign Policy Institute of Turkey and Bilkent University to present a paper on democratic elections in Iraq and human rights issues."

I don't want to be accused of cherry picking here, so please read the 'expertise' page at the site.

Fein has another company called Bruce Fein & Associates, located at 1025 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 1000. Washington, D.C.. 20036, which incidentally shares that address with the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund - TALDF, where Bruce Fein is the main contact. A bunch of similar astro-trurf groups - including the Turkish Coalition of America, TCA - share the same address. Bruce Fein is 'resident scholar' at the Turkish Coalition of America. Fein's Huffington Post bio also notes that he was previously 'resident scholar' at ATAA. According to Sibel Edmonds, the ATAA conducts "the dirty activities" of the Turkey/Israeli lobby - including delivering bribes and other forms of blackmail to congressmen like Hastert, Roy Blunt, Tom Lantos, Dan Burton and others. Phil Giraldi similarly fingers ATAA here.

Fein's Huffington Post bio also notes that he has been "a consultant to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus." Isn't that odd. Just last month I noted that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was at the heart of Sibel's money laundering claims -and that the TRNC was also at the heart of money laundering operations for Central Asian dictators, terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, and "US government agencies," "certain US government people," "certain non-profit organizations in the US," "certain US institutions including banking institutions," and "certain US-based organizations."

So, yeah, Bruce Fein is a 'resident scholar' at the Turkish Coalition of America, which, as Mizgin notes, "is closely linked to the Deep State and has created and founded an "academic" program to officially deny the Armenian genocide."

The president of the Turkish Coalition of America is Lincoln McCurdy who "was the president and chief executive officer, 1998 - 2004, and executive director, 1989 – 1998, of the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington." The ATC is at the heart of Sibel's claims.

It should therefore not surprise anyone that Bruce Fein would be called upon to write op-eds such as this which parrots Turkey's position on the Armenian genocide. Fein's position, coincidentally, mimics the genocide-denial position of Bob Livingston, who has long been on Turkey's payroll. Who'd have thought that different people, with different ideological bents, paid to have the same opinion, would actually have the same 'opinion'?

I don't care whether the Armenian genocide resolution makes sense or not (Giraldi argues that it is stupid - but I can't find the link) - but the fact that someone with the apparent stature and integrity of Bruce Fein has apparently succumbed to Mammon on this issue is cause for concern for us all.

-----------
Update: More here

AIPAC case dismissed. What happens to Larry Franklin?

2009-05-02T10:33:00.007+10:00

So the long-expected dismissal of the AIPAC/Rosen/Weissman case has arrived - in a Friday news dump. Great.

Greenwald's response is typical:

(D)espite being as vigorous a critic of AIPAC as can be, I absolutely believe the Obama DOJ did the right thing.
[]
No matter how harmful one might believe AIPAC to be, the end of this prosecution is something everyone who cares about press freedoms and even free speech should cheer.

There is a problem with that, though, as JTA's Ron Kampeas writes:

But Boente (acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia) made it clear that while Rosen and Weissman are free, the government likes the tool it unearthed in an obscure section of the 1917 Espionage Act -- the ability to charge civilians with dealing in classified information -- and it's going to keep it.

Phil Giraldi adds:

"If you pass information that you know to be classified to a foreign Embassy, that should be considered espionage, shouldn’t it?
[]
Is there something wrong here? Yes, something terribly wrong, though for the life of me I don’t know how we will ever take our government back. Nothing changes. AIPAC always wins. Depressing."

One other point: None of the coverage today mentions the fact that Larry Franklin is currently a free man, and that his eventual sentence was supposed to be dependent on him co-operating. What happens to Franklin now? And what happens to all of the other evidence he has given FBI counter-intelligence in the meantime? Will that ever be acted upon?

**Update: Court filing due May 14

Bashir Noorzai

2009-05-01T21:19:00.003+10:00

I've written, but never published, a number of articles about Bashir Noorzai. He was sentenced today to life in prison.

Here is a 2007 article about him in Time.

Here is an article from today about his conviction.

Obama on State Secrets, again

2009-05-01T20:15:00.004+10:00

As I expected yesterday, there was a lot of buzz about the State Secrets question in Obama's presser today - some of it more favourable than others.

Michael Scherer from Time, who asked the question, wrote about it here. Glenn Greenwald has a predictable response here. CJR had a good response here - they quote the ACLU's Ben Wizner saying:

“I’m just delighted that Time magazine thought it was worth asking the question,”

and

“If he wants to put that gloss on it, that it was a mistake, that it was hasty, all the better.... We welcome it.”

(I presume that was original reporting, because I can't find a press release from Wizner.)

I agree with both of Wizner's points.. And I also agree with the criticism Obama's response received because he, you know, lied - but the important thing, I think, is that he apparently felt that he needed to walk back from an embarrassing and unsustainable position. That is good news.

Of course, the proof will be in the pudding - but in many ways, it is actually good news that he lied about the situation (and the subsequent media coverage) - because that will mean that any future decisions that Obama, Craig and Holder make about the State Secrets Privilege will be under intense scrutiny.

And of course, given my particular interest in all of this, the Obama DoJ needs to retroactively review cases of SSP abuse, and Obama will be judged on the DoJ's response to the Ben-Ami Kadish case, the Rosen/Weissman/AIPAC case, as well as the Harman/AIPAC case.

It should be an interesting couple of months. Things seem to be escalating from all angles.

(BTW - Nobody seemed to notice my analysis of Sibel's latest interview. Take a look)

Who is Israeli spy MEGA?

2009-04-30T17:41:00.007+10:00

In an interview last week, Phil Giraldi told Scott Horton that he had heard that admitted Israeli spy Ben-Ami Kadish was to be finally sentenced last Friday, but, according to PACER, nothing has happened.

Let's hope that he is negotiating with the authorities to disclose the identity of Mega.

As some background, here is a snip from Giraldi's June 08 article, "The Spy Who Loves Us. Pay no mind to the Mossad agent on the line":

"The arrest revived suspicions that Israeli agents might still be operating inside the U.S., most particularly “Mega,” whose cover name was revealed in an NSA-intercepted conversation between two Israeli intelligence officers. “Mega” was clearly at the policymaker level, as Kadish and Pollard frequently sought files by name or number. Someone more senior in Washington appeared to be directing the Israeli handlers toward sensitive information. Whoever “Mega” was, he is still at large."

Scott Horton interviewed Giraldi at the time. I wrote up a transcript a while ago, but never published it. Here you go:

Scott Horton: Do me a favor, Phil, I was ten years old at the time. I barely know a thing about it, tell me and the audience about Jonathan Pollard and the giant spying case in the 1980s.

Phil Giraldi: Well, Jonathan Pollard was an Israeli spy, he spied for at least three years for them, he was receiving money. His motivation apparently was somewhat loyalty to Israel in a kind of generic way, but it was mostly money that he was interested in.

And he worked for the Defense Department and he was able to steal apparently an entire room full of highly sensitive documents, many of which related to security of communication systems and things like this, and capabilities of satellites and the kind of information that is of top-level interest to any intelligence service.

So he stole a whole room full of this type of classified information, gave it to Israel, and Seymour Hersh among others believes that a lot of this information wound up in Russia, where the Israelis exchanged it for Russian permission to let some Russian Jews leave the country. So this information wound up presumably in the US's principal enemy, so this was not a benign activity that wound up just in Israel to benefit the Israelis. It went far beyond that.

Scott Horton: Well now there's something that I do remember from 1986 - that the Soviet Union were the bad guys and had a bunch of nuclear missiles pointed at us.

Phil Giraldi: Yeah, that's the point. The defenders of Pollard often say that he really did nothing wrong, he was helping an ally; he was giving them information they needed for their defense and so on and so forth. That's nonsense, and the reason why Pollard has not been released from prison is the fact that everyone on the inside knows very well that Pollard gave them tons of information that had nothing to do with Israel, nothing to do with the Middle East, and in fact the information went on to the Russians, and benefited the Russians in their confrontation with us.

