Media Alert

I'll be on Scott Horton's radio show on Tuesday at 12.15pm Eastern for 45 minutes.

You can listen live here, and I'll try to get a copy of the program too.

I suspect we'll be talking about Sibel's case :-)

Update, the audio is here (but not great quality) I'll have the transcript soon.

FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds: 'I Will Tell All, & Name (new) Names'

Former FBI translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has promised to tell us everything she knows about treason at the highest level of the US government - with one proviso:

"Here's my promise to the American Public: If anyone of the major networks --- ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX --- promise to air the entire segment, without editing, I promise to tell them everything that I know."

Edmonds, "the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America," has been trying to expose criminal activity, treason, at the highest levels of the US Government - Congress, Pentagon and State Dept - since she became aware of the crimes in 2001 and 2002.

Edmonds has exhausted every conceivable channel in the courts, Congress, and elsewhere, and is now willing to risk criminal charges to ensure that the American people learn how their government really 'works.'

BradBlog has the exclusive.

*****

From BradBlog (in full, with permision)

EXCLUSIVE: FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Will Now Tell All - and Faces Charges if Necessary - to Any Major Television Network That Will Let Her

She's Prepared to Name Names, Including Those of Two 'Well-Known' Congress Members Involved in Criminal Corruption

The 'Most Gagged Person in U.S. History' Tells The BRAD BLOG She's Now Exhausted All Other Channels...

-- By Brad Friedman

Attention CBS 60 Minutes: we've got a huge scoop for you. If you want it.

Remember the exclusive story you aired on Sibel Edmonds, originally on October 27th, 2002, when she was not allowed to tell you everything that she heard while serving as an FBI translator after 9/11 because she was gagged by the rarely-invoked "States Secret Privilege"? Well, she's still gagged. In fact, as the ACLU first described her, she's "the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America".

But if you'll sit down and talk with her for an unedited interview, she has told The BRAD BLOG, she will now tell you everything she knows.

Everything she hasn't been allowed to tell since 2002, about the criminal penetration of the FBI where she worked, and at the Departments of State and Defense; everything she heard concerning the corruption and illegal activities of several well-known members of Congress; everything she's aware of concerning information omitted and/or covered up in relation to 9/11. All of the information gleaned from her time listening to and translating wire-taps made prior to 9/11 at the FBI.

Here's a handy bullet-point list, as we ran it in March of 2006, for reference, of what she's now willing to tell you about.

"People say, 'why doesn't she just come forward and spill the beans?' I have gone all the way to the Supreme Court and was shut down, I went to Congress and now consider that shut down," she told The BRAD BLOG last week when spoke with her for comments in relation to our story on former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's original attempt to move a resolution through the U.S. House in 2000 declaring the 1915 massacre of 1.5 million ethnic Albanians in Turkey as "genocide".

"Here's my promise to the American Public: If anyone of the major networks -- ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX -- promise to air the entire segment, without editing, I promise to tell them everything that I know," about everything mentioned above, she told us.

"I can tell the American public exactly what it is, and what it is that they are covering up," she continued. "I'm not compromising ongoing investigations," Edmonds explained, because "they've all been shut down since."

Against all enemies

I've renamed the blog "Against All Enemies" as per our recent discussion.

And I should have some new posts coming soon.

traveling

I'm traveling, blogging will be light

(bump)

Sibel Edmonds case: The real culprits of 911

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has made a number of disturbing claims about the 911 attacks, but perhaps the most disconcerting is her oft-repeated statement that the US authorities have covered up an entire organizational layer within al-Qaeda.

In the documentary, Kill The Messenger, Sibel says:

"They haven’t mentioned anybody who actually is connected to Al Qaida, in mid or higher level."

Similarly, Sibel often says:

"And I would like to give an analogy - if you take the War on Drugs, imagine if they only went after street dealers and they refused to investigate the mid-level dealers or the drug lords. This is very similar."

As we approach another 911 anniversary, it's time we learnt:
1) Who are these mid and high-level al-Qaida operatives?
2) What role did they play in planning 911?
3) What operational support did they provide?
4) Why they are still roaming free today?
5) Why did the US authorities continually exclude key participants from the official narrative?

