American Judas 2nd Edition Part Six: Sibel Edmonds [View All]

[robertpaulsen]

In light of Sibel Edmonds speaking in the recent article printed in the UK Sunday Times, I think now is an appropriate time to revisit one section of the second edition of American Judas that focuses on the revelations that Sibel Edmonds has brought forth. I would also like to take this time to thank Sibel for her service and courage, and to thank Luke Ryland and Larisa Alexandrovna for reading between the lines and spelling out what The Times lacked the courage to specify:

http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2008/01/sibel-names-names-in-pictures.html

http://www.atlargely.com/2008/01/sibel-speaks-pa.html

Finally, I would encourage everyone here who cares about the truth to SPEAK OUT ABOUT THIS. Contact Keith Olbermann. Contact your Congressperson. Write a LTTE to your local paper. Do whatever you feel is necessary to spread the word about Sibel's story, but above all, DO NOT REMAIN SILENT!


Thursday, March 1, 2007
American Judas 2nd Edition: INVESTIGATE CHENEY & UNRAVEL THE CABAL

Part Six: Sibel Edmonds

Scott Horton: (P)erhaps your case is tied in with the AIPAC spy scandal?

Sibel Edmonds: Absolutely. And I cannot go into any details. … But even the AIPAC spy scandal, as far as I'm reading today, is just touching the surface of it. It's going only to a certain degree. It doesn't go high enough, in what it involves and how far it goes, and that's as far, and the best – as far as I can explain. http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=7032

It is not Sibel Edmonds intention to be vague or cryptic when she says she cannot go into any details, she is simply saying all that she is allowed by law. But before delving deeper into that peculiar circumstance, it is important to explore the link between the AIPAC spy scandal and Sibel Edmonds as links between other scandals were explored in the 1st edition of American Judas: in the words of W. Mark Felt, a.k.a. Deep Throat, “Follow the money.” The weak link in the financial trail starts with Plame/AIPAC provocateur Doug Feith and an institution plagued with scandal known as Riggs Bank. The notoriety of Riggs Bank became publicized at a time when Jonathan Bush, George W’s uncle, was an executive there. The trouble began when Omar al-Bayoumi opened bank accounts at Riggs for two of the 9/11 hijackers. The wife of al-Bayoumi got money from Prince Bandar’s wife through the Riggs account. Though the 9/11 Commission believed the money was not intentionally routed to fund terrorists, investigators were shocked at how lax Riggs was in their lack of background checks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riggs_Bank Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), states that he asked the FBI to undertake a review of the Riggs Bank records on the terrorists' money trail, to look at other Saudi companies with ties to al-Qaeda, to plan for monitoring suspect Saudi interests in the United States; however, Graham adds: "To my knowledge, none of these investigations have been completed. Nor do we know anything else about what I believe to be a state-sponsored terrorist support network that still exists, largely undamaged, within the United States." http://www.counterpunch.org/edmonds11152006.html Further investigations discovered that Riggs helped former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet hide millions, illegally allowing him to retain access to his fortune. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53345-2004Jul15.html Finally, there is the case of Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who Condoleeza Rice refers to as a ‘good friend’. http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/18/rices-good-friend-a-brutal-oil-rich-dictator/ The dictator of Equatorial Guinea, Obiang was allowed by Riggs to siphon oil revenue into his personal accounts. Despite the fact Obiang and his wife made cash deposits of nearly $13 million over a three-year period into their Riggs accounts, the bank never filed a single suspicious activity report to federal regulators as required by law. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53345-2004Jul15.html Obiang's brother—who is accused of torturing prisoners with stinging ants—was touted by a top bank official as a "valued customer." http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/000248.php In the end, Riggs Bank was fined $25 million in February 2005 in the wake of these controversies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riggs_Bank Feith’s connection to this debacle? Joe Allbritton, whose control of Riggs collapsed in the wake of these revelations. Allbritton pumped millions of dollars from his own holdings of bank stock and from George W. Bush's uncle Jonathan's investment-banking operation (which was part of the Riggs National Bank conglomeration) into the Allbritton Foundation. During 2000 and again in 2002, the records show, the foundation donated $25,000 to the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School. Doug Feith is a director and former president of this private school. http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/000248.php

