Of Turkish Spies and Other Moles...

My good friend Phil Giraldi has written a piece for the American Conservative about the Sibel Edmonds case. Below are some of the snips from his story. I suggest that people read this, as his background as a CIA case officer makes him a writer that the corporate media cannot ignore for long:

"..After five years of thwarted legal challenges and fruitless attempts to launch a congressional investigation, Sibel Edmonds is telling her story, though her defiance could land her in jail. After reading its November piece about Louai al-Sakka, an al-Qaeda terrorist who trained 9/11 hijackers in Turkey, Edmonds approached the Sunday Times of London.

On Jan. 6, the Times, a Murdoch-owned paper that does not normally encourage exposés damaging to the Bush administration, featured a long article. The news quickly spread around the world, with follow-ups appearing in Israel, Europe, India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Japan--but not in the United States.

Edmonds is an ethnic Azerbaijani, born in Iran. She lived there and in Turkey until 1988, when she emigrated to the United States, where she received degrees in criminal justice and psychology from George Washington University. Nine days after 9/11, Edmonds took a job at the FBI as a Turkish and Farsi translator. She worked in the 400-person translations section of the Washington office, reviewing a backlog of material dating back to 1997 and participating in operations directed against several Turkish front groups, most notably the American Turkish Council."

Now pay very close attention to the below:

"The ATC, founded in 1994 and modeled on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was intended to promote Turkish interests in Congress and in other public forums. Edmonds refers to ATC and AIPAC as "sister organizations." The group's founders include a number of prominent Americans involved in the Israel-Turkey relationship, notably Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and former congressman Stephen Solarz. Perle and Feith had earlier been registered lobbyists for Turkey through Feith's company, International Advisors Inc.

The FBI was interested in ATC because it suspected that the group derived at least some of its income from drug trafficking, Turkey being the source of 90 percent of the heroin that reaches Europe, and because of reports that it had given congressmen illegal contributions or bribes. Moreover, as Edmonds told the Times, the Turks have "often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's spy agency, because they were less likely to attract attention."

Over nearly six months, Edmonds listened with increasing unease to hundreds of intercepted phone calls between Turkish, Pakistani, Israeli, and American officials. When she voiced concerns about the processing of this intelligence--among other irregularities, one of the other translators maintained a friendship with one of the FBI's "high value" targets--she was threatened. After exhausting all appeals through her own chain of command, Edmonds approached the two Department of Justice agencies with oversight of the FBI and sent faxes to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy on the Judiciary Committee. The next day, she was called in for a polygraph. According to a DOJ inspector general's report, the test found that "she was not deceptive in her answers."

But two weeks later, Edmonds was fired; her home computer was seized; her family in Turkey was visited by police and threatened with arrest if they did not submit to questioning about an unspecified
"intelligence matter."

When Edmonds's attorney filed suit to obtain the documents related to her firing, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft imposed the state-secrets gag order. Since then, she has been subjected to another federal order, which not only silenced her, but retroactively classified the statements she eventually made before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the 9/11 Commission.

--- snip ---

"Charismatic and articulate, the 37-year-old Edmonds has deftly worked the system to get as much of her story out as possible, on one occasion turning to French television to produce a documentary entitled "Kill the Messenger." Passionate in her convictions, she has sometimes alienated her own supporters and ridden roughshod over critics who questioned her assumptions. But despite her shortcomings in making her case and the legitimate criticism that she may be overreaching in some of her conclusions, Edmonds comes across as credible. Her claims are specific, fact-based, and can be documented in detail. There is presumably an existing FBI file that could demonstrate the accuracy of many of her charges."

I urge you to read the whole thing. It is some important analysis from someone who was on the other side of the secrecy wall and who has direct experience with the Turkish scene.

Follow Larisa Alexandrovna on Twitter: www.twitter.com/larisa_a

Comments

[dlswriter]

I'm beginning to think that Cheney (Bush Admin.) really wanted to bust-up Valarie Plame's (Brewster Jennings) operation, and was not actually targeting Wilson.

