US EMBASSY ANKARA CABLEGATE DOCUMENTS

"This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests. It is an attack on the international community."
~ Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

You can read or search the Wikileaks secret US embassy cables at this site. If you'd like to cut to the chase for the moment, you can browse all the cables from the US Embassy in Ankara here.

I haven't made a thorough search of the site yet, but did check out the Ankara cables first. At this point there doesn't seem to be anything shocking in the revelations . . . at least, if you know the real situation in Turkey, there's nothing really shocking, nothing to justify old woman Clinton's hysterics.

Germany's Spiegel Online has an interesting take on the Ankara Embassy cables, though:

The leaked diplomatic cables reveal that US diplomats are skeptical about Turkey's dependability as a partner. The leadership in Ankara is depicted as divided and permeated by Islamists.

SHOCK!! He,he, just kidding. Spiegel Online continues:

The US diplomats' verdict on the NATO partner with the second biggest army in the alliance is devastating. The Turkish leadership is depicted as divided, and Erdogan's advisers, as well as Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, are portrayed as having little understanding of politics beyond Ankara.

The Americans are also worried about Davutoglu's alleged neo-Ottoman visions. US diplomats quote one high-ranking government adviser as saying that Davutoglu would use his Islamist influence on Erdogan, describing him as "exceptionally dangerous." According to the US document, another adviser to the ruling AKP party remarked, probably ironically, that Turkey wanted "to take back Andalusia and avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683."

The US diplomats write that many leading figures in the AKP were members of a Muslim fraternity and that Erdogan had appointed Islamist bankers to influential positions. He gets his information almost exclusively from newspapers with close links to Islamists, they reported. The prime minister, the cables continue, has surrounded himself with an "iron ring of sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors" and presents himself as the "Tribune of Anatolia."

"Sycophantic" advisors?! Personally, I prefer to call them "toadies" but sycophantic advisors will work.

Frankly, yes, the AKP is far more dangerous than the paşas. On the other hand, who's in charge of the "Muslim fraternity" quoted in the cables, according to Spiegel Online? Where is this leader living? Why, in the US itself and he's got his own green card. You'd think after all the problems the US has had with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, they'd give up on aiding and abetting Islamists. But now they're whining about the problems their Turkish Islamists are causing them.

BOOO-HOOO-HOOOOOOOO!!

According to the Cablegate site, 278 of the 251,287 cables have been released so far. It's definitely worth watching what's next.

It'll also be worth watching to see if Katil Erdoğan is going to prosecute the US for its criticism of him, like what happened to some students in Istanbul recently or to Hürriyet . . . or to another journalist . . . or to Musa Kart . . . or to Michael Dickinson, et cetera, ad nauseum.

Best in Show ~ Michael Dickinson

Tribune of Anatolia, indeed. What a weenie.

CHANGE? YOU SAY YOU WANT CHANGE?

"Barack Obama's first appointment, that of Chicago Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, is quite frankly unsettling and suggests that voters who had hoped for real change in Washington will be disappointed."
~ Philip Giraldi.

Thanks to the heval who sent me this piece of interesting information, from Reuters:

Russia has evidence that citizens from NATO member states including the United States and Turkey fought for Georgia in the five-day August war, Russia's top investigator said on Monday.

A senior security official in Tbilisi dismissed the statement and said by law only Georgian nationals could serve in the country's armed forces.

Asked to list the nationalities of the foreign fighters it believes were involved, Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Prosecutor-General's investigative committee said: "America, the Czech Republic, Chechnya, the Baltic States, Ukraine and Turkey."

OOPS!

I guess that's why Russian special ops types were joking around about invading Turkey:

"Next time we should invade Turkey. It's nice down there," said the second soldier, who wore a ski mask and drank bottles of beer with Georgian lettering on them.

On the other hand, maybe the Russian wasn't joking. And as for the secretary of Georgia's security council blowing off the information, I wouldn't be so quick to do that. After all, Condoleeza Rice admits that Georgia started the war and that great whore of the American media, the NYTimes finally admitted at the beginning of this month that Georgia started the war . . . in sharp distinction to everything else it ever published on the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia.

So who are you going to believe? The Russians or some Mickey Mouse Georgian security council dude?

I hope the Russians holds everyone's feet to the fire over this Reuters report of foreign fighters doing their dirty deeds for Georgia and the US.

And now, for those of you who wanted change and thought you would get it with a new American administration, you need to spend 36 minutes of your time and listen to a recent interview by Scott Horton with Philip Giraldi, here.

Some of you may remember Philip Giraldi's name from a number of Rastî posts about the Sibel Edmonds case. Once upon a time, Giraldi served as the CIA's Istanbul chief of base. In the interview linked above, Giraldi talks about Obama's pick as White House chief of staff, the congressman from Illinois, Rahm Emanuel.

Like Obama, Emanuel comes from Chicago. Chicago was the hub of Turkish activity in the US on the FBI wiretaps that Sibel Edmonds translated. From the Vanity Fair article:

. . . One counter-intelligence official familiar with Edmonds’s case has told Vanity Fair that the F.B.I. opened an investigation into covert activities by Turkish nationals in the late 1990’s. That inquiry found evidence, mainly via wiretaps, of attempts to corrupt senior American politicians in at least two major cities—Washington and Chicago. Toward the end of 2001, Edmonds was asked to translate some of the thousands of calls that had been recorded by this operation, some dating back to 1997.

[ . . . ]

. . . Vanity Fair has established that around the time the Dickersons visited the Edmondses, in December 2001, Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, contacted Sibel and asked her to review some wiretaps. Some were several years old, others more recent; all had been generated by a counter-intelligence that had its start in 1997. “It began in D.C.,” says an F.B.I. counter-intelligence official who is familiar with the case file. “It became apparent that Chicago was actually the center of what was going on.”

[ . . . ]

In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing. In all, says a source who was present, she managed to listen to more than 40 of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I. target at the city’s large Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associates.

The Turkish "cultural" crowd in Chicago would appear to be problematic. The Turkish "cultural" crowd in Chicago has been active in fundraising for other politicos besides Dennis Hastert, including one Mehmet Çelebi. Çelebi was a big time fundraiser for the politico who's been nominated to become Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. From Luke Ryland:

In the meantime, another important angle to Edmonds' case has opened up. Earlier this week, the New York Post ran a Page 6 piece, ODD FILM BY HILLARY BACKER, which highlights the close relationship between Hillary Clinton and Chicago-based Turkish businessman Mehmet Celebi.