But it is Feith’s association with Richard Perle as a foreign lobbyist that takes the money trail closer geographically to Sibel Edmonds’ territory in the country of Turkey. In 1989, Feith registered International Advisors Inc. (IAI) as a foreign agent representing the government of Turkey. In official documents, one of the stated purposes of the work of IAI was to "promote the objective of U.S.-Turkish defense industrial cooperation." IAI was described in both the United States and Turkish press as Perle’s brainchild. Perle, however disputed this claim saying that IAI was not his group. He claimed that he was merely an "advisor." He further noted "I find very distasteful this business where people leave the government and the next thing you know, they’re on the other side of the table negotiating with the U.S." However, in semiannual reports filed by IAI during its 1989-1994 tenure, Richard Perle is listed as the single highest paid consultant to the group earning $48,000 each year. Feith, himself earned $60,000 per year and his law firm, Feith and Zell, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from IAI. http://www.mediamonitors.net/zogby9.html

Chris Deliso: At several points you state that such organized crime networks employ "semi-legitimate organizations" as their point of interface with governments and the "legit" world. Can you explain exactly what you mean?

Sibel Edmonds: These are organizations that might have a legitimate front – say as a business, or a cultural center or something. And we've also heard a lot about Islamic charities as fronts for terrorist organizations, but the range is much broader and even, simpler.

CD: For example?

SE: You might have an organization supposed to be promoting the cultural affairs of a certain country within another country. Hypothetically, say, an Uzbek folklore society based in Germany. The stated purpose would be to hold folklore-related activities – and they might even do that – but the real activities taking place behind the scenes are criminal.

CD: Such as?

SE: Everything – from drugs to money laundering to arms sales. And yes, there are certain convergences with all these activities and international terrorism.

CD: So with these organizations we're talking about a lot of money –

SE: Huge, just massive. They don't deal with 1 million or 5 million dollars, but with hundreds of millions.
http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=2917

I don't think the issue here is about whistleblowing, being fired, being wronged – that is not the most important issue here. The most important issue is: What were these criminal activities, and why instead of pursuing these our government chooses to cover it up and actually issue classification and gag orders so the American public will not know about what is going on within these agencies within their government – and even within the Congress? That is my focus point, and I have been trying – it is what I have written and have said in my interviews – to steer away from the fact that yes, I was fired, yes I was wronged, and they retaliated against me, and how they ruined my life – which is all true. But this is not where I want to focus, and this is not where I want the country to focus, this is not where I want the Congress to focus. I'm not saying, "Look, they did wrong to me, and this is not fair." I'm saying, "I came forward because criminal activities are taking place – have been taking place – some of them since 1997." Some of these activities are 100 percent related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, and they are giving this illusion that they are pursuing these cases, but they are not.

-Sibel Edmonds http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=7032

Sibel Edmonds, a Turkish-American, was hired, as a contractor, to work as an interpreter in the translations unit of the FBI on September 20, 2001. Between December 2001 and March 2002, Edmonds reported to FBI managers various incidents of misconduct and incompetence, involving her supervisor Mike Feghali and others, that she observed while employed as a translator. In response, she claims that managers retaliated against her. She escalated her complaints to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility and the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General. She was fired on March 22, 2002. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds The misconduct Edmonds reported information about concerned an FBI translator named Jan Melek Can Dickerson whose husband, U.S. Air Force Major David Dickerson, belonged to a Turkish organization which was an investigative target of the FBI’s own counter-intelligence unit. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0504/S00251.htm Both Dickersons have Turkish backgrounds, Jan by birth, Doug as an Air Force man formerly stationed in Turkey and tasked with weapons procurement there for countries including Uzbekistan and Turkey itself. Edmonds and her husband were asked by them to join the Turkish organization Edmonds refers to above as a “semi-legitimate organization”, explaining that joining that organization would be very lucrative for the Edmonds’ and in return would require passing over classified FBI information. When this overture proved unsuccessful, they threatened Sibel Edmonds and her family, allegedly influencing the Turkish government to harass Sibel Edmonds’ sister while in Turkey. http://www.balkanalysis.com/?p=401 CBS host Ed Bradley said Edmonds found that "Dickerson had left out information crucial to the FBI’s investigation; information that Edmonds says would have revealed that the Turkish intelligence officer had spies working for him inside both the U.S. State Department and the Department of Defense at the Pentagon." After reporting evidence of espionage in December, 2001, Edmonds told an FBI special agent who had also had suspicions about the Dickersons and they pursued the issue; but Bureau heads said they were never notified despite Edmonds’ proof to the contrary. She said the FBI permitted other targets of the investigation, key people, including foreign nationals based in the U.S, to flee the country right up through January and February, 2002. Edmonds has said in the past that "I reported some of the suspects’ names higher up as I came across them in our investigation. And you know what? Within two weeks, they had all left the country. Just vanished." During the whole month the Dickersons were being subpoenaed, starting in June, 2002, Jan Dickerson continued to work in the FBI translations department--with a top-secret security clearance. Finally, only two weeks after the Air Force convened a formal investigation, Jan and David Dickerson were permitted to leave the country on September 9, 2002--about a year after September 11. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0504/S00251.htm

