NEWS FOR FRIDAY

"Actually, Cemil Çiçek's approach, in a way, is Turkey's century-long general approach. The hysterical, assimilationist, exclusionist, vengeful, denialist policy reveals itself through Cemil Çiçek."
~ Mehmet Nuri Güneş, DTP mayor of Iğdır.

Last week the Vineyard Saker interviewed Zerkes from Zerkesorg. It's an excellent and extensive interview discussing the current situation in Turkey, the Turkish Deep State, and potential Kurdish alliances in the region, so go on over to The Vineyard of the Saker and enjoy.


This week the third installation of an examination of the career of the new American Turkish Council chairman Richard Armitage is up at Sibel Edmonds' place. You can also find Part 1 and Part 2 on Armitage if you missed them.





Down in Tucson, Arizona there's been a bit of a dust-up over a Gülen school. You might want to notice the final comment of the Turkish principal:

"I'm hoping that they know that these are defamatory allegations which may put them in trouble later on. These are excelling schools. ... I hope they are aware of what they're doing."

Cue threatening music . . .

Turkish is taught in the school and students are encouraged to participate in Gülen's Turkish Olympiads. The Turkish Olympiads are sponsored by local Turkish organizations around the world and news about these Olympiads regularly appear on Fethullah Gülen's official website.

The interesting thing about this, especially in the US, is that the Bush administration created the National Security Language Initiative in 2006. Turkish is included as a language that is "fundamental to the economic competitiveness and security interests of the Nation."

Now, that begs the question: What kind of translators are former Gülen students going to be? Are they going to be like Sibel Edmonds? Or are they going to be like Melek Can Dickerson? Does anyone think, if these students have a Gulen-inspired view of Turkey--a Turkish nationalist view of Turkey--that they are going to translate things in a way that is favorable to Turkey? Doesn't that undermine the whole idea of a "National Security Language Initiative"?

Finally, last week the DTP/BDP mayor of Iğdır, Mehmet Nuri Güneş, was among those detained in the continuing terror actions against the Kurdish people in Turkey. Many here will remember an interview with Comrade Mehmet from ANF last year. This was after deputy prime minister Cemil "Chicken Little" Çiçek almost had a stroke because the DTP (read: the KURDS) had taken over Iğdır. The problem being, of course, that Iğdır borders Armenia and you know how Kurds might just let the Armenians in the back door so that they would be able to SEPARATE--OMG! OMG! OMG!--Turkey.

According to Roj TV, Comrade Mehmet's detention officially became an arrest last weekend.

TRAITORS AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
~ John Harington.

As Luke Ryland continues his series against a recent article regarding nuclear blackmarketing, there is something we should keep in mind. Marc Grossman, former US ambassador to Turkey and career State Department official with 29 years of "service" to his name, mysteriously "resigned" his position as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (State's number 3 position) in January 2005. This would have been following the Tinner arrest in 2004 in Switzerland, for supplying AQ Khan's nuclear black market network.

Coincidence? Probably not. As Luke explains, former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, and current Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell ordered the Swiss justice minister to destroy evidence in the Tinner case to protect American traitors like Marc Grossman; Turkish MİT front organization, the ATC; and certain Turkish and Israeli businessmen who operated as part of the AQ Khan network from the US.

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

In last Monday's New York Times, David Sanger and William Broad wrote a front-page article about the CIA's involvement in the nuclear black market.

The article demonstrates (again) that the New York Times, Sanger & Broad in particular, has simply become a mouthpiece for the government (see my previous articles 1, 2, 3) but they did let one fact slip through to the readership. I can only presume that the slip was accidental, because they don't appear to have understood the ramifications of what they reported:
The US Government is covering up the fact that US citizens and entities are involved in the nuclear black market.

Background

Three members of the Tinner family in Switzerland were key suppliers to AQ Khan's nuclear black market ring. They were arrested in 2004 and have been awaiting trial but the US government has been trying to sabotage the Swiss trial because "compromising and embarrassing information about the CIA's activities with the Khan network" would be exposed if the trial were to proceed.

High-Level Visit

The New York Times reported that in July 2007, the Swiss Justice Minister came to the US to discuss the case with high-level US officials, apparently to find a mutually-acceptable arrangement regarding how to deal with the Tinner case.

According to an anonymous former Bush administration official:

"The State Department wanted the bomb plans destroyed as a way to stem nuclear proliferation, while the C.I.A. wanted to protect its methods for combating illicit nuclear trade."

Whether those two things are true or not I don't know - but the NY Times also notes, without elaboration, that the Swiss Justice Minister met with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller (and Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence).

Domestic US Involvement

The US Dept of Justice and FBI have exclusively domestic jurisdiction. Why would the Swiss Justice Minister meet with Mueller and Gonzales regarding the planned destruction of evidence in a Swiss case involving the nuclear black market? The only logical explanation is that the case also involves US persons and US entities who have yet to be named and indicted. I presume that Gonzales and Mueller desperately argued that the Swiss needed to derail the Tinners' trial by destroying all the evidence because the FBI had an 'ongoing investigation' which would otherwise be exposed. What else could they have argued? Of course, there is no 'ongoing investigation, and there will not be any forthcoming indictments.

The AQ Khan network was officially exposed in 2003. Now we have proof that the Bush administration is well aware of the involvement of US persons and entities, and is apparently refusing to bring indictments against these people.

Sibel Edmonds Case

We know from the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds that the FBI has long been aware of nuclear black market activities within the US and has failed to do anything about it, going to such extraordinary lengths to gag Sibel using the State Secrets Privilege, and to illegally gag congress involving Sibel's case.

We know that high-level US officials were directly involved in these activities. We know that the Pentagon and State Department actively shut down the investigations that Sibel was involved with, and they also actively facilitated the gagging of Sibel.

We even know at least 3 of the US persons/groups that were actively involved in the nuclear black market:

Marc Grossman

Former #3 at the State Dept, Marc Grossman, was heard on FBI wiretaps facilitating the theft of nuclear secrets "from every nuclear agency in the United States." Other participants in the ring include officials from Pakistan, Turkey and Israel who were operating out of their respective embassies. Once the ring stole these secrets they were sold to the highest bidders on the nuclear black market.

Could it be that the US government was desperate to sabotage the Swiss case because they were afraid that Grossman's role in criminal activity would finally be exposed?

American Turkish Council (ATC)

The ATC is a powerful Military-Industrial-Complex lobby, home to some of the most pwerful people and companies in the US. It is also the "nexus" of nuclear black market activity in the US.

We also know that the CIA, via Valerie Plame's cover company Brewster Jennings, was investigating the ATC for its role in illegal nuclear proliferation.

Sibel Edmonds heard wiretaps of phone traffic between the Turkish embassy and the American Turkish Council involving dealings in the nuclear black market.

Could it be that the US government was desperate to sabotage the Swiss case because they were afraid that the ATC's role in criminal activity would finally be exposed?

Zeki Bilmen & Giza Technologies

Turkish businessman and US citizen, Zeki Bilmen, illegally supplied nuclear hardware to Pakistan's military program via Asher Karni, an Isaeli businessman in South Africa. Karni was indicted, but Bilmen was never charged, and his company, New Jersey-based Giza Technologies, continues operating to this day, with shipments to and from from proliferation hotspots" like Dubai, Spain, South Africa, Turkey."

Bilmen was also heard organizing the transfer of nuclear technology on wiretaps translated by Sibel, meaning that his FBI file is at least seven years old.

Could it be that the US government was desperate to sabotage the Swiss case because they were afraid that Zeki Bilmen's role in criminal activity would finally be exposed?

Summary

Former CIA official Phil Giraldi:

"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."

The involvement of domestic US agencies in the decision to destroy evidence in the Tinner case in Switzerland proves that there is a domestic US component to the nuclear black market. Five years after the public exposure of the AQ Khan network, the US government still refuses to bring indictments against a number of criminal US participants.

Why not?

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

Posted at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak and DailyKos.


It kind of makes you wonder what other secrets Marc Grossman has sold as a middle man. Maybe that's why he pulls the big bucks from such shady businesses as İhlas Holding and The Cohen Group.

By the way, someone needs to add "treason" to the career highlights sections of Alberto Gonzalez's, Robert Mueller's, and Mike McConnell's Wikipedia entries.