Celebi, "one of the national leaders of the Turkish-American community in the US," is a key fundraiser for Clinton, and is one of Clinton's Chicago delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Celebi was also heavily involved in the controversial 2006 movie "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" which has been widely regarded as "anti-Semitic, anti-American, conspiratorial agitprop."

Mehmet Celebi is also a key figure in the Sibel Edmonds case - he is heavily involved in the narcotics trade in the US and the corruption and bribery of high-level US officials.

According to Celebi's bio:


"He has been serving as the President of the Turkish-American Cultural Alliance (TACA) since 2000, and as Member of the Board/Vice-President of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations (ATAA), a Washington, D.C. based umbrella organization representing 57 organizations."


The Chicago-based Turkish-American Cultural Alliance (TACA) and the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations (ATAA) both figure prominently in Sibel Edmonds' case. Both are reported to be front groups for criminal activity involving illegal weapons sales, narcotics trafficking, and the bribery and corruption of high level US officials.

Mehmet Celebi first came to my attention in my first interview with Sibel in January 2006. My notes from that interview read:


"Sibel mentioned the mafia nature of the Turkish business establishment - in particular she mentioned Celebi as one of the key players - apparently they are involved in an arms trading cartel, and they ship narcotics in the cargo of their planes as they zoom around.

"One of the Celebi family members (Mehmet Celebi) is chairman of the Turkish American Cultural Association (TACA) in Illinois. (Sibel has often pointed to both Chicago, and also to 'cultural exchanges')."


TACA and the ATAA were both targets of an FBI counter-intelligence operation investigating the corruption and bribery of high-level US officials from 1997 onward, including the period when Celebi had high level positions at these organizations.

But Clinton wasn't the only one Çelebi has raised funds for. He's fundraised for Rahm Emanuel as well (The photo below shows Emanuel, center, and Çelebi, far right):

Well-versed in international policies, Emanuel acknowledges the importance of Turkey in such a strategic part of the world. "I encourage the continuation of strong ties between Turkey and Israel and would urge European governments to admit Turkey into EU as soon as possible," he said. "Such a move would benefit the U.S. which is highly appreciative of Turkey's membership in NATO."

Emanuel said he would support the construction of the pipeline to go through Turkey. He also touched upon the Cyprus controversy as a difficult challenge and said he did not know enough about the Turkish point of view dealing with the Armenian conflict of 90 years ago

Mehmet Celebi, TACA's president promised to send him material on the Ottoman-Armenian conflict and encouraged him "to keep politicians out of the debate and analysis of historical events that took place during the demise of the Ottoman Empire." Historians, not politicians, should research and write about this subject, was the consensus of those attending the meeting.

Here's a photo from Yeni Şafak, which shows Clinton on the left and Çelebi on the right:




Remember that the Clinton administration gave more arms to Turkey than anyone else in US history. I do mean "gave" because those arms were funded 80% by the US taxpayer, meaning they were virtual freebies for Turkey.

Remember that in February, Bill Clinton left no doubt as to Hillary's support for Turkey:

"Turkey is a very significant country for us. We need to have good relations with Turkey. The biggest contribution to this will come from Hillary. There will be great progress in relations if Hillary is elected."

He went on to thank the many Turks who "contribute a lot to Hillary's election campaign" and assured readers that relations with Turkey will prosper under a Hillary administration.

She can do all of that as the head of the State Department.

Remember the Clean Break Strategy of the neocons, specifically Perle, Feith, and their International Advisors, Inc., which have also been brought up in connection with Sibel Edmonds' information. More on that can be found at The Nation.

Remember, too, that they're all running together--Hillary Clinton, Mehmet Çelebi, Rahm Emanuel, and the American Deep State.

Is that the change you voted for . . . chumps?

SINGING FOR THE PAŞAS

"He [Şemdin Sakık] was not a big leader, but a peasants’s gang chief. For ten years he has behaved this way. We did not bring him forward. Since 1993 it has been the Turks’ plan to propel him centre stage. Even the French secret services warned us that important sums of money ended up in his pockets."
~ Abdullah Öcalan.

Hevallo has a post from last Friday on the Council of Europe's call for an end to the isolation of Abdullah Öcalan. He's included a link to the CoE's report.

He's also posted this familiar photo, the one photo that we've seen of Öcalan's cell. Then there's more description of Öcalan's prison conditions, from the translator's introduction to Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilization:

Ocalan inhabits a cell of 13 square metres equipped with a single frosted-glass window, which can only be be opened a finger's breadth. Fresh air is provided by air-conditioning. The cell is located in a two-storey building with special safeguards. There is a toilet and washing facility in the room. The cell is subject to 24-hour surveillance by camera and peephole by a team of carefully selected Turkish military officers, who are regularly rotated.

The cell is illuminated 24 hours a day, causing the prisoner severe sleep problems. In general, Ocalan is permitted to see his lawyers for one hour once a week in a room adjacent to his cell. These visits are often arbitrarily postponed or cancelled, resulting in complete week-long isolation.

Ocalan's closest relatives are permitted to see him once a month for one hour. They may only see him through a glass partition and speak to him by means of a telephone. Twice a day he is allowed to leave his cell for a one-hour walk in the yard. This yard is about 40 square metres in size; it is surfaced with gravel and surrounded by high walls surmounted with barbed wire.

Contact with the outside world, including access to information, has been reduced to an absolute minimum. Ocalan has no television, and the books and papers supplied by his lawyers are often handed over to him only in part and sometimes not at all. His mail is censored, and he is not allowed to answer any letters. He is allowed no more than three books at a time. His single source of up-to-date information is a radio, which only receives the state-run Turkish channel TRT.

This is the official picture of Öcalan's prison conditions, of Turkey's so-called premier "terrorist."

On the other hand, we have the example of Şemdin Sakık's imprisonment. Sakık was the PKK commander who disobeyed Öcalan's orders and killed 33 off-duty Turkish troops in 1993 ending a PKK ceasefire. Sakık ran from PKK in 1998 and sought refuge with the KDP, who turned him over to the Ankara regime, along with his brother.