[DLSteinhardt]

Amazing that even with Edmonds' basically Republican background, and her preferred reporting published in the American Conservative, that most major media outlets are allergic to covering this potentially biggest story of our political age.

[RadicalWhig]

Giraldi says:

"The Justice Department IG report confirmed Edmonds’s charge that translators’ section managers issued a go-slow order shortly after the terrorist attacks to create an artificial backlog that would justify an increase in budget and manpower."

This is not true. The IG's report did not confirm a go-slow order.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0501/index.htm

See Section VI.A.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0533/app7.htm

" With regard to various other allegations made by Edmonds concerning the FBI’s foreign language program, our review substantiated some but did not substantiate others. For example, we found that certain travel by linguists was wasteful, and that a contract monitor was hired even though he had not scored high enough on the language test to qualify for the position. However, we did not find sufficient evidence to substantiate Edmonds’s allegations that the FBI condoned time and attendance abuse, an intentional slow down of work to support hiring additional analysts, or travel fraud."

[deminmo]

How about this to add:
AFP 1/22/08
"Bush signed secret orders Tuesday aimed at
accelerating the approval process for exports
of military equipment to US allies.

Just keeps getting better and better.

[kirotahoe]

the blatant corruption in washington is like a house of cards. you can pull a card and sometimes the house doesn't fall. but it is safest to never pull a card. that is congress' theory.

[ScooterLiddy]

Thank you Larisa. Keep bird dogging this story. I'll keep you as a "favorite" on Huffpo so I can continue to follow it.

[dryfactoidobotanoid]

it sounds like Charlie Wilson's War plus Iran-Contra, but with nukes.

[insultant]

Unless and until we allow the good and righteous agents within the Justice Department, FBI and CIA to stand up for the truth particularly when it involves issues of national security and treason, we will never be free. Lest a vacuum is created whereby only the evil ones are left with control.

These agencies have been reduced to nothing more that racketeers and carry no moral authority when they enforce the law. This is very dangerous and casts a cold chill on that which makes our country free.

It is the duty of Congress to oversee and and provide the American people with accountability on these rogue elements and traitors to the Constitution. Demand hearings!

[syllepsis]

Thank you, Larisa, for being one of the few to hop on this story- it is shameful that too few seem interested in this "Pandora's box of revelations."
It has been my suspicion since the Dems won in '06 that they were nervous about exactly what Giraldi mentions- that Waxman is afraid that what Edmonds has to say would damage Republicans and Democrats alike. Thus, he too is complicit.
I have seen it asserted that Brewster Jennings was outed because it intercepted WMD heading into Iraq.
Patriotism is treason. Betrayal is honor. War is peace.

[Novista]

Thanks for keeping the Sibel Edmonds story going, Larisa.

When will MSM stop playing ostrich?!

[SPENCER]

Larisa:
This excerpt from Vanity Fair's 2005 interview with Edmonds sounds intriguing as well:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9774.htm
"Edmonds had time to listen to numerous calls before the Friday meeting, and some of them sounded important. According to her later secure testimony, in one conversation, recorded shortly after [Melek Can] Dickerson (a Turkish translator close to the ATC-Spencer)reserved the targets’ calls for herself, a Turkish official spoke directly to a U.S. State Department staffer. They suggested that the State Department staffer would send a representative at an appointed time to the American-Turkish Council office, at 1111 14th St. NW, where he would be given $7,000 in cash. “She told us she’d heard mention of exchanges of information, dead drops—that kind of thing,” a congressional source says. “It was mostly money in exchange for secrets.” (A spokesperson for the A.T.C. denies that the organization has ever been involved in espionage or illegal payments. And a spokesperson for the Assembly of Turkish American Associations said that to suggest the group was involved with espionage or illegal payments is “ridiculous.”)

Another call allegedly discussed a payment to a Pentagon official, who seemed to be involved in weapons-procurement negotiations. Yet another implied that Turkish groups had been installing doctoral students at U.S. research institutions in order to acquire information about black market nuclear weapons. In fact, much of what Edmonds reportedly heard seemed to concern not state espionage but criminal activity. There was talk, she told investigators, of laundering the profits of large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder.