Action Alert. Grossman to appear in DC Wednesday 10am

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

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

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

Marc Grossman is a traitor.

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

We want you to hand out flyers and two recent articles to the various Congressmen, their staff, and attendant media.

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

DEMAND OPEN PUBLIC HEARINGS

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

Former ambassador to Turkey and former State Department #3, Marc Grossman is the unnamed senior official in the UK Times' recent blockbuster "For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets"

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


Please also contact Committee Chairman, Henry Waxman.
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-5051

-----------------------
Please take copies of the following two articles with you to the event (some snippets below). I've also created a 'flyer' for you to hand out. (PDF for download) . Sorry about the rushed job, we only got word of this late.

From the UK Times, January 6, 2008:

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets

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

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official (MARC GROSSMAN) in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.
[…]
“He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”



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


From American Conservative Magazine, January 2008
Found in Translation. FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds spills her secrets.

Marc Grossman was recorded by FBI
* Tipping off criminal suspects regarding CIA’s WMD cover company Brewster Jennings in 2001
* Planting criminals in US Nuclear labs to steal secrets
* Picking up $15,000 cash bribe
* Setting free four 9/11 suspects without interrogation


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

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

DEMAND OPEN PUBLIC HEARINGS


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


Bradblog has more

download the flyer here PDF for download

Philip Giraldi

Ex CIA agent Philip Giraldi, who was based in Turkey, has a terrific new piece up at the American Conservative "Found in Translation. FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds spills her secrets."

First paragraph:

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

Final paragraph:

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

Read the rest here.

UK media slams US media on Sibel Edmonds case

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the spies involved, FBI translator Melek Can Dickerson, was known to have worked for the American Turkish Council (ATC) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA). These organizations were known to be targets of FBI counterintelligence operations. This was publicly confirmed by the FBI and Congress at the time.

Another of the spies identified at the time, AF Major Douglas Dickerson, the husband of Melek Can Dickerson, was working for Douglas Feith at the Pentagon. He had previously worked with Marc Grossman in Turkey.

We know that both Feith and Grossman are two of the prime guilty parties in Sibel's case.

These two spies, Melek Can Dickerson and Douglas Dickerson, were permitted to leave the country while under active investigations by the US Senate Judiciary, by the Department of Justice's Inspector General (IG), by the Pentagon's IG, and by FBI.

*****************

In an article three weeks ago, the UK's Times reported:

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

We already knew this, and much of the other information reported in the Times.

Consider that in October 2002, CBS' 60 Minutes reported:

"Edmonds... revealed that the Turkish intelligence officer had spies working for him inside the US State Department and at the Pentagon."

Mainstream American journalists, from the Washington Post to CNN, knew about this, and mostly refused to report on it.

US journalists have been either too lazy, or complicit, to report on anything but the most trivial of Sibel's claims, including 'mismanagement' within the FBI, particularly the translation division. However, even if they had initially focussed on the 'mismanagement' of the FBI, they ought to have been able to follow up and connect some of the dots.

Here again is 60 Minutes, October 2002:

Take the case of (Melek) Jan Dickerson, a Turkish translator who worked with Sibel Edmonds. The FBI has admitted that when Dickerson was hired last November, the bureau didn't know that she had worked for a Turkish organization being investigated by the FBI's own counterintelligence unit, and they didn't know she'd had a relationship with a Turkish intelligence officer stationed in Washington who was the target of that investigation.

This information was in a then-public letter written by Senators Leahy and Grassley to Attorney-General John Ashcroft in August 2002, after they had held hearings into Sibel's case, where they note that the FBI verified these facts. This was also later confirmed in the Justice Department's IG report.

Melek Can Dickerson in fact had worked with at least two organizations that were targets of FBI investigations, the American Turkish Council (ATC) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), and she was actively preventing the FBI agents from receiving important translations from the wiretaps pertaining to these organizations. The information that Dickerson was blocking related to:

"activities to obtain the United States military and intelligence secrets."

Again, we knew all of this in 2002. We knew that the FBI was running a counter-intelligence operation against certain organizations regarding the theft of military and intelligence secrets and that foreign elements had spies working for them in the Pentagon and State Department.