After his imprisonment, Sakık began to sing the TSK's tune like a canary. Those who attempted to assasinate Akın Birdal claimed to be inspired to do so by Sakık's false accusations against Birdal, which were vigorously promoted by the irresponsible Turkish media. Sakık also claimed that PKK carried out the assassination of Swedish politician Olof Palme. Turkish journalists Cengiz Çandar and Mehmet Ali Birand were fired from Sabah on the basis of Sakık's "confessions"; they were allegedly taking bribes from the PKK in exchange for promoting the freedom movement.

Sakık was considered Turkey's number 2 terrorist.

Sakık began to write books for the Paşas.

Nowadays, Sakık has his own laptop and website, where you can see a flash player photo gallery of his spacious digs. You can register at his site. You can leave comments. You can read his books online at semdinsakikweb(dot)com.

See how nicely the Paşas treat you when you sing their tune?

When you get done at Sakık's place, check Progressive Historians, where Gordon Taylor has a great post on recent events in Turkey.


NEWSFLASH: Clinton drops Mehmet Çelebi like a hot potato, from ABC News:

"We were unaware of Mr. Celebi's involvement in this film and we obviously do not agree with it," said Clinton campaign senior adviser Ann Lewis on Friday to JTA. "He is no longer raising money for this campaign."

Some Clinton critics note that Clinton campaign has known about this issue since at least about a month ago when the New York Post called to ask about the Celebi connection and asked how Lewis could have only learned about it Friday from JTA.

Asked this morning for clarification, the Clinton campaign told me that they were unaware of Celebri's involvement with the film until around the time of the New York Post item, when Celebri's involvement with the campaign ceased.

It will be interesting to see if Sen. Obama's campaign suggests that Clinton return the $100,000 or so that Celebi bundled for her.

So I guess those Kurdish sources were pretty damned accurate.


And let's not forget Çelebi's connections to Sibel Edmonds' story and the Deep State.

CLINTON: RELATIONS WITH TURKEY WILL PROSPER

"As a secular Muslim state, Turkey has always been an attractive political and military ally to the Israelis; respectful of the close relationship between the US and Israel, over a decade ago the Turks began to appreciate the value for Turkish-US relations in being close with Israel, and have also grown to appreciate how useful an ally the American Jewish lobby can be against the Greek- and Armenian-American lobbies."
~ Jason Vest, "Turkey, Israel and the US".

Here's something more on Clinton ties to Turkey, from Hyeoctane:

Some may have thought that Hillary Clinton's backpedaling on the Genocide resolution back in October or appointment of Turkish ultra-nationalist fundraiser Mehmet Celebi as one of her delegates to the Democratic Convention wasn't quite enough to make her suspect in the eyes of Armenians and anti-genocide activists. After all, she is still a co-sponsor of the Armenian Genocide resolution in the U.S. Senate, right?

Well, now it seems that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is seeking to end all doubt on where Mrs. Clinton actually stands. In a recent interview with the Turkish daily Sabah, Bill said the following: "Turkey is a very significant country for us. We need to have good relations with Turkey. The biggest contribution to this will come from Hillary. There will be great progress in relations if Hillary is elected."

He went on to thank the many Turks who "contribute a lot to Hillary's election campaign" and assured readers that relations with Turkey will prosper under a Hillary administration.

Check Hyeoctane's post for several links to sources. If, as Bill says, "There will be great progress in relations [with Turkey] if Hillary is elected," then all that money coming from Mehmet Çelebi must be doing some good, eh?

It also looks like Çelebi is working to compensate for Kurtlar Vadisi Irak by producing a new film, about the Holocaust. From Blogian:

The Turkish Daily News reports that BMH Worldwide Entertainment is filming The Ambassador, about a Turkish diplomat who saved Jewish lives during World War II.

[ . . . ]

Confirming official Turkish support for The Ambassador, Çelebi told TDN:

"BMH Worldwide Entertainment has been working with Member of Turkish Parliament and previous President of the Federation of Turkish-American Associations Egemen Bagis, who has spent many years in the United States and is very aware of and concerned about Turkey’s image around the world. He has been a great supporter of this and other projects that will enhance Turkey’s image across the globe.

"Bagis, the president of the U.S. Caucus in Turkish Parliament, had given the first clue about the project last week in Parliament. Bagis, also a member of advisory council of the Turkish Film Council in the United States, suggested."

"Prominent figures of the diaspora pay Hollywood to make genocide movies. We too have wealthy people; however, we don’t have a culture of investing in Hollywood. We should also be relying on such methods and commission movies explaining Turkey’s side of the story."

The point? It's crystal clear:

Two sides to the story? Sure. Racism and anti-Semitism for domestic consumption, tolerance and harmony abroad.

Not too much different from Erdoğan's hypocrisy in Germany last Sunday.

On the other hand, it may simply be a case of Turkey trying to keep up with the neighbors.

MORE ON THE ÇELEBI-CLINTON CONNECTION

"In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing. In all, says a source who was present, she managed to listen to more than 40 of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I. target at the city’s large Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associates."
~ David Rose, "An Inconvenient Patriot".

It's apparent from the right-wing fascist blogs that have commented on Çelebi's involvement with Clinton, that those blogs are only concerned with the inherent racism of the film Kurtlar Vadisi İrak, something that was of interest to Kurds years ago when the film first came out. The TV program of the same name, airing in Turkey, was also a controversy after the Council of State attack in Turkey by the Deep State in May 2006.

But Turkish racism, in this case, is merely a distraction.

What no one is talking about are Çelebi's ties to Sibel's story, including his possible close ties to (or employment by) Milli İştihbarat Teşkilatı (MİT).

Oddly enough, last year in June, the BMH Worldwide website was not just a tangle of dead links as it is today; it actually worked. At the time, I captured something from Çelebi's bio for Rastî readers:

Mehmet's experience in management and finance spans the globe. Professionally, Mehmet worked in a management capacity at some of the world's largest financial institutions and has provided financial guidance to many high-net worth individuals and celebrities as well as corporations.

[ . . . ]

Mehmet is also an authority on international relations. He has worked with various political leaders from Turkey as well as other countries on issues dealing with Turkish-American relations and Turkey at large, and is considered one of the national leaders of the Turkish-American community in the US. He has been serving as the President of the Turkish-American Cultural Alliance since 2000, and as Member of the Board/Vice-President of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations, a Washington, D.C. based umbrella organization representing 57 organizations.