Scott Horton: Right, now just recently - a month and a half ago or so, it came out that there was another Israeli spy, actually an American citizen who was spying for Israel named Ben-Ami Kadish and, just from what I read in Newsweek, I think this sort of shed brand new light on the Jonathan Pollard case from 1986. How's that?

Phil Giraldi: Yes, it does indeed shed new light on it because when Pollard was caught and convicted, the Israelis privately agreed with the US government that they had been spying, and that they wouldn’t do it anymore, and they basically said that this was a rogue operation.

Well it turns out that it wasn’t a rogue operation, because there was another rogue out there, and also the NSA has intercepted communications that the Israelis had yet another more senior spy whom they referred to as MEGA - and there's been a lot of speculation as to who MEGA is. MEGA obviously is still out there.

Scott Horton: I want to hear some speculation as to who MEGA is!

Phil Giraldi: I don't think I'd better do that (laughs) - I know a few names that are being thrown around, I mean, even Henry Kissinger has been named as a possible MEGA, but there are a couple more that are quite plausible when one thinks about it, but I'd rather not name names.

Scott Horton: Geez. I'm trying to remember, because I know that James Bamford has talked about, or brought up, an old Washington Post story from 1997 or something like that where they talk about, whoever this guy MEGA was, he was in a position where he knew not just the file numbers, but even the super-duper top secret titles of intelligence reports and so forth, that he must be a very senior level person to have this kind of intelligence clearance, is that right?

Phil Giraldi: Yeah, that's the theory, because apparently both Pollard and Kadish were directed to request and steal specific intelligence reports or assessments, and they had the names, they had the numbers, and these names and numbers - because of the sensitivity of the reports - could only have come from someone who was at the very top level of the US government.

Scott Horton: At the very top level? So this would be, maybe not necessarily cabinet level, but say, someone like the head of counter-terrorism or something like that?

Phil Giraldi: I would say, yeah - you're looking basically at maybe the one or two or three top people in something like the FBI, something like the NSA, but more likely, the evidence seems to indicate that MEGA was a political player, so that would actually more likely be someone at the cabinet level, or somebody equivalent to that. So the speculation would be that it is someone maybe in the National Security Council structure - someone like that.

Scott Horton: Yeah, I guess that's what I was trying to get at with the counter-terrorism thing - somebody who is an executive agent, not necessarily a Secretary or something, but pretty high up - and I think one of the other qualifications for this MEGA is that they've had this level of clearance in multiple administrations, right?

Phil Giraldi: Yeah, the individual involved would have - so it seems - would have been in place during both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Scott Horton: Alright. Interesting stuff!

Phil Giraldi: That narrows down the speculation as to who it might be...

Scott Horton: That's got to be less than a dozen people on your list though, right?

Phil Giraldi: Try about six!

Scott Horton: Try about six... half a dozen on Phil's short list there. Well I'm sure that there's a grand jury investigating this right now, right?

Phil Giraldi: Of course.

Scott Horton: (laughs) OK. Sorry. I'm sure that's actually not the case. Now this guy Ben-Ami Kadish apparently gave the Israelis information on F15s and I think even on nuclear weaponry - is that right?

Phil Giraldi: Yeah, my understanding is he gave them avionics information on F15s and F16s and also there was information that dealt with nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

Scott Horton: Now, this is an old case, sort of a cold case. This guy is an old man, he's not going to be prosecuted for treason?

Phil Giraldi: Well, I would like to see him prosecuted for treason, but it is not likely. I'm quite surprised that they let him out on bail, and this is a case of treason if there ever was one, but he is out on bail. I would think that there is considerable risk of his fleeing to Israel, from which he would not be extradited. So, I'm quite confused by the signal that the US courts are sending on this.

Scott Horton: (Some snippage) Now, we've got to get to the neoconservatives, because, I don’t think it has been alleged, for at least a long, long time, that our household-name favorite neocons like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, are actually Israeli spies, but are clearly such Israeli partisans that their foreign policy seems to be all centered around the Clean Break plan that David Wurmser and Douglas Feith and Richard Perle wrote up for Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, and they've been described as agents of influence for Israel - what do you say about that?

Phil Giraldi: Well, first of all let me point out that all those people you've named have in fact been investigated, under suspicion of passing classified information to Israel, so it's not just pure speculation that these people would on occasion have indicated or demonstrated a willingness to go beyond what are the normal restraints to assist the Israelis as they see it. Whether they are agents of influence for Israel or not is a matter of semantics I think. These people are all deeply in love with Israel and have strong and continuing relationships, and very often business relationships.

Doug Feith as you know and Richard Perle both have had business interests in Israel that have enriched them greatly. So that's one side of it. But the point is that the neocons have been engaging in this con-job forever, which is essentially that, the way the see the world, Israel and the US are united and are virtually one entity, and everybody else is basically a shade of grey or a shade of black.

I have tried to reconstruct the org charts from way-back-when to see who was on the National Security Council during those administrations in an attempt to identify who is on Giraldi's short list for MEGA but didn't have much luck.

Who is MEGA?

By the way, I know that times are tough economically, but Antiwar.com really should employ an intern to transcribe all/many of Scott Horton's interviews exist in print as well as audio. Scott is such an insanely great interviewer, and he gets such great interviews, and the long-format fleshes out such important detail. Unfortunately most of it disappears into the ether because Google can't (yet) search audio. For example, consider yesterday's Eric Margolis interview where Scott asks Eric to repeat his claims that the CIA sponsored and supported the Uighur terrorist movement. This is directly relevant to the third category of Sibel's Gallery of Rogues. If / when I get a chance I'll transcribe the relevant parts of this Margolis interview, and his previous interviews with Scott about the same issue - and I'll connect some dots - but this stuff is too important to be dependent on my availability / state of mind or whatever.

(Updated from the original)

Obama's State Secrets.

2009-04-30T16:25:00.004+10:00

Obama was asked about State Secrets Privilege in his presser by Michael Scherer of Time. Here is the exchange:

Transcript:

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. During the campaign, you criticized President Bush's use of the state secrets privilege, but U.S. attorneys have continued to argue the Bush position in three cases in court. How exactly does your view of state secrets differ from President Bush's? And do you believe presidents should be able to derail entire lawsuits about warrantless wiretapping or rendition if classified information is involved?

Obama: I actually think that the state secret doctrine should be modified. I think right now it's overbroad.

But keep in mind what happens, is we come in to office. We're in for a week, and suddenly we've got a court filing that's coming up. And so we don't have the time to effectively think through, what exactly should an overarching reform of that doctrine take? We've got to respond to the immediate case in front of us.

There -- I think it is appropriate to say that there are going to be cases in which national security interests are genuinely at stake and that you can't litigate without revealing covert activities or classified information that would genuinely compromise our safety.

But searching for ways to redact, to carve out certain cases, to see what can be done so that a judge in chambers can review information without it being in open court, you know, there should be some additional tools so that it's not such a blunt instrument.

And we're interested in pursuing that. I know that Eric Holder and Greg Craig, my White House counsel, and others are working on that as we speak.

That comment should get some traction tomorrow. It appears as though Obama has changed his mind on this issue, and if he wants to use the excuse that he simply inherited the problem, I don't care much even if it is not true, as Wired's Threat Level notes:

Obama’s explanation has a nice ring to it, but ultimately falls flat.

Describing the Justice Department as essentially on auto-pilot when pushing for the blanket dismissal of warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition cases would be reasonable enough if this were Obama’s 14th day in office, instead of his 100th. When the administration first argued Bush’s state secrets position just two days after Obama was sworn in, really, only Threat Level complained.

But since then the Justice Department has unrelentingly continued to push the privilege, including making an argument before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the administration’s position on Tuesday.

Brain Beutler makes the same point at TPM:

But it's hard to square (Obama's excuse) with what the administration's actually done. DOJ lawyers haven't asked the courts for more time, or to withhold key pieces of information. Rather, they've argued that these cases--Jewel v NSA, Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v Obama, and Mohammed v Jeppesen Dataplan--be tossed out entirely. And they've done that by invoking the state secrets privilege. In fact, in Jewel, the administration went so far as to claim "sovereign immunity" for the government from just about any lawsuit involving wiretapping. That position is even more radical than Bush's was.

It's hard to imagine Obama walking that claim back. But as far as state secrets go, now he's on the record.

There was also an NYT editorial yesterday re the Jeppesen ruling, The State-Secrets Privilege, Tamed:

Of the many ways that the Bush administration sought to evade accountability for its violations of the law and the Constitution under the cover of battling terrorism, one of the most appalling was its attempt to use inflated claims of state secrecy to slam shut the doors of the nation’s courthouses.

Sadly, the Obama administration also embraced this tactic, even though President Obama criticized the cult of secrecy while running for office, leaving it to the courts to stand up for transparency and accountability.

It appears that Obama didn't like stuff like this, not surprisingly. It is good to see that Obama is apparently willing to change his mind. Of course, we still need to see the results of the Craig/Holder review, and whether they will review previous cases as well. It's also somewhat interesting that Obama mentioned the DoJ review, but didn't mention the State Secrets Protection Act.

Hastert. a matter of public concern

2009-04-30T15:56:00.003+10:00

Phil Giraldi in American Conservative:

"Justice Department records indicate that Hastert will now be “principally involved” on a $35,000-a-month contract providing representation for the Turkish government. He will work as a subcontractor for another former House speaker, Dick Gephardt, who runs the eponymous Gephardt Group.

As Hastert, a former wrestling coach, presumably knows little about the country paying him, his true role will be networking with Congress to block any legislation that Turkey considers to be not in its interest. In that capacity, Hastert would be just one more ex-congressman on the make. But his relationship may be more complicated. FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds claimed that Hastert was investigated by the Bureau for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in illegal payments from Turkish lobbying groups in exchange for “political favors and information.” Edmonds’s claims have never been pursued, presumably because there are so many skeletons in both parties’ closets. She has been served with a state-secrets gag order to make sure that what she knows is never revealed, a restriction that the new regime in Washington has not lifted.

In Hastert’s case, it certainly should be a matter of public concern that a senior elected representative who may have received money from a foreign country is now officially lobbying on its behalf. How many other congressmen might have similar relationships with foreign countries and lobbying groups, providing them with golden parachutes for their retirement?"

Thank you Sir.

Harman/AIPAC on The Daily Show

2009-04-30T10:49:00.003+10:00

Last week Phil Giraldi asked "So I have to ask, why isn’t the MSM interested in aggressively pursuing this (Harman/AIPAC) story?"

Jon Stewart is doing his bit to help out.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Your Government Not at Work - Jane Harman Scandal

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

First 100 Days

2009-04-29T11:11:00.003+10:00

There was some great news today in the Jeppesen / State Secrets case brought by the ACLU. Glenn Greenwald has some of the major highlights, including a great interview with ACLU's lead counsel, Ben Wizner.

The appellate court ruling is here (pdf).

I'm not a lawyer, so I won't go into the details for fear of saying something silly - but as Wizner says, you should read the ruling, because it is (mostly) readable by non-lawyers, and it makes some very commonsense arguments.

Wizner also warns that this is only the beginning on this case, in that it simply means that the State Secrets Privilege (SSP) can't be used to nuke a case at the beginning, and that the government must actually defend and justify every claim of secrecy as it pertains to each and every piece of evidence.

Although I didn't hear anything about it today re Jeppesen, the Obama administration's next legal argument will undoubtedly center around the Mosaic Theory that has previously been used in Sibel's case:

It requires little reflection to understand that the business of foreign intelligence gathering in this age of computer technology is more akin to the construction of a mosaic than it is to the management of a cloak and dagger affair. Thousands of bits and pieces of seemingly innocuous information can be analyzed and fitted into place to reveal with startling clarity how the unseen whole must operate.

For today, however, let's celebrate the ACLU's win and congratulate Ben Wizner.

Wizner, of course, also worked on Sibel's case with Ann Beeson. In Kill The Messenger, he says:

What you have here is the Attorney General of the U.S saying: " The plaintiff can’t even set foot inside a court because the entire case is a state secret. "

The danger is that if the government succeeds in that really overbroad invocation of the ‘State Secret Privilege in this case, it will be a very easy tactic for the government in future cases to avoid accountability and to avoid responsibility.

In early April, Attorney General Eric Holder was interviewed by Katie Couric. The Washington Independent reported:

"During last night’s interview, Couric asked Holder whether he thought the state secrets doctrine had been abused by the Bush administration.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Holder. “On the basis of the two, three cases we’ve had to review so far, I think that the invocation of the doctrine was correct. We - reversed - are in the process of looking at one case. But I think we’re very likely to reverse it.”

Presumably, the three cases he’s referring to are the Jewel, Al-Haramain and Jeppesen Dataplan. But Holder went on to say that there have been more than 20 such assertions in cases that are still open. He added that a report on the Justice Department’s use of the privilege is being prepared, and his “hope is to be able to share the results of that report with the American people.”"

I can't wait to see the 'results of that report.' Even though Sibel's case is not 'open' in any sense that I'm aware of, it would be difficult to imagine any review that does not consider the case, so I'll try to remain optimistic in the interim.

I'm certainly not on the side of those who argue that Obama is playing 11-dimensional chess, but if Holder does reverse one of the SSP claims of the Bush administration, when combined with today's Jeppesen ruling (against Obama), then perhaps there is some cause for optimism.

The Jeppesen ruling appears to completely undermine any reliance on Totten that the executive branch might use in Sibel's case, forcing them to rely entirely, and appropriately, on Reynolds.

Even then, the appellate court smacked down the Reynold's basis in today's ruling:

Even in Reynolds, avoidance of embarrassment—not preservation of state secrets—appears to have motivated the Executive’s invocation of the privilege. There the Court credited the government’s assertion that “this accident occurred to a military plane which had gone aloft to test secret electronic equipment,” and that “there was a reasonable danger that the accident investigation report would contain references to the secret electronic equipment which was the primary concern of the mission.”

In 1996, however, the “secret” accident report involved in that case was declassified. A review of the report revealed, not “details of any secret project the plane was involved in,” but “[i]nstead, . . . a horror story of incompetence, bungling, and tragic error.”

This reflects the same language that Senators Leahy and Grassley used when discussing Sibel's case:

"...We fear that the designation of information as classified in some cases [brought forth by Sibel Edmonds] serves to protect the executive branch against embarrassing revelations and full accountability... Releasing declassified versions of these reports, or at least portions or summaries, would serve the public’s interest, increase transparency, promote effectiveness and efficiency at the FBI, and facilitate Congressional oversight."

Senators Leahy and Grassley were aware of (at least some of) the real facts about Sibel's case when they wrote this - prior to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's illegal retroactive classification of that information.

The Jeppesen case has other parallels with Sibel's case. In the Jeppesen ruling today, the courts differentiated between 'facts' and 'evidence' - noting that, for example, even though the Fifth amendment offers the protection of self-incrimination, that doesn't preclude other evidence being presented which point to the same facts. Similarly, the ACLU argued that the whole world knows that the plaintiffs were transferred by Jeppesen to various locations where they would be tortured - whether or not the American courts wanted to acknowledge it (courts in other countries have accepted that.) Sibel has been in a similarly weird situation, as she has said:

Swanson: So I should ask, I guess, before I start, are you under any gag order? Are there things that you can and cannot talk about?

Edmonds: Well - that's a very interesting question, David, because when the government invoked the State Secrets Privilege, it was specifically for the court procedures, so there won't be any court hearings, and as far as the courts are concerned, my case is gagged and classified.
[...]
But I've never had a gag order placed on me as far as the public statements, or any other investigative procedures are concerned, but as you know they have declared everything in my case, including my languages, and what I did for the FBI, classified. Now the question is whether this classification that they're using is even legal, or justified. As you know the executive branch has complete control over the classification.

That is, to a large extent, the gag on Sibel is to keep her case outside of the courts, outside of an offical judication, outside of the discovery process that would prove her case. This is also why they were so determined to fight her FOIA cases so strenuously.