We also knew that Melek Can Dickerson was married to Air Force Major Douglas Dickerson. Douglas Dickerson worked in weapons procurement in Turkey from approximately 1992-1997, based in the attache in Ankara, working under then-Ambassador Marc Grossman, the "senior official" identified in the recent Times article.

In the summer of 2002, while Melek Can Dickerson was being investigated, the Pentagon IG was also investigating Douglas Dickerson regarding these espionage charges/allegations. The official letter sent by the Pentagon specifically mentions Dickerson's involvement with the American Turkish Council.

At the time, Major Douglas Dickerson was working with another of the key perpetrators in Sibel's case, Douglas Feith, at the Pentagon. Whatever "duties" he was conducting at the ATC were presumably on behalf of Douglas Feith.

The Dickersons left the country in 2002 while they were both under active investigations by Senate Judiciary Committee, by the Justice Department's IG, the Pentagon's IG, and by the FBI itself.

In their August 2002 letter to Ashcroft, Senators Leahy and Grassley note that they were concerned that the Dickersons were leaving the country, before the investigations would be completed, and that "...there will be little or no assurance that (Dickerson) will return or cooperate with an investigation in the future." Their concerns were well-founded.

Grassley and Leahy also wrote that they were concerned that:

"...the FBI currently opposes depositions of the monitor and her husband as part of the investigation into this case.
[...]
It is unclear, then, why the FBI is taking this position in the wake of such important allegations bearing on national security."

Again, American reporters knew all of this in 2002. They knew that there were spies in the Pentagon and the State Department who were enabling the theft of military and intelligence secrets, and they knew that the Pentagon and the FBI were actively involved in covering it up.

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

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

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

.

Who could argue with him?

Scott Horton interview

I was interviewed again by Scott Horton of AntiWar radio regarding the latest in Sibel's case.

You can find it here (45 mins)

Dan Ellsberg slams MSM's failure re Sibel Edmonds

In response to the latest stories in the UK Times - including yesterdays's blockbuster proving that the FBI is lying about the existence of a multi-year counter-intelligence operation involving criminality at the highest levels of the US government - famed Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has written a new op-ed.

Ellsberg calls out Waxman and Leahy for sitting on the evidence for years, and he suggests that other whistleblowers come forward in the case with more documents and evidence.

But Ellsberg saves his best for the US media.

********

In Bradbrog's terrific coverage of Sunday's Times piece, he quotes former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds:

"I have had [American] reporters call me and tell me that I have 'stumbled on some big time national security, covert operation'," she continued, explaining that as the reason given by some for staying away from the story.

"Well, Iran-Contra was a goddamn covert operation too! Even if that's what they're telling reporters in the U.S., it doesn't make the operation any less illegal. And the cover-up of that is outrageous," she told us tonight.

Ellsberg excoriates the media - the journalists and the corporate owners - for abiding by this nonsense, citing Iran-Contra, illegal spying and secret torture camps as examples where the fact that the operations were authorized at the highest levels doesn't negate the fact that they are criminal, and doesn't negate the public's right to know.

Of course, we don't have any evidence that Sibel 'stumbled on some big time national security, covert operation,' all evidence points to the fact that powerful people are profiting from the entire enterprise and that's why they want to keep it under wraps. As far as we know, nobody from the government has asked Sibel to keep quiet and explained that there are legitimate national security implications, all we have is a few journalists cravenly using that 'excuse' as cover for their cowardice.

In November, Bradblog reported Dan Ellsberg saying:

"I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to 'How do we deal with Sibel?'... The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn't get into the media. "

It appears that after five years the government's new plan to 'deal with Sibel' was to start a new whisper campaign, telling journalists that she stumbled onto a top secret covert operation! Of course, if any of the ostensible targets of this purported sting operation has ever read my blog then they'd have realized what was going on and extricated themselves from the operation years ago. Every possible 'target,' and every intelligence agency in the world will be aware of the details of this case - so there's no possible legitimate justification for keeping the whole thing under wraps any more, except to shield the guilty from accountability for their crimes.

Here's a short (90 sec) video of Ellsberg discussing Sibel and the need and duty of whistleblowers.