*******

Sibel Edmonds is the most gagged woman in US history making it a little it difficult for us, the public, to have a detailed understanding of everything she knows about al-Qaida and the 911 attacks, but she has given interviews and written a number of great articles and letters which enable us to put some of the pieces together.

Immediately after the release of the 911 Commission report, Sibel wrote an open letter to Thomas Kean and the Commission in which she chided the 911 Commission panel for ignoring important issues related to the attacks, and she also made public some of her closed-door testimony to the 911 Commission.

For example, in that letter, Sibel identified specific warnings from April 2001 that:

"1) Osama bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting four or five major cities;
2) the attack was going to involve airplanes;
3) some of the individuals in charge of carrying out this attack were already in place in the United States;
4) the attack was going to be carried out soon, in a few months."

As we all know, this information was not included in the Commission report, and was barely mentioned in the US media even though it was confirmed in the Chicago Tribune and FBI Director Robert Mueller was surprised that he wasn't asked about it by the 911 Commission. In fact, according to Sibel,

"(A)fter 9/11 the agents and the translators were told to "keep quiet" regarding this issue."

More importantly, for today's purposes, I want to focus on this statement from the same letter:

"The public has still not been told of the intentional obstruction of intelligence. The public has not been told that certain information, despite its relevance to terrorist activities, is not shared with counterterrorism units. This was true prior to 9/11, and it remains true today. If counterintelligence receives information about terrorism that implicates certain nations, semi-legit organizations or the politically powerful in this country, then that information is not shared with counterterrorism, regardless of the consequences. In certain cases, frustrated FBI agents have cited "direct pressure by the State Department." The Department of Justice Inspector General received detailed evidence regarding this issue. I provided your investigators with an account of this issue, the names of other witnesses willing to corroborate this, and the names of U.S. officials involved in these transactions and activities."

In order to understand this, we need to understand a little bit about how the FBI operates. 'Counterintelligence' (CI) is essentially a monitoring organization which routinely investigates various groups - such as embassies, and groups like AIPAC and the American Turkish Council (ATC) - which might be involved in criminal activity, or otherwise might be able to provide valuable information. If and when CI comes across evidence of criminality, they are supposed to forward that information and evidence to other divisions of the FBI which have the authority, and responsibility, to act on the information and arrest the guilty parties. Typically the cases will be forwarded to, for example, Public Corruption, or Narcotics, or in this case, Counter Terrorism (CT).

As Sibel indicates, prior to 911, the State Department put pressure on people at FBI HQ to block the transfer of certain cases to the actionable divisions within the FBI. Outrageously, even immediately after 911, the State Department continued to refuse CI permission to pass significant information to Counter-terrorism that was directly relevant to the 911 attacks. In other words, while the Bush administration was rushing through the PATRIOT ACT, rounding up thousands of 'suspects' and gutting the Constitution, the State Department was protecting many of the key participants in the mass murder on 9/11 in order to protect 'sensitive diplomatic relations.'

Here's Sibel describing the cover-up:

"What occurred with the 911 related investigation - be it the FBI, or the Department of Defense, or the Department of State, or the CIA or the Pentagon - they choose to basically publicize the deal at the hijacker level - and completely went about covering up certain entities that they had DIRECT evidence, DOCUMENTED evidence of the support networks - be it the financial support networks, or communications, or obtaining visas - they have not touched those individuals. Those individuals are still roaming free! Today!"

And here's Sibel again, making the same point:

"I will give you an analogy, okay? Say if we decided to have a "war on drugs," but said in the beginning, "right, we're only going to go after the young black guys on the street level..." But we decided never to go after the middle levels, let alone the top levels...

It's like this with the so-called war on terror. We go for the Attas and Hamdis – but never touch the guys on the top."

Which people are Sibel talking about?
Sibel is talking about three different, though often over-lapping, groups of: a) Those who were directly involved in planning and/or facilitating the 911 attacks, b) Those who knowingly, specifically, intentionally provided and facilitated 'indirect' support functions for the attacks c) Those who support and finance al-Qaeda generally.