As Sibel explained:

They were not only doing it with (Turkey) - because that operation was the sister operation of another investigation that dealt with Israel, but the FBI was not (transfering) these from counter-intelligence to investigation units, and they were supposed to do that. They were supposed to transfer and let the counter-espionage unit in the FBI, and the criminal division handle it. But they were not (transferring these cases).

So this was another case that I reported internally - and I never got anywhere with it as far as the FBI was concerned - and later, of course, when Ashcroft came out and invoked the State Secrets Privilege, Ashcroft himself inadvertently explained it! There is a sentence there saying "The State Secrets Privilege is being invoked in order to protect certain sensitive diplomatic relations and business relations of the US" - this is an exact quote from Ashcroft, explaining why the State Secrets Privilege was invoked.

Today's Jeppesen ruling undermines Ashcroft's argument here. The Jeppesen ruling essentially reinforces the principles behind Reynolds. Jeppsesen's 'business relations' in the torture regime are not given a blanket exemption from exposure in today's ruling, and, similarly, nor should the 'business relations' in Sibel's case be given a free reign.

Sibel has always argued that: 1) none of the disclosures that she wants to make would breach any national security concerns, specifically that her disclosures wouldn't reveal any 'sources and methods,' and that 2) it is illegal to use classification to hide illegal activity.

Today's Jeppesen ruling gives us hope, despite the Obama regime, that maybe the courts are at least open to applying the law.

Maybe that is all we can ask for at this point.

Why did CIA go after AIPAC and Harman and get away with it?

2009-04-28T21:51:00.001+10:00

There's some push-back in various quarters about the charges against Jane Harman - mostly from pro-Israeli sources.

The main arguments as I understand them are: a) There's no there, there, and b) The CIA/Porter Goss is involved in some sort of vendetta against Harman.

Let's assume both of those are true.

The fascinating thing, then, is that the CIA/Goss is apparently willing to throw the Israel Lobby under the bus in their efforts to get Harman. That is some serious collateral damage!

Many of the Harman defenders are 'pro-Israel' - and curoiusly, much of the defense is Harman-specific. For some reason they don't seem to be arguing in defense of The Lobby/AIPAC. That is, apparently it is not surprising at all that The Lobby would try to turn Harman into an asset, but 'she didn't act on her promise!'. No crime here!

But even if Harman didn't act on her promise to the Israeli agent, and regardless of the definition of a 'completed crime,' surely there is news in the fact that an Israeli agent tried to place an 'asset' (or at a minimum, a prospective-asset) at the heart of US intelligence. (Of course, as a general matter, this is not surprising - but in this particular instance, it is still a significant crime, at the heart of the US government.)

Consider the counter-factual. Imagine, hypothetically, that an agent of Iran was caught offering a member of congress the Chair of House Intelligence. Imagine how different the reporting on this case would be. It appears as though all sides have simply accepted the fact that the Israel Lobby is engaged in this type of activity.

Perhaps that is why Goss et al were so comfortable in apparently throwing AIPAC under the bus in their atempts to harm Harman. It didn't even occur to them that any of this might reflect badly on AIPAC - and they were correct!

(As an aside, the Israeli Lobby seems to have decided on an interesting way to divert attention from the case. David Frum at the AEI, for example, writes:

"The story is almost insanely complicated."

No. It isn't. Not at all. And especially not to Frum, or to the audience he is writing for.)

-------------

The flipside to all of this is the Sibel Edmonds case. For some reason, nobody is shopping around the wiretaps of Hastert and others receiving bribes. Why not?

Consider Giraldi's recent pieces on Harman but substitute Hastert for Harman, and (maybe) substitute Israel for Turkey:

As a former intelligence officer who has himself recruited agents of influence, I can tell you that Harman was the fruit of a high level Israeli covert action.
[...]
The Israeli on the phone was committing espionage against the United States by trying to influence the actions of a government official and Harman was committing a number of possible crimes by agreeing to cooperate in return for her own personal advancement.

Please take my word for it that the quid pro quo is precisely how an intelligence officer recruits an agent. You ask for a favor and give a favor in return. As both the favor and the reward are illegal and the agreement itself can be used to blackmail the target of the operation, the target henceforth will be obligated to do what the intelligence officer wants or risk exposure.

Consider that Hastert (and others) received legal campaign donations, then illegal campaign donations, then suitcases full of cash. It is exactly that cascading level of criminality that Giraldi speaks of. It is impossible to get rid of the skeleton in the closet, so the 'victim' of the original crime might as well profit from it along the way. There's plenty of money to share around.

CQ: Hastert knew of AIPAC infiltration

2009-04-27T10:37:00.005+10:00

Jeff Stein has a new brain-twister of an article in CQ titled 'CIA “Whistleblower” Told Hastert About Suppression of Harman Wiretap.'

The premise of the article is that in 2006, ODNI Negroponte, apparently at the behest of Attorney General Gonzales, blocked DCI Porter Goss from following protocol and informing the House leadership, Hastert and Pelosi, about the Harman wiretaps. In May 2006, Michael Hayden replaced Goss as DCI, but still there was no briefing for Hastert and Pelosi.

In the Fall of 2006, someone from CIA HQ, either under orders or freelancing, 'blew the whistle' to Hastert, 'incensed' that the protocols had been breached, then wrote a letter to Attorney General Gonzales demanding to be briefed. Gonzales ignored the request for weeks, but eventually told Hastert that there was nothing in the files to warrant a briefing.

By this time, the 'whistleblower' was becoming "agitated" about the lack of movement on the case. Fearing that the whistle blower might release the wiretap transcripts to the media - which would expose the operation against AIPAC and "unfairly 'smear' Harman as a foreign agent," (who they knew to be "highly respected") - Hastert's staff told Pelosi's staff about the wiretap on Harman in 'early October' 2006. Pelosi's Chief of Staff “remembers a conversation about it with (Hastert's Chief of Staff ), but that’s all.”

Kudos to Jeff Stein for getting Hastert on the record about this, and continuing to chase the story - and I'm sure that the 'facts' presented here are (mostly) accurate, but the combination of narrative & spin presented here doesn't make much sense. I'm not criticizing Stein here - but there's much more going on here than Stein offers in this piece.

Hastert
For starters, Hastert was most likely not really concerned about separation-of-power arguments, nor about following protocol. His demand for a briefing was much more likely because he desperately wanted to know the status of the 'sister investigation' that caught him on wiretaps in the years leading up to 1999, and probably since then.

Similarly, Hastert's efforts to inform Pelosi were intended to appease the so-called whistleblower from the CIA so that the news of the investigation didn't get exposed in public, because that would be very bad for Hastert and his cronies.

For some reason, Hastert thought that telling Pelosi would assuage the 'agitated' CIA 'whistleblower,' and stop him from going to the media. But as Jeff Stein reported last week, a CIA official independently told Pelosi. "She knew. We made sure she knew," said one of the former officials, chuckling."

(As an aside, from the pieces of Hastert's statements that Stein published, Hastert seems keen to emphasize two points: a) that the wiretap was a "legally authorized wiretap related to an espionage investigation" and b) that he "instructed (his) staff in early October 2006." I'm not exactly sure of the significance of either of those yet, but they are interesting details.)

Goss and the CIA
We also don't know the motivations of the CIA 'whistleblower.' Was Porter Goss really worried about the protocol of informing the House Leadership? Was he really worried that there might be a mole in their midst? Goss himself was Chair of the House Intelligence Committee from 1997 to 2005, so he was well aware that Hastert himself, and others in the House, had been compromised by Israeli and Turkish surrogates.

Perhaps the CIA 'whistleblower' actually was freelancing, and was legitimately concerned about the possibility that Harman would become Chair of House Intelligence. In that case, they only needed to tell Pelosi, but they told Hastert too, under the guise that the protocol dictated that both Hastert and Pelosi should know this information.

Regardless, at the same time that the CIA 'whistleblower' was telling Hastert, he was apparently exposing the issue in the media regardless of Hastert's efforts.

Hastert instructed his "staff in early October 2006 to tell Leader Pelosi" about the wiretaps, but the Time article detailing the essence of the story was published on Oct 20, 2006 anyway.