Mehmet has also been a member of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations', "Task Force on Islamic relations in the US," since 2003.

As I asked in June, how could MİT overlook a guy with so much talent and potential? And if MİT is not involved in the Deep State in the US, then why does Sibel post Mehmet Eymür's picture in her Rogue's Gallery? Eymür was the former head of the "counter-terror" department at the MİT, in charge of the kontragerillas, who were trained by the US military, and who conducted a campaign of atrocities and gross human rights violations against the Kurdish people during the last Clinton administration--a fact well-known to that administration.

Oh, yeah, Eymür now has a safe haven in the US.

Luke Ryland says that all the info on Çelebi needs to be made public through FOIA. He's absolutely correct and then let's see the fascist right-wing start blogging about it.

But don't hold your breath.

In the meantime, here's Luke's latest post in its entirety with permission, sourced from Sibel Edmonds, and targeting the future of the Deep State in the US:

Note: All links to BMH Worldwide, Çelebi's company that was involved with the production of Kurtlar Vadisi Irak, have mysteriously been yanked from the web.

Key Clinton Backer Guilty in Sibel Edmonds Case

The UK's Times has already run three bombshell articles on the nuclear black market element in the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds this year, and we are expecting more fallout in the near future as new evidence and witnesses come forward.

In the meantime, another important angle to Edmonds' case has opened up. Earlier this week, the New York Post ran a Page 6 piece, ODD FILM BY HILLARY BACKER, which highlights the close relationship between Hillary Clinton and Chicago-based Turkish businessman Mehmet Celebi.

Celebi, "one of the national leaders of the Turkish-American community in the US," is a key fundraiser for Clinton, and is one of Clinton's Chicago delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Celebi was also heavily involved in the controversial 2006 movie "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" which has been widely regarded as "anti-Semitic, anti-American, conspiratorial agitprop."

Mehmet Celebi is also a key figure in the Sibel Edmonds case - he is heavily involved in the narcotics trade in the US and the corruption and bribery of high-level US officials.

According to Celebi's bio:

"He has been serving as the President of the Turkish-American Cultural Alliance (TACA) since 2000, and as Member of the Board/Vice-President of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations (ATAA), a Washington, D.C. based umbrella organization representing 57 organizations."

The Chicago-based Turkish-American Cultural Alliance (TACA) and the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations (ATAA) both figure prominently in Sibel Edmonds' case. Both are reported to be front groups for criminal activity involving illegal weapons sales, narcotics trafficking, and the bribery and corruption of high level US officials.

Mehmet Celebi first came to my attention in my first interview with Sibel in January 2006. My notes from that interview read:

"Sibel mentioned the mafia nature of the Turkish business establishment - in particular she mentioned Celebi as one of the key players - apparently they are involved in an arms trading cartel, and they ship narcotics in the cargo of their planes as they zoom around.

One of the Celebi family members (Mehmet Celebi) is chairman of the Turkish American Cultural Association (TACA) in Illinois. (Sibel has often pointed to both Chicago, and also to 'cultural exchanges')."

TACA and the ATAA were both targets of an FBI counter-intelligence operation investigating the corruption and bribery of high-level US officials from 1997 onward, including the period when Celebi had high level positions at these organizations.

According to the 2005 investigative piece in Vanity Fair into Sibel's case:

Vanity Fair has established that around ... December 2001, Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, contacted Sibel and asked her to review some wiretaps. Some were several years old, others more recent; all had been generated by a counter-intelligence that had its start in 1997. “It began in D.C.,” says an F.B.I. counter-intelligence official who is familiar with the case file. “It became apparent that Chicago was actually the center of what was going on.”

Its subject was explosive; what sounded like attempts to bribe elected members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican. “There was pressure within the bureau for a special prosecutor to be appointed and take the case on,“ the official says. Instead, his colleagues were told to alter the thrust of their investigation – away from elected politicians and toward appointed officials. “This is the reason why Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme fashion,” he says “It was to keep this from coming out.”

In her secure testimony, Edmonds disclosed some of what she recalled hearing. In all, says a source who was present, she managed to listen to more than 40 of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I. target at the city’s large Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Consulate, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associates (ATAA).

Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes. To a person who knew nothing about their context, the details were confusing and it wasn’t always clear what might be significant. One name, however, apparently stood out – a man the Turkish callers often referred to by the nickname “Denny boy.” It was the Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert."

Hastert is from Chicago, of course, but he wasn't the only congressmen who was bribed by these groups - others who were identified in Sibel's Rogues Gallery are Roy Blunt, Tom Lantos, Dan Burton, Robert Livingston and Steven Solarz.

The Vanity Fair article identifies a number of different mechanisms for bribing these Congressmen, and the bribes appear to come from three separate, yet overlapping, groups. In an article in 2006, I attempted to categorize these groups:

The first group is a criminal element of the Military Industrial Complex, represented primarily by Richard Perle, Doug Feith and Marc Grossman among others - generally using AIPAC and the American Turkish Council as front organizations.

The second group suspected of bribing Hastert is the 'mafia-like' Turkish 'Deep State', probably a mix of Turkish military, heroin producers and drug-runners. It is suspected that these funds are laundered through 'lobbyists' - originally Perle & Feith's company International Advisors Inc, and later (and currently) through Bob Livingston's company The Livingston Group.

The third group is a bit more hazy, but it is suspected that it is a group of Turkish heroin 'baba' (mafia) operating in the US, probably headquarted in Chicago. This group appears to use front organisations such as the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (A.T.A.A.) and the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (T.A.C.A.)

Mehmet Celebi is a key player in this third group, the Turkish heroin mafia.

Ex-CIA agent Phil Giraldi has also previously linked TACA and ATAA to Sibel Edmonds case,

"The commercial interest (between has also fostered close political ties, with the American Turkish Council, American Turkish Cultural Alliance (TACA) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) all developing warm relationships with AIPAC and other Jewish and Israel advocacy groups throughout the US."

Given the strong connections between the Turkish and Israeli lobbies identified in Sibel's case, it is perhaps not surprising to see members of Israeli lobbying groups stepping forward to defend Celebi in the NRO and elsewhere, although the claims made in his defense are easily debunked.