From Daniel Ellsberg's op-ed, "US Media Covering Up for Government?" (courtesy of Bradblog):

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

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

[...]

In support of the official cover-up, various American journalists in the last weeks have reportedly received calls from "intelligence sources" hinting that "what Sibel Edmonds stumbled onto" is not a rogue operation by American officials and Congressmen working to their own advantage --- as believed by Edmonds and some other former or active FBI officials --- but a sensitive covert operation authorized at high levels. If there is any truth to that, we clearly have another prize candidate --- giving us, as blowback, the Pakistani Bomb and nuclear sales --- in the category of "worst covert operation in U.S. history", rivaling such contenders as the Bay of Pigs, Iran-Contra, and the secret CIA torture camps abroad.

In the first two of those, the American press gullibly responded to official warnings of "sensitivity" and sat on information they should have reported (as did the New York Times, for a year, on the illegal NSA surveillance program). If the Washington Post had heeded such warnings and demands with respect to the covert torture camps, they would have missed a well-earned Pulitzer Prize and the camps would still be torturing.

Many, if not most, covert operations deserve to be disclosed by a free press. They are often covert not only because they are illegal but because they are wildly ill-conceived and reckless. "Sensitive" and "covert" are often synonyms for "half-assed" or "idiotic," as well as for "criminal," as the pattern of activities revealed by Edmonds would appear to be if it were truly presidentially authorized. These activities persist, covertly, to the point of national disaster because the press neglects what our First Amendment was precisely intended to protect and encourage it to do: expose wrongdoing by officials.

Thank you Mr Ellsberg.

As an aside, where are the major bloggers on this story? They justifiably criticize journalists for being stenographers, and they justifiably criticize journalists for delaying stories like such as the New York Times withholding the illegal spying story for a year. Where are they on this story? It's time to step up, people.


***********

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

Cross-posted at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

UK Times: Official Documents Prove FBI lied to protect US officials

The UK's Sunday Times has another explosive article out tonight.

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

The Times has obtained official documents which prove that the FBI is lying about the existence of a counterintelligence operation targeting high-level US officials and Turkish operatives.

The FBI's comments demonstrate conclusively that either:
a) They are lying, or
b) They have destroyed the evidence of this multi-year investigation concerning the corruption of high-level US officials, the nuclear black market, money laundering and narcotics trafficking.

****

The revelations in the Times are also the first known incident where official FBI documents have been leaked to the press confirming the FBI's counterintelligence operations targeting Turkish operatives in US. According to the Times, these operations have been taking place since 1996.

Destruction of Evidence?
The Times has obtained an official FBI document which confirms the existence of the Turkish counter-intelligence operation, including the official Case Number of the operation. This case number, 203A-WF-210023, has been very tightly held because it directly ties the Turkish operation to specific documents and wiretaps which can then be used as evidence.

The FBI has, till recently, been very careful not to respond to any requests that might disclose, confirm or deny any information in this matter, 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.

With the FBI claiming that these documents don't exist, we must conclude either that they are demonstrably lying, or that they have destroyed all the evidence.

Unfortunately for the FBI, we are aware of at least two other cases where this operation was referenced, and those references were documented outside the FBI. The first case was that of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds; her case was reported by the Justice Department's Inspector General, as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the second case was that of former FBI Special Agent Gilbert Graham, whose cases was also documented in Congress and by the Inspector General.

If the FBI is telling the truth that these documents do not (currently) exist, then the FBI must have destroyed them. Did they destroy ALL the copies that existed? Did the FBI retrieve ALL the copies and references seen by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Inspector General's report which was seen by Henry Waxman's office and perhaps elsewhere? How far did they go to retrieve the evidence? We do know that in May 2004, two years after the Senate Judiciary Committee held unclassified hearings into Sibel's case, the Department of Justice retroactively classified details of those hearings. Did the DoJ destroy all the evidence, and all the case files, at the same time?

We also know that at least one other FBI Special Agent filed classified protected reports in early 2002. Special Agent Gilbert Graham, one of Sibel's bosses, worked on "counterintelligence investigations involved espionage activities by Turkish officials and agents in the United States." Graham's primary concern, according to the unclassified version of his filings was that the FBI was using phony FISA warrants to spy on "high-profile U.S. public officials."