In a ridiculed op-ed in the New York Times in early 2006 called Loose Lips Sink Spies, Goss wrote:

I take seriously my agency's responsibility to protect our national security. Unauthorized disclosures undermine our efforts and abuse the trust of the people we are sworn to protect. Since becoming director, I have filed criminal reports with the Department of Justice because of such compromises. That department is committed to working with us to investigate these cases aggressively...

Our enemies cannot match the creativity, expertise, technical genius and tradecraft that the C.I.A. brings to bear in this war. Criminal disclosures of national security information, however, can erase much of that advantage. The terrorists gain an edge when they keep their secrets and we don't keep ours.

Your choice, Mr Goss: A) Did you file a criminal report with the DoJ in this case? Or B) Was this an 'authorized disclosure'?

Pelosi
The incurious Nancy Pelosi is apparently befuddled about these events.

In May 2006, according to LA Weekly, Harman "had some major contributors call Pelosi to impress upon her the importance of keeping Jane in place. According to these members, this tactic, too, hasn't endeared Harman to Pelosi."

The Harman thing was obviously on her radar, then - both privately and in the press - at a time when "Pelosi had soured on her California colleague."

At some point, apparently in the early Fall of 2006, the CIA officials unofficially told Pelosi:

that Harman had been overheard on a wiretap agreeing to intercede with Justice Department officials to try to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, or AIPAC.

However, Pelosi only has some vague recollection of this. Now she says that she can not remember exactly who told her, but "she thought it was the FBI."

But again, according to the 'whistleblowers':

"She knew. We made sure she knew," said one of the former officials, chuckling."

But according to Pelosi, they apparently didn't 'make sure' that she really knew.

And again, in "early October," Hastert briefed Pelosi on the matter, in a highly irregular meeting, that Harman was on the wiretaps. This meeting presumably included the fact that Hastert was 'incensed' at the breach of protocol, that Gonzales was blocking the whole thing, and that CIA officials from headquarters had decided to circumvent their chain of command, yet Pelosi's ~~firewall~~ Chief of Staff "remembers a conversation about it... but that’s all.”

And this was all during the time when there was a large battle taking place - in public and behind closed doors - about who Pelosi would appoint to Chair the House Intelligence Committee (Reyes was appointed in December 2006)

Yet apparently this was all eminently forgettable to Pelosi.

(Compare and contrast Hastert's level of detail with Pelosi's haziness. I suspect that Hastert's apparent clarity of recollection is due to Hastert doing some CYA - both then and now. And I suspect that Pelosi's haziness is due to same.)

Why It Matters
As Phil Giraldi said in his interview with Scott Horton last week, if not for the wiretap:

(Y)ou might have had someone who was - essentially - an Israeli agent either heading the House Permanent Intelligence Committee - or heading the CIA, which was another job that Jane Harman had a shot at.

At his blog on Saturday, Giraldi said:

As a former intelligence officer who has himself recruited agents of influence, I can tell you that Harman was the fruit of a high level Israeli covert action.

Whomever Harman spoke to, she was surely aware that she was in contact with someone empowered to promise her rewards from Israel and the Israeli lobby. The threat to withhold contributions from the Democratic Party if Harman were not to be named chairman is significant, as it indicates that it was all part of a careful plan.

The Israeli on the phone was committing espionage against the United States by trying to influence the actions of a government official and Harman was committing a number of possible crimes by agreeing to cooperate in return for her own personal advancement.

Please take my word for it that the quid pro quo is precisely how an intelligence officer recruits an agent. You ask for a favor and give a favor in return. As both the favor and the reward are illegal and the agreement itself can be used to blackmail the target of the operation, the target henceforth will be obligated to do what the intelligence officer wants or risk exposure.

This whole transaction is particularly important in the context of Jane Harman and what she might have represented to the Israelis. She was chairman presumptive of the House Intelligence Committee and subsequently was spoken of as being on the short list for Obama’s Director of Central Intelligence. If she had obtained either position, which would have happened if the FBI had not been privy to the transaction, she would have had complete access to all of America’s secrets and would have been involved in policy making. She would also have been working for Israel. So I have to ask, why isn’t the MSM interested in aggressively pursuing this story?

Jeff Stein
Again, kudos to Jeff Stein for pushing this story so hard. And congratulations to him for continuing to get people on the record and advancing the story. He has said that he was completely taken by surprise by the traction that this story has received. And at the same time, Giraldi is also correct that the MSM needs to agressively push it further.

Update:
Giraldi has a new article. Read the whole thing, but this excerpt was maybe the juiciest:

"Once you are on the hook in an intelligence relationship, there is no getting off it. Had Harman done a favor for the Israelis and been rewarded in return, it would have been a skeleton in her closet forever. The Israelis might also have taped the incriminating conversations, presumably unaware that the FBI was also on the line. The Israelis would surely remind her of her crime whenever they need a favor, and she would be forced to pay the piper whenever called upon. What could have been better for Israel than owning the director of central intelligence or the head of the House Intelligence Committee? What could have been worse for the United States?"

AIPAC Trial

2009-04-25T19:22:00.003+10:00

There was an odd article on March 5 titled "The ‘AIPAC Two’ aren’t the only ones on trial" by Douglas M. Bloomfield. Bloomfield "spent nine years as the legislative director and chief lobbyist for AIPAC."

Bloomfield's lede was:

"Trials can be dangerous things. And not just for the accused. They can make or break prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges. And even a vaunted lobby.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its leaders could be the biggest losers in a case that threatens to expose the group’s inner secrets."

Bloomfield closed with this:

"Will the organization want to go through discovery, depositions, interrogatories, subpoenas, and compelled testimony under oath about all the elements of this case? That could be the key to very generous out-of-court settlements for Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman.

That will leave unanswered the biggest question of all: Why was this case brought in the first place?"

Grant F. Smith, who has done great work on this case, calls these "not-so-subtle public threats." He adds, in an article titled "Why Steve Rosen is Suing AIPAC" (from April 8):

"The seemingly defeatist maneuvers of this circular firing squad partially mask Rosen’s real strategy. Millions of dollars would do him little good behind bars or preserve AIPAC’s reputation if he prevails. What Rosen needs most is for AIPAC to pull him ‘out from under all this’ as soon as possible. Otherwise AIPAC and the rest of the lobby will face the full wrath of Rosen’s accumulated arsenal: access to damning AIPAC internal information and a multitude of allies who follow the credo that “divided we fall.” "

On April 22, (with the Jane Harman/AIPAC story in the near-background) the Washington Post published "U.S. Might Not Try Pro-Israel Lobbyists":

"The U.S. government may abandon espionage-law charges against two former lobbyists for a pro-Israel advocacy group, officials said yesterday, as a prominent House lawmaker denied new allegations that she offered to use her influence in their behalf."

Was Bloomfield's threat effective?

(By the way - Grant Smith has apparently been alone, for months, in noting that Larry Franklin is not currently in jail.)

For the record, at the end of that second video, Sibel says:

"Other operations were shut down in 2000 and 2001 because they ended up going to higher levels and involving way too many people. I’m talking about individuals who are breaking the law, misusing the trust and abusing their power, and in some cases I would even say engaging in treason."

Interestingly, I just tested that youtube in two different browsers and on two different computers, and the audio goes silent when Sibel says "engaging in treason." I've never noticed that before. I can only presume that was an error on my part when I uploaded the interview.

Obama: Armenian genocide

2009-04-25T17:25:00.006+10:00

McClatchy:

Obama marks Armenian tragedy but doesn't say 'genocide'

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Friday broke a campaign pledge but mollified Turkey by formally remembering the mass killings of Armenians without using the diplomatically loaded term "genocide."
[...]
Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush broke similar pledges. President Bill Clinton, too, leaned on congressional leaders not to pass genocide commemoration measures.

In 2000, only minutes before debate was set to start in the House of Representatives, then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert yielded to Clinton's request not to bring the genocide resolution, authored by Radanovich, up for a vote.

Hastert is now a lobbyist with the firm Dickstein Shapiro, one of a number that Turkey hired to press its cause on Capitol Hill. Turkey pays $35,000 a month for help from Hastert and his team, Justice Department foreign-agent filings show. Turkey is paying former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt's firm, DLA Piper, $100,000 a month, filings have shown.

