Sibel Edmonds Update

The most important update is that American media still refuses to cover the story of claims of nuclear treason by American officials by a FBI translator who is violating her gag order.

Edmonds claims that Marc Grossman—ambassador to Turkey from 1994-97 and undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2001-05—was a person of interest to the FBI and had his phone tapped by the Bureau in 2001 and 2002. In the third-highest position at State, Grossman wielded considerable power personally and within the Washington bureaucracy. He had access to classified information of the highest sensitivity from the CIA, NSA, and Pentagon, in addition to his own State Department. On one occasion, Grossman was reportedly recorded making arrangements to pick up a cash bribe of $15,000 from an ATC contact. The FBI also intercepted related phone conversations between the Turkish Embassy and the Pakistani Embassy that revealed sensitive U.S. government information was being sold to the highest bidder. Grossman, who emphatically denies Edmonds’s charges, is currently vice chairman of the Cohen Group, founded by Clinton defense secretary William Cohen, where he reportedly earns a seven-figure salary, much of it coming from representing Turkey.

After 9/11, Grossman reportedly intervened with the FBI to halt the interrogation of four Turkish and Pakistani operatives. According to Edmonds, Grossman was called by a Turkish contact who told him that the men had to be released before they told what they knew. Grossman said that he would take care of it and, per Edmonds, the men were released and allowed to leave the country.

Edmonds states that FBI phone taps from late 2001 reveal that Grossman tipped off his Turkish contact regarding the CIA weapons proliferation cover unit Brewster Jennings, which was being used by Valerie Plame, and that the Turk then informed the Pakistani intelligence service representative in Washington. It is to be assumed that the information was then passed on to the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network.

Edmonds also claims that Grossman was instrumental in seeding Turkish and Israeli Ph.D. students into major American research labs by godfathering visas and enabling security clearances. She says that she reviewed transcripts in which the moles in the U.S. military and academic community involved in nuclear technology reportedly carried out several “transactions” involving the sale of nuclear material or information relating to nuclear programs every month, with Pakistan being a primary buyer. In the summer of 2000, the FBI recorded a meeting between a Turkish official and two Saudi businessmen in Detroit in which nuclear information stolen from an Air Force base in Alabama was offered: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000,” the wiretap allegedly recorded. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” Edmonds told the Times.

She further reports that beginning in 1999, the FBI was investigating senior Pentagon officials who were assisting agents of foreign governments, including Turkey and Israel. Edmonds has not publicly named names at the Pentagon, but a website linked to her appears to be a non-incriminating instrument for identifying suspects without doing so directly. Its “rogues gallery” includes photos of Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. Perle was chief of the Pentagon’s prestigious Defense Policy Board when Edmonds was working at the FBI, and Feith was undersecretary of defense for policy. If either were being investigated, it would be a matter of record, as would any reasons for dropping the investigation. “If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” Edmonds told the Times....

A low-level contractor might seem poorly positioned to expose major breaches of national security, but the FBI translators’ pool, riddled with corruption and nepotism, was key to keeping these secrets from surfacing. Edmonds’s claims that the section was infiltrated by translators who should never have received security clearances and who were deliberately failing to translate incriminating material are supported by the Justice Department inspector general investigation and by an FBI internal investigation, which concluded that she had been fired after making “valid complaints.”

More at the Huffington Post:

To stop Sibel from telling her story, then Attorney General John Ashcroft subjected her to a state secrets privilege gag order after her appearance on CBS's 60 Minutes in October 2002 that not only forbade her providing details of her employment with FBI but also made the ban retroactive so that anything relating to her case would be considered a state secret. Edmonds had been discouraged by her experience with CBS as her most important points wound up on the cutting room floor. Then came the gag order, which she has observed while working assiduously to get bits and pieces of her story out in various ways. In October 2007 she decided to tell all without regard for the consequences, stating that she would provide details of her allegations to any American media outlet that would let her collaborate in the final edit so that her message would not be lost. There were no takers. Last month, The Sunday Times of London decided to pick up her story and has now produced a long feature article called "For Sale: the West's Deadliest Nuclear Secrets" plus two follow-ups. The story was picked up and replayed all over the world, but not by the mainstream media in the United States....

Article III of the Constitution of the United States defines treason as giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States. This has been interpreted by US courts to include the selling or betrayal of defense secrets to foreign powers. Sibel Edmonds is talking about treason at the highest levels of the United State government and it is clear that a cover up is going on orchestrated by the Bush Administration that is being aided and assisted by an acquiescent media. It is time that Sibel's voice be heard.