GIRALDI ON SIBEL, THE MEDIA, AND CONGRESS

"From what I understand, from what she has to tell, it has a major difference from the Pentagon Papers in that it deals directly with criminal activity and may involve impeachable offenses. And I don't necessarily mean the President or the Vice-President, though I wouldn't be surprised if the information reached up that high. But other members of the Executive Branch may be impeached as well. And she says similar about Congress."
~ Daniel Ellsberg.

There's something on why Sibel Edmonds, whose "story about high level corruption in the United States government involving Turkey and Israel," must be heard, from Phil Giraldi at The Huffington Post:

Why should Sibel be heard? Mostly because her story, if true, involves corruption at the highest levels of government coupled with the sale of secrets vital to the security of the United States. One of her claims is that a senior State Department officer who has been identified as Marc Grossman, recorded by the FBI while arranging to pick up bribes from a Turkish organization, also revealed the identity of the CIA cover company Brewster Jennings to a Turkish contact in late 2001. The Turk then passed on the information to a Pakistani intelligence officer who presumably warned the AQ Khan nuclear proliferation network that the CIA was apparently pursuing. Some might call that treason and it should be noted that it occurred two years before Robert Novak's notorious exposure of Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings which led to the conviction of Scooter Libby.

Not only does Giraldi rip the US media for its silence on Sibel's story, but he names those who've been approached with the story, and have ignored it. The question is: Why?

But the media remains silent in spite of considerable efforts to get them on board and provide some coverage of her very serious charges. Since the recent Sunday Times articles, her story has been brought to the attention of news editors at MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, to PBS's Bill Moyers, to The New York Times, The Washington Times, and to both ABC and CBS news in an attempt to arouse some interest. But there has been no response, not even a courteous "Thank you very much for contacting us...." What are so-called gadflies like Olbermann and Moyers afraid of? The suggestion that the media does not want to face the potential legal consequences of the gag order has been cited but lacks substance as much of the Sibel story is already out in public and the details of her allegations can be pieced together without actually interviewing her in violation of the state secrets privilege. Also, no one in the media has actually claimed that the lack of interest is based on the potential legal consequences. The silence has been deafening, suggesting that other forces are at work.

You see, journalists are supposed to investigate, delve into, examine, nose around, probe, pry, and scrutinize. But the servile American media today does not include anyone who's capable of digging into a story. They won't dig into it when you give them all the initial information. They won't look at it. As Giraldi notes, they won't even give you a response. Why? They're owned.

Gore Vidal said: "To keep information from the public is the function of the corporate media".

Noam Chomsky agrees and expands on the idea: "The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly".

Edward Herman, who has collaborated with Chomsky on the manufacturing of consent in the US media further explains: "The propaganda system allows the U.S. Ieadership to commit crimes without limit and with no suggestion of misbehavior or criminality; in fact, major war criminals like Henry Kissinger appear regularly on TV to comment on the crimes of the derivative butchers".

Giraldi also sets Congress in the crosshairs:

Congress has a responsibility to look into Edmonds' allegations. Congressman Henry Waxman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been stonewalling Edmonds and her supporters, preferring instead to look into steroids use among professional athletes. To be sure, some in the media and Congress are undoubtedly nervous because the Edmond's story involves Israel and corrupt officials both in Washington and Tel Aviv. Many of the American former and current officials involved are considered to be particularly close to the Israeli government and to the Israeli lobby AIPAC. Others fear that FBI investigative reports or wiretaps revealing illegal contributions or bribery of congressmen could open up a can of worms that many would prefer to keep closed.

In other words, Congress is protecting its own--in an attitude no less servile than that of the US media.

Daniel Ellsberg has gone on the record to state that Sibel's story "is far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers". The Washington Post received the Pulitzer Prize for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's investigation and reporting of the Watergate scandal. To use Ellsberg's words, Sibel's story "is far more explosive" than Watergate and I have no doubt that a future Pulitzer Prize would be the result of any serious, comprehensive journalistic investigation of Sibel's story of the corruption and international and domestic intrigue surrounding "the theft and sale of United States defense secrets, most particularly nuclear technology".

More from Giraldi on Sibel:


Found in Translation.

Phil Giraldi chats about Sibel Edmonds, including mp3 (Sibel chat starts at 24 minutes into the interview).

Sibel, Giraldi, American Conservative Mag from May 2006.

STUPIDITY AND CRIMINALITY

"What's a Kurd, anyway?"
~ Norman Podhoretz.

Okay. Here's an example of just how stupid the "counter"-terrorists are:

The U.S. National Counter-Terrorism Center says it was a mistake to include the symbol of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan -- the political party headed by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani -- on a list of "terrorist logos" that police should be on the lookout for during traffic stops and other contacts with members of the public.

The PUK, one of the two Kurdish political parties that makes up the regional government in Iraq's Kurdish area, is not on the lists of designated foreign terror groups maintained by the U.S. departments of State or Treasury, and indeed is considered by many in the U.S. government as one of the closest U.S. allies in its war on terrorism.

"After a review, we determined that the PUK logo should not have been included, and we have updated the online version," National Counter-Terrorism Center spokesman Carl Kropf told United Press International Saturday.

In other words, after the morons at the U.S. National Counter-Terrorism Center pulled their heads out of their asses . . .

That level of stupidity ranks right up there with the stupidity of neoconservative freak Norman Podhoretz, as related by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic:

Just before the “Mission Accomplished” phase of the war, I spoke about Kurdistan to an audience that included Norman Podhoretz, the vicariously martial neoconservative who is now a Middle East adviser to Rudolph Giuliani. After the event, Podhoretz seemed authentically bewildered. “What’s a Kurd, anyway?” he asked me.

And these are the idiots who are running the War on Terror, Inc. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Speaking of the so-called War on Terror, Edward Herman, along with David Peterson, has an excellent article at ZNet in which they call out the emperor for wearing no clothes. Some Rastî readers may remember that Edward Herman co-authored Manufacturing Consent with Noam Chomsky. Like Chomsky, Herman has also spoken out against the Ankara regime's brutal repression of Kurds, and American backing of Turkish repression.

Now, Herman confirms what we already knew, that there is no "War on Terror," and he does it very, very well. From ZNet:

The United States and Israel actually engage in big-time terror, like strategic bombing, helicopter attacks, torture on a continuing basis, and large-scale invasions and invasion threats, not lower-casualty-inflicting actions like occasional plane hijackings and suicide bombings. This has long been characterized as the difference between wholesale and retail terror, the former carried out by states and on a large scale, the latter implemented by individuals and small groups, much smaller in scale, and causing fewer civilian victims than its wholesale counterpart.[20] Retail terrorists don’t maintain multiple detention centers in which they employ torture (at the height of its state terror activities in the 1970s the Argentinian military maintained an estimated 60 such centers, according to Amnesty International;[21] the United States today, on land bases and naval vessels and in client state operated facilities, uses dozens of such centers).

Furthermore, retail terror is often sponsored by the wholesale terrorists—notoriously, the Cuban refugee network operating out of the United States for decades, the U.S.-supported Nicaraguan contras, Savimbi’s UNITA in Angola in the 1980s, backed by both South Africa and the United States, the South Lebanon Army supported by Israel for years, and the Colombian rightwing death squads still in operation, with U.S. support. Thus, a meaningful war on terror would surely involve attacks on the United States and Israel as premier wholesale terrorists and sponsors, a notion we have yet to find expounded by a single one of the current war-on-terror proponents.

In short, one secret of the widespread belief that the United States and Israel are fighting—not carrying out—terror is the remarkable capacity of the Western media and intellectual class to ignore the standard definitions of terror and the reality of who does the most terrorizing, and thus to allow the Western political establishments to use the invidious word to apply to their targets. We only retaliate and engage in “counter-terror”—our targets started it and their lesser violence is terrorism.

We can add Turkey to complete the US-Israel-Turkey troika of wholesale terror. Of course, that brings up another item: Sibel Edmonds. There's another interesting article on her case and the recent revelations in London's Sunday Times, from Philip Giraldi and American Conservative magazine. An interesting point made by Giraldi is that Sibel was not hit with court-ordered gags from the FBI, but by the Pentagon and the State Department, whose personnel were the ones identified as big time criminals on the FBI wiretaps:

Curiously, the states-secrets gag order binding Edmonds, while put in place by DOJ in 2002, was not requested by the FBI but by the State Department and Pentagon—which employed individuals she identified as being involved in criminal activities. If her allegations are frivolous, that order would scarcely seem necessary. It would have been much simpler for the government to marginalize her by demonstrating that she was poorly informed or speculating about matters outside her competency. Under the Bush administration, the security gag order has been invoked to cover up incompetence or illegality, not to protect national security. It has recently been used to conceal the illegal wiretaps of the warrantless surveillance program, the allegations of torture and the CIA’s rendition program, and to shield the telecom industry for its collaboration in illegal eavesdropping.