Let's begin at the highest level. In Sibel's "THE HIGHJACKING OF A NATION - Part 1" she quotes Senator Bob Graham's numerous statements that Saudi Arabia's support for some of the 911 hijackers has been hidden in the redacted 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report into 911. Sibel notes:

"What Graham is trying to establish in his book and previous public statements in this regard, and doing so under state imposed ‘secrecy and classification’, is that the classification and cover up of those 27 pages is not about protecting ‘U.S. national security, methods of intelligence collection, or ongoing investigations,’ but to protect certain U.S. allies. Meaning, our government put the interests of certain foreign nations and their U.S. beneficiaries far above its own people and their interests. While Saudi Arabia has been specifically pointed to by Graham, other countries involved have yet to be identified." (emphasis mine)

In various other interviews and articles, Sibel gives us some clues as to which 'other countries' she is pointing to. For example, in this 2006 interview, Sibel says

We're not just talking about - as they say - Saudi Arabia and Egypt - but they have glossed over the involvement of certain entities within other countries - such as Turkey, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan - many Central Asian countries.

They have absolutely covered up the involvement of certain entities - it's not necessarily only governmental - from these other countries - Central Asia - they call it "Sensitive Diplomatic Relations' - you know they are putting (military) bases there.

Please note that not only is the US establishing military bases in these countries, these countries are generally:
1) Major customers for US military hardware
2) US 'allies'
3) Anti-democracy, anti-freedom, police states
4) Major players in the heroin trade
5) Supporters of various terrorist activity

Sibel describes the US' hypocrisy (if that's the correct descriptor), particularly as it relates to Turkey, in The Highjacking of a Nation: Part 2:

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

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

In summary, certain US allies protect a bunch of organizations which support al Qaeda and the Taliban. Despite this, these organizations, and their host countries, are protected by the US government under the guise of protecting 'sensitive diplomatic relations' and "protecting certain foreign business relations."

When Sibel first began claiming publicly that the US was covering up the role of certain allies in 911, her claims sounded so outrageous that she was largely dismissed. In 2007 it has become accepted fact. For example, when Presidential hopeful Barack Obama states that Pakistan, a US ally, is protecting Osama bin Laden, there is no about about whether this is true or not, only what to do about it. Similarly, Senator Bob Graham says in his book: "It was as if the President’s loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America’s safety."


Some Specific Examples of Hiding the Culprits
In this section, I'll take a look at some examples of organizations and individuals that were believed by the FBI to have played roles in 911 but have escaped any accountability.

American Turkish Council (ATC)
The ATC is a mini-AIPAC - a lobbying group where Turkey's business and military leaders interface with America's finest; current politicians from both parties, CEOs from the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), and former high-level officials acting as lobbyists. The ATC was being monitored by FBI counterintelligence (as well as CIA counterintelligence (Brewster Jennings)) and much of the information that Sibel learned is believed to have come from the surveillance of the ATC. Sibel says that the ATC is essentially a front organization for various criminal activity - ranging from nuclear black market, heroin trafficking and illegal arms sales - and was being "monitored in a 9/11 investigation."

Despite the ATC's role in all of this criminal activity, it is demonstrably untouchable and is alive and well today. In fact, Sibel goes as far as to say that the ATC is basically a representative arm of the U.S. government, lobbyists, foreign agents, and the MIC. It's not a surprise, therefore, that the ATC has some type of informal 'protected' status, and that the FBI can't act on any of the information uncovered in any of the counter-intelligence operations.


Melek Can Dickerson
Dickerson joined the FBI in October 2001 as a Turkish translator. She had previously worked at the ATC and two other organizations that were the targets of FBI counterintelligence. Almost immediately, Dickerson began engaging in various espionage activities including attempting to recruit Sibel and other translators into the espionage ring, intentionally covering up FBI evidence which implicated her friends at the ATC and elsewhere, stealing documents and leaking them to her friends, and falsifying "top-secret documents related to 9/11 detainees" in an attempt to falsely exonerate her guilty associates.

Sibel's claims regarding Dickerson were investigated and validated by the FBI. Remarkably, Dickerson was allowed to keep her Top Secret clearance, and was allowed to continue translating Top Secret information regarding her friends and associates, including 911 investigations, for another 6 months until she fled the US.