Links from BradBlog.

Tags: Sibel Edmonds, FBI, treason, nuclear secrets, Turkey, Israel, Pakistan, SCLM

Whistleblower Charges High Level Nuclear Weapons Cover-Up

Former 'Gagged' FBI Whistleblower Alleges Pentagon, State Department Officials Overheard Receiving Payoffs in Exchange for Classified Info; Crimes Covered Up at Highest Levels of Bush Administration

Headline News in London.

BradBlog has been covering this story from the start.

Sibel Edmonds Claims Former Turkish diplomat captured on tape selling nuclear secrets.

Note - I started blogging on her story in 2004.

Last October she tried to get any major US media to report the story.

Despite broken promises for hearings on her case by U.S. Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), support from Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-MI), and a number of mainstream exposés several years ago detailing aspects of her story before she was willing to break her unprecedented "States Secrets Privilege" gag order, none of the American broadcast media outlets took her up on her offer.

She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

Bradblog:

In our mid-November follow-up article, the legendary 1970's whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg had excoriated the U.S. media for their failure to cover the story, even as Edmonds was risking jail in order to expose crimes and massive corruption, allegedly, in the highest levels of the government. At the time, Ellsberg told us that he believed the information she had been forced by the Administration to withhold "is far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers."

Among other allegations:

Foreign intelligence agents from Turkey, Israel and Pakistan enlisted the support of high-level US officials in order to acquire a network of moles deep inside of sensitive American military and nuclear agencies, including "PhD students – with security clearance [at] Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent."

Well-known US officials were then bribed by foreign agents to steal US nuclear secrets. One such incident from 2000 involves an agent overheard on a wiretap discussing "nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama," in which the agent allegedly is heard saying: "We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000

Nuclear secrets were then subsequently sold by foreign agents to America's enemies, including Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Pakistani officials involved in the nuclear black market network have significant cross-over with al-Qaeda and 9/11. Officials such as the chief of ISI, Pakistan's spy agency, allegedly sent $100,000 to 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, and aides of A.Q. Kahn --- who had used the stolen secrets to develop nuclear weapons for Pakistan --- met with Osama bin Laden "weeks before 9/11...to discuss an Al- aeda nuclear device."

Elements of the US government have repeatedly shut down investigations into these crimes under the guise of protecting "certain diplomatic relations."

The US government has been aware of all of the above information since at least 2001.

In a somewhat related story it is alleged that former Speaker Hastart recieved $500,000 in bribes from Turkish citizens. Hastert resigned after reports of Department of Justice investigations linking him with convicted lobbyist Abramoff.

There are other related bombshells in reports from other bloggers: The #3 guy at the State Dept facilitated the immediate release of 911 suspects at the request of targets of the FBI's investigation.

The usual gang of suspects, us liberal bloggers, have been demanding hearings for years with little success. Last year she was begging for the media to let her name names. Now she has in pictures.

I have followed Sibel Edmonds story for a long time and she has repeatedly been found credible and the Bush administration has gagged her story and our media will not follow-up.

You can see why Bush&Co. would. Many administration members, including names you may recognize, have been selling our nuclear secrets to the highest bidders in the Middle East. But the Democrats in Congress have been too afraid to investigate because of "national security concerns." Rep. Waxman has pretty much admitted he waits until the US media will cover a story to proceed on House hearings. And the Senate committees are worse.

Investigative journalist Larisa Alexandrovna, after years of not getting the US media to pick up her story, also drops a few names.

Sibel Edmond's Website.

01/26/05 "ACLU" -- -- After her termination, many of Edmonds' allegations were confirmed by the FBI in unclassified briefings to Congress. More than two years later, in May 2004, the Justice Department retroactively classified Edmonds' briefings, as well as the FBI briefings, and forced Members of Congress who had the information posted on their Web sites to remove the documents

CannonFire: Terrorists had a lot of drug money. They used that money to buy officials in the U.S., who allowed moles to enter our most sensitive installations.

Daniel Ellsberg - Sibel's story is more explosive than the Pentagon Papers.

There is more including more bloggers but we seem to be giving the NSA supercomputer fits, I keep losing the connection to all the sites. (Pure speculation.)

Managed to get through and will add Raimondo at AntiWar.com. "We're in big trouble if even half of what Sibel Edmonds says is true… "

As Edmonds says, "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."

If a nuke ever goes off in an American city, it will probably have been stolen from our own arsenal – once the American people wake up to that scary fact, the rest will follow automatically.

