Turkey and Turkish agents

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?

Douglas Frantz and Nuclear Black Market

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.

Bruce Fein, Turkey and the Armenian Genocide.

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!

Bruce Fein & Turkey

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:

1. No military commissions except on the battlefield.
2. No evidence extracted by torture or coercion.
3. No detaining citizens as unlawful enemy combatants.
4. Restoring habeas corpus for suspected alien enemy combatants.
5. Prohibiting warrantless spying by the National Security Agency in violation of law.
6. Renouncing presidential signing statements.
7. Ending secret government by invoking State Secrets Privilege.
8. Stopping extraordinary rendition by the United States.
9. Stopping threats to prosecuting journalists under the Espionage Act of 1917.
10. 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.

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Update: More here

Obama: Armenian genocide

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.