Why is Hillary Clinton involved with such a character? The claims against him are well documented, and extend back to her husband's presidency, including steps in place to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Celebi and the bribery of Hastert's and others. Sibel described the situation on a radio program in early 2006:

" In 1999, the Clinton Administration actually asked the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Hastert, and certain other elected officials that were not named in this (VF) article, to be investigated formally. And the Department of Justice actually went about appointing this prosecutor, but after the Administration changed they quashed that investigation and they closed it despite the fact they had all sorts of evidence, again I’m talking about wiretaps, documents - paper documents - that was highly explosive and could have been easily used to indict the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. That investigation was closed in 2001, and this was around the time I started reporting my cases to the Congress."

Has Hillary forgotten all this? Or is she too for sale to the highest bidder? We are all well aware of George Bush's fund-raising giants, the Rangers and Pioneers, which resulted in many a scandal and prosecution including Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff and Brent Wilkes - yet here is Hillary Clinton engaging in the exact same behaviour, taking large sums of money from corrupt interests, and appointing these people to positions of political power. How can we even hope that a Clinton presidency will be an improvement over the last 8 years?

The right-wing blogs are already beginning to pick up this story of Celebi and Clinton - Debbie Schlussel, National Review Online, Gateway Pundit - focusing solely on Celebi's involvement with the movie "Valley of the Wolves." The Right-Wing-Noise-Machine will no doubt go into overdrive if Hillary wins the nomination to be the next president. This information needs to be made public immediately.

When asked for a comment, Sibel said:

"In 2005, Vanity Fair reported that Dennis Hastert had been bribed by Turkish interests. If people want to investigate this further they should FOIA the FBI's Chicago Field Office for information regarding Mehmet Celebi going back to 1997. If the FBI is honest, there will be boxes and boxes of files responsive to these FOIA requests.

Hillary Clinton knows, or should know, about Mehmet Celebi's activities. If she doesn't, she should ask Bill Clinton or his Attorney General Janet Reno."

The FBI's Chicago Field Office has investigative files relating to Mehmet Celebi's involvement in the trafficking of narcotics as well as the corruption of high-level US officials. We need to recruit some prominent 'good government' groups, of any political persuasion, to file a FOIA request with the FBI's Chicago Field Office (CFO) for all information relating to Mehmet Celebi and this criminal activity. I expect that the CFO will deny and stonewall, but as we saw with the recent UK Times article, false denials can lead to other frustrated whistleblowers coming forward with documents and other evidence which can prove the case. Please contact me if you can prepare, file, and follow-up the FOIA request.

**********

As Sibel recently said, "Buckle up, there's much more coming".

THE VIDEO HILLARY DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE

A video on Hillary, Çelebi, and others. Many thanks to the friend who sent the link:

What would Sibel say?

CLINTONS, KURDS, MORE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

"President Nursultan Nazarbaev retained power in the December 2005 presidential elections, which international observers found did not meet international standards."
~ Human Rights Watch, Report on Kazakhstan.

Do you live in one of the world's top surveillance societies? Check the map:




Here's the color key:




From Wired:

Privacy International, a UK privacy group, and the U.S.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center have put together a world map of surveillance societies, rating various nations for their civil liberties records.

Both the U.S. and the UK are colored black for "endemic surveillance," as are Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Russia, China and Malaysia.

Here's a link to the data. Isn't that interesting?

We know that the Clinton administration did all it could to enrich the military-industrial complex by selling more MIC product to Turkey than during all the combined years of the Cold War. We also know that it was the Clinton administration that appointed criminals like Marc Grossman and Joseph Ralston to important positions whereby they were able to set themselves up very comfortably in private life--working to sell Turkey more MIC product or warning off Turkish interests from CIA front companies like Brewster Jennings. We might say that the term "conflict-of-interest" is the term that best describes everything that happened while the Clinton administration was in charge.

Today, the NYTimes tells us that the former president has been assisting Canadian buddies in swinging uranium deals in that well-known bastion of democracy--Kazakhstan:

Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.

Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.

[ . . . ]

Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clinton’s public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.

The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.

Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.

If Hillary Clinton goes to the White House, Bill, with all his conflicts-of-interest and privileges bestowed on "friends", will go with her. Of course, Hillary boasts of her previous experience in the White House during her two terms as first lady:

In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: a full partner to her husband in his administration, and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her "eight years with a front-row seat on history."

[ . . . ]

Clinton's role in her most high-profile assignment as first lady, the failed health care initiative of the early 1990s, has been well documented. Yet little has been made public about her involvement in foreign policy and national security as first lady. Documents about her work remain classified at the National Archives. Clinton has declined to divulge the private advice she gave her husband.

Don't forget that Hillary is owned by, among others, Mehmet Çelebi and the MIC. In case you've forgotten, Mehmet Çelebi was one of the producers of Kurtlar Vadisi İrak. Note the following:

Celebi, who led Chicago-based the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (TACA) during a time Vanity Fair magazine claimed the local Turkish community was under FBI counterintelligence surveillance, is an up and coming movie producer.

The Vanity Fair article in question is the article by David Rose on Sibel Edmonds from September 2005.

And since I've pointed out Bill Clinton's Kazakh connections, take a look at what's happening to Kurds in Kazakhstan:

Fearing for their physical safety, many ethnic Kurds say they plan to leave southern Kazakstan, as reports of low-level violence against them continue.

Zara, an inhabitant of the southern city of Shymkent, says her family and many other local Kurds plan to sell up and leave following a spate of attacks on the community last November.

“Of course we are afraid to leave - we have lived here all our lives - but we are also afraid to stay,” Zara told IWPR.

“We don’t know what is coming next. The newspapers are writing bad things about us Kurds. If the community elders say so, we will certainly leave.”

The trouble dates from the end of October, when a Kurdish teenager from the village of Mayatas, in the Tolebi district of South Kazakstan region, was accused of sexually assaulting a four-year-old Kazak boy. (See previous IWPR story, Kazakstan: Ethnic Clash a Worrying Sign.) After the latter’s father went to the police, locals took the law into their own hands and started burning and looting houses and beating up Kurds.

The violence then spilled over into other towns and villages where to Kurds live.

[ . . . ]

Official statistics suggest that there about 46,000 Kurds now living in Kazakstan, of whom 7,000 live in the South Kazakstan administrative region.

