Sibel Edmonds

[Joseph]

Joseph
Thank you for picking up the torch and running with it!

No sweat. I'm really interested in the Sibel Edmonds case and not just because it touches on the Genocide issue, but because I have a very good friend who is working at a government agency and is dealing with all sorts of incompetence that you would not even believe.

[Joseph]

Sibel Edmonds interview

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg189204.html

4. In Gag We Trust?
An Interview with FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds (Part I)
By Khatchig Mouradian

FBI language specialist Sibel Edmonds was fired from her job with the FBI's
Washington Field Office in March 2002. Her crime was reporting security
breaches, cover-ups, blocking of intelligence, and the bribery of U.S.
individuals including high-ranking officials. The State Secret Privilege has
often been invoked to block court proceedings on her case, and the U.S.
Congress has even been gagged to prevent further discussion.

Edmonds uncovered, for example, a covert relationship between Turkish groups
and former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who reportedly
received tens of thousands of dollars in bribes in return for withdrawing
the Armenian Genocide Resolution from the House floor in 2000.

Born in Iran in 1970, Edmonds received her BA in criminal justice and
psychology from George Washington University and her MA in public policy and
international commerce from George Mason University. She is the founder and
director of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) and in
2006, received the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award. She speaks
Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani.

This interview was conducted in Washington on April 23. To follow the
development of her case, visit www.justacitizen.com.

Khatchig Mouradian-It's been more than five years since you first contacted
the Senate Judiciary Committee to reveal the story on Turkish bribery of
high-level U.S. officials. Can you tell us about how this has evolved since
then, and where it stands now?

Sibel Edmonds-Sure. It's been slightly over five years since I went to the
Senate Judiciary Committee and briefed both Senator Charles Grassley's
(R-Iowa) staff and Senator Patrick Leahy's (D-Vt.) staff in a classified
fashion, giving them the specific document numbers, document names, names of
specific targets and detailing the issues related to my case. And as you
might remember, a few months after I briefed the Senate Judiciary Committee,
both Senators started speaking out pretty loudly in the media. We had the
CBS 60 Minutes segment when Senator Grassley showed up and said this is
outrageous. Even people within the FBI have confirmed all the stories and
said we need to turn the FBI upside down on this issue. Senator Leahy was
making similar statements and both Senators were trying to put together a
hearing on this case. I was later told that the Chairman at the time
prevented a hearing and some people-including good FBI agents who would be
telling the truth under oath-from testifying and shedding light on the
issue.

Two years later, we had the unclassified version of that report issued by
the Inspector General's Office. This is the Department of Justice's own
Inspector General's Office. After two years of investigating, the report
confirmed my own reports. It found that although these allegations were
supported by documents and other witnesses, the FBI refused to conduct a
follow-up or an investigation-a real investigation-on this case. So you have
this case which for the past five years has been confirmed by Congressional
sources, and people familiar with my case, and the Department of Justice's
Inspector General's Office, and has never been contradicted or denied by the
Justice Department or the FBI, and still nothing has been done.

There has been no hearing and nobody has been held accountable. We are
basically where we started and I find that really appalling. It is a very
sad situation and not only for me or my case. Many people think this is
about one whistleblower, one language specialist who worked for the FBI and
was wrongfully terminated. But I wouldn't have been terminated if I hadn't
brought forth issues that were important to the American public, and even to
people outside the United States. This case sheds light on several important
areas, including our foreign policy, which is hypocrisy-ridden. We're not
talking only about foreign individuals; we're talking about our own, about
U.S. officials who have engaged in actions that are against the American
public's best interests and what we stand for. But the American people still
don't know about this case, and Congress has done nothing despite the fact
that they have been fully briefed and have gotten full confirmation.

K.M.-This makes one wonder, who is actually working for the people and who
is working for his own personal and private gains?

S.E.-This is important, the issue of self-interest versus the interests of
the American public, especially when you're talking about public servants.
These are the people who have been given access to our national
security-related issues and top-secret documents. And I emphasize that this
is not about one party, this is not an issue of right wing versus left wing,
this is not an issue of one administration against another. Because when you
really go deep into these cases, you find that these people-these U.S.
entities, U.S. officials-have been misusing and abusing their positions for
a while. And we have been looking the other way. And the mainstream media
has been looking the other way. These are not top-secret issues. All you
have to do is take a look at these people.