There's a lot there, too, on Grossman, the Turks, and Grossman's bribe-taking from the Turks. Go read, because this particular article explains a lot about Sibel's case in plain English.

Once again, while there remains a deafening silence about American officials and their rat's nest of Turkish and Israeli moles, and the sale of nuclear information to Pakistan, another British paper has taken up Sibel's story, this time in the form of an op/ed from The Guardian, which slams the US media for its refusal to touch Sibel's story:

An American human rights group attempted to obtain further proof of this amazing tale by making a freedom of information request for a specific numbered document relating to the case. The FBI responded by claiming that it did not exist. But the Sunday Times countered that it had obtained another document, signed by an FBI official, showing the existence of the file.

That's why the Sunday Times's latest story, under its old Insight logo, began by accusing the FBI of a cover-up. This looks to me like a very hot story indeed that should surely have been taken up by mainstream newspapers in the United States.

As always, Luke Ryland has his own commentary on The Guardian's piece, so make sure to take a look at it, and check the rest of Luke's posts for the most complete information.

Luke also puts us on notice that Grossman will be present at a congressional committee hearing tomorrow, Wednesday, January 23, at 10am, at Room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building. Sibel is urging supporters to show up and give Grossman hell and take video of the event.

So if you're in the DC area tomorrow and can dish some hell, go to it.

FAWNING AT THE FEET OF MAMMON

"The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread."
~ John Swinton, NYTimes editor, 1953.

At the moment we are still waiting for an official statement on the Amed (Diyarbakır) bombing from KCK, reference this article. The official investigation by KCK is not complete yet and the leadership has not yet determined exactly what has happened. They feel that they owe it to the Kurdish people to reveal the truth and they plan to do exactly that when the investigation is completed. Out of deep respect for the leadership and all the fighters of the Kurdish freedom movement, I will wait for their official statement.

At the moment, I am following the situation and am bookmarking the pertinent pages and when the moment is right, I will faithfully report what our freedom movement has to say.

In the meantime, there has been much chatter on the Sibel Edmonds case. On the surface, it may seem strange that I have followed Sibel's case and have tried to bring as much of it as possible to the readers of Rastî, but perhaps Hevallo's comments on Luke Ryland's recent post will help to explain why Sibel's case is important for Northern Kurds:

To get to bottom of this 'dirty' relationship is part of the Kurdish struggle for freedom. I have spoken to officials from the Kurdish parties in Turkey about your campaign and they asked me to send their very best wishes and solidarity. I will continue to do everything within my own modest capacity to help.

Sibel's case goes to the heart of the political battle in North Kurdistan because the actors in this sordid chapter of Deep State crime are all complicit in the genocide of the Kurdish people and they should all be exposed no matter where they are--in the US, Turkey, or Israel. This is why Sibel's information should be dispersed as widely as possible, and here are some links for doing just that:


"'Nükleer köstebek' Marc Grossman mı" (For Turkish-language speakers, thanks to Miguel for that link. Believe it or not, it's a Hürriyet article that is actually true to Sibel's story. It summarizes The Sunday Times article well, and also draws from Sibel bloggers, especially Luke Ryland's work. It's a good, complete summary of Sibel's case in Turkish.)

Luke also has a couple of posts to update The Sunday Times: "Media Coverage" and "Facts & Thanks". He also has a link to something Chris Floyd has written.

Joseph Cannon at Cannonfire has a very detailed post here. Remember the guy who, back in 2005, was arrested in Turkey for building bombs he was going to use against Israeli ships? Cannon mentions him in reference to The Times article last November--the article that prompted Sibel to approach The Times with her story. Here's what Cannon has to say:

Sakka and the spooks: I'm still not sure why news reports about this man triggered Edmonds to go into action. But the following may be of interest.

According to the Turkish newspaper Zaman, 2000 was the year when the Americans "turned" Sakka, who received an unspecified (but large) amount of money from the CIA. More than that: He received protection during his time in Turkey -- while he ran those Al Qaeda training camps.

Then came his mysterious sojourn in Germany in 2000-2001. During this period, he appears to have met Atta -- and then he went "underground.

Germany's BND -- their version of the CIA -- aided Sakka while he was on the run. This, despite the fact that Sakka was considered a wanted man in Germany, due to his role in earlier terror plots.

In late 2005, after Sakra’s arrest in Turkey (see July 30, 2005), the German television news show Panorama will report that the German BKA (Federal Office of Criminal Investigation) suspects the German BND (Federal Intelligence Service) to have helped Sakra escape from Germany in late 2001. Supposedly, German police had learned where he was staying in Germany, but the BND enabled him to escape via France to Syria in order to prevent further investigations about him. Panorama will report that Sakra was secretly still working for Syrian intelligence and was giving them information about al-Qaeda’s leadership. Sakra will go on to mastermind a series of suicide bombings in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2003...

We cannot know what Sakka was up to in Syria, but one thing seems clear: Western intelligence placed greater value on his services than on bringing a 9/11 plotter to justice. His protection continued in the face of the 1999 plots, the 9/11 tragedy, and the 2003 bombings. It ended only when he decided to go after Israeli ships.

At his 2005 trial, his lawyer offered an intriguing observation:

Sakra’s lawyer will claim that if Sakra revealed all that he knew, “a few states would collapse.”

This was the guy referred to in The Sunday Times:

She [Edmonds] approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

If the CIA gave the guy money and "turned" him, and if the Ankara regime protected him while he was running al-Qaeda training camps in Turkey, and another American ally, Germany, aided the guy while he was on the lam, does that make him a CIA asset?

Do you find that surprising? You shouldn't. Remember who the real terrorists are.

Lastly, there's a video interview with Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog at INN World Report, discussing Sibel's case. Perhaps the thing that comes across most clearly in the interview is that Friedman notes that the US media has not breathed so much as one syllable of Sibel's case.

I never thought I'd live to say it, but Sibel's case makes me respect Turkish media so much more than American media.

Ax!

THE MAN WHO GAVE PAKISTAN THE BOMB

"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."
~ Sibel Edmonds.

We have not heard too much from Sibel Edmonds since the end of October, when she let it be known publicly that she was willing to tell the whole story of her work at the FBI and the information she learned from the translations she made--information that would expose and damn the Turkish lobby in the US and that great American work of fiction, The 9/11 Commission Report.

The silence since Sibel's offer to go public has been mainly the result of the chickenshit American media, which continually refuses to show any interest in Truth or in telling a story that requires a bit of mental concentration to understand--no matter how important the story is. So much for the tradition of muckraking.

Until today, anyway.

Britain's The Sunday Times has placed Sibel's story front and center to tell who it was that was involved with selling nuclear secrets to Pakistan:

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official 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.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

However, Edmonds said: “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.”

Oh, let me take three nanoseconds of my time to guess who that "well-known senior official in the US State Department" was: Marc Grossman.

Those familiar with the details of the conflict of interest surrounding the State Department's appointment of Lockheed Martin's Joseph Ralston as "PKK coordinator" for Turkey, will remember that Ralston works as a vice-chairman of The Cohen Group. The other vice-chairman of The Cohen Group is Marc Grossman.

The Cohen Group, founded by former Defense Secretary William Cohen--a Clinton appointee--has been involved in nothing but dirty business since its creation, such as its role in the cover-up of Oil-for-Food kickbacks and the Australian Wheat Board. Then, of course, there was the appointment of Ralston as "special envoy" to Turkey to "coordinate" the PKK, even while he was listed as a lobbyist for The Cohen Group in order to export tactical fighter aircraft--and this while maintaining his position as a member of the Board of Directors of Lockheed Martin.

So it should come as no surprise that The Cohen Group should attract and employ a major rodent like Grossman.