How credible is she. 60 Minutes found her very credible in 2002 - video. All of her information was available in 2002 but the media didn't pursue it and the government covered it up. Now she is willing to risk going to jail to get it out.

Tags: Sibel Edmonds, FBI, treason, corruption, nukes, nuclear secrets,

Boom - Sibel Edmonds Nuke Revelations tied to BCCI

The nuclear arms spy and corruption network recorded by FBI wiretapping which Sibel Edmonds revealed has ties to the Bush family and BCCI. See also the bottom Postscript of this article.

OhMyNews - Spy Story Bombshell Rocks Washington. Note, OhMyNews in South Korea is a very popular citizen journalist site. US coverage - zero, international coverage - some.

What are the odds the only thing that comes from this is Edmonds getting jail time for revealing national security secrets?

Tags: nukes, corruption, Sibel Edmonds, BCCI, Bush&Co, treason, wiretaps

FBI translator says she was bribed not to spill beans on 9-11 cover-up

Boing Boing - Sibel Edmonds said she was hired to retranslate material that was collected prior to Sept. 11 to determine if anything was missed in the translations that related to the plot. In her review, Edmonds said the documents clearly showed that the Sept. 11 hijackers were in the country and plotting to use airplanes as missiles. The documents also included information relating to their financial activities. Edmonds said she could not comment in detail because she has been under a Justice Department gag order since October 2002.

FBI translator, Sibel Edmonds, was offered a substantial raise and a full time job in order to not go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to retranslate and adjust the translations of [terrorist] subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001 by the FBI and CIA.
Edmonds, a ten year U.S. citizen who has passed a polygraph examination, speaks fluent Farsi and Turkish and had been working part time with the FBI for six months-- commencing in December, 2001.

In a 50 reporter frenzy in front of some 12 news cameras, Edmonds said "Attorney General John Ashcroft told me 'he was invoking State Secret Privilege and National Security' when I told the FBI I wanted to go public with what I had translated from the pre 9-11 intercepts."

Salon has more. Salon has had many must read features this week and last but I find myself saving up to visit because of the commericial I have to wade through. I should use the last donation to get a subscription again except I have other pressing priorities.

Sibel case thrown out, "could damage national security"

Sibel Edmonds, who was fired as a translator for informing Congress of the inefficiencies and improprieties at the FBI, will not get her day in court.

Edmonds said the judge dismissed her lawsuit without hearing evidence from her lawyers, although the government's lawyers met with Walton at least twice privately. She noted that Walton, the judge, was appointed by President Bush.

"This shows how the separation of power has basically disappeared," Edmonds said in a telephone interview. "The judge ruled on this case without actually this ever being a case."

In his decision, Walton acknowledged that dismissing a lawsuit before the facts of the case can be heard is "Draconian."

Edmonds' lawyer, Mark S. Zaid, called the decision "another example of the executive branch's abuse of secrecy to prevent accountability."

In a recent interview she also indicated the bribery and corruption at the FBI where they knowingly may have refused to act against politically connected arms and drugs smugglers. She also informed that an interpreter with a relative at a foreign embassy might have compromised national security. She was offered higher paying opportunities at the agency if she ceased her whistle blowing.

Democracy Now interview with Sibel Edmonds

She says the FBI had information that an attack using airplanes was being planned before Sept. 11 and calls Condoleezza Rice's claim the White House had no specific information on a domestic threat or one involving planes "an outrageous lie." [includes rush transcript]

"We had not one, but we had many specific informations."

"Attorney General Ashcroft on October 18, 2002, personally asserted State Secret Privilege in my case. I would read two sentences here: 'To prevent disclosure of certain classified and sensitive national security information, Attorney General Ashcroft today asserted the State Secret Privilege in Sibel Edmonds' case. This assertion was made at the request of the F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller,' in papers filed today, and they are citing the reason that because this case would create substantial risks of disclosing classified and sensitive national security information that could cause serious damage to our country's security. They are citing that this privilege is very rare and is asserted to prevent certain information getting -- becoming public or hurting diplomatic relations. I would underline this phrase, diplomatic relations several times."