For example, look at Mr. Marc Grossman. He used to be the U.S. ambassador in
Turkey and used his position within the State Department to secure future
higher-level positions while in office-and I would like to emphasize
this-while in office and with several agencies knowing about it. Some people
in these agencies wanted to investigate these cases but they were prevented
from going forward.

In my case, with this one example that I gave you, I was told by my
bosses-and these are the "good people" bosses, these are the agents that I
work with-that the Pentagon and the State Department were pressuring the
Justice Department to silence the case. And just take a look at where Mr.
Grossman is today. Within a few months after he gave his resignation, he
obtained a position with a semi-legitimate Turkish company that is supplying
him with a very attractive monetary reward.

And then you can start going around and looking at similar cases, such as
Mr. Douglas Feith and Mr. Richard Perle. They were registered as foreign
agents for Turkey between 1988 and 1995. These were very lucrative
positions, and they were not representing the American government at that
point. So once they resumed their high-level positions within the U.S.
government in 2000, do you think anything changed in terms of which
interests they represented?

And unfortunately you also see this from the Congressional side. You saw it
in the late '80s and early '90s with Congressman Solaris, and again we saw
it with Congressman-and later Chairman-Livingston and the position he
obtained as a representative of a foreign interest. And we may see it
shortly with current Congressmen, such as former chairman Hastert. And it is
for the American public, for our mainstream media to really look hard at
these issues. This is an example of one country [Turkey] we are talking
about right now, one case. How many others are there? And why are they
looking the other way? Do our people know, are they aware, that they are
trusting and giving the authority to people who are not representing them?

K.M.-You are just one person and you're a translator working on issues that
have to do mainly with Turkey. You had some 200 colleagues. So one wonders
how many stories like this there are. This one story, your story, by itself,
is enough to show how corrupt the system is.

S.E.-My case has been known to a certain degree because of the activities
that I have been engaging in, in terms of going to courts, going to
Congress, etc. There are similar cases we are not hearing about. For
example, the Larry Franklin case, with the espionage case that they pursued
with AIPAC. And what the American public doesn't know is the fact that there
were other counter-intelligence operations within the FBI that obtained far
more information not only limited to Mr. Franklin. Other operations were
shut down in 2000 and 2001 because they ended up going to higher levels and
involving way too many people. I'm talking about individuals who are
breaking the law, misusing the trust and abusing their power, and in some
cases I would even say engaging in treason.

Again it's very easy to see what happened with my case. What kind of example
is my case presenting to those other people who may want to do the right
thing and come forward? They would say it doesn't make a difference at the
end, because I pursued every channel possible. I went as high as I could go
with the courts, including the Supreme Court, and as you know, they issued a
gag order on me several times and invoked the State Secrets Privilege. They
say that everything about my case-including where I was born, including the
languages I speak, everything-is classified. I'm prevented from discussing
whether or not I'm right. And I went all the way to Congress, I did the
right thing. I was not what they call a "leaker" who goes straight to the
media and starts divulging classified documents. I went to the appropriate
committees, the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee, too, by
the way, and the House and Senate... I went through the other legitimate
channels-the courts, the Inspector General's Office, which is the executive
branch. I tried the media. So I don't blame those people that get
pessimistic and say it doesn't make a difference, or think they'll lose
their job or possibly go to jail. Many of these people are the breadwinners
for their families. They're conscientious people, but they have put 15-20
years into their careers and think, "Oh, I'm 5 years away from my retirement
and I don't want to damage that." So you have many reasons why more people
aren't coming forward.

They make an example out of you. Because if one case, let's say my case,
would really bring justice and accountability, you would see so many people
doing the same thing. And how many times-let's just look at the past
decade-have you seen a legitimate whistleblower from any of these agencies
come forward and prevail? I don't think you can name one case.

You're also looking at all the other channels being culprits, sometimes
without even intending. For example, there is a lot of blame to be placed on
our mainstream media today. Willingly or not, they have become accomplices
by not reporting what they should be reporting, and not investigating what
they should be investigating. They have abdicated their responsibilities.
And where do we look at when we talk about issues such as accountability
investigations? We look at Congress. And they have been a major reason we
are not seeing more people coming forward from the FBI, agents that I worked
with-solid, patriotic, good Americans, dedicated people. They were as
outraged as I was when I was going through these cases and reporting them
internally. If one of these committees, be it the Judiciary Committee or the
Government Affairs Committee in the House, would set a hearing and call
these individuals to testify, these agents would tell the truth under oath.

