Ed Bradley interviewed Sibel Edmonds (now online)

[lukery]

Recently deceased Ed Bradley interviewed Sibel Edmonds way back in September 2002 for 60 Minutes.

In many ways it was a very flawed report, and much of the interview was left on the cutting room floor - but it is now available online for the first time.

Here it is (about 15 mins in four parts):
1. http://youtube.com/watch?v=xxV7UGvadbw
2. http://youtube.com/watch?v=YB6M4xEBvHQ
3. http://youtube.com/watch?v=5iFH2k0aS34
4. http://youtube.com/watch?v=7svXI7_QEfA

Let's remember that this was an early interview (Sep02) - and a lot of the stuff that we now know was secret at the time - therefore this interview doesn't touch on many of Sibel's claims. The interview mostly frames the problem as 'poor management' at the FBI translation unit - we know that is simply not true.

Much has been made of Senator Grassley's claim that Sibel is 'credible' - here we have the full context: Grassley says:
'She's absolutely credible - and the reason that she's credible is that a lot of people in the FBI have corroborated her story'

Sibel's co-worker Jan Dickerson features in the segment.
We now know that she was a mole who tried to recruit Sibel into an espionage ring. Prior to her joing the FBI, Jan Dickerson worked for the American Turkish Council - which was being monitored by Brewster Jennings. Dickerson's husband is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Air Force and is also a player in this espionage ring - but the 60 Minutes segment doesn't mention him.

In the interview, Bradley asks Sibel what kind of information Dickerson 'mistranslated.' Sibel answered:
"Activities to obtain US military and intelligence secrets"

The 60 Minutes story didn't mention any of the other elements of Sibel's story, for example, that Hastert got 'suitcases of cash... knowing that a lot of that is drug money.'

David Rose raised some of the issues about Hastert being bribed in Vanity Fair last year. He was on Democracy Now last week discussing his latest article "Neo Culpa" about Perle and other neocons distancing themselves for the Iraq war and the Bush administration:

AMY GOODMAN: David Rose, you wrote an earlier piece, and we had you on at the time, the question of, did Speaker Hastert accept Turkish bribes to deny Armenian Genocide and approve weapons sales.
[]
Any further thoughts on that issue and a summary of the investigation that you did earlier?

DAVID ROSE: Well, that, of course, was an article published last year about the case of Sibel Edmonds, who was a translator who worked for the FBI after 9/11, who listened to wiretap recordings made of a number of individuals, wiretaps of various targets who were working in the Turkish embassy and elsewhere that the FBI thought might be a threat to national security or involved in criminal activity. Now, what the article reported was that one of the investigations that she was asked to work on involved recordings made of individuals who claimed that they had bribed Speaker Hastert, with both covert campaign donations and using other methods to transfer money, in favor for his withdrawing the Armenian Genocide resolution, which at that stage was about to pass through the House. It had passed through two preliminary stages.

Now, I think the extraordinary thing about that story is that it has not ever been contested that there was an FBI investigation, which did pick up allegations made by these Turkish targets, targets who, you know, were judged to be security risks by the FBI making these allegations about Speaker Hastert. I have never claimed that those allegations had substance, that they were true, because I simply cannot say. It's impossible to prove it one way or the other. But it is clear that there were recordings made by the FBI in which individuals claimed to have given illegal payments to the Speaker in return for political favors. And I was always slightly surprised and, indeed, again disappointed that the rest of the American media didn't pick up on that and didn't perhaps try to take it further, because it does seem to me to be an important issue.

I've been told that the American corporate media won't touch Sibel's story because 60 Minutes has already done a segment on the story. Are you satisfied with that?

I'm not.

------------------------
You can see the trailer for the new movie about Sibel at her website- and keep up to date with her story at sibeledmonds.blogspot.com

[lukery]

1. RIP ed. n/t

[seemslikeadream]

2. Whistlerblower Coming in Cold From The FBI

There is so much information in this article


Whistlerblower Coming in Cold From The FBI

...

the article mentions a woman named Melek Can Dickerson, a Turkish woman married to a major in the U.S. Air Force. The woman told Edmonds that she couldn't believe America was monitoring people who were their chief "persons of interest" because Dickerson and her husband had done favors for them...shopping...

"Ms. Edmonds has told the Judiciary Committee that soon after, Ms. Dickerson tried to establish social ties with her, suggesting they meet in Alexandria and introduce their husbands to each other.

When Sibel invited the visitors in for tea, she said, Major Dickerson began asking Matthew Edmonds if the couple had many friends from Turkey here in the U.S. Mr. Edmonds said he didn't speak Turkish, so they didn't associate with many Turkish people. The Air Force officer then began talking up a Turkish organization in Washington that he described, according to the Edmondses, as "a great place to make connections and it could be very profitable."

Sibel was sickened. This organization was the very one she and Jan Dickerson were monitoring in a 9/11 investigation. Since Sibel had adhered to the rule that an F.B.I. employee does not discuss bureau matters with one's mate, her husband innocently continued the conversation. Ms. Dickerson and her husband offered to introduce the Edmondses to people connected to the Turkish embassy in Washington who belonged to this organization. ..."My husband keeps thinking he's talking about promoting business deals," Ms. Edmonds later said of the encounter. "He has no idea the man is talking about criminal activities with some semi-legitimate front."

These are classic "pitch activities" to get somebody to spy for you, according to a Judiciary Committee staffer who investigated Ms. Edmonds' claims. ...The targets of that F.B.I. investigation left the country abruptly in 2002. Later, Ms. Edmonds discovered that Ms. Dickerson had managed to get hold of translations meant for Ms. Edmonds, forge her signature, and render the communications useless."

more
http://www.gailsheehy.com/9_11/9_11_art1_21.html

American Turkish Council
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4423637#4423906

[lukery]

4. sheehy's article was one of the first

Good on her.

The VF article is an updated version of that. (18 months later)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9774.htm

[upi402]

3. k/r RIP

[lukery]

5. ed bradley

i forgot to mention - Bradley's interview makes an appearance in Kill The MEssenger

[yurbud]

6. good or bad?

[StateSecrets]

7. Signatories

25,000+ signatures on Edmonds' petition for Public Hearing

[lukery]

8. death threats.

I'm not sure I understand your question.

I don't think that they *discuss* the Bradley interview very much - but in the trailer they use some of the footage about the death threats etc