I'm still connecting the dots.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/22/19552/5785<snip>
Whistleblower Armageddon: Can GOP Stop the Revelations?
by Valtin
Sun Jan 22, 2006 at 04:55:02 PM PST
In Al Gore's January 16 speech, he laid out a programmatic five points to address the threats to our freedoms. Somewhat surprisingly, the number two demand was:
... new whistleblower protection should immediately be established for members of the executive branch who report evidence of wrongdoing, especially where it involves abuse of authority in the sensitive areas of national security.
(see Washington Post transcript)
Why the emphasis on whistleblower protection? Because the bureaucracy is imploding, with defections within the government, threatening to unveil a tsunami of revelations that will possibly link the Plame scandal, Sibel Edmonds's case, the Abramoff scandals, with the build-up to the Iraq war, if not the 9/11 attack itself.
Tinfoilhatters, hold onto those hats, because your day may be almost here...
Valtin's diary :: ::
Sibel Edmonds, besides being an incredibly brave woman, is an ex-FBI, post-9/11 translator who sought to bring some very strange and incriminating documents to the attention of her bosses, and later key member of Congress. She was stopped in her attempt, and had an arcane but draconian law asserting "state secret privilege" plastered on her, preventing her from saying anything concrete about what she knows. She went to the federal courts to remove the gag order, only to have Judge Reggie Walton -- the same judge "randomly" assigned to the Libby case -- reject her motion. So we don't know what were in those documents... yet.
Well, then, what's the Edmonds case all about? Daily Kos blogger, Necons Will Ban Me, had an excellent diary on Edmonds that attracted a lot attention back on 1/6/06:
Evidently the American Turkish Council, AIPAC, the Usual Neocon Suspects (Feith/Perle/Wolfowitz/Libby) and specific high-ranking individuals including former Turkish ambassadors Eric Edelman and Marc Grossman are deeply involved in global arms smuggling, drug-dealing, money-laundering and black market nuclear sales to terrorists. Individuals involved in this crime nexus were instrumental in the outing of Valerie Plame in an effort to sabotage the work of CIA front Brewster Jennings - which was seen as increasingly threatening to them.
<snip>
The bottom line seems to be that a group of influential lobbyists, high-ranking officials and diplomats in Turkey, Israel, the United States and the 'Stans --with the neocons at the center of all of it-- are caught up in a very large, fantastically lucrative and staggeringly corrupt scheme to facilitate precisely the ills (terrorism, arms proliferation, drug smuggling) these countries all claim to want stopped.
Now, as I was poking around on the Internet, I came across an interview Edmonds gave to the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel in May 2004. Notice the conclusion of Edmonds' statement, when asked, "What is Al Queda?"
This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap-- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money.
Now, where is there a big scandal unfolding surrounding a gigantic lobbying and money laundering operation, where some of this money could get into someone's political campaign? Hmmmm... "And people don't want to be traced back to this money." Hmmmmm...
<snip>
Oh, yeah! Jack "Indian Guide" Abramoff!
Time magazine reports the Bushies "scrambling to find photos of President Bush and Abramoff"? (link is from 1/9/06 NY Daily News) Why so scared of a picture or two? Surely the Rove machine can explain them away. Or is there something much bigger behind the Bush-Abramoff connection? Bigger even than the Susan Ralston connection. While this is very speculative, could it be something that connects them to the Edmonds grouping, financed with both Al Queda and Abramoff money? Or were the Abramoff millions (billions?) used to buy the U.S. elections? Or both? Or more?
Am I crazy? Well, why did the Associated Press report on September 27, 2001, that terrorists from the 9/11 hijackings were seen on Abramoff's SunCruz gambling boats in Florida a week prior to 9/11? And Atta's known to have jetted to Vegas prior to 9/11. The confluence of mob money, deep cover, and assassination/terror/drug money/money laundering is well covered in the political classic, UC Berkeley Professor Peter Dale Scott's book, Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina.
AP
In Florida, Michael Hlavsa, chairman of SunCruz Casinos gambling cruise company, said two or three men linked to the hijackings may have been customers on a ship that sailed from Madeira Beach. One name on the passenger list from a Sept. 5 cruise was the same as one of the suspected terrorists, Hlavsa said. SunCruz Casinos turned over photographs and other documents to FBI investigators...
<snip>
After Gore's speech, Sibel Edmonds e-mailed The Brad Blog:
The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition applauds Mr. Gore for his nonpartisan speech which very eloquently and sincerely expresses our core American values based on the notions of liberty and justice.
As stated by Mr. Gore, without whistleblowers the public would never know of the many abuses of constitutional rights by the government. Whistleblowers, Truth-Tellers, are responsible for the disclosure that President George W. Bush ordered unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens....
Hundreds of national security whistleblowers, patriotic government employees, have brought to the public's attention cases of agency wrongdoing only to find themselves fired, stripped of their security clearance, and/or deprived of meaningful work, simply because they were courageous and patriotic enough to place the security of our nation above their own career security and interests.
....our legislative branch has failed to provide these patriots with any protection.
<snip>
The U.S. government has been adept at running off-the-books political operations for decades now. Some of these operations became known: Watergate plumbers, Iran/Contra, etc. Many must be unknown. It seems possible that the whole War on Terror business is the work of one of these operations, spread across countries, and aimed at consolidating the dream of endless war to better consolidate the dicatorship of the war machine. These operations oftentime utilize connections with organized crime, drug operations (hmmm... Afghanistan's back in the opium business, uh, "bigtime"), special ops, and dubious local politicians and warlords.
Do I sound extreme? Tinfoil crazed? You may also wish to see the documentaries, "The Fog of War" (Errol Morris, Oscar best documentary) and "Why We Fight" (Eugene Jarecki; this picture was the 2005 winner at Sundance).
With all the secrets this administration is trying to hold onto: Plamegate, Niger forgeries, Abu Graib photos, NSA illegal wiretapping orders, Bush and Abramoff, the testimony of Sibel Edmonds, and much more; how much longer before it all comes out? Many good people in the state bureaucracy have been fighting a guerilla war against the forces of corruption and evil within this government. Al Gore has taken up the cudgels, and it should devolve upon us honest bloggers to take this demand and make it a mainstream meme on both our blogs and in the mainstream media.
There's no guarantee we can win. But the time is growing short before this government will move to stifle all dissent. One major economic downturn, accompanied by any strong showing of social fightback, and they will let loose their dogs of domestic war.
"When even one American -- who has done nothing wrong -- is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril." -- Harry S. Truman
(on masthead at nswbc.org)
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