K.M.-So in your opinion, what is the definition of an agent today in the
U.S.? What is his job? An important portion of his work is what we are
talking about, things that are actually not being dealt with and that are
being covered up. So it seems that agents are "good agents" as long as they're
dealing with the enemy. But this enemy is decided by people who are often
corrupt and even committing treason.

S.E.-I can't speak for other agents but I can speak for the FBI, and within
the FBI you have different types of operations. For example, if they are
looking at criminal cases, it is the agent's job to collect evidence with
court warrants, etc., to go after the criminals and bring them to justice.
To a certain degree, the same concept holds true for counter-terrorism
operations, the one division within the FBI that I consider the most
important, but unfortunately the worst run. You have agents and translators
and analysts overseeing the activities-sometimes criminal or
espionage-related-of foreign entities in our country. Now, if they come
across criminal activities and U.S. persons engaged in these what they
should be doing and what they are able to do is to take it, report it, go to
the Justice Department, go to the courts and start parallel investigations,
no longer under counter-intelligence but through criminal or espionage
cases. Now, by accident, this happened with this AIPAC case. It started in
the Washington Field Office where I worked long before I started working
with the FBI, and with the translators and the analysts and agents I spoke
with, that operation started as counter-intelligence. The targets were not
even U.S. individuals. They were, let's say hypothetically speaking, AIPAC
and Israeli Embassy entities. It is after they came across these explosive
activities and after a certain agent in charge decided to really tackle
this-and this was before 2000-that they opened a parallel investigation.
This is when we later heard about Feith's office and Larry Franklin.

[Joseph]

2

Now the same thing was about to take place with Turkish counter-intelligence
in the main portion of the documented-wiretapped or paper-operations that I
translated verbatim not only for the Washington Field Office but also for
the Chicago and New Jersey offices. They were obtained before 2001. If we
were to put a date on it you're looking at end of 1996 to 2001. Now, in 1998
and 1999, there were so many pieces of evidence of U.S. individuals'
involvement. We're talking about people with official positions, whether
they were in the State Department or the Pentagon or the U.S. Congress. The
agents did the right thing again by starting a parallel investigation that
targeted individuals who were possibly committing acts of treason.

However, as I was told by first-source agents I was working with, this was
put on hold in 1999 because President Clinton was then going through the
Lewinsky scandal. After the current administration came into power and after
I was working there, the agents were told to shut down. The people who made
that decision were not the Justice Department or the FBI, and that's what I
try to emphasize all the time-they were pressured, they were forced by
higher-up forces within the Pentagon and the State Department. And what was
their reasoning behind the scenes? I don't know, I wasn't there, but they
gave similar explanations and justifications with the courts: "You're
talking about very sensitive diplomatic relations." And in fact,
then-Attorney General Ashcroft said this in his declaration when he invoked
the State Secrets Privilege in my case. He said that exposing these issues
in courts, whether or not I'm right, would damage certain sensitive
diplomatic relations and would hurt certain U.S. foreign business relations.
In this case we know one of the countries is Turkey. So you have a U.S.
citizen here who has been deprived of her First Amendment rights. Gagged. I
mean, is that an American concept, gagging a person? You're not talking
about an enemy combatant, you're not talking about a terrorist suspect. You're
looking at a tax-payer, a law-abiding American citizen. So these business
relations, these diplomatic relations have justified depriving a U.S.
citizen of her First Amendment rights, of her Fourth Amendment rights in
court. In fact, the U.S. State Department did a retroactive classification
illegally and Congress was effectively gagged in May 2004. They're not even
saying what diplomatic relations they refer to. Are they ashamed of it? Are
we talking about billions of dollars of weapons procurement? Why don't they
be more specific? Because this is top-secret, classified stuff. That's why I
have been writing these papers, relying on outside sources, getting all the
data. You're looking at $5 billion every two years of weapons procurements?
That's not top-secret. Who benefits from this? What companies? Who are the
individuals who are benefiting from this? And is there anything in the
issues that I dealt with that if exposed would harm the Americans and their
security? None. None whatsoever.