Top Targets of 911 Investigation
Melek Can Dickerson and her husband, USAF Major Doug Dickerson, offered to introduce Sibel to some of their friends, including two Turkish guys who belonged to the ATC and worked out of the Turkish embassy in DC. According to Sibel, "These two people were the top targets of our investigation!"

For one reason or other, these two (and maybe more) "top targets" of the 911 investigation were allowed to leave the US in mid-2002 without ever having even been interviewed. Prior to Robert Mueller's testimony at the 911 Commission, Sibel prepared a list of questions for the Commissioners to ask Mueller including:

"Director Mueller, is it true that several top targets of FBI investigations, related to support networks of terrorist activities, were allowed to leave the United States, months after the 9-11 attacks, without ever being questioned? Why?"

That question remains unanswered.


"Blueprints, pictures and building material for skyscrapers"
Another case that was apparently ignored by the US authorities was a mid-2001 wiretap that Sibel translated of a prisoner who had been arrested on narcotics charges. The FBI agents suspected that he might be involved in terrorism-related activity and wiretapped his phone calls from prison. In one phone call, this individual organized for blueprints, photos & details of the building material of the World Trade Center to be sent to (presumably) the authors of the 911 atacks who were hiding in a remote border location somewhere in the Middle East. The wiretap also "revealed illegal activities in obtaining visas from certain embassies in the Middle East through network contacts and bribery."

Immediately after 911, another wiretap captured this same individual congratulating an associate on the successful attack.

Who was this individual? Who did he phone to deliver the blueprints? Was he a mastermind of 911? Was he acting on his own initiative? If not, at whose behest (and why was he doing from jail?)? Who was he congratulating? We don't know the answer to any of these questions.

In fact, in July 2002, FBI Director Robert Mueller "maintained... that the 19 al-Qaida hijackers operated independently in the U.S. and were an isolated case" telling the joint congressional 911 inquiry:

"As far as we know, the (hijackers) contacted no known terrorist sympathizers in the United States,"

Mueller was effectively lying (although he may have technically given himself wiggle-room). As Sibel said, the US authorities

"completely went about covering up certain entities that they had DIRECT evidence, DOCUMENTED evidence of the support networks - be it the financial support networks, or communications, or obtaining visas... They have absolutely covered up the involvement of certain entities - it's not necessarily only governmental - from these other countries"

Of course, it's not just Mueller who knows what Sibel knows. I'll finish with two more quotes. The first is from an interview with Chris Deliso

Deliso: You think they [the government] know who they are, the top guys, and where?

Sibel: Oh yeah, they know.

Deliso: So why don't they get them?

Sibel: It's like I told you before – this would upset "certain foreign relations." But it would also expose certain of our elected officials, who have significant connections with high-level drugs- and weapons-smuggling – and thus with the criminal underground, even with the terrorists themselves.

And finally, in Kill The Messenger, Sibel says:

"I am not the only one who knows about this. Too many people know this!

The fraudulent 9/11 Commissioners, every single one of them knows about my case and the details, and the names, and all the specifics.

Several people within the U.S Congress do know.

Everybody in the FBI, involved, they know!

Everybody in Department of Justice, they know!

My goal has been exposing the criminal activities: money laundering, narcotic activities, and nuclear black market, converging with terrorist activities.

Put out the tapes, put out the wiretaps! Put out those documents! Put out the truth! The truth is going to hurt them, the truth is going to set me free!

Everybody knows except us.

It's time we knew.

Let Sibel Edmonds Speak
Call Embarrass Waxman. Demand public open hearings:
DC phone: (202) 225-3976
LA phone: 323 651-1040
Capitol switchboard phone: 800-828-0498

(let me know if you want to be added to my email list which announces whenever I have a new Sibel-related post. Subject: 'Sibel email list')

FBI divulges secrets in Sibel Edmonds case.

I recently wrote a post called "FBI, Congress: Sibel Edmonds case 'unclassified'" where I highlighted the fact that, for months, the FBI and Congress openly discussed the details of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds' case in unclassified settings, with participants who did not have security clearances. That is, none of the participants, including high level Counter-Intelligence agents, considered that the information was 'secret.'