For the record, Gephardt is another first-I-was-against-it genocide denier too.

Poltico is running this youtube of Samantha Powers today

Kudos to Jonathon Schwarz who ran this six weeks ago.

BTW: I knew that Marc Grossman, William Cohen and Joe Ralston had a "strategic alliance" with DLA Piper via the Cohen Group, but I (think I) only recently learned that all three are actually "Senior Advisers" to DLA Piper directly.

BTW2: Note in the following youtube how Hastert's 'official spokesman' says "The Speaker does not have any connections to American-Turkish interests." That statement is no longer operative.

Also interesting is the spokesperson's statement/rebuttal that 'the reporter does not have a transcript of any wiretap conversations that we know of' - which is reminiscent of the current outbreak of the Harman/AIPAC outrage.

* Update: In a post worth reading (as usual) , Mizgin says:

"If any of these Deep Staters had even the slightest nano-particle of honor, they'd blow their own brains out.

I'm just saying."

For what it is worth, I'd consider any reports of suicide as suspicious. I think we are both on the same page.

Scott Horton, Phil Giraldi & Jane Harman

2009-04-25T10:59:00.002+10:00

Scott Horton interviewed Phil Giraldi - about the Jane Harman story and some other things.

Giraldi says that he knows a journalist who has the transcript, and that the source of the transcript was the Justice Department. Giraldi also says that the name of the other person on the phone call with Harman is blacked out, and he says that this is often what happens when the other person is co-operating with the US officials.

Giraldi also notes that the fact that Harman and the Israeli operative were talking so freely about this qui-pro-quo indicates that Harman was probably an Israeli 'asset' (in the sense that she had crossed the line previously) before this call.

See here and here for Giraldi's recent blog posts about Harman.

A partial transcript follows:

Phil Giraldi: My source has seen a copy of the (Harman) transcript, and there are apparently a couple of copies floating around in various places, and he's been able to confirm that what the New York Times and other sources have been reporting about some of the actual words used and some of the quotes are alleged to have been made in this conversation are completely accurate.

He further indicated to me that the original leak of this information came from an official at the Department of Justice - where of course these transcripts would be on file. So that’s kind of interesting in and of itself, because it raises the question of why this is happening right now, and how did this happen. Is there some political motivation behind it?
[…]
There are a couple of things to look at here. The first thing to look at, of course, is what would have been the potential consequences of this - and one of the potential consequences is that you might have had someone who was - essentially - an Israeli agent either heading the House Permanent Intelligence Committee - or heading the CIA, which was another job that Jane Harman had a shot at.

Scott Horton: A couple of things here. Let me start with that - and suggest that what you are saying here is hyperbole. I don’t know, you're a former intelligence agent, a covert operative, not an analyst, but on the covert side of the CIA. If you recruit someone in another country, that makes them an agent, or an asset?

PG: That makes them your asset, because, you see the line you try to get a potential agent to cross is to do something illegal for you, and once they cross that line, there's no going back, because they will always have that skeleton in their closet, and that skeleton is always going to be there. And all you have to do is go back and tweak them and say 'Hey - remember that conversation we had, and that favour we did for you, and the favour you did for us? Well, we remember that, and we have another favour to ask you' - and that's the way it works, that's how you recruit spies, and that's how you run spies.

SH: ... So what you're saying here is that a foreign power almost had their agent as the head, the Chair, of the House Intelligence Committee, and then also she was runner-up for Director of Central Intelligence, or Director of CIA, in the new Obama administration?

PG: That's right. She could have conceivably had either position, and indeed if the scheme that they had worked out where the Israeli lobby and the Israeli interests were going to weigh in with Nancy Pelosi to make sure that she got the job, it would have happened.

And there's no reason to assume that it wouldn’t have happened except of course that both the Israeli and Jane Harman were not aware that (the conversation) was being taped while this conversation was going on, and Nancy Pelosi was later briefed on the call.
[…]
But the fact is that the idea was a sound one, that the Israeli lobby had enough influence, and certainly if you combine it with the money issue, to make sure that Harman got the job. But the problem for Pelosi was that once the investigation got opened by the FBI this becomes a matter of public record, in a sense, and Pelosi could not take the risk of appointing her to the job.

SH: That's a really good point. I guess it is fair speculation that if Pelosi didn’t have any idea, and this was the normal course of events, she probably would have gone along, and that's the normal course of events in that city.

PG: Sure, because Jane Harman was mentioned as the likely candidate. If you think back to that time, it was a big surprise when Reyes got the job instead of her, and everybody was wondering what has happened here, and now this kind of fills out the story.
[…]

SH: Now, your source, I know you can't name names, but can you say whether this is a journalist friend of yours, or a current or former intelligence agent, or who this is that saw the transcript?

PG: It is a journalist who saw it.

SH: So, I guess I'm going to understand that the name on the transcript other than Harman is blacked out or what? How come we don't know - of all the leaks all over the place about this - how come we still don't know the name of the alleged Israeli spy here?

PG: Yeah, that's correct - it's an interesting question, and in fact the journalist I talked to - the transcript he saw did indeed have the name missing, and - now, this is interesting - because that is often a deliberate way of handling a source that is co-operating with you. So this might mean that the FBI already had a hook into this guy.
[…]

SH: Somebody in the comments section at antiwar.com/radio blog mentioned that Jane Harman had done this major flip-flop and there was a link to a youtube video of the Armenian lobby group - a lot of you people protesting quite loudly calling her genocide denier. Apparently she was a co-sponsor of the Armenian Genocide Recognition Resolution - or what ever it was - while at the same time it was discovered that she had written a letter to Tom Lantos to scotch the thing.

SH: So that reminded me of course of Dennis Hastert because I believe the story goes that, according to Vanity Fair, and Daniel Ellsberg and people familiar with the Sibel Edmonds case, which I know you've written about, that this was something that Hastert got a direct cash pay-off for - thousands of dollars - in order to thwart the Armenian Genocide resolution, in order to protect America, and apparently Israel's relationship with Turkey. Can you expand on that?

PG: Yeah, I think that you hit it right at the end there. I think that what she was doing... she's a congresswoman from Los Angeles and she has a strong constituency of Armenians who are wealthy and politically motivated, and so she was indeed one of the co-sponsors, but the Israel lobby, and Israel, decided that they didn’t really want this to go ahead, for a couple of reasons. The relationship with Turkey being the most important one, and a lot of congressmen as a result of the shift on the part of the Israeli interests also shifted those votes. So she was one of them. Tom Lantos of course was involved in this too. Nancy Pelosi did a shift on it as you know. So a lot of it goes back to Israel.

SH: ... I want to really focus on this distinction between, as you said, Israel's covert operations against the US government - and I think anybody tuning in to this story will say 'Wait a minute. A congresswoman being bought off by an Israeli spy to intervene in a trial of other Israeli spies? What is going on here? It seems like this must not be taking place in a vacuum. There's a bigger picture here to understand about the extent of Mossad or whatever influence inside the US.' Can you give us a reasonable picture of what we're looking at here?

PG: Well, I guess it is what the Greeks would call Hubris, and the Israelis would call chutzpah. It's a sense that the Israelis have, because of the power of their lobby, have basically come to the point of view that they can do anything and get away with it. And essentially this point of view has been supported by reality. You know, why should an Israeli intelligence officer, or a surrogate of an Israeli intelligence officer be able to call up a congressman and even make one of these proposals in a credible way? It's kind of astonishing. You or I couldn’t do it.

The Israelis act as you might think back to the article I wrote last year for the American Conservative about Israeli spying. The Israelis are amongst the most active spies against the US, and a big part of this espionage operation is what they call covert actions, or influencing operations where you influence the policies of the countries that you are targeting. The objective of all of this is to do it in a covert way - as the name implies - so that your hand is not revealed, and this is precisely what we're seeing in this phone call where the Israeli intelligence officer is presumably using a surrogate to make the call, someone who has access to Jane Harman and he makes his proposal and his proposal is an attractive one, and as I said earlier, once you are on the hook for this, you are on the hook for ever. And once you're on the hook forever, whatever they ask you to do within the realm of possibility, you have to do. And that's basically how an intelligence operation of this sort works.