What Edmonds discovered about espionage and corruption in the FBI pales in comparison to what she learned about September 11, which got her in much more unique trouble with the US government than a mere employment termination. On August 15, 2002, Burnett v. Al Baraka Investment & Dev. Corp., was filed by families of 600 victims of the 9/11 attacks against Saudi banks, charity organizations, and companies. Edmonds was to file a deposition in this case regarding her claim that FBI had foreknowledge of al-Qaeda's attacks against the World Trade Center. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds While she was employed as a contract linguist for the FBI, she was given top-secret security clearance and hired to retranslate material that was collected prior to 9/11 to determine if anything was missed in the translations relating to the plot. She concluded that documents clearly showed that the 9/11 hijackers were in the country and plotting to use airplanes as missiles to carry out an attack in a major city. She said documents also included information relating to terrorist financial activities. http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=427 In response, the FBI offered her a substantial raise and a full-time job to encourage her not to go public that she had been asked by the Department of Justice to adjust translations of terrorist subject intercepts that had been received before September 11, 2001 by the FBI and CIA. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0504/S00251.htm The tapes she translated, often connected to terrorism, money laundering or other criminal activity, provide evidence that should have made apparent that an al-Qaeda plot was in the works. Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaeda on 9/11. "Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That's an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it's a lie." She testified before 9/11 commission staffers in February 2004 for more than three hours, providing detailed information about FBI investigations, documents and dates. http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/03/26/translator/index_np.html Unfortunately, the 9/11 Commission reduced her contributions in the 9/11 Commission Report to a single footnote.

Amazingly, that footnote is more information than the Department of Justice has been willing to allow Edmonds to disclose to the American public. On October 18, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft, in response to her lawsuit filed July 22, 2002, against the Department of Justice, the FBI, and several high-level officials, alleging that she was wrongfully terminated from the FBI in retaliation for reporting criminal activities committed by government officials and employees, invoked the State Secrets Privilege in order to prevent disclosure of the nature of Edmonds' work on the grounds that it would endanger national security, and asked that the suit be dismissed. Then on December 11, 2003, in response to her deposition in the Burnett v. Al Baraka 9/11 case, Ashcroft again invoking the State Secrets Privilege, filed a motion calling for Edmonds' deposition to be suppressed and for the entire case to be dismissed. The judge, seeking more information, ordered the government to produce any unclassified material relating to the case. In response, Ashcroft submitted further statements to justify the use of the State Secrets Privilege, and on May 13, 2004, took the unprecedented step of retroactively classifying as Top Secret all of the material and statements that had been provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2002 relating to Edmonds' own lawsuit, as well as the letters that had been sent by the Senators and republished by a watchdog group, Project On Government Oversight (POGO). Ashcroft’s reclassification was successful; Edmonds was barred from testifying in the 9/11 class action suit, and on July 6, 2004, her own suit was dismissed on state secrets grounds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds The judge who dismissed her suit, Reggie Walton, is also the judge in the trial of Scooter Libby. To this date, the Department of Justice gag order, despite all appeal attempts by Edmonds’ lawyers, has remained in effect. If it were to be rescinded, Edmonds told Kyle Hence, cofounder of 9-11 Citizens Watch, “it could lead to charges of treason being leveled against officials at top levels of the U.S. government”. Hence added, “If that is the case, then all those who have been involved in keeping this information from getting to the public are complicit in this treason”. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sibel_Edmonds