Marc Grossman climbed his way to the number three position at the State Department during his 29 years at the department, during which time he worked in Turkey and Pakistan. As the US ambassador to Turkey, he supervised the procurement of American military hardware for the Turkish military and the guy who was directly in charge of that procurement was none other than US Air Force Major Douglas Dickerson who, with his wife, MİT operative Melek Can Dickerson, figures prominently in Sibel's story.

Note that Grossman and Dickerson worked together to provide Turkey with American weapons and military training at the height of Turkey's genocidal Dirty War against the Kurdish people, during which time the US provided more weapons to Turkey than it had during all the other combined years of the Cold War.

Grossman has also been seriously implicated in tipping off both the Pakistanis and the Turks as to the true nature of Brewster Jennings, earning him the status of "subject of interest" by US intelligence circles:

"When Beyaz Enerji began to encounter 'consultants' with Brewster Jennings, they expressed an interest to their ATC interlocutors in buying the firm along with other energy consulting companies. In the two phone calls intercepted by the FBI, Grossman told the called parties to 'stay away from Brewster Jennings . . . they're the government . . . they're nothing but a cover.' One of the calls was to a Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) top agent in Washington. The other call, bearing an almost identical message, was made to a Northrop Grumman official who was a key player with the ATC. The Northrop Grumman official made a phone call to his ATC handler, stating, 'Our guy warned us off Brewster Jennings.' A U.S. intelligence source stated that 'Grossman's name was all over the FBI wiretaps in 2001.'

"Grossman, who now works for the Cohen Group of former Defense Secretary William Cohen, was, according to U.S. intelligence sources, a subject of interest to counter-intelligence agents since his stint as U.S. ambassador in Ankara."

Then there was Grossman's Pakistan connection:

Ahmed [General Mahmoud], the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11, and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA, and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to "retire" by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn't the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in court?

A better question: Why hasn't the US demanded that Marc Grossman be questioned and tried in court?

Did claims against our "subject of interest" pan out? If not, then why did Grossman resign from the number 3 position at the State Department under cover of darkness--normal activity for rodents--by the beginning of 2005?

Sibel herself put it best:

The second Vice Chairman of Cohen’s firm is Marc Grossman, who was the U.S. Undersecretary for Political Affairs in the State Department from 2001 until 2005. From November 1994 to June 1997, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey. In January 2005 Grossman resigned from his position and joined the Cohen Group. In late December 2005, Grossman joined Ihlas Holding, a large and alleged shady Turkish company which is also active in several Central Asian countries. Grossman is reported to receive $100,000 per month for his advisory position with Ihlas.’ Most and foremost, Grossman is known for his extraordinarily cozy relationship with Turkey and Israel; followed by Pakistan.

[ . . . ]

Please do not make the grave and naive mistake of assuming that Grossman found and obtained his highly lucrative and questionable positions after his resignation in January 2005. Within two months after his confident resignation, this boy got the vice chairmanship of the Cohen Group. Only six months later, Grossman ended up securing a ‘special advisory’ position for a foreign company that reported his monthly fee at $100,000 a month. The industrious Grossman seems to be juggling so many balls simultaneously: numerous foreign sponsored dinner speeches, the demanding pimping activities of Cohen’s firm, the very ‘special advising’ of a shady foreign company…

As Sibel noted, that "shady foreign company" is Ihlas Holding, a Fethullacı (i.e. Islamist) business. Obviously Marc Grossman was able to make a very comfortable transition to the private business world because he had made a lot of lucrative connections during his time at the State Department. These connections were his retirement plan, you might say. The fact is also that Grossman didn't cultivate any of his connections for high-minded ideological purposes; he did it for the money and the power.

Let's make it clear what I'm saying here, and what Sibel is saying: Marc Grossman sold nuclear secrets to the Turks, who turned around and sold them to Pakistan. Marc Grossman gave Pakistan The Bomb.

The rodent Grossman is in complete denial, again from today's Sunday Times:

The senior official in the State Department no longer works there. Last week he denied all of Edmonds’s allegations: “If you are calling me to say somebody said that I took money, that’s outrageous . . . I do not have anything to say about such stupid ridiculous things as this.”

But American intelligence types corroborate Sibel's version of the story, just as every official investigation into Sibel's accusations have done:

In researching this article, The Sunday Times has talked to two FBI officers (one serving, one former) and two former CIA sources who worked on nuclear proliferation. While none was aware of specific allegations against officials she names, they did provide overlapping corroboration of Edmonds’s story.

And if Grossman is truly innocent, he won't have anything to hide and, therefore, will not mind a public investigation . . . will he?

By the way, check out this little zinger at the beginning of the article:

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Let's see now . . . Turkey . . . that would be America's close ally and Model of Democracy for the Middle East, right . . . training 9/11 hijackers in Turkey?

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Americans are so stupid.

For more on Sibel and The Sunday Times, see Luke Ryland's latest post at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak. Also, see Grossman backgrounders:

"Marc Grossman, Man of Mystery".

"Doug Feith, Richard Perle and Marc Grossman"

"Lesser Neocons of L'Affaire Plame"


In order to put faces to names, Sibel has a State Secrets Rogues Photo Gallery. The list of rogues reads as follows, from left to right:


Richard Perle
Douglas Feith
Eric Edelman
Marc Grossman

*****

Brent Scowcroft
Larry Franklin

*****

Dennis Hastert
Roy Blount - ( Republican, Missouri)
Dan Burton - (R - IN)
Tom Lantos - (D- CA)
?
Bob Livingston
Stephen Solarz

*****

Graham Fuller- RAND
David Makovsky - WINEP
Alan Makovsky- WINEP
?
?

*****

Yusuf Turani (President, Turkistan)
Professor Sabri Sayari (Georgetown, WINEP)
Mehmet Eymur (Turkish MIT)


UPDATE: Luke has a post with the photos of the guilty. Take a look and read the comments.

DEEP STATE, IRON TRIANGLE, AND THE KURDS

"As it happens, the ATC is a creation of AIPAC (and other Israeli lobbying interests) - and there is significant overlap in the membership, goals and activities of both AIPAC and the ATC. This is perhaps not surprising given the long-standing tri-lateral military (and military 'defense' spending) relationship between the three countries. In fact, Sibel refers to AIPAC and the ATC as 'sister organizations.'"
~ Luke Ryland.

I have been very busy in the last week but I wanted to take a moment to point out a few new threads on Sibel Edmonds by Luke Ryland:


Sibel Edmonds' Case: the untellable story of AIPAC

Sibel Edmonds' Case: the untellable story of AIPAC, part 2

Sibel Edmond's Case: New (and old) revelations of spying at the FBI


As always, Luke is very thorough in his research of Sibel's case and her angle on the Deep State in America. The Deep State does include the Israelis, hence Luke's recent emphasis on the Israel lobby, AIPAC. It should be remembered that in the 1990s, the Israelis conducted flight training in the skies over Turkey--with Turkish permission of course--and both Turkey and Israel are routinely gifted with billions of dollars worth of US military equipment, such as Lockheed Martin product. Thank you, American taxpayer!! This is why the relationship between the US, Turkey, and Israel is called the "Iron Triangle."

Sibel mentions Israeli air force "training" over Anatolia in her documentary.

How much of this "training" was conducted over Turkish-occupied Kurdistan is one question. Another question would be how many of the bombing raids the Turks conducted under the so-called "Safe Haven" (with the acquiescence of the US and the UK) were actually "training" sorties by the Israeli air force.

How many South Kurdistani villages were, in fact, bombed by the Israelis? How many bombing sorties in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan were actually carried out by the Israelis?

Enquiring minds want to know.

For a backgrounder, check out something from The Nation. Don't be surprised to see the same names popping up over and over again.

NEXUS OF EVIL, PART 2

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Today I have a round-up of some of Luke Ryland's latest work on the campaign to get a public, open congressional hearing on the Sibel Edmonds' case, in order to break open the Deep State in the US. For starters, here's a transcript of former CIA Istanbul deputy chief of base, Philip Giraldi, lifted from the pages of American Conservative magazine and carried on Stress:

Sibel Edmonds, the Turkish FBI translator turned whistleblower who has been subjected to a gag order could provide a major insight into how neoconservatives distort US foreign policy and enrich themselves at the same time. On one level, her story appears straightforward: several Turkish lobbying groups allegedly bribed congressmen to support policies favourable to Ankara. But beyond that, the Edmonds revelations become more serpentine and appear to involve AIPAC, Israel and a number of leading neoconservatives who have profited from the Turkish connection. Israel has long cultivated a close relationship with Turkey since Ankara’s neighbours and historic enemies - Iran, Syria and Iraq - are also hostile to Tel Aviv. Islamic Turkey has also had considerable symbolic value for Israel, demonstrating that hostility to Muslim neighbours is not a sine qua non for the Jewish state.