"You see, after September 11, these people -- people from the F.B.I., came forward and they blamed everything on shortage of budgets and shortage of personnel. And they said, we failed, and these were the major causes. These were the reasons. That is not accurate. We were told during the time that these people were going on TV and they were begging for people to apply for translation positions because we had this shortage, what was going on behind the scenes was exactly opposite. We were being asked not to do these translations, and let the documents pile up, because within a month or so, they were scheduled to go in front of the Senate and Congress and ask for increased budgets. In doing so, they needed to give numbers of pages, numbers of documents and audios that they were not translated due to the shortage, and needed to be translated, and that they were urgent, and in order to do so, we had to increase that number, the number of pages and the number of audio. "

Remember two words: Sibel Edmonds

TAP - On March 30, Salon's excellent Eric Boehlert interviewed this former FBI translator, who told him that she had told the 9-11 commission in closed testimony that clear warnings were received throughout the spring and summer of 2001 (Bush's watch, not Clinton's) that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted. Her name has not yet crept its way into the major American newspapers (with the interesting exception of The Washington Times). But there are many mentions in the international press, so the Washington bureaus should wake up eventually.

If Edmonds's testimony is credible -- and Republican Senator Charles Grassley has described her with exactly that word -- it's one more piece of a puzzle that Richard Clarke began to solve for us two weeks ago. Somehow, his story just keeps being corroborated. Funny thing.

US 'knew' air attack coming

US officials knew months before September 11, 2001 that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network was planning to use aircraft to carry out a terrorist attack, a former FBI translator has alleged.

Sibel Edmonds told the Independent newspaper, in an interview published on Friday, that a claim by US President George W Bush's national security advisor Condoleezza Rice that there had been no such warnings was "an outrageous lie".

"President Bush said they had no specific information about September 11 and that is accurate but only because he said September 11," Edmonds told the Independent.

There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away.

More Bush whistleblowers

Michael Springman

WHO: Twenty-year State Department veteran, and former head of the visa bureau in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

CLAIM: He was repeatedly overruled by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to bin Laden recruits so they could receive training in the United States. Says this continued at least until the summer of 2001. (Notably, 15 of the 9/11 hijackers first entered the US through Jeddah.) Springman protested.

RESULT: Fired. Springman says he believes that the victims of 9/11 "may have been sacrificed in order to further wider US geopolitical objectives."
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=104&row=1
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2002/02/521.shtml
http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/dispatches/audio/020116_springman.rm


Sibel Edmonds

WHO: FBI translator

CLAIM: That a Turkish "spy ring" operated in the translation department with the apparent protection of FBI brass, falsifying intercepts containing explicit, actionable warnings of 9/11. That members of this ring were involved with the subjects of the intercepts. And that high-ranking officials asked her to falsify her translations and bribed her to keep quiet.

RESULT: Fired. After taking concerns to upper management, was dismissed with only one reason offered: "for the convenience of the government." Escorted from building by agents who said "We will be watching you and listening to you. If you dare to consult an attorney who is not approved by the FBI, or if you take this issue outside the FBI to the Senate, the next time I see you, it will be in jail." Told by John Ashcroft that he was invoking "State Secret Privilege and National Security" to keep what she knows from reaching the public.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/spy/edmonds.htm
http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=8516
http://tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=50


Robert Wright

WHO: FBI special investigator

CLAIM: That FBI agents assigned to intelligence operations actually protect terrorists from investigation and prosecution. That the FBI shut down his probe into terrorist training camps, and he was removed from a money-laundering case that had a direct link to terrorism. Says the FBI "intentionally and repeatedly thwarted his attempts to launch a more comprehensive investigation to identify and neutralize terrorists."

RESULT: Suspended and ordered to remain silent. Subject of at least three internal FBI investigations. Has written a book that the FBI is not only refusing to allow publication, but is not permitting anyone to even see it.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/printer_2469.shtml
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/37/news-crogan.php


Lt. Col. Steve Butler

WHO: Vice Chancellor for student affairs, Defense Language Institute in Monterey.
CLAIM: In a letter to the editor of a local paper, Butler wrote "Bush knew of the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism. What is...contemptible is the President of the United States not telling the American people what he knows for political gain." During Butler’s term as chancellor, 9/11 hijacker Saeed Alghamdi was enrolled at the Defense Language Institute.

RESULT: Disciplined, lost his position and threatened with court martial.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mcherald/3406502.htm
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/06.06E.butler.bush.htm
http://raleigh.craigslist.org/com/21220698.html


Indira Singh

WHO: "Risk architect" consultant to JP Morgan Chase.

CLAIM: That Ptech, a software company founded by a Saudi financier on the terrorist watch list, had troubling access to sensitive US institutions, which was apparently of no concern to the institutions involved or the FBI. For instance, a "person of interest" from Ptech “had a team in the basement of the FAA for two years” before 9/11. One of Ptech’s projects gained it access to "all information processes and issues that the FAA had with the National Airspace Systems Agency."

RESULT: Warnings went ignored by institutions and the FBI. Told to keep quiet. Subject to surveillance and threats.
http://www.madcowprod.com/index45.html

Colleen Rowley

WHO: FBI field agent, Minnesota office.

CLAIM: That FBI head office perversely thwarted the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, throwing up unusual roadblocks which prevented exposing the terrorist use of flight schools in the summer of 2001. That Dave Frasca of the Radical Fundamentalism Unit altered her report, rendering it impossible for the FBI to pursue the matter further.

RESULT: After 9/11, Frasca – the senior official who altered Rowley’s report and sat on the Minnesota office's request to investigate flight schools, even though he had received a similar request from the Phoenix office – is promoted and commended.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOO208B.html

Was the Speaker bribed by Turkey?

With the Vanity Fair article is the FBI wiretap of Turkish officials discussing paying Hastert $500,000 story finally getting traction?

Tags: bribery, GOP, corruption, Hastert, Sibel Edmonds, wiretap

Questions about the Judge in Scooter Libby, Sibel Edmonds cases

Supreme Court Denies Sibel Edmonds an Open Hearing

What the Bush administration has been hiding - GOP leader took Turkish bribes

I have blogged about former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds since March of last year. Now the story is coming out in Vanity Fair that what the FBI and the Bush administration have been hiding in her case is that a Turkish group was paying tens of thousands in bribes to Speaker Hastert.

Whistleblower on the incompetent FBI translation department

Sibel Edmonds details the feuds, corruption, cover-ups and the lack of expertise.

CD: So you're saying that you would see all of the raw data first, and then decide what to do with it and who would see it?

SE: Correct.

CD: And that they [the agents] don't have any way of knowing if you're telling the truth or giving them the right translation?

SE: Correct.

CD: So more or less, the agents are at the mercy of the translator?

SE: Correct. While the FBI's internal procedures say that a second translator should always take a look at every text, to prevent any faulty translations from occurring, that never happens.

CD: Really? Why not?

SE: Well, a lot of the translators would find that offensive, you know, the idea that someone might think they're not good enough and need to be babysat in their translating. It could end up in a fistfight.

The whole place is like that. It's like the Twilight Zone in there – you have to keep the Pakistani translators on one side of the room and the Indians on the other, or they will come to blows. You have to keep the Hebrew translators separated from the Arabic ones, and so on. It's so unprofessional it's ridiculous. Most of the time people spend trying to dig up dirt on one another. Really.

CD: In your October 25 2002 interview with 60 Minutes, "Lost in Translation," you charged the FBI with incompetence and greed – and also of allowing infiltration by foreign intelligence outfits. Some of these charges have also been substantiated by other sources, both congressional and from inside the bureau. For example, there's the Guantanamo Bay Turkish-English translator who actually didn't know either language very well, Kevin Taskasen, I believe? And he worked with you at some point?

SE: Correct.

CD: And also, your bosses told you to work more slowly, in some cases not at all, so that the department's seemingly huge workload would mean more funding the next year, right?

SE: Correct.

CD: Can you provide any more details on these subjects?

SE: Well, as for Kevin – he was this poor little guy who was very nice, his only fault as a translator being that he, well, didn't speak English.

CD: Really! Where was he from? How did he get that job, anyway?

SE: Kevin was from Turkey. He had met an American woman there, married her, and moved to America. But his lower-elementary-school-level English was only enough to get him a job as a busboy/dishwasher in a restaurant.

However, his wife worked in the languages testing center at FBI headquarters in Washington. Hers was the office that takes in the applications of aspiring translators and schedule language proficiency tests.

CD: So in other words, she used her connections to get him a job in the FBI, even though he wasn't qualified?

SE: Correct. There was an Arabic language supervisor in our department, who had about seven or eight family members under his wing, working away in the Arabic language section even though several of them weren't qualified, hadn't passed the proficiency test in either English or Arabic…

CD: So they made a bargain?

SE: Yes, he had made a deal with this woman, Kevin's wife. She had approved all of his extended family members to work for the FBI translations center, and so she then asked to do the same with her poor husband. And I can't really blame him at all, he was just a nice guy who dreamed of opening his own restaurant. But that's not likely to happen when you're working as a busboy for $6.50 an hour.

CD: How much do they pay in the translating department that he was hired to?

SE: The average is $40 an hour.

This soon gets much deeper and darker and more sordid as it goes into bribery, corruption and treason being covered-up by the F.B.I. and John Ashcroft. Read here.

Americans Barely Hear of Sibel Edmonds

Sept. 11 Allegations Lost in Translation For U.S., Not Foreigners