In fact, they are issues and they are cases that would help with their
national security because the same activities also involve money laundering
or certain narcotic activities. All you have to do is look at the State
Department's own reports on Turkey and opium. Ninety-two percent of the
heroin supplied in Europe is coming through Turkey, and it's being marketed
and distributed by Turkish individuals. This is not classified. This is
within the State Department's own report. The poppies are being produced in
Afghanistan and Taliban-esque people are getting benefits, and Al-Qaeda
people are getting the benefits of these poppies being sold to individuals
in Turkey who then distribute and provide 92 percent of Europe's heroin
market. Have we said "clamp down on these narcotic activities because it's
helping the terrorists, and the terrorists are threats to our national
security?" No, we haven't.

Time Magazine ran a piece about 11 pages long on how the Afghanistan opium
production has increased. They also put the value on that opium production.
And there were statements from various Congressmen including Walter Jones
who went to Afghanistan saying a lot of it goes to support Al-Qaeda and the
Taliban. The number was somewhere between $38 billion to $50 billion a year.
This same article limited the issue of poppy production to some farmers. And
you're looking at these Afghans in shalvars cultivating the poppies there,
and you think, these people aren't capable of managing a $50 billion
industry. They only get a small share. Processing the poppies into heroin
and then transporting them through the Balkan route is done by Turkish
individuals. And you're not looking at street thugs in Turkey, you're
looking at the Turkish military and the Turkish police. In 2000, a professor
in Turkey issued a documented report saying that a quarter of Turkey's
economy relies on heroin production and distribution. Of course, he had to
escape the country, go to Germany and ask for political asylum because he
committed treason by criticizing the Turkish government.

The Time Magazine article didn't talk about the main actors, the big people,
the powerful ones who are distributing, processing, marketing and laundering
the proceeds. Those people are not touched. If you look at the report you'll
see the countries involved-Turkey, Cyprus, the UAE. But they were
conveniently left out of the Time Magazine article, leaving any American to
conclude that the farmers are making $50 billion a year. Again, the culprit
is Time Magazine because that is not the case.

While the report shows Turkish, UAE and Pakistani involvement, we say they
are our allies, we don't want to touch them, we don't want to turn them off.
In fact, we have lots of good business and sensitive diplomatic relations
with them, as Don Ashcroft put it. Now if one of them were part of the axis
of evil, if one of them was Syria, if one of them was Iran, if one of them
was Korea, if it was Saddam, you would see the stink they would raise-how
Saddam's country and people are helping the Taliban with their finances and
helping Al-Qaeda with these cases. But there was this big oops! They're our
very close allies, the ones who we are giving billions of dollars of aid to,
the ones who come back and buy our weapons. We can't mess around with things
like that. We have too many powerful people, too many powerful companies
that are benefiting from this. There is this huge lobby industry that is
benefiting from this.

Who is representing the American people? Well we know former chairman Mr.
Livingston today is representing these outside interests, therefore our
Congress is representing these foreign powers. But who is really
representing the American public? And how? It's very hard to see the track
record. And these are the issues that you wish the mainstream media here in
this country would cover, and they're not.

Part II of this interview will appear in next week's issue of the Weekly.

[1.5 million]

Wow!! - this is good stuff. It needs to get out more. Its a shame that the insideous nature of this - with so many sensitivities for people up high - is and will prevent this info form getting out and even more importantly - for stopping it. Too many (obviously) benefit from these relationships. Regardless this requires greater exposure (perhaps a documentary movie eh?)...does anyone have Micheal Moore's of the Yes Men's contact info? (lol) ...only partically joking....this is potentially the very sort of thing that they might latch onto...and the drug money issue is most interesting as well...along with all the rest...

[Joseph]

Wow!! - this is good stuff. It needs to get out more. Its a shame that the insideous nature of this - with so many sensitivities for people up high - is and will prevent this info form getting out and even more importantly - for stopping it. Too many (obviously) benefit from these relationships. Regardless this requires greater exposure (perhaps a documentary movie eh?)...does anyone have Micheal Moore's of the Yes Men's contact info? (lol) ...only partically joking....this is potentially the very sort of thing that they might latch onto...and the drug money issue is most interesting as well...along with all the rest...

That would be sweet if Michale Moore filmed a doucmentary on Sibel Edmonds. She has been dragged through the mud, threatened and also ignored for far too long. THe problem is, the FBI, CIA as well as some senior very powerful and senior people in the current administration are keeping this under wraps. Perhaps when the Democrats take full power, we'll see her in the spotlight and held in high regard, where she belongs.