Turkey benefits from the relationship by securing general benevolence and increased aid from the US Congress - as well as access to otherwise unattainable military technology. The Turkish General Staff has a particular interest because much of the military spending is channeled through companies in which the generals have a financial stake, making for a very cozy and comfortable business arrangement. The commercial interest has also fostered close political ties, with the American Turkish Council, American Turkish Cultural Alliance and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations all developing warm relationships with AIPAC and other Jewish and Israel advocacy groups throughout the US.

Someone has to be in the middle to keep the happy affair going, so enter the neocons, intent on securing Israel against all comers and also keen to turn a dollar. In fact the neocons seem to have a deep and abiding interest in Turkey, which, under other circumstances, might be difficult to explain. Doug Feith’s International Advisors Inc, a registered agent for Turkey in 1989 - 1994, netted $600,000 per year from Turkey, with Richard Perle taking $48,000 annually as a consultant. Other noted neoconservatives linked to Turkey are former State Department number three, Marc Grossman, current Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz and former congressman Stephen Solarz. The money involved does not appear to come from the Turkish government, and FBI investigators are trying to determine its source and how it is distributed. Some of it may come from criminal activity, possibly drug trafficking, but much more might come from arms dealing. Contracts in the hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars provide considerable fat for those well placed to benefit. Investigators are also looking at Israel’s particular expertise in the illegal sale of US military technology to countries like China and India. Fraudulent end-user certificates produced by Defense Ministries in Israel and Turkey are all that is needed to divert military technology to other, less benign, consumers. The military-industrial-complex/neocon network is also well attested. Doug Feith has been associated with Northrup Grumman for years, while defense contractors fund many neocon-linked think tanks and “information” services. Feith, Perle and a number of other neocons have long had beneficial relationships with various Israeli defense contractors.

Regarding Giraldi's comments, the money coming from arms deals should be noted, because this is a fact about Ralston's appointment as "PKK coordinator" that I've tried to make for months. The Deep Staters don't give a damn about negotiating a political solution to end Turkish repression of the Kurdish people, not do they care about spreading "democracy" or "stability" in the Middle East (Remember in what regard neocon ideology holds the vast majority of the world's population: "And they are certainly not too concerned about the happiness of mere mortals. They have little pity or compassion for them. On the contrary, the pain, suffering, and tragedies of the mortals provide them with entertainment.").

For more on Giraldi, Luke conducted an interview with one of the directors of Sibel's documentary, Kill The Messenger. Here's a portion of Luke's interview with director Mathieu Verboud:

LR: OK, Philip Giraldi now. What did he have to say?

MV: Philip Giraldi appears in the last chapter of the film. Giraldi is the one who connects the final dots. He was stationed in Turkey in the 80s for the CIA. He knows the players in the game. He recently published a remarkable article in the American Conservative on Sibel’s case. Giraldi obviously understood most of what was to be understood about it.

As explained before, Giraldi knows the reason why there was a military relationship between Turkey and Israel for the last 30 years - Turkey wanting to get access to weapons in the US and Israel being interested in becoming friendly with a Muslim country. That's the starting point.

Beyond that, he understands the role of the Military Industrial Complex, both in the US and in Israel and Turkey - for example, Turkish Generals retain commissions on the works and the production lines of the Turkish arms manufacturing companies - in other words, baksheesh.

Giraldi then pointed to the neocons who are intertwined in the U.S-Turkey-Israel triangle and also insists on the fact that these people have been connected to the Turkish government, Israeli arms companies and the Military Industrial Complex in the U.S, as he says "making money, doling out influence."

Giraldi also insisted very specifically about the FBI investigations on Feith and Perle and some others. The belief we had before meeting Giraldi was that Turkey recruited the ‘crème de la crème’ of Israel's friends in the U.S, so that they would then have access to not only Washington’s officials, but also to the Pentagon and its most hi-tech weaponry. Giraldi confirmed that.

LR: In his article, Giraldi says that the false end-user certificates were used by Israel and Turkey to provide weapons to both China and India - I hadn't heard of India being involved.

MV: Well, in the 1990’s, it is well known that Israel has sold China sensitive U.S military technology. For almost two decades now, China and Israel have spied on the U.S more than any other country in the world. In the film, Philip Giraldi states that the FBI does an annual compilation of who spies most on the U.S. As he says : "The result is always the same: number one is China, number two is Israel. "

India is a different story. In Sibel’s case, some witnesses fingered the ‘India’ component, but for reasons already mentioned we didn’t go further (laughs)… By the way, if you look at the Giza case, it’s public record that the Israeli broker Asher Karni was also selling the nuclear detonators he got from Giza to India.

Regarding the sale of "sensitive U.S. military technology" to China, Lockheed Martin has been in trouble for doing just that. Of course, the State Department didn't seek criminal sanctions against Lockheed Martin, but only civil penalties. It simply would not do to criminalize a major corporation that is part of the US foreign policy-making process.

Luke has a new post today in his diary at Daily Kos, in which he outlines and discusses the main issues behind Sibel's case. I'm stealing most of it here, but for the entire post, including congressional contact links, see the diary:

**********

Former FBI translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds discovered massive criminality when she was at the FBI and was told to shut up. Sibel is the most gagged person in US history. We're in the final days of a campaign, Let Sibel Edmonds Speak, to demand that Henry Waxman hold hearings into her case and the State Secrets Privilege.

Because Sibel is gagged, and because her case is complicated, it can be difficult to understand of all the different elements. In this post, I will lay out the most simple of the issues that Sibel raised - espionage in the FBI translation department - and why it is still important today (hint: a confirmed 'mole'/foreign agent is in charge of all Arabic translators at the FBI.)

In other words, I hope that you can send this diary to your friends and family - people who may not be involved in politics, people who have never heard of Sibel - and they are sufficiently outraged that they can't wait to call Waxman on Monday morning and demand hearings.

The reason they should be outraged is because America is more likely to be attacked because of the information in this diary.

Last week, more than 30 'good-government' groups from across the political spectrum petitioned Henry Waxman to hold hearings into Sibel Edmonds' case.

From the petition:

The issues that were reported by Ms. Edmonds include:

• Cases of espionage activities within the FBI...
• Cases of cover-up of information and leads pre and post 9/11, under the excuse of protecting certain diplomatic relations
• Cases of intentional blocking and mistranslation of crucial intelligence by FBI translators and management

Today I want to describe exactly what she's talking about regarding espionage at the FBI translation unit, and prove that we are all less safe because the problems have not been rectified - in fact, the problems are much worse today.

When Sibel Edmonds joined the FBI immediately after 911, she was the first and only Turkish translator there. Shortly afterwards, the FBI recruited two other translators, Melek Can Dickerson and Kevin Taskasen. Their boss was former translator Mike Feghali.

Let's dispense with Kevin Taskasen first, because he isn't particularly important in the scheme of things, although his situation does demonstrate the massive incompetence and cronyism in the translation department. Taskasen failed two language proficiency exams, English and Turkish, but his wife worked at the FBI's language testing center so... he got the job. Three months later he was sent to Guantanamo Bay to translate the interrogations: to perhaps help foil a new terror attack, or to help determine the guilt or otherwise of the prisoners held there.

Now on to more serious matters: Melek Can Dickerson.

In a fantastic interview with Sibel last week titled "What if the FBI Hired Someone Honest to Look into 9-11?" David Swanson said:

There's a saying in Italian "Traduttore traditore" which means "The translator is a traitor"...

Not all translators are traitors, of course, but translators do have tremendous power, as Sibel described in the same interview:

You know, a lot of people consider the language specialists as like a clerical job, but you need to realize, when the information comes... the first people exposed to it are the language specialists. Before that information gets transferred to agents or analysts, the first person who sees it is the language specialist... and that language specialist is in a position to decide whether or not this particular piece of information... is important enough to be translated, whether or not it should be translated verbatim - in detail, or just a summary translation. So by the time that information goes to an analyst or an agent, it has already gone through this filter of the language specialist.