SH: Well, that's pretty outrageous. Is it just crazy to think that somewhere in any intelligence agency they would think 'Wait a minute - I think going for the Chair of the Intelligence Committee is a bit too high. This might be more trouble than it is worth' or something like that? Would basically any covert operator try to rig a situation like that?

PG: Well you always go for risk-versus gain assessment on any operation in intelligence, but this one is a gold medal one. You get the big star for catching the person at the top of the pile, and certainly if she had this conversation with this person on the phone, clearly it was somebody she had been talking to before about things that kind of were maybe similar, because otherwise she would have probably been unwilling to even talk to him about these kinds of things, so they kind of had a feeling that she would be inclined to look at this thing positively before they even made the proposal, and they threw some very strong incentives into the hopper. They hit the money button in terms of money for the Democratic Party and they also hit her own personal ambition in terms of turning her into the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

SH: So that's where we really get into Bizarro World here... You have Larry Franklin, the case that started all of this thing, the top Iran analyst in the policy shop at the Pentagon, he wanted a promotion to the National Security Council, so apparently the way he judged his risk/benefit, the idea of going to Rumsfeld and asking for a recommendation was out of the picture. He decided instead the best route to the White House was through Israeli spies, and apparently this is the same way that Jane Harman assesses the balance sheet as well: If I want a promotion, I need to get the government of Israel to intervene on my behalf! That's really through the Looking Glass at this point isn’t it?

PG: Well, it's not through the Looking Glass, because obviously they felt that that was the way to go. And, you know, there are a lot of other people that see the US in the same way. For example, let's go back to our Turkish example. Why are the Turks so cozy with Israel? Do they have any real community of interest? You know, they have some common enemies in the area and so forth, but the big reason is that being chummy with the Israelis is a big plus for the Turks vis-a-vis the US. So a lot of people have seen our foreign policy as having this kind of key in the door which is the Israeli relationship, the Israeli connection, and clearly this was very plausible that the Israelis would be able to make these things happen. And even a canny operator in the political sphere like Jane Harman was convinced that it would work.

SH: I guess the message here is that the American people are just not responsible enough to maintain a world empire, because the incentive for the leaders of every other country to exert extraordinary influence in order to try to influence this empire apparently outmatches the American people every time.

PG: And our politicians are so corrupt and so motivated by their own interest that it makes it easy to manipulate them. I suspect that's a big part of it too. But you know this whole Israeli thing has been going on for so long, and they've been so successful at it, that they just kind of feel that at certain levels they are bullet-proof, and they can do what they want, they can manipulate the situation to satisfy their own needs. And I think, in this case, I think the story has real legs and I think this is something that maybe is not going to go away no matter how hard Fox News and some of the others try to make it go.
[…]

SH: I want to get to the NSA thing because that connects to this story in a couple of important ways, and I guess the Ben-Ami Kadish theft of nuclear secrets cuts perhaps into the same thing. I'm having trouble figuring out exactly who is investigating what and under what authority but it seems like there has been one big FBI counter-intelligence operation against Israel spying inside the US since about 1998 or 1999, and that this one investigation seems to interact with all these different things - whether it is the leaking of secrets to Ahmed Chalabi who then passed them onto Iran, or whether it is the Sibel Edmonds story talking about the Turkish lobby, the neocons or Israeli spies in the Pentagon or paying off people in the Pentagon to steal secrets for them. It all sort of seems like - perhaps even this Jane Harman investigation - or would-have-been investigation-that-never-happened - is still kind of part of this one big counter-intelligence operation. Am I guessing anything close to right there? What do you think is going on?

PG: Well, I think that the key here is that this is all part of one huge, co-coordinated intelligence effort by the Israelis, and once you make that assumption, you realize that what the FBI is doing is they've been nibbling at the edges of this for a long time, and they've been discovering increasingly that a lot of the pieces come together. And we really shouldn’t be surprised at that. I would also throw in a lot of the phony intelligence leading up to the Iraq war, a lot of the phony intelligence that we've seen more recently trying to blacken the Iranians. This is all part of a scheme that is basically coordinated by Israeli intelligence, but has a lot of fellow travelers in the US, particularly the people we were seeing up until recently at the Pentagon, that basically are part of this scheme. And I think what the problem is for the investigators at the FBI is that they get a lot of names, they get a lot of information, but a lot of these people turn out to be Jane Harmans. They turn out to be people that basically are in very sensitive positions in the government and it becomes a political issue where to go with this kind of investigation, and the result is that most of these investigations are, as in the case of the Jane Harman investigation, they are squashed.

SH: It really goes to show, I guess, that you can even understand their point of view. That to really make the change and say for example really let the FBI off the leash and try to bring cases and let the Justice Department try to bring cases against as much Israeli spying and corruption and that kind of thing as they can, in this whole interconnected web of neocons and criminals... It would be 'horribly destabilising,' in their words, right. We'd be talking about taking two thirds of Washington DC and putting them in prison.

PG: Yeah, that's one way to look at it. The thing is that if the FBI and DoJ ever went after all the people who ever gave classified information to Israel or did things that amounted to malfeasance or criminal activity on behalf of Israel there would be a lot of people running through the system, and you'd have people like Abe Foxman screaming 'Anti-semitism!'

So yeah, there's a political dimension to everything but this is one kind of festering sore that has been there for a long time, and to lance it now would be an enormous political problem for any administration, Democratic or Republican.
[…]

SH: Let's talk about heroin.

PG: Sure

SH: Part of the Sibel Edmonds case is that, and again, this is like a giant onion with all of these different layers, but she basically describes nuclear secrets being sold on the black market, in one big market basically that includes basically the terrorists' underground economy and money laundering obviously, and heroin running from Central Asia through the Turkic countries and into Europe. Now, my basic assumption going into these matters has got to be that the CIA is running the whole thing, and I wouldn't know why anybody in America participating in such a thing would really be in such a bad way if it's all given a wink-nod but the US government anyway. But maybe I'm assuming too much. What do you say?

PG: Well, I have no evidence that the CIA is involved with these things. I think that there are a lot of this is private enterprise. These are people who are a Turkish General, or retired CIA officers of whom I could name a couple but I won't, who are involved in... let's call it commodities trading - in Central Asia, in the Middle East, and getting stuff into Europe and into Russia and stuff like that. Russian Generals, warlords in Afghanistan, Pakistani intelligence officers, there's a whole community of people out there, and they're all kind of involved in these same ventures.

And once you set up a mechanism that is good for shipping drugs and getting it into a certain market you can use the same mechanism, in reverse, to sell weapons. So that I think is the bottom line of Sibel's story - that there are just a whole lot of complex relationships that have been set up in the Middle East and Central Asia - Israelis are in the middle of a lot of these, there are Turks involved, but there are Americans involved too.

You can listen to the whole interview here.

First Merchant Bank exposed

2009-04-23T20:47:00.003+10:00

A partial transcript of Sibel's recent interview is now up at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak.

The most interesting news involves First Merchant Bank (FMB) in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). The TRNC is only recognized by one country, Turkey.

In August 2004, US Treasury blacklisted First Merchant Bank because:

Pursuant to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, FinCEN (Treasury) found First Merchant Bank to be of primary money laundering concern based on a number of factors, including:
(1) it is licensed as an offshore bank in the TRNC, a jurisdiction with inadequate anti-money laundering controls, particularly those applicable to its offshore sector; (2) it is involved in the marketing and sale of fraudulent financial products and services;
(3) it has been used as a conduit for the laundering of fraudulently obtained funds; and
(4) the individuals who own, control, and operate to launder criminal proceeds.

All of which is apparently true. The problem is that this was all publicly known at least as far back as 1997, when a member of the Susurluk Commission said that First Merchant Bank was being used to launder money and finance terrorism for the "Susurluk Gang."