Gilbert Graham's filings with the Inspector General, as well as his evidence to the Senate Judiciary Committee certainly contained the relevant Case Numbers that the FBI is now denying exists. Were all of Graham's reports destroyed too?

For years, Sibel has challenged US officials: (youtube):

"We have the facts, we have the documents, we have the witnesses. Put out the tapes, put out the documents, put out the intercepts. Put out the truth."

The FBI is apparently still obstructing justice, and still blocking the truth from coming out.

Asked for a comment, Sibel said:

"I cannot comment on the contents of the case file, however I can tell you with 100% certainty that the FBI lied when they said that it doesn't exist."

The FBI/DoJ is currently investigating the CIA's destruction of evidence, the torture/interrogation tapes of al-Qa'ida suspect Abu Zubaydah and others. If they have destroyed all the evidence in this Turkish Counter-Intelligence operation, how can they possibly be trusted to investigate the CIA's destruction of evidence?


Brewster Jennings
The official document obtained by The Times has some very damning evidence regarding Marc Grossman, former #3 at the State Department and former Ambassador to Turkey. Two weeks ago, The Times ran an explosive article detailing how Marc Grossman was a mole for foreign criminal groups which stole American nuclear secrets and sold them to the highest bidder.

According to the latest Times article, they have an anonymous letter which:

claims the government official [Grossman] warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

Former CIA agent Phil Giraldi, who was stationed in Turkey, is another who is familiar with these matters. Giraldi wrote a terrific article for the American Conservative in 2006 describing Sibel's case. In Kill The Messenger, a documentary about the nuclear black market element of Sibel case, Giraldi says:

"And that Brewster Jennings was, apparently, working against the target of Turkey, meaning that Turkey was being investigated by the CIA as a proliferator of weapons."

One of Brewster Jennings targets was the American Turkish Council, a lobbying group known to be a hub of the activity facilitating the theft and sale of nuclear secrets, among other things.

Journalist Chris Deliso wrote a terrific article in Nov 2005 linking Marc Grossman, Brewster Jennings, the American Turkish Council and the Turkish connection to the nuclear black market. Although the new Times article doesn't mention Grossman by name, it is clear that Grossman is again the unnamed former official in this article.

Crimes, Cover-ups, and... Consequences?
We are all familiar with the cliche that 'the cover-up is worse than the crime,' but that is often nonsense. Just as in the CIA tape destruction case, here we have rational people making 'rational' decisions, not in the heat of the moment, to commit felonies by destroying evidence of treason amongst other crimes. The original crimes are much worse than the cover-up, and the guilty parties know it, that's why they decided to destroy and cover up all of the evidence.

Will Congress finally hold hearings into the foreign criminal penetration of every branch of the US government which has been repeatedly corroborated?

We have the crimes, we have the cover-ups, where are the consequences?

*******************
Digg THis

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

Sibel Edmonds Case: Nukes for sale (Pt 2)

In a blockbuster article two weeks ago, the UK's Sunday Times described how a criminal network of Turkish, Israeli, Pakistani and American diplomats and officials conspired to steal nuclear secrets and sell them to the highest bidder in the nuclear black market.

The article, based primarily on the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, noted that:

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

The decisions to preserve those "diplomatic relations" - Pakistan, Turkey and Israel - were made by people within the US Government who happened to be personally profiting from those same relationships.

In this post, I'll discuss two other dimensions of the network that the Times article didn't cover:
a) The use of Turkish front groups to supply nuclear hardware to the network
b) The extraordinary legal steps the US and UK governments have used to hide their guilt

****

Turkish Front Groups

One of AQ Khan's American suppliers was a company with strong Turkish roots called Giza Technologies in New Jersey. Giza's 'exposure' was 'officially' the result of an anonoymous email tip in 2003, however, as we know from Sibel's case, the FBI was aware of Giza's role in the AQ Khan network at least two years earlier. According to a documentary about the nuclear black market element of Sibel's case, Kill The Messenger, Giza's CEO Zeki Bilmen "was on the FBI wiretaps translated by Sibel Edmonds" who left the FBI in early 2002.