In other words, America's enemies are motivated to A) try to recruit existing translators B) place their own translator 'moles' in the translation unit and C) if they're really lucky/skilled/successful, take over an entire 'desk' in the FBIs translation unit. Unfortunately, and scarily, in Sibel's case, we see all three.

Melek Can Dickerson had worked for at least three organizations that were under investigation by the FBI's counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism divisions. She lied on her application form, saying that she'd never worked before in her life, and was given Top Secret clearance and immediately began working in the translation unit. We don't know whether Dickerson was given her job, and Top Secret clearance, as a result of FBI incompetence or corruption - I suspect corruption - but it doesn't really matter, because within weeks of her arrival, the Turkish desk of the FBI translation unit was completely corrupted.

On Sunday December 2nd, 2001, Dickerson and her husband, Doug, arrived at Sibel's house and tried to persuade Sibel and her husband, Matthew, to join the American Turkish Council (ATC) - one of the organizations that Dickerson had previously worked for and failed to mention on her FBI application form. The Dickersons promised Sibel and her husband, Matthew, an early retirement if they joined the ATC. Sibel immediately recognized that she was being recruited to be a mole in the translation unit because the ATC, and some of the Dickersons' other friends, were targets of counter-intelligence & counter-terrorism investigations that Sibel had been translating at the FBI.

According to the 10-page Vanity Fair article on Sibel and her case, the ATC "was being used as a front for criminal activity" involving "laundering the profits of large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder." In other words, serious business. We also have evidence from a bunch of other places that suggest that the ATC was involved with all sorts of illegal activity - not least, we know that Valerie Plame's CIA front company, Brewster Jennings, had been investigating the ATC for years.

Brewster Jennings' main focus was Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), and we know that companies involved with the ATC were actually supplying rogue nations with nuclear technology - hardware, and nuclear secrets, stolen (via bribes paid to vaious State Dept officials) from US nuclear labs (Sandia, Los Alamos etc)

Story so far: FBI employed Melek Can Dickerson, an agent/mole for a foreign/criminal network involved in WMD (among other things). Dickerson tried to recruit Sibel into the network.

Sibel immediately reported the Dickerson's 'recruitment' attempt to her boss at the FBI, Mike Feghali, but he had already (if not before) been co-opted by Dickerson and the ATC. Within a month of Dickerson joining the FBI, she had changed the FBI translation unit's internal procedures, with the help of her boss, Feghali, so that she alone was in charge of translating any intercepts from her friends at the ATC (and elsewhere). Of course, now that Dickerson, the mole, was in charge of 'translating' her criminal friends' wiretaps, whenever she came across anything incriminating (and there were many such situations), she simply didn't translate it, or marked it 'Not Pertinent.'

Sibel thinks that Feghali and Dickerson were having an affair - often conducted in his office, during business hours. Not only that, he also
"covered-up information and leads pre and post 9/11" (for more, see Sibel's open letter to the 911 Commission)

Sibel reached out to Dennis Saccher, the F.B.I.’s special agent in charge of Turkish counter-intelligence, and told him what had happened. He said "It sounds like espionage to me." We aren't sure of what other payoffs Feghali may have received, from Dickerson or the ATC, but he clearly shouldn't be in charge of such a sensitive translation facility at the FBI. "The translator is a traitor."

Sibel took her case up the FBI hierarchy - eventually pleading her case that the translation unit, the frontline against America's enemies, had been infiltrated by a criminal network to FBI Director Robert Mueller, to no avail - and was eventually fired 'at the government's pleasure.'

Despite being fired, Sibel continued to try to bring attention to the fact that America was in danger because foreign criminal elements had taken over the FBI translation unit. She went to the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility (internal affairs), the Department of Justice's Inspector General, the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the 911 Commission, and Henry Waxman's office. Every one of them confirmed Sibel's allegations - Republican Senator Charles Grassley explains why:

"Absolutely, she's credible. And the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story."

Veteran FBI counterintelligence agent John Cole said the same thing:

"I knew (Sibel) was doing the right thing. I knew because she was right."

Cole tells how he had "talked to people who had read her file, who had read the investigative report, and they were telling me a totally different story" than FBI officials...

"They were telling me that Sibel Edmonds was a 100 percent accurate, that management knew that she was correct."

In fact, in a CBS 60 Minutes report (download, 300 megs) by Ed Bradley about Sibel's case in 2002, Charles Grassley said angrily, about these facts, "We need to turn the FBI upside down." Five years later, and the FBI has indeed been turned upside down. Five years ago, Mike Feghali was in charge of three Turkish translators, a patriot, an incompetent, and a foreign agent - he fired the patriot, sent the incompetent to Guantanamo, and had an affair, and probably received payment, from the foreign agent. Five years later, he is no longer at the bottom of the pyramid, but at the top. The FBI has been turned upside down! Feghali has been promoted, and promoted again, and is now in charge of all Arabic speakers at the FBI. "The translator is a traitor."

And if Feghali's promotion isn't bad enough, in and of itself, let me repeat that Sibel's claims about him have been reported up the chain all the way to Direct Mueller, and her allegations have been verified by the FBI OPR, the Dept of Justice's Inspector General, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 911 Commission. All of them know of Sibel's claims, all of them know that her claims have been validated, and all of them know that Feghali has been promoted again and again and that he is now in charge of all 300 Arabic translators.

Surely that makes us all much less safe.

For more detail on just this one element of Sibel's case, see my "Sibel Edmonds' Corrupt Boss is STILL the key to National Security" post.

Please call the offices of Congressmen Waxman and Conyers demanding open hearings into Sibel Edmonds' case and the State Secrets Privilege. We need you to call on Monday and Tuesday of this week - and we'll demand an answer from Waxman mid-week.

**********

Luke recently did an interview with Expert Witness Radio, which you can download and listen to here. It runs about 60 minutes. Tomorrow, the final 30 minutes of the interview should be available at the same site and, according to Luke, that portion will focus on Sibel's former supervisor, Mike Feghali, as everyone tries to determine whether he's simply an incompetent or if he's corrupt. Or both.

One of the interesting things about this interview is that it's repeatedly remarked that, over the years with various corruption/incompetence/criminal scandals, nothing has ever been done to correct the problems that inspire outrage. The answer to this is to use alternative media, such as the Internet, to outrage the grassroots enough that they hold the feet of all corrupted/incompetent/criminal officials to the fire in order to clean House . . . and Senate . . . and judicial branch . . . and executive branch . . . and anyone else who needs cleaning out.

As Michael Levine mentioned in the interview, "Luke has done is a first-class job of putting together an indictment."

I definitely second that comment.


In a Kurdish-related matter, there's someone in North Dakota paying attention to the situation of Kurds under Turkish occupation, at Left in East Dakota:

A lot was made of Saddam's brutal treatment of the Kurds (and rightfully so.) But we don't hear much about Turkey's very overt attempts to wipe out anything that is Kurdish or related to the Kurdish people. The Kurds make up 20% of the population of Turkey and have virtually no voice in government.

Turkey's terrorist war against the Kurds has been largely supported by the United States. Just as Saddam was backed by the US when he was gassing the Kurds, Turkey has been receiving military aid during their campaign to suppress millions of Kurds. Turkey has received millions in military aid, along with other notorious human rights abusers like Israel, Egypt and Colombia.

[ . . . ]

The Kurds I have spoken to are skeptical of the US. I can't blame them. If the US really wants to be spread freedom, it should stop supportings oppression.

See? It's really very simple.

NEXUS OF EVIL, PART 1

". . . but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before see a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.

In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again."

~ Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

In the last week, Luke Ryland from the Land Down Under, has been working like a horse to get the word out on Sibel Edmonds' story, in light of a newly released official complaint against the US government's use of the State Secrets Privilege to silence FBI whistle-blowers.

This new complaint is another piece of documentation that corroborates Sibel's credibility on the whole Deep State mess in the US, and can be added to the credibility given to Sibel's claims by a Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General report from January, 2005. Shortly after the OIG's report, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) filed a motion calling for an open and public hearing of Sibel's case, noting that the DOJ had been so afraid of Sibel that it had attempted to retroactively classify information pertaining to Sibel that had been widely disseminated on the Internet for two years.