The Kurds belong to a community deported wholesale from Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1937, and from Georgia in 1944. Like hundreds of thousands of Chechens, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars and other ethnic groups, they were deemed suspect by Stalin, who ordered them to be shifted far into the interior of the Soviet Union.

The entire Kurdish community of Kazakhstan is punished for the alleged wrongdoing of one. There's no mention of a trial, not even of a trial in a kangaroo court, but the entire Kurdish community has already been judged. Hard to believe, isn't it, especially since Kazakhstan is considered part of Greater Turan.

Bill Clinton praised the Kazakh dictator, Nazarbaev, for "opening up the social and political life of [his] country," and hoped Kazakhstan would lead the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This must be the US position on Kazakhstan anyway since Dick Cheney and other US officials have recently "failed to comment publicly on the government’s human rights record during their visits" to the country.

Unfortunately, Human Rights Watch has a different opinion about that.

But Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, and an entire host of US officials would never lie to us . . . right?

THE DEEP STATE'S CANDIDATE

"We should work more to both protect the Kurds and make sure they will not provide shelter to terrorists in their territory."
~ Hillary Clinton.

A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for the war industry, according to Britain's Independent. The military-industrial complex (MIC) realizes that the Republicans stand a proverbial snowball's chance of winning the White House in the next election, so the employees of the MIC have chosen Hillary with their campaign bucks:

Mrs Clinton's wooing of the defence industry is all the more remarkable given the frosty relations between Bill Clinton and the military during his presidency [Bullshit--Mizgîn]. An analysis of campaign contributions shows senior defence industry employees are pouring money into her war chest in the belief that their generosity will be repaid many times over with future defence contracts.

Employees of the top five US arms manufacturers – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon – gave Democratic presidential candidates $103,900, with only $86,800 going to the Republicans. "The contributions clearly suggest the arms industry has reached the conclusion that Democratic prospects for 2008 are very good indeed," said Thomas Edsall, an academic at Columbia University in New York.

In spite of what the article says about Bill Clinton's relationship with the military itself--certainly not as cozy a relationship as he had with any number of women--Bill Clinton was the MIC's dream come true. From Multinational Monitor, 1995:

Arms industry lobbyists say they are delighted with the Clinton administration’s record. “Clinton has been very helpful through [Commerce Secretary] Ron Brown,” says Ana Stout, executive vice president of the American League for Export Assistance, Inc., an industry association that promotes unimpeded defense sales to U.S. “friends and allies.”

“We’re quite satisfied with what we see the thrust of the policy to be,” adds Joel Johnson, vice president for international affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association. “It’s 180 degrees different from Carter. They won’t throw up obstacles to every arms sale to every country. The Clinton people are very supportive of specific sales. They are more dynamic than any administration we’ve seen.”

Under the sidebar:

A fellow NATO ally, the United States is Turkey’s closest military partner. Between 1987 and 1991, 77 percent of all arms deliveries to Turkey came from the United States, according to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

For fiscal years 1986-1995, Congress has appropriated $5.1 billion in military aid for Turkey, making it the third-largest recipient after Israel and Egypt. In terms of commercial sales, Turkey is the fifth-largest consumer of U.S. arms after Saudi Arabia, Japan, Taiwan and Egypt. Turkey bought $9.4 billion in U.S. arms during fiscal years 1984-1993. In 1994 alone, Turkey’s counterinsurgency campaign cost an estimated $6.5 billion.

The Clinton administration helped Turkey acquire more cluster bombs, which were used on the Kurdish people:

Human Rights Watch’s Arms Project revealed in December 1994 that the U.S. government is weighing a Turkish request to buy almost 500 U.S.-made CBU-87 Combined Effects Munitions (CEMs), or cluster bombs.

[ . . . ]

One type of bomb the Turkish air force dropped on Zaleh in January of 1994 was the U.S.-made, Vietnam-era Mk20 Rockeye cluster bomb. This is the only cluster bomb now thought to be in the Turkish arsenal. “Turkey already has [cluster bombs] in its inventory,” says an arms lobbyist, who asks not to be identified. “Human rights shouldn’t be involved. What does [blocking new cluster bombs exports] accomplish?”

We know that Turkey is using cluster bombs against the civilian population in South Kurdistan yet again.

And there's more on Bill Clinton's illegal arms transfers to Turkey, from Human Rights Watch and at the Federation of American Scientists.

Let us also remember that our friends at The Cohen Group all worked for the Clinton administration, with William Cohen as Defense Secretary, Marc Grossman in a number of State Department jobs including ambassador to Turkey, and Joseph Ralston as military head of NATO.

Deep State Hillary will not be any better than her husband when it comes to the situation in North Kurdistan? The situation there is a return to the Dirty War, complete with the state's black operations, a new OHAL, and greater efforts at enforcing a media blackout on the area.

In fact, she may be worse; females are always the more deadly of the species.

END OF WEEK BITS AND PIECES

"It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting."
~ Tom Stoppard.

I want to do a little bit of a wrap up of interesting odds and ends. These are things I've come across during the week that need to be noticed by Kurds.

First off, Dr. Kristiina in Finland offers her congratulations to the new Kurdish parliamentarians and expresses her happiness on their achievement. She has written something in Finnish for Finland's biggest daily paper and promises she will post some comments on the elections in English on Monday, 30 July. It will certainly be something to watch for.

Hevallo keeps hammering away at ExxonMobil. Apparently the corporation that racked up the greatest annual profits of any corporation in history (last year) has suffered some loss of profit. Give me thirty minutes and I'll see if I can squeeze out a tear for them--but don't hold your breath.

Stress is carrying an interview on Antiwar Radio with Joshua Frank, who talks about the danger of Deep State-funded Hillary Clinton becoming president. Some of the points in the interview include an acknowledgement of Hillary's meddling in foreign affairs and wars while she was merely First Lady. This may be an indication that she will be far more war-mongering and bloodthirsty than her philandering husband.

That's no small matter because Bill Clinton provided more weapons to Turkey toward the end of his administration than the US provided to Turkey during all the combined previous years of the Cold War, and he managed to have the American taxpayer foot the bill for most of it. Check a report by the Federation of American Scientists and an earlier report by HRW which documents how American weapons were routinely used against the civilian Kurdish population of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan.