Given what we learnt in The Times, that phone call was probably between Bilmen and either the American Turkish Council or the Turkish Embassy - both targets of FBI counter-intelligence operations.

Inexplicably, Zeki Bilmen was never charged with his involvement, and Giza continues operating to this day. In 2005, Sibel said:

And (Giza's) business – well, business is good.

They have many shipments going out, coming in, all day long. To places like Dubai, Spain, South Africa, Turkey. They have branches in all these places. Yep, they're sailing along very smoothly.

When asked how this is possible, Sibel replied:

"It's beyond logical explanation. Maybe it was decided in high places that no one would touch him."

In fact, the identity of the company was even hidden in the indictment of one Humayun Khan, a procurer for the network who was close to Pakistan's ISI. In the indictment, Giza is simply referred to as 'a broker in Secaucus, New Jersey,' whereas every other company is clearly identified.

Investigative journalist Joe Trento might have an explanation for why Giza continues to operate, and why the US government wants to hide Giza's involvement. He says that

"The CIA even started using some of the Khan network’s front companies for its own purposes."

As I documented here, it is very possible that Giza one of those companies. In Kill The Messenger, an anonymous "U.S intelligence officer" who is "very familiar with Turkish espionage activities" - including Giza and the American Turkish Council - says:

"There are people within the State Department and also in the U.S Congress that were facilitating the Israelis and the Turks in obtaining proprietary information or restricted technology.

That’s why there is a gag order against Sibel Edmonds!"

That technology, he notes, can be:

"Nuclear or non nuclear. For example, computer hardware, maybe software."

Some people have wondered recently whether maybe Sibel inadvertently stumbled on a sting operation - but that is clearly not the case. The State Dept and Congress are certainly not the people who would be running a sting operation.

Further, when Sibel first reported her case to Congress, the first step taken was to make sure that this was not a covert operation, and that there weren't any double agents involved. Only after Senators Leahy and Grassley were assured this wasn't the case did they proceeded to hold unclassified hearings (which were retroactively classified.)

This shouldn't come as a surprise. Sibel has previously said that from her experience is concerned:

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

In fact, the same thing has been true for decades. As far back as 1986, the CIA was running diligent operations against the Khan network; then, as now, it was people at the State Dept who were ruining all the operations. As Seymour Hersh documented in 1993, a high-level top secret inter-governmental group was formed in 1986 "in an effort to stop illegal American exports to Pakistan and other non-nuclear nations." This group ran undercover operations to arrest those buying nuclear-related materials for Pakistan's program. Richard Barlow, "the government’s leading expert on illegal Pakistani procurement," with the full knowledge and support of his superiors at the CIA and elsewhere, was able to engineer the arrest of some of Khan's suppliers - but only after they'd learnt not to tell the State Dept what their plans were. Here's Hersh:

"The State Department’s Near East Bureau was not told of the planned operation, for fear that the officers there would tip off the Pakistanis, as they had done in the past...

“We still have cases on Pakistan and we still don’t tell State about it,” a senior Customs Service official told me recently, in anger. “The State Department constituted a security problem for us."

The Guardian effectively debunked with the same 'sting' claims recently:

"Intelligence officials on both sides of the Atlantic have said they waited until 2003 to strike against the Khan network in order to gather evidence on all its activities and all its customers.

"But what did they achieve?" Armstrong asked. "Where are all the people connected to the Khan network? There were at least 50 people in this thing, and there are only a handful of people under house arrest. Did they need three extra years to do that?""

Not only have very few guilty people suffered any consequences, the US government has even "hampered" the criminal prosecutions of some of the suppliers.

A segment on Democracy Now in 2006 notes:

Over the past year Swiss officials have requested at least four times that the Bush administration share documents and evidence related to Khan’s nuclear black market. But the United States has never responded.

Swiss officials maintain it needs U.S. assistance in order to convict three Swiss men accused of helping AQ Khan set up a secret Malaysian factory to make components for gas centrifuges.

Last week U.S. weapons expert David Albright testified before Congress and said, “I find this lack of cooperation frankly embarrassing to the United States and to those of us who believe that the United States should take the lead in bringing members of the Khan network to justice for arming our enemies with nuclear weapons.”