I guess retroactive classification is the current administration's attempt to avoid a scandal similar to that which surrounded the leak of what became known as the Pentagon Papers back in the 1970s. From the introduction to the Supreme Court's decision on the NYTimes' publication of the Pentagon Papers:

In 1967 Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara ordered a full-scale evaluation of how the United States became involved in the Vietnam War. A study team of thirty-six persons took more than a year to compile the report, which ran to forty-seven volumes, with some 4,000 pages of documentary evidence and 3,000 pages of analysis. Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department economist who had grown disillusioned with the war, copied major portions of the study and then turned them over to the press. On June 13, 1971, the New York Times began publishing the papers, and the Nixon administration immediately sought to stop further publication.

Why is Sibel's case important or, more specifically, why is Sibel's case important for Kurds? It's important because if we want to end the repression of Kurds by Turkey, we must sink the Deep State and all the business interests that keep it afloat. Remember, one of the major contributing factors to the continued repression and genocide of Kurds by Turkey is the military-industrial complex, best exemplified by the recent State Department appointment of Lockheed Martin board of directors' member, Joseph Ralston, as "special envoy" to "coordinate the PKK' for Turkey. In reality, this appointment has served only to enrich the Deep Staters through recent Lockheed Martin/Turkey deals totaling some $13 billion.

As if to continue the farce of Ralston's appointment as "special envoy," we get an idea of the hypocrisy of the appointment from Ralston himself, from the AP:

On Thursday, Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, a special envoy tasked with countering the PKK, said in Washington that the U.S. is addressing Turkish complaints about PKK activity and that reducing the PKK threat to Turkey would go a long way toward improving U.S.-Turkish relations.

"As the snows melt in the mountain passes along the Turkish-Iraqi border in several weeks, we will see if the PKK renews its attacks and how the Turkish government chooses to respond," Ralston said.

That's Ralston bullshit, because it was the US and Turkey that refused the ceasefire and continued with military operations. Let's review Ralston's statements last year. From TDN:

Days before the declaration of the truce, the United States publicly said that a PKK cease-fire would have little value and that the terrorist group instead should lay down its arms and renounce violence. "Cease-fire sort of implies an act that is taken between two states, two actors, to do that. And I don't want to confer that kind of status on the PKK by saying a cease-fire," Joseph Ralston, the newly appointed U.S. special envoy for countering the PKK, said here last Wednesday.

In that case, Ralston was Buyukanit's parrot--read the whole thing. Later, from TNA:

"The PKK is a terrorist organization, not a tool of U.S. foreign policy. We are not using and will not use the PKK in any way in Iraq," said former Gen. Joseph Ralston, the recently appointed U.S. special envoy.

[ . . . ]

"I want to be clear on this point: The U.S. will not negotiate with the PKK. We will not ask Turkey to negotiate with the PKK. And I pledge to you that I will never meet with the PKK."

[ . . . ]

"We have not taken any option off the table for dealing with the PKK. At the same time, as a former military commander, I know that the use of military force must always be the last option for addressing a problem," Ralston said. "To defeat the PKK, we will need to employ all the assets in our counterterrorism arsenal -- diplomatic, intelligence, law enforcement, and financial, in addition to military. We are working on all of these fronts."


[ . . . ]

Asked whether the U.S. intends to use the IRA model in dealing with the PKK, Ralston underlined that these two were totally different problems.

"You are comparing two very different situations, and mixing apples with oranges," the U.S. envoy said. "In the case of the PKK, our objective is to enhance cooperation with the Turkish and Iraqi governments to fight the PKK. We are also working with European governments to cut the PKK's financial and logistics lifeline. We will use all of the tools at our disposal: law enforcement, intelligence, diplomacy, financial pressure. And we have not taken any other option off the table."

More Ralston bullshit. He has "not taken any option off the table for dealing with the PKK" except that of ceasefire and political negotiation. Why, then, has the US been traipsing up and down Qendîl since 2003? And let's note that Ralston did not "underline" that the IRA and PKK are two "totally different problems," so I'll go ahead and underline that for everyone who's too thick to figure it out for themselves: The IRA and PKK are two totally different problems because the US never backed the use of Lockheed Martin aircraft to bomb millions of people out of their villages in Northern Ireland as it did in Turkish-occupied Kurdistan. Hence, Joe Ralston as a director of Lockheed Martin, along with all the other rats at Lockheed Martin, were not earning billions of dollars off Northern Ireland.

It's obvious from this that Ralston is a liar and a tool of both the Turkish general staff and the military-industrial complex--and everyone else who cooperates with them. Ralston is only one part of the Deep State in the US. His co-worker at The Cohen Group, former ambassador to Turkey, Mark Grossman, is another Deep State vermin and Sibel's information indicates that he may be an even bigger pimp than Ralston.

Luke was one of the very few people who actively helped to spread the word about the Ralston conflict of interest last October and November. Being so familiar with Sibel's case, he saw how Ralston and the Kurdish situation fit into the bigger picture. It is that bigger picture that maintains the status quo which, in turn, maintains the severe repression of the Kurdish people under Turkish tyranny.

Explaining the bigger picture (and why it matters) is the point where Luke's work over the last week or so becomes brilliant. In distilling Sibel's--and related--information, it becomes clear that the nexus of Deep State evil in the US lies in the American Turkish Council (ATC). Because Luke's work is brilliant, and because he has stolen entire posts from me in the past without permission (!!), I'll do him one better here by stealing two of his posts, one for today and one for tomorrow. Today's theft is made possible by Wot Is It Good 4:



What the heck is Sibel Edmonds' Case about? And why should I care?


As part of our campaign this week to call for hearings into Sibel Edmonds case, below the fold is a short-as-possible piece which hopes to answer the burning question in Sibel's case: What the heck is her case about?

For a longer version, see my recent interview with Scott Horton.

Please call the offices of Congressmen Waxman - (202) 225-3976 - and Conyers - (202) 225-5126 - demanding open hearings into Sibel Edmonds' case and the State Secrets Privilege.

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Sibel Edmonds' case is about the intersection of illegal arms trafficking, heroin trafficking, money laundering, terrorist activities and the corruption of many "highly-recognizable, highly-known names" in and around the US government. Sibel says that the people involved will go straight to prison if we can get hearings into her case. Richard Perle, in prison. Douglas Feith, in prison. Dennis Hastert, in prison. Marc Grossman, in prison.

According to Sibel, the best place to begin trying to understand the case is a recent article by Phil Giraldi in the American Conservative. Sibel says “Giraldi has it 100% right; this I consider the most accurate summary of my case.”

Giraldi writes:

"Sibel Edmonds... could provide a major insight into how neoconservatives distort US foreign policy and enrich themselves at the same time. On one level, her story appears straightforward: several Turkish lobbying groups allegedly bribed congressmen to support policies favourable to Ankara. But beyond that, the Edmonds revelations become more serpentine and appear to involve AIPAC, Israel and a number of leading neoconservatives who have profited from the Turkish connection.

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Turkey benefits from the relationship by securing general benevolence and increased aid from the US Congress - as well as access to otherwise unattainable military technology. The Turkish General Staff has a particular interest because much of the military spending is channeled through companies in which the generals have a financial stake, making for a very cozy and comfortable business arrangement. The commercial interest has also fostered close political ties, with the American Turkish Council, American Turkish Cultural Alliance and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations all developing warm relationships with AIPAC and other Jewish and Israel advocacy groups throughout the US.

Someone has to be in the middle to keep the happy affair going, so enter the neocons, intent on securing Israel against all comers and also keen to turn a dollar."

Giraldi goes on to list some neocons who are "linked to Turkey" - Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Grossman, Eric Edelman, and Stephen Solarz - and he suggests that they "enrich themselves" via drug trafficking and arms dealing.

The American Turkish Council (ATC)

The main Turkish lobbying group in the US is an organization called the American Turkish Council (ATC) - one of the most powerful lobby groups in the country. The ATC is heavily stacked with former government officials - statesmen, lobbyists and 'dime a dozen generals' - lobbyists and representatives of the military-industrial-complex (MIC). Brent Scowcroft is the chairman, and heavy hitters from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrup Grumman and other 'defense' contractors populate the board.

It's perhaps not surprising, then, that Turkey is a major recipient of US military aid - running to the billions of dollars - with much of it financed by the US taxpayer. Giraldi suggests in his article that this largesse appears to be the result of bribes paid to congressmen - a suggestion that shouldn't surprise anyone - but there's much more to the story than the usual Iron Triangle / Revolving Door story that we're all familiar with.