It was only later that Attorney General John Ashcroft decided that he needed to protect certain criminals (high level US officials at the Pentagon and State Department), and he slapped the State Secrets Privilege across the case.

In an apparent about-face, attorneys from the FBI and Dept of Justice have been discussing previously-classified elements of the case and placing it on the court record.

Is the information now declassified? Will the attorneys be prosecuted for harming national security? Is the State Secrets Privilege a scam? Will Sibel Edmonds be allowed to tell all?

****

You may remember the bizarre hearings from last week on the NSA illegal spying / State Secrets case which gave us this memorable exchange (from Wired's liveblogging):

Judge Hawkins wonders if the document is really that secret?

"Every ampersand, every comma is Top Secret?," Hawkins asks.

"This document is totally non-redactable and non-segregable and cannot even be meaningfully described," (Assistant U.S. Attorney General) Bondy answers.

[snip]

Judge McKeown: "I feel like I'm in Alice in Wonderland."

(Plaintiff's attorney) Eisenberg: "I feel like I'm in Alice in Wonderland, too."

(see the Toldeo Blade's When secrets are secret' for more ludicrousness)

The reason that the USG needs to argue that "Every ampersand, every comma is Top Secret" and that the whole information is "non-redactable and non-segregable" is because the State Secrets Privilege (SSP) was originally constructed to exclude certain pieces of information from public disclosure in court actions in case the disclosure of those particular elements might harm national security interests by exposing certain justifiable State Secrets (sources and methods etc). The intent was never to use the SSP to shut down entire cases.

To get around this 'problem,' some government lawyer-types came up with a concept called the Mosaic Theory in which they argue that they can't disclose anything because foreign enemies might be able to put all the apparently disparate pieces of the 'mosaic' together and come and kill us all.

However, in actual usage the Mosaic Theory is used by governments to throw a blanket of secrecy over entire cases in order to cover-up their own criminality. In the NSA case, they need to argue that 'every ampersand' is protected and that everything is 'non-segregable' because once we start sliding down the slippery slope of actually identifying which elements of the case are legitimate secrets and which elements are covering up criminality, then the criminals within the government will be exposed and convicted.

And so it is in Sibel Edmonds' case.

The government has to argue that even the most mundane minutiae - including her date of birth - is a State Secret, and that everything about her case (actually, she's still permitted to use her name and state that she lives in the US) is 'non-segregable' because otherwise they'd be forced to explain/defend other elements of the case which can prove that high-level US officials are engaged in various criminal activities which can't be defended on legitimate grounds of national security / state secrets.

To put it more simply, they have to say 'everything is classified' otherwise they'd be in prison.

So this brings us back to the latest news. For five years the USG has said that 'everything' pertaining to Sibel and her case has been classified as a State Secret. This SSP has meant that Sibel hasn't been able to move her own case forward in the courts, and has also scared off Congress from doing anything about the case.

However, in recent depositions, FBI and DoJ attorneys have been openly discussing various items which were previously designated State Secrets under the SSP.

What say you, law-and-order types? Divulging State Secrets is treason, no?

National Security Whistleblowers Coalition statement:

GOVERNMENT REVEALS ITS OWN ABUSE OF STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE

Department of Justice, Which Claimed State Secrets Required Termination of Whistleblower Suit, Now Relies on Same "Secrets" to Avoid Tort Liability

Department of Justice and FBI attorneys, during recent depositions taken in FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds’ Federal Tort Claims case, Civil Action NO. 1:05-CV-540 (RMC), questioned witnesses regarding information previously designated "state secrets" by the Attorney General.