While she has been gagged from revealing specifics of the crimes she discovered, Edmonds has gone on record describing the government’s reaction to 9/11 as a cover-up. "Nobody is looking at the Department of Defense aspect of the whole 911 cover-up. The FBI is citing two reasons for my gag order: to protect ‘sensitive’ diplomatic relations and to protect foreign U.S. business relationships," she said. "I will say this: The FBI is only a mouthpiece for the State Department. The State Department is the main reason for the cover-up. It has to do with foreign business relationships and who they are...Pakistan, Turkey...espionage in the State Department...preventing an investigation." She believes that "once this issue gets to be...investigated, you will be seeing certain (American) people that we know from this country standing trial; and they will be prosecuted criminally… There is direct evidence involving no more than ten American names that I recognized… some are heads of government agencies or politicians--but I don’t want to go any further than that," revealing the content of the FBI intercepts she heard indicates that recognizable, very high-profile American citizens are linked to the 9/11 attacks. When asked in 2002 by CBS 60 Minutes co-host Ed Bradley, "did she seem credible to you? Did her story seem credible?" Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) said "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." http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0504/S00251.htm Her credibility received further confirmation when on January 14, 2004, the Justice Department's Office unclassified summary of the Justice Department's Inspector General's report on Edmonds found that many of her claims “were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services”. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sibel_Edmonds

To help other whistleblowers like her, In August, 2004, Edmonds founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), an alliance of whistleblowers who have come forward to address security weaknesses of the US. The NSWBC helps national security agency whistleblowers through advocacy of governmental and legal reform, public education on whistleblowing activity, provision of comfort and fellowship to national security whistleblowers suffering retaliation and other harms, and working with other public interest organizations. NSWBC is involved in backing former intelligence analyst Russ Tice, who was dismissed by the National Security Agency (NSA) in May, 2005. On December 16, 2005, ABC reported that Tice was among the sources of a leak about illegal NSA wiretap programs, ordered by the White House and first disclosed by the New York Times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibel_Edmonds And on a semi-related note, on February 25, 2007, Edmonds accused President Bush of using FISA warrants to spy on members of Congress, and that FISA was not aware of the misuse of the warrants. http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/2/25/172012/182

So how do you translate the translator? How do you decipher the words of a gagged woman? How do you find out who the “semi-legitimate organizations” are that are engaging in drugs, money laundering and arms sales in convergence with international terrorism? Sibel Edmonds has been encouraging everyone, as Felt encouraged Woodward, to follow the money. Doing so helped Vanity Fair, who went on the record with allegations that while he was House Speaker, Dennis Hastert may have been the recipient of tens of thousands of dollars of secret payments from Turkish officials in exchange for political favors and information. In the article, titled "An Inconvenient Patriot," Edmonds says that she gave confidential testimony about the payments to congressional staffers, the Inspector General and members of the 9/11 Commission. Edmonds says that she heard of the payments while listening to FBI wiretaps of Turkish officials who were under surveillance by the FBI. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/10/1346254 But getting back to the Dickersons, Edmonds caught a lucky break being on the receiving end of an accidental disclosure from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. According to the Edmonds team’s reply of September 19, 2002, the USAF Inspector General’s letter had referred specifically to the American-Turkish Council, based in Washington, D.C., as being related to the Dickersons. When asked if the American-Turkish Council (ATC) was in fact the name of the key “semi-legitimate organization” that had infiltrated the FBI during her time there, because of the DOJ gag order she could only say, “I cannot confirm that… they said it, we did not.” http://www.balkanalysis.com/?p=401