Albright has floated one theory as to why the Bush administration won’t help the Swiss investigators. He says the three Swiss men accused of being part of AQ Khan’s underground network may have been working for the CIA and being paid by the U.S. government.

Albright is echoing the same point made by Joe Trento - and if these firms weren't helping with a sting operation, then what on earth was the CIA using them for? The problem is that as soon as these firms are given immunity for their activities, then they immediately become a likely vehicle for all types of nefarious activities - whether it be funding illegal black-ops, or trafficking narcotics, or both.

Other American Suppliers
Giza is not the only American supplier to Khan's network. Sibel has previously told me that there are others firms. This was confirmed in 2004 by IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei. The involvement of these firms apparently "sheds new light on the activities of the network, known up to now for primarily supplying technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran." None of these firms have apparently been exposed, let alone faced any criminal charges.

Giza's Bilmen claims that he is an innocent victim, though Sibel told me that Bilmen "has social & business ties" with another supplier to Khan's network, Turkish businessman Selim Alguadis.

Other Turkish Suppliers
Giza is not the only Turkish company involved in supplying the AQ Khan network. Firstly, Turkey served as one of the transhipment hubs for components that were sourced in the US and elsewhere. Further, some of the nuclear components for Khan were actually manufactured in Turkey.

In Sibel's fantastic Highjacking of a Nation series, which outlines the contours of her case, she writes:

Turkey played a major role in Pakistan and Libya’s illicit activities in obtaining nuclear technologies. In June 2004, Stephen Fidler, a reporter for Financial Times reported that in 2003, Turkish centrifuge motors and converters destined for Libya's nuclear weapons program turned up in Tripoli aboard a ship (BBC China) that had sailed from Dubai. One of those detained individuals in this incident, a ‘respected and successful’ Turkish Businessman, Selim Alguadis, was cited in a public report from the Malaysian inspector-general of police into the Malaysian end of a Pakistani-led clandestine network that supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea with nuclear weapons technologies, designs and expertise. According to the report, “he supplied these materials to Libya." Mr. Alguadis also confessed that he had on several occasions met A Q Khan, the disgraced Pakistani scientist who has admitted transmitting nuclear expertise to the three countries. Selim Alguadis remains a successful businessman in Turkey with companies in several other countries. He was released immediately after being turned over to Turkish authorities. His partner, another well-known and internationally recognized wealthy businessman, Gunes Cire, also actively participated in transferring nuclear technology and parts to Iran, Pakistan and North Korea. Although under investigation by several international communities, Alguadis and his partners continued to roam free in Turkey and conduct their illegitimate operations via their ‘legit international business’ front companies.

Gunes Cire has since died, however his company, ETI Elektroteknik, continues to operate freely, with Cire's son now at the helm. Selim Alguadis is apparently 'under investigation' but neither he nor his company, EKA, appear to be in any trouble three years later.

It's an odd pattern. There's strong evidence of Turkish complicity in the nuclear proliferation network, yet guilty people are allowed to walk free, and Western governments go to great lengths to cover up the facts.

States (cough) Secrets

There are significant parallels between Sibel's case and the recent case of British Customs official Atif Amin. The UK government, desperate to cover its complicity in allowing the AQ Khan network to continue proliferating, is trying to shut Amin down using the Official Secrets Act, the British equivalent of the State Secrets Privilege gag that has been used to shut down Sibel's case. Informed observers widely recognize that for the Bush administration, the State Secrets Privilege is simply a 'get out of jail free' card to shield themselves when they commit egregious crimes.

The same is true in the UK. An editorial, ', Secrets and lies,' in the Guardian last Friday noted:

"National security is being invoked not to protect us but to shield politicians from embarrassment
[...]
There are genuine threats to national security and to our public and personal safety. It is a dangerous abuse if a government hoists the flag of national security and deploys the Official Secrets Act when all it is really trying to do is protect itself from embarrassment."

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

Enough is enough.


**************************
In case you missed it, the unnamed senior State Department official in last week's Times article is Marc Grossman.

*************************
In case you missed it, Sibel found a novel way of exposing the other guilty parties. She posted 18 photos on her website, without explanation. I published the faces along with the names here.

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

(cross-posted at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak)