Tuesday, September 22, 2009

THE INTERVIEW IS AVAILABLE

"The original targets were intelligence officers under diplomatic cover in the Turkish Embassy and the Israeli Embassy. It was those contacts that led to the American Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations and then to AIPAC fronting for the Israelis. It moved forward from there."
~ Sibel Edmonds.


The Phil Giraldi interview with Sibel Edmonds is online:


Sibel Edmonds has a story to tell. She went to work as a Turkish and Farsi translator for the FBI five days after 9/11. Part of her job was to translate and transcribe recordings of conversations between suspected Turkish intelligence agents and their American contacts. She was fired from the FBI in April 2002 after she raised concerns that one of the translators in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation. She appealed her termination, but was more alarmed that no effort was being made to address the corruption that she had been monitoring.

A Department of Justice inspector general’s report called Edmonds’s allegations “credible,” “serious,” and “warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI.” Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee members Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have backed her publicly. “60 Minutes” launched an investigation of her claims and found them believable. No one has ever disproved any of Edmonds’s revelations, which she says can be verified by FBI investigative files.

John Ashcroft’s Justice Department confirmed Edmonds’s veracity in a backhanded way by twice invoking the dubious State Secrets Privilege so she could not tell what she knows. The ACLU has called her “the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America.”

But on Aug. 8, she was finally able to testify under oath in a court case filed in Ohio and agreed to an interview with The American Conservative based on that testimony. What follows is her own account of what some consider the most incredible tale of corruption and influence peddling in recent times. As Sibel herself puts it, “If this were written up as a novel, no one would believe it.”


Read the entire interview at The American Conservative.

UPDATE: Sibel has a link to an interview with Philip Giraldi, who conducted the American Conservative interview, and Joe Lauria. This interview deals with the credibility question that certain factions have brought up with regard to Sibel's story. I don't have a problem with Sibel's credibility because I know how things work in Turkey and Sibel's story fits the pattern of behavior. In addition, Sibel's story has been out in the public realm for some time and those who have been named as evildoers by her in the past--like Dennis Hastert and Marc Grossman--have not brought any libel or other charges against her for the issues she's brought up. And the reason for that is that they don't dare.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This interview has found its way to Taraf daily. Yildiray Ogur is asking the reports from Turkey who are here to watch Erdogan's visit to USA to interview Sibel Edmonds. Here is the URL for Yildiray Ugur's piece:

http://taraf.com.tr/makale/7593.htm

Sibel must get ready. :)

Berfo

Mizgîn said...

Hi Berfo.

I saw that Taraf piece early in the day and sent it to Sibel. It would be great if the story were carried in full in Turkish media but this could be as damaging to them as it is to certain former members of the US government. As a result, I think we'll hear deafening silence from over there just as we do here.