One man described as a pillar of the ATC that Edmonds has been able to talk about is Marc Grossman. http://sibeledmonds.blogspot.com/2006/09/doug-feith-richard-perle-and-marc.html The same Marc Grossman who told Scooter Libby on June 11 or 12, 2003, more than a month before Novak’s column, about Wilson’s wife working at the CIA. http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001046.php The same Marc Grossman mentioned in the 1st edition of American Judas who had a meeting that was reported on September 10, 2001, as “most important” with General Mahmoud Ahmad, who resigned from being Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Chief the following month in the wake of an investigation by Times of India, confirmed by the FBI, that he authorized ISI agent Omar Saeed Sheikh to wire transfer $100,000 in August 2001 to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker of the 9/11 attacks. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essaysaeed.html When questioned in April 2006 by director Mathieu Verboud for an interview that was later cut out of a documentary about Sibel Edmonds titled Kill the Messenger, Grossman claimed he didn’t know anything about Sibel Edmonds or Valerie Plame. This cannot be true, according to Edmonds, because Grossman was one of three officials – the other two, she says, are Richard Perle and Douglas Feith – who had been watched by both Valerie Plame's Brewster Jennings & Associates CIA team, and by the major FBI investigation of organized crime and governmental corruption on which she herself was working until being terminated in April 2002. http://sibeledmonds.blogspot.com/2006/09/doug-feith-richard-perle-and-marc.html

Now that yet another motivation for Cheney to blow Plame’s cover has been revealed, the role that Turkey plays in this game of “many dark actors” appears much larger. Edmonds has researched this extensively and wrote about it in a two part article in November 2006 titled The Hijacking of a Nation. To quote: “Turkey played a major role in Pakistan and Libya's illicit activities in obtaining nuclear technologies. In June 2004, Stephen Fidler, a reporter for Financial Times reported that in 2003, Turkish centrifuge motors and converters destined for Libya's nuclear weapons program turned up in Tripoli aboard a ship that had sailed from Dubai. One of those detained individuals in this incident, a 'respected and successful' Turkish Businessman, Selim Alguadis, was cited in a public report from the Malaysian inspector-general of police into the Malaysian end of a Pakistani-led clandestine network that supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea with nuclear weapons technologies, designs and expertise. According to the report, "he supplied these materials to Libya." Mr. Alguadis also confessed that he had on several occasions met A Q Khan, the disgraced Pakistani scientist who has admitted transmitting nuclear expertise to the three countries”. http://www.counterpunch.org/edmonds11292006.html

One more dot to connect: is Dick Cheney directly affiliated with any of the “semi-legitimate organizations” in this international criminal conspiracy? While only a thorough binding investigation with subpoena power can determine this, the gagged former FBI translator has left a trail of breadcrumbs pointing investigators in the appropriate direction. Again from The Hijacking of a Nation, 'ATC is joined in the creation of the New EuroAsia by the American Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (AACC). AACC's Honorary Council of Advisors just happens to have General Scowcroft and the following persons of significance: Henry Kissinger and James Baker III. Former Council members include Dick Cheney and Richard Armitage, and Board of Trustee members include media-overkill subject Richard Perle of AEI, and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas.' http://www.counterpunch.org/edmonds11292006.html

Interesting that Cheney is listed as having resigned from the AACC in November 2000. As though leaving the organization a month before the Supreme Court selected him to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency could cover up the fact that this American Judas has made more money selling the security of his country out for the greater profits of drugs, money laundering, arms sales and international terrorism than the 30 pieces of silver the Biblical Judas sold his friend Jesus Christ out for. This is a story that cannot be swept under the rug. It is a huge story, sometimes daunting, but it must be told, and those who are in the best position to tell it must no longer be silenced by a government that claims to be of the people, for the people and by the people. We, the people, hunger for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The outline of the truth has been mapped in this paper, but there are many more pieces of the puzzle to discover. It’s important to remember that no matter how many stories are listed here, it is still just one story. But to get the whole story, we must have a whole investigation. Nothing in our lifetime could be more important, because there is no greater endeavor than establishing justice. It’s what our Founding Fathers listed first in the Constitution for their priorities of forming “a more perfect union”. We owe it to them, and ourselves, to see the truth through to the end.

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html