Now if Hillary gives indications of being more bloodthirsty than her husband, do you think that's a good thing for Kurds?

What may be even more alarming is the fact that there has been talk of appointing mass-murderer Richard Holbrooke as Secretary of State in a possible Hillary administration. Since the guy had been to Maxmur earlier this year, and since the guy is tight with Turkish business interests, namely the Sabancı gang, this doesn't look good for Kurds either.

Why? Well, check out an excellent article by Edward S. Herman (co-author with Noam Chomsky on Manufacturing Consent) earlier this year titled "Richard Holbrooke, Samantha Power, and the 'Worthy-Genocide' Establishment":

It follows that a man like Richard Holbrooke, who has been a part of the U.S. foreign policy establishment for over 40 years, is likely to have been a participant in the genocides that have taken place during that period. Thus, while Holbrooke regularly speaks and gets a warm welcome from the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard and from Human Rights Watch, [2] we should recall that he was an official of the U.S. government during the Vietnam war era, from 1962 through 1969; he was the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs in charge of Indonesian relations during the Carter administration, and during the worst and most genocidal phase of Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor in 1977-1978. He was also an official of the Clinton administration, and eventually the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, in the years when the United States was enforcing the “sanctions of mass destruction” on Iraq.

If we measure “genocide” by the numbers deliberately and intentionally killed and the threat these actions pose to the survival of the target population, all three of these episodes in which Holbrooke was involved qualify for inclusion.

This means that a possible future Hillary administration could be dubbed "The Genocide Gang 2."

There's a good commentary at Harper's about the American Enterprise Institute:

To hear President Bush tell it, all he does is sit back and patiently take the advice of his generals in the field and in the Pentagon. But every field commander to return from Iraq and put on his civvies has told a different tale: the White House hammers ridiculous strategies down their throats, doesn’t listen to a word they say, and instead takes direction from a group of juveniles in their fifties over at Neocon Central Command, the American Enterprise Institute.

Read the rest.


Finally, Özgür Gündem has a couple of articles (here and here) about more election corruption in Culemêrg (Hakkari). Apparently, people voted in Culemêrg who were out of town on election day for various reasons--like they were in the military in other parts of Turkey, or they were teachers off to spend the summer with relatives--and voting was held in the graveyard . . . by dead people. Not only did the military cast votes in Culemêrg, even though the military is not permitted to vote by Turkish law, but the military also forced 317 villagers to vote openly. In other words, the military violated their right to a secret ballot.

In Riha (Urfa), seventeen ballot boxes are missing and no one seems to know where they are, when they went missing, or what happened to them. YSK will have to make a determination on the matter of the missing election boxes, but even if they are eventually recovered there will still have to be another vote because the boxes have been out of any official chain of custody. This means that the contents of the boxes are tainted and should no longer be legitimate. Or at least that's the way it should work in a democracy.

But I guess that's a bit of a stretch.

THE PIMPS OF K STREET

"But the kingpin of Turkish advocacy is Bob Livingston, whose lobbying firm, the Livingston Group, has hauled in roughly $13 million in Turkish lucre since 2000."
~ Michael Crowley.

In comments the other day, someone dropped off a link to a great video produced by the Armenian National Committee of America. I wished that the video were available through YouTube so that I could embed it here. Today, I received an email which contained a link to the video on YouTube, so I am carrying the video here.

Along with the video was a link to an article from The New Republic by Micheal Crowley which discusses Washington's illustrious red-light district, known in "polite" society as "K Street." That's K Street, as in the center of power for the American lobby industry,and Crowley's article looks at the lobby industry through the lens of the Armenian Genocide. As an intro to the video, let's look at a part of that article, a part which deals with the rat you will see in the video:

With Rogan's [Jim, R-CA] seat on the line in 2000, a first-ever vote on a genocide resolution seemed a sure thing--that is, until the Turkish government mobilized its lobbying team, led by former Republican House Speaker Bob Livingston, its $700,000 man in the field. In a state of affairs one furious Republican described to Roll Call as "ridiculous," Livingston found himself battling a measure meant to protect the very House majority he had briefly presided over just two years earlier. A Turkish threat to cancel military contracts, including a $4.5 billion helicopter deal with a Fort Worth-based company, ensured the opposition of powerful Texas Republicans like Tom DeLay. Hastert was cornered. But he found cover in Bill Clinton, who warned that Turkey might shut down its American-run Incirlik air base, from which the United States patrolled the no-fly zone over northern Iraq. Citing Clinton's objections, Hastert pulled the bill. Rogan tried to accuse Clinton of playing politics, and someone sent out a last-minute mailer featuring Schiff next to a Turkish flag. But it wasn't enough, and Schiff beat Rogan by nine percentage points.

The "Fort Worth-based" helicopter company would be Bell Helicopter Textron, whose employees helped to murder Kurdish civilians throughout the 1990s. And let's not forget that Bill Clinton (whose wife is now campaigning to become the Democratic nominee for the US presidency courtesy of Turkish Deep State campaign funds) provided more weapons, including illegal weapons transfers, to Turkey than any other administration in US history.

Turkey, in turn, used those American weapons to commit gross human rights abuses and violations of the laws of warfare against its Kurdish population. Along with that is the fact that US and UK sorties leaving Incirlik to protect the Kurdish people of South Kurdistan, ostensibly, were always called off by the Turkish general staff when they wanted to conduct their own sorties against the very same Kurdish people the US and UK were supposed to be protecting. Aircraft supplied courtesy of Bill Clinton and Lockheed Martin and paid for, in most part, by the US taxpayer.

In other words, the Clintons and their administration lackeys are guilty of the crime of genocide.

And speaking of Clinton lackeys, the article at TNR brings up the subject of Dick Gephardt, former "Young Turk"--his own label--and supporter of the Armenian Genocide Resolution back in the year 2000, who's become a pimp for Turkey in the same mold as Livingston:

A RISING St. Louis politician in the mid-1970s, Richard Gephardt was among a dynamic group of aldermen dubbed "The Young Turks." So perhaps it's not surprising that, 30 years later, the former Democratic minority leader of the House of Representatives has aged into an Old Turk. This spring, Gephardt has been busy promoting his new favorite cause--not universal health care or Iraq, but the Republic of Turkey, which now pays his lobbying firm, DLA Piper, $100,000 per month for his services. Thus far, Gephardt's achievements have included arranging high-level meetings for Turkish dignitaries, among them one between members of the Turkish parliament and House Democratic leaders James Clyburn and Rahm Emanuel; helping Turkey's U.S. ambassador win an audience with a skeptical Nancy Pelosi; and, finally, circulating a slim paperback volume, titled "An Appeal to Reason," that denies the existence of the Armenian genocide of 1915.