In April 2004, the Justice Department succeeded in preventing Edmonds from testifying in a lawsuit related to the September 11 terrorist attacks. The law firm of Motley Rice, representing September 11 family members, had subpoenaed Edmonds for a deposition, but the government argued that information provided by Edmonds "would cause serious damage to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States." By invoking the state secrets privilege and citing classification concerns, the government quashed the subpoena, and even seemingly innocuous questions regarding Edmonds’ birth place, her date of birth, her languages, even her position as a translator with the FBI, were deemed covered by the state secrets privilege. To view the information classified in the Motley Rice subpoena Click Here

Other Court proceedings in Edmonds’ case were also blocked by the assertion of the state secrets privilege, and the Congress was gagged and prevented from investigating her case through retroactive re-classification of documents by DOJ. In May 2004, the Justice Department retroactively classified Edmonds' briefings to Senators Grassley and Leahy in 2002, as well as FBI briefings regarding her allegations. The congressional gag applied to all information related to Edmonds’ case, including the interrogation and arrest warrant issued for her sister in Turkey as a result of a leak regarding Edmonds’ monitoring of certain foreign targets of the FBI. To read the timeline on Edmonds’ case Click Here.

During recent depositions conducted by the Justice Department in a lawsuit filed by Edmonds under FTC, Department of Justice and FBI attorneys, Dan Barish and Ernest Batenga, questioned witnesses on and discussed information that was previously declared state secrets. This information was communicated on the record in the presence of parties who did not have security clearance. Information such as the nature of Ms. Edmonds’ work with the FBI, the specific FBI units where she performed translation, FBI target countries, the arrest warrant issued by the Turkish government for Ms. Edmonds’ sister, and congressional letters regarding the consequences of Dickerson’s espionage case in Turkey and here in the U.S., all of which were retroactively classified by the Justice Department, was discussed and put in the court record.

Edmonds’ responded to this recent development: “The Department of Justice has now confirmed what we knew all along: it is abusing the state secrets privilege to avoid accountability, not to protect national security. How can it be that the very same information is a state secret when it would assist plaintiffs suing the government, but not a state secret when it would assist the government in defeating plaintiffs? It's long past time for Congress to put an end to the government's misuse and abuse of the state secrets privilege."

Currently Edmonds, her attorneys, and civil liberties group are reviewing this latest disturbing development and its implications on other SSP and government secrecy cases. The law firm Motley Rice has also been notified since their case is still active.

The following quotes are from legal experts and government watchdog organizations:

“This latest revelation proves that throwing Ms. Edmonds’ case out of court was a travesty and a ploy, because no state secrets would have been revealed,” said David K. Colapinto, General Counsel for the National Whistleblower Center. “If the courts won’t prevent the government from using the State Secrets Privilege as a trump card to cover-up agency wrongdoing and to defeat meritorious claims, like Ms. Edmonds’ whistleblower case, then Congress must act to stop this odious practice,” Colapinto added.

"These latest revelations are indicative of the arbitrary and self-serving and excessive use of the state secrets privilege by the Executive Branch in order to defeat specific cases of concern at the time," said Mark S. Zaid, a Washington, D.C. attorney who served as counsel to Sibel Edmonds during her state secrets litigation and who has handled several such cases. “This is just another example of why either the Judiciary needs to aggressively challenge state secret assertions by the Executive Branch or Congress needs to intervene and legislatively limit the government's ability to utilize the privilege,” added Zaid.

"This proves the point we have been making all along,” said Michael D. Ostrolenk, National Director of the Liberty Coalition. "The use of the state secrets privilege against Mrs. Edmonds is not about protecting true national security. The government was not created to protect itself and various political and financial interests but to secure Americans rights.

Nancy Talanian, Director of Bill of Rights Defense Committee, stated "The DOJ's opportunistic classifying and divulging information raises suspicions about its motivation for using State Secrets to silence Ms. Edmonds. Now that the classified information has been revealed, it is time for Ms. Edmonds to have her long-awaited day in court." (emphasis mine)

This youtube is from a recent speech Sibel gave describing the abuse of the SSP


The National Whistleblower Center also issued a statement:

National Whistleblower Center Joins Coalition in Calling For An End To "State Secrets" Abuses

The National Whistleblower Center, along with a broad coalition of liberal, libertarian and conservative groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, and the Liberty Coalition, condemns the Government's abuse of the State Secrets Privilege in the case of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, and calls for swift action by Congress and the courts to stop this abuse.
[...]
On August 23, 2007, it was revealed that the Justice Department recently publicly revealed information that it had claimed was "privileged" and "secret" in Ms. Edmonds' case. The DOJ's recent actions show that it abused the State Secrets Privilege in Ms. Edmonds' whistleblower case in order to convince the court to dismiss her case.