In a 10-page article in Vanity Fair on Sibel's case, the ATC is described as "a front for criminal activity" involving "large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder." We'll discuss the drug side of the story shortly, but let's first take a quick look at the military technology element - not only are the MIC contractors bribing congress to ensure that military aid flows to Turkey (and Israel), the Turks and the Israelis are also illegally selling that technology to the highest bidder - which inevitably includes America's enemies, States, and terrorist groups.

Sibel's case also involves the nuclear black market - some Turkish members of the ATC have supplied Pakistan's A.Q. Khan network with hardware, as have American companies that Sibel overheard on the wiretaps. Perhaps even more disturbing, as reported in Vanity Fair, other wiretaps indicate that "Turkish groups had been installing doctoral students at U.S. research institutions in order to acquire information about black market nuclear weapons." Daniel Ellsberg says that, according to Sibel, bribes were paid to people at the State Department to facilitate this activity.

These are extraordinary claims, of course, and we have a lot of evidence to support the claims - including, but not limited to, the fact that Valerie Plame's front company, Brewster Jennings, had been conducting a counter-intelligence operation against the ATC for years.

One very interesting aspect of Sibel's case that has not really gained traction is that while the ATC is understood to be the key focus of her case, it appears that AIPAC is equally involved. In a terrific 2005 interview with Chris Deliso, Sibel said:

Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive one... But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it... You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people.

And she went a little bit further in a great interview with David Swanson this week:

"AIPAC helped form the American Turkish Council - look at the board members, look at the people. You will see the same people involved in both fronts, because it is the same operation."

Reading between the lines (in a number of different places), it appears that Sibel was actively involved in 'the AIPAC investigation' as well as the investigation into the ATC. As she says, both the ATC and AIPAC are both 'fronts' for the 'same (criminal) operation.'

Drug Trafficking.

As I document in "Sibel Edmonds & the Neocons' Turkish Gravy-Train," Afghanistan supplies almost 90% of the world's heroin, and most of that goes straight to Turkey where it is processed, packaged, warehoused, and then re-exported to other countries for final consumption. Turkey supplies approximately 80% of Europe's heroin, and 15% of heroin in the US - worth approximately $40 billion at street prices.

Turkey is widely acknowledged to be controlled by a "Deep State." In 1996, a deadly car crash at a place called Susurluk blew this out into the open. In the car were four people who probably shouldn't have been in the car together:

"an MP, a police chief, a beauty queen and her lover, a top Turkish gangster and hitman called Abdullah Catli... Catli, a heroin trafficker on Interpol’s wanted list, was carrying a diplomatic passport signed by none other than the Turkish Interior Minister himself.

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The Susurluk Incident became Turkey’s Watergate, exposing the deep links between the Turkish state, terrorists and drug traffickers. It revealed what Turks call the Gizli Devlet, or Deep State – the politicians, military officers and intelligence officials who worked with drug bosses to move drugs from Afghanistan into Europe."

Sibel spells it out:

"The Turkish government, MIT and the Turkish military, not only sanctions, but also actively participates in and oversees the narcotics activities and networks."

As I outlined in the curiously-titled "Sibel Edmonds: America's Watergate," Sibel's case demonstrates that Turkey's Deep State 'owns' large parts of the American establishment, to the point where it appears that there also is a 'Deep State' in the US as well. ATC/AIPAC appear to be headquarters for this Deep State in the US, a cozy club where drug dealers, weapons traffickers and past-and-present government officials coexist. Happily!

And if that's not bad enough, we also know that:

"Heroin trafficking is also the main source of funding for the al-Qaeda terrorists. A Time Magazine articlereported that al-Qaeda has established a smuggling network that is peddling Afghan heroin to buyers across the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, and in turn is using the drug revenues to purchase weapons and explosives. The article states: “...al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies are increasingly financing operations with opium sales. Anti-drug officials in Afghanistan have no hard figures on how much al-Qaeda and the Taliban are earning from drugs, but conservative estimates run into tens of millions of dollars.”

That is, our Turkish Deep State friends, the people we are directly providing with weapons, are outsourcing some of their distribution activities to al-Qaeda and the Taliban (and, while we're at it, to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA.))

When we are discussing issues such as al-Qaeda smuggling heroin through Afghanistan and the other 'Stans, sometimes it can seem remote and distant, so let's come back to something more concrete. In Adrian Gatton's terrific recent article, The Susurluk Legacy, he quotes Huseyin Baybasin, a Turkish heroin kingpin who is now in jail in Holland:

“I handled the drugs which came through the channel of the Turkish Consulate in England... I was with the Mafia but I was carrying this out with the same Mafia group in which the rulers of Turkey were part.”

Gatton also describes how anyone in the UK government who dared speak about the issue were immediately rebuked by the Foreign Office (the UK equivalent of the State Department.)

The parallels with Sibel's case couldn't be clearer. As 60 Minutes first reported (youtube) in 2002, and Vanity Fair later reported, the Turkish Embassy was directing a lot of the heroin trafficking activity - in conjunction with people at the ATC.

"Sibel also recalled hearing wiretaps indicating that Turkish Embassy targets frequently spoke to staff members at the A.T.C.

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In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing... Many (calls) involved an F.B.I. target at (Chicago's) large Turkish Consulate... Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes."

And just as the UK Foreign Office silenced anyone in the UK who tried to speak out, Sibel says:

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

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In some cases where the FBI stumbles upon evidence of high-level officials being involved in drug-smuggling, they're even prevented from sharing it with the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency]. The Department of State just comes in and says, "Leave it."

Elsewhere, Sibel says:

"For years and years, information and evidence being collected by the counterintelligence operations of certain U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies has been prevented from being transferred to criminal and narcotics divisions, and from being shared with the Drug Enforcement Agency and others with prosecutorial power. Those with direct knowledge have been prevented from making this information available and public by various gag orders and invocation of the State Secrets Privilege. Why?"

Pay attention here, because the ATC is where the worlds of the MIC and the heroin trafficking collide. One of the key Turkish interfaces at the ATC is the Turkish Generals - people that Giraldi says own a stake in the companies through which the military spending is channeled. As described earlier, these exact same people, the Turkish Deep State, also control much of the global heroin market. In between the MIC and the heroin traffickers - are the "neoconservatives (who) distort US foreign policy and enrich themselves at the same time."

One of the difficulties in trying to unravel the Sibel Edmonds case is that we aren't sure where one case ends and another begins. We know that some of the wiretaps were from the ATC, and some from the Turkish embassy in DC, and some from the embassy in Chicago. We also know that many of the wiretaps involve conversations between the embassies and the ATC.
Some of the wiretaps relate to drug trafficking, some relate to the nuclear black market and other weapons trafficking, and some refer to terrorist activity - including 9/11.

Perhaps it's not surprising, then, when she says:

You have the same players when you look into these activities at high-levels you come across the same players, they are the same people.

Those 'same people' - at least on the American side - according to Giraldi, appear to be Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Grossman, Eric Edelman, and Stephen Solarz. It appears that we can also add William Cohen and Joseph Ralston - and Dennis Hastert - to that roster, and I'm sure there are a few more that haven't yet been publicly identified.

If what Sibel says is true, and her claims are all backed by documents and wiretaps, and also backed up by other agents who have filed similar complaints, and are ready and willing to testify. All of these people should be in jail. For a long, long time.

Congress must hold hearings to get to the bottom of these crimes. If you agree, please call Congress, today, and demand public, open hearings.

Contact Information

Congressman Henry Waxman (contact page)

(Those calling Waxman's office should ask for Michelle Ash & David Rapallo.)

In Washington, D.C.
2204 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-3976 (phone)
(202) 225-4099 (fax)

In Los Angeles
8436 West Third Street, Suite 600
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 651-1040 (phone)
(818) 878-7400 (phone)
(310) 652-3095 (phone)
(323) 655-0502 (fax)

House Government Reform Committee (contact page)
By Mail or Phone:
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-5051

Please also contact Congressman John Conyers, asking him to support hearings by Chairman Waxman.
(Those calling Conyers' office should ask for Elliot Mintzberg.)
Email: John.Conyers@mail.house.gov

Washington, DC
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax

crossposted at Wot Is It Good 4 & Let Sibel Edmonds Speak and dkos and DU




Brilliant, Lukery. Absolutely brilliant. Bijît!