[ . . . ]

Even more striking than the historic Turkish-Armenian hatred festering in the halls of Congress, however, is the way Washington's political elites are cashing in on it. Take Gephardt. While the Turks and Armenians have a long historical memory, Gephardt has an exceedingly short one. A few years ago, he was a working-class populist who cast himself as a tribune of the underdog--including the Armenians. Back in 1998, Gephardt attended a memorial event hosted by the Armenian National Committee of America at which, according to a spokeswoman for the group, "he spoke about the importance of recognizing the genocide." Two years later, Gephardt was one of three House Democrats who co-signed a letter to then House Speaker Dennis Hastert urging Hastert to schedule an immediate vote on a genocide resolution. "We implore you," the letter read, arguing that Armenian-Americans "have waited long enough for Congress to recognize the horrible genocide." Today, few people are doing more than Gephardt to ensure that the genocide bill goes nowhere.

It's Gephardt's DLA Piper connection that links him to some of the worst monsters of the Clinton bureaucracy because DLA Piper is the legal partner of The Cohen Group. The Cohen Group was founded by Clinton's defense secretary, William Cohen, while two other former Clinton bureaucratic lapdogs help run the show--former NATO chief and current Lockheed Martin PKK Coordinator Joseph Ralston and former ambassador to Turkey, the slimy Marc Grossman.

You can read the entire The New Republic article here.

Now, on to the show. By the way, did you know that Livingston had to resign his place in the House of Representatives for adultery? Well, now you do know.

HILLARY HORNING IN ON HASTERT?

"With all due respect to Hillary Clinton and her current posturing, she is—frankly speaking—a damn liar and should be treated as such, and never be given the opportunity to lead the United States of America."
~ Scott Ritter.

Is Hillary Clinton horning in on Hastert's financial turf?

Some of you may remember that among the many pieces of information Sibel Edmonds has been able to reveal, one of those was the Turkish bribing of former Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert:

The FBI refused to investigate Edmonds’ claims, at least in part, because the contract linguist had discovered quite a messy scandal: the content of the mistranslated documents revealed that some very powerful people in the U.S. government, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, were connected to foreign organized crime. Even worse, these foreign criminals connected to the high and mighty in the U.S. were also connected internationally, through the heroin trade and associated money laundering, to international terrorist organizations like al Qaeda.

And, from the original Vanity Fair article:

Edmonds has given confidential testimony inside a secure Sensitive Compartmented Information facility on several occasions: to congressional staffers, to investigators from the O.I.G., and to the staff from the 9/11 commission. Sources familiar with this testimony say that, in addition to her allegations about the Dickersons, she reported hearing Turkish wiretap targets boast that they had a covert relationship with a very senior politician indeed—Dennis Hastert, Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House since 1999. The targets reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information. “The Dickersons,” says one official familiar with the case, “are only the tip of the iceberg.”

And there's more, from Lukery's Kill The Messenger blog, including information from one of the directors of Kill the Messenger:

His [David Rose, author of the Vanity Fair article] testimony helps strengthening the pillars of the story - yes, the tapes involved Turkish officials, some of them working for the embassy in the Washington, and others in the consulate in Chicago. Money in exchange secrets, basically what we could read in Vanity Fair… When that was done, he described how he found out about Hastert, and then alluded to what we expose in the last segment of the film: the Neocons connection.

So, what are we to think when one of Hillary's Chicago fundraisers is also a leader in Chicago's Turkish community? One Mehmet Çelebi:

The major contributors could help Clinton draw support from Obama, argued another Clinton fundraiser, businessman Mehmet Celebi, a leader in Chicago's Turkish community.

"People will assume these big names must know something," Celebi said.

Yeah, those major contributors must know something . . . Like how well all those Turkish bribes helped turn Hastert against a House resolution that he'd initially supported--the Armenian Genocide Resolution.

Çelebi on why he helped with the production of Kurtlar Vadisi İrak:

Celebi, who has lived in the United States for 15 years, tells us why he took part in this project as a person who wants the relationship of the two countries to be at its best: “Knowing the truth, being on the side of the ones who have been done wrong, are two of the characteristics of an American. Also the founders of the country were those who had been done wrong. This movie has been shot under the light of these truths.”

Sure, sure . . . Kurtlar Vadisi İrak was truth par excellence and it was film par excellence . . . well, at least on the level of Birth of a Nation. But there's more on Çelebi's bio:

Mehmet’s experience in management and finance spans the globe. Professionally, Mehmet worked in a management capacity at some of the world’s largest financial institutions and has provided financial guidance to many high-net worth individuals and celebrities as well as corporations.

[ . . . ]

Mehmet is also an authority on international relations. He has worked with various political leaders from Turkey as well as other countries on issues dealing with Turkish-American relations and Turkey at large, and is considered one of the national leaders of the Turkish-American community in the US. He has been serving as the President of the Turkish-American Cultural Alliance since 2000, and as Member of the Board/Vice-President of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations, a Washington, D.C. based umbrella organization representing 57 organizations.

Mehmet has also been a member of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations’, “Task Force on Islamic relations in the US,” since 2003.

Now I ask you, how could MIT pass up a guy with that kind of talent and those kinds of connections?

Apparently, Çelebi knows money, but what I want to know is whether or not the money he's handled has been dusted with a little heroin. That's something that Hillary Clinton should be interested to know, too. If she were nice about it, she might ask Dennis Hastert.

Maybe it's just natural that Hillary should turn to the Turkish-American community for campaign financing. After all, her husband's administration did a lot of business with Turkey which helped to enrich all of those who've grown fat from arming repressive regimes.

And let's not forget that some of the Clinton's favorite playmates were William Cohen, Marc Grossman, and Joseph Ralston.

Smells like Deep State to me.

If anyone thinks there will be regime change in a Democratic 2008, they are woefully mistaken.

Thanks, Miguel.