NWC President, Stephen M. Kohn, issued the following statement in support of Ms. Edmonds:

"...the government used that alleged 'privilege' to have her case thrown out of court and cover up FBI wrongdoing. The government abused a 'privilege' to undermine constitutionally protected free speech and ignore an Inspector General's findings of retaliation..."

(Full NWC statement.)

Let Sibel Edmonds Speak
Call Embarrass Waxman. Demand public open hearings:
DC phone: (202) 225-3976
LA phone: 323 651-1040
Capitol switchboard phone: 800-828-0498

(let me know if you want to be added to my email list which announces whenever I have a new Sibel-related post. Subject: 'Sibel email list')

Sibel Edmonds and the CIA/911 IG report

I haven't spoken to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds about yesterday's release of the CIA/911 Inspector General's report. I can imagine some of the things that she'd say, though.

On the 'plus' side, she'd probably think that there was some benefit in the fact that there was some individual 'accountability' - after all, George Tenet, his deputy John McLaughlin, and Cofer Black were at least named.

She'd probably scoff at the notion that "information wasn't shared."

And she'd probably scoff at the notion that this was an 'executive summary.'

But most of all...

It's difficult to know where to start with 'But most of all...'

A leading contender is that, whatever the actual specifics of pre-911 intelligence, we have objective, factual, specific evidence that there was a post-911 cover-up (and yes, I'm going to be guilty here of conflating FBI vs CIA intelligence for the purposes of this post)

To take one example, in April 2001, a highly credible asset told the FBI that:

1) Osama bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting four or five major cities;
2) the attack was going to involve airplanes;
3) some of the individuals in charge of carrying out this attack were already in place in the United States;
4) the attack was going to be carried out soon, in a few months.

That information did not appear in the 911 Commission report. At all. Despite testimony from Sibel, and others. This case is documented. For one reason or other, thank goodness, one element of the case - 'four or five major cities' didnt fully eventuate. Still, it was the one piece of intelligence that was most accurate, even if only in retrospect. I've joked before that if a psychic had made the same claims then it would probably have been included in the report as a 'missed opportunity.'

Another candiate for 'But most of all...' might be the fact that the FBI, at the behest of the State Department and the Pentagon, refused to investigate certain issues that involved their friends 'certain diplomatic and business relationships.'

As Sibel says:

Even after 911, we had a lot of intelligence coming regarding some of the terrorist activities, or support network of these terrorist activities, that did not come through the counterterrorism (CT) investigations but through counter intelligence (CI). And I was told, by the agents that I was working for, that the State Dept would come and ask them not to pursue, or transfer, this CI information, relevant to our fight against terrorists, to CT because it would affect certain diplomatic relations. As you said, we had 3000 people lose their lives, here they are putting under various color-coded threat system, and they're compromising our civil liberties with the PATRIOT Act, YET there are certain sensitive diplomatic relations that are worth protecting, that are worth more than our national security and what occured here!

In other words, we can't investigate the actual people behind the people behind 911 because we are making too much money off those relationships. We have to strip you of your civil liberties to protect you from terrorism, but we'll ignore 80% of the causes of terrorism because our wallets, and campaign contributions, depend on it.

Another candiate for 'But most of all...' is the issue of state involvement - by our 'quasi-allies' - in 911. Sibel gave a partial illustration in her fabulous "THE HIGHJACKING OF A NATION" series (more importantly, see Part 2)

I have another important '911' post up my sleeve - but I'll wait a week or two till we approach the anniversary.

In the meantime, here's another of my cheesy videos



Let Sibel Edmonds Speak
Call Embarrass Waxman. Demand public open hearings:
DC phone: (202) 225-3976
LA phone: 323 651-1040
Capitol switchboard phone: 800-828-0498

x-posted at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

(let me know if you want to be added to my email list for new Sibel-related post. Subject: 'Sibel email list.')