[1.5 million]

That would be sweet if Michale Moore filmed a doucmentary on Sibel Edmonds.

Agreed - he has the knack for making people look pretty silly...Charlton Heston comes to mind...

She has been dragged through the mud, threatened and also ignored for far too long. THe problem is, the FBI, CIA as well as some senior very powerful and senior people in the current administration are keeping this under wraps.

Agreed - the current admin seems to be very active in supressing this...one wonders just why eh? (no need to wonder)

Perhaps when the Democrats take full power, we'll see her in the spotlight and held in high regard, where she belongs.

Unfortunatly I wouldn't count on it. Remember they are just (arguably) the lesser of two evils...they are still politicians (which in my book means the assumption of corruption unless otherwise proven to the contrary)...

[Joseph]

Agreed - he has the knack for making people look pretty silly...Charlton Heston comes to mind...



Agreed - the current admin seems to be very active in supressing this...one wonders just why eh? (no need to wonder)



Unfortunatly I wouldn't count on it. Remember they are just (arguably) the lesser of two evils...they are still politicians (which in my book means the assumption of corruption unless otherwise proven to the contrary)...

Perhaps, but she definitely stand more of a chance with a new admin coming in, especially one that would like nothing more than to soil the current admin -which isn't very hard to do

[Evropeos]

Videos

Kill The Messenger

Lost in Translation-part1

Lost in Translation-part2

Lost in Translation-part3

Lost in Translation-part4

[Joseph]

Kill The Messenger

Lost in Translation-part1

Lost in Translation-part2

Lost in Translation-part3

Lost in Translation-part4

Thanks for the videos. I'm surprised Sibel Edmonds is still alive considering the sinister conspiracy she has revealed. I hope she is safe and that her voice will be heard by millions.

[Joseph]

Sibel Edmonds awarded

NEW YORK (AP) — A novelist from Turkmenistan who has been barred from leaving his home country for more than two years traveled to the United States for the first time to accept an award for his work defending freedom of expression. Rakhim Esenov, 78, a writer and freelance correspondent for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was allowed to leave Turkmenistan to attend Tuesday evening’s PEN American Center Gala in New York, after the U.S. Embassy and others protested the Turkmen foreign minister’s refusal to let him make the trip.

“It is very noble and humane to fight for someone you don’t know and to see them as a human being,” Esenov said through a translator in his acceptance of the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award at the American Museum of Natural History.

The PEN American Center advocates free expression, defends writers in legal disputes and sponsors literary programs. Esenov was arrested in February 2004 on charges that he incited social, national and religious hatred through the mass media. His novel “The Crowned Wanderer” was banned from publication by the country’s president, who said it was historically inaccurate. In an interview before the dinner ceremony, Esenov said he coped with the restrictions placed on him by “working, working, working.”

“I am by nature an optimist, and that helped me, too,” he said through a translator. He said he planned to stay until Saturday, and hoped to meet with publishers while he was in New York. The same award also went to Algerian newspaper publisher Mohammed Benchicou, who has been jailed since 2003. Benchicou published Le Matin, an independent French-language newspaper critical of the Algerian government.

He is serving a sentence for violating a law governing the transfer of money, viewed by many international press advocates as a trumped-up charge.

The PEN American Center said Benchicou was being held in a prison that was infested with lice and xxxxroaches and that did not provide medical care. The center honored the two men with the intention of applying pressure to their respective countries to lift the penalties against them.

Also honored Tuesday was Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who was fired from her job in March 2002. Edmonds has said the FBI terminated her contract after she complained about the quality of translations of terrorism-related wiretaps and reported that another translator was leaking information to targets of investigations. The Justice Department’s inspector general found that the FBI did not take her complaints seriously enough and fired her for lodging complaints about the translation unit. A lawsuit she filed against the FBI was dismissed after the government said it would not release materials supporting her case for security reasons.

Edmonds won the $20,000 (€16,300) PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award. She said before the dinner that she thought her receipt of the award would help others see whistle-blowers as “freedom fighters” rather than “disgruntled employees.” Also Tuesday, Mohamed Hashem, owner of Merit Publishing House, an independent publisher in Egypt, was honored with the Association of American Publishers’ International Freedom to Publish Award.