In fact, Treasury essentially admitted that they knew all this when they blacklisted First Merchant Bank in 2004:

Domestic and foreign newspapers and magazines report that First Merchant Bank has been used for illicit transactions since its founding in 1993. Apparently, First Merchant Bank was established, at least in part, to facilitate the movement of funds between organized crime rings and corrupt politicians. The earliest indicators of illicit activity on the part of First Merchant Bank or its principals involved the original shareholders or partners of the Bank.

One of the original partners of First Merchant Bank is reported to be a former KGB employee identified as Vladimir Kobarel, who allegedly involved First Merchant Bank in transferring underground money to Russian banks. Another original partner, Tarik Umit, was a former Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) member who was believed killed in connection with a well-known Turkish investigation into links between the Turkish mafia, the MIT, and right wing politicians (the Susurluk scandal).

First Merchant Bank, Tarik Umit, and Dr. Hakki Yaman Namli are alleged to have been involved with the laundering of $450 million in narcotics proceeds for the ``Susurluk gang.''

The Susurluk scandal began with an automobile accident in Susurluk, Turkey, on November 3, 1996. Four people occupied the automobile: The deputy police chief of Istanbul; an alleged "extreme nationalist hit man'' previously convicted of heroin trafficking and wanted for terrorism; the hit man's girlfriend...; and a member of the Turkish Parliament, whose private militia had helped the army fight Kurdish militants.... The trunk of the car was full of weapons.

The incident received national notoriety and served as the basis for Parliamentary investigations into links among politicians, the arms trade, and organized crime.

Despite this, it took the US Government until 2004 - 3 years after 9/11 - to shut down First Merchant Bank.

It took them three years to shut down First Merchant Bank despite the fact that, according to the Wall Street Journal, Al Qaeda was known to be using the TRNC to launder money.

It took them three years to shut down First Merchant Bank despite the fact that the FBI knew that the bank was being used for these purposes by early 2002 at the latest.

It took them three years to shut down First Merchant Bank despite the fact "the criminal Turkish networks" had "direct and indirect role and ties" to 9/11.

It took them three years to shut down First Merchant Bank, despite the fact that, as Sibel has noted, "After 911, the US Government engaged in mock investigations and shut down many small Islamic charities and organizations, giving the appearance of action in the so-called 'War on Terror.'"

Why would the US government be slow to act when it came to shutting down First Merchant Bank?

There are some clues in the recent interview. Sibel states that, based on information that she has first-hand knowledge of, First Merchant Bank was used by "US government agencies," "certain US government people," "certain non-profit organizations in the US," "certain US institutions including banking institutions," and "certain US-based organizations" to launder and distribute money.

Some of the money was undoubtedly sent back to the US. Some of this money went to finance various Turkish/Israeli 'lobbying' efforts, including the American Turkish Council, the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, and the Turkish American Cultural Alliance. Some of this money financed various 'lobbying' groups including ex-House Speaker Bob Livingston's The Livingston Group and ex-congressman Stephen Solarz's various lobbying companies. Some of this money was shovelled into "campaign contributions – legal and illegal, declared and undeclared" for congress members, including Roy Blunt, Tom Lantos, and Dan Burton. Some of this money was simply stuffed into suitcases for ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and presumably others. And of course, most of this money simply went into personal bank accounts via First Merchant Bank's correspondent banks "including JP Morgan Chase, BNP Paribas, Doha Bank, Mizuho, Riyad Bank, and UBS."

But not all of the money was sent to the US. As Sibel says in the interview:

"This bank was also used, actively, by certain government agencies in the US, with certain operations dealing with Central Asia"

Sibel doesn't elaborate on this point, probably because she can't without facing severe repercussions, but the idea that US government agencies were using a terrorist-financing, money-laundering bank for 'certain operations' in Central Asia is cause for much concern. Of even greater concern is the possibility that the US government might be 'forced' to ignore evidence in some particularly egregious crimes in order to cover up their involvement in other nefarious activity.

Sibel has often noted that the US government has been busy establishing military bases in Central Asia, and that there are "certain entities (involved) within other countries - such as Turkey, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan - many Central Asian countries... it's not necessarily only governmental" - and that the US government, particularly the Pentagon and State Departments, have "absolutely covered up the involvement of certain entities."

Similarly, Sibel says that both the Pentagon and State Department intervened to prevent relevant counter-intelligence information being transferred to the FBI's counter-terrorism division, and elsewhere, where it could be acted upon "involving money laundering tied to some terrorist activities, by let's say, Turkish individuals, or some Pakistani individuals, or entities here in the US (whether official governmental related entities, or others.)"

Which "certain operations" in Central Asia could Sibel be talking about that could possibly justify turning a blind eye (or worse) to all this? I wrote about one possibility in 2008 :

"(An) illegal, covert, CIA operation involving the intentional Islamization of Central Asia. This operation has been ongoing since the fall of the Soviet Union in an ongoing Cold War to control the vast energy resources of the region - Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan - estimated to be worth $3 trillion"

For that article, Sibel said:

"You've got to look at the big picture. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the super powers began to fight over control of Central Asia, particularly the oil and gas wealth, as well as the strategic value of the region.

Given the history, and the distrust of the West, the US realized that it couldn't get direct control, and therefore would need to use a proxy to gain control quickly and effectively. Turkey was the perfect proxy; a NATO ally and a puppet regime. Turkey shares the same heritage/race as the entire population of Central Asia, the same language (Turkic), the same religion (Sunni Islam), and of course, the strategic location and proximity.

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam."

Sibel added that, during this time, the US government 'harbored, supported and resourced' a multi-billion dollar enterprise, which established madrassas and mosques throughout Central Asia and the Balkans. Was First Merchant Bank used to finance this Central Asian project?

Sibel does say in the latest interview that family members of the presidents of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan also used First Merchant Bank - presumably to either launder money or make illegal payments. Sibel says that the brother of one of the Turkish presidents, Süleyman Demirel was an owner of the bank. Mizgin says (update: see here) that is Murat Demirel (although the Washington Post identifies Murat as the nephew of the president.) Turkish prosecutors wanted "a record 4,727 years in prison" for Murat's role in embezzling money from another bank that he owned. He is said to have laundered the money though "offshore banks in northern Cyprus," which may very well include First Merchant Bank.

Were certain "US government agencies" also paying off government officials in Central Asia , up to and including their presidents, via First Merchant Bank? If so, why? Was it to gain access via bribes to the massive oil and gas concessions available in Central Asia? Were there illegal payments made to ensure the establishment of military bases in the region? Or perhaps these certain US agencies were helping to fund the Susurluk gang, and/or other similar gangs, involved in "Strategy of Tension" activities throughout the region.

In fact, Sibel notes in the interview that two of the main people involved in her case, Under-Secretary of State Marc Grossman and the Defense Intelligence Agency's Lt. Col Douglas Dickerson, were both prematurely pulled out of Turkey in the aftermath of the Susurluk scandal. Furthermore, Sibel has frequently noted that the particular FBI counter-intelligence operation that she worked on was opened at the end of 1996 (the trigger event for the Susurluk scandal, the car crash in Susurluk, was in November 1996.) It is certainly possible that the Susurluk event triggered the FBI's investigation.

In the interview, Sibel says that "Just a simple check on the Dickersons would have brought out so much information and the stuff that they are considering State Secrets Privilege," adding that at the end of 2001, Dickerson "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."

(Dickerson tried to 'recruit' Sibel to conduct espionage in 2001 when she worked as a translator for the FBI, alongside his wife, Melek Can Dickerson, who is reported to work for Turkish intelligence. The Dickersons were forced to flee the country when Sibel reported them. They went to Belgium to work for NATO, then Japan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Douglas Dickerson is now back in the US to finish an MBA at Fuqua at Duke University.)

One other interesting part of the interview, highlighted by Mizgin, is that indicted spy Larry Franklin was working with Richard Perle and Douglas Feith at the ATC way back in 1994. According to Sibel, Franklin was "one of the top people providing information and packages during 2000 and 2001." Despite many media reports to the contrary, Larry Franklin is not currently in jail, and it is not clear what will happen to him if the trial of Rosen & Weissman from AIPAC doesn't proceed as planned in June.

(Speaking only for me)

New Interview

2009-04-18T20:30:00.000+10:00

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

2008-09-05T23:26:00.001+10:00

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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