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ACLU Urges Supreme Court to Review Case of FBI Whistleblower

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  • ACLU Urges Supreme Court to Review Case of FBI Whistleblower

    ACLU Urges Supreme Court to Review Case of FBI Whistleblower

    The ACLU’s National Security Project is dedicated to ensuring that U.S. national security policies and practices are consistent with the Constitution, civil liberties, and human rights.


    August 4, 2005


    Vanity Fair Profile Reveals New Facts About FBI's Termination of Former
    Translator Sibel Edmonds

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    Contact: [email protected]

    Sibel Edmonds addressed the press in Washington, D.C.

    NEW YORK -- The American Civil Liberties Union today urged the
    U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court's dismissal of the case of
    Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who was fired in retaliation
    for reporting security breaches and possible espionage within the
    Bureau. Lower courts dismissed the case when former Attorney General
    John Ashcroft invoked the rarely used "state secrets" privilege.

    The Court created the so-called state secrets privilege more than 50
    years ago but has not considered it since. The need for clarification
    of the doctrine is acute, the ACLU said, because the government is
    increasingly using the privilege to cover up its own wrongdoing and
    to keep legitimate cases out of court.

    "Edmonds' case is not an isolated incident," said ACLU Associate Legal
    Director Ann Beeson. "The federal government is routinely retaliating
    against government employees who uncover weaknesses in our ability
    to prevent terrorist attacks or protect public safety."

    The states secrets privilege, Beeson said, "should be used a shield
    for sensitive evidence, not a sword the government can use at will to
    cut off argument in a case before the evidence can be presented. We are
    urging the Supreme Court, which has not directly addressed this issue
    in 50 years, to rein in the government's misuse of this privilege."

    The ACLU is also asking the Supreme Court to reverse the D.C. appeals
    court's decision to exclude the press and public from the court hearing
    of Edmonds' case in April. The appeals court closed the hearing at
    the eleventh hour without any specific findings that secrecy was
    necessary. In fact, the government had agreed to argue the case
    in public. A media consortium that included The New York Times ,
    The Washington Post , and CNN intervened in the case to object to
    the closure.

    Edmonds, a former Middle Eastern language specialist hired by the FBI
    shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002 and filed a lawsuit later that
    year challenging the retaliatory dismissal.

    Her ordeal is highlighted in a 10-page article about whistleblowers
    in the September 2005 issue of Vanity Fair which links Edmonds'
    allegations and the subsequent retaliation to possible "illicit
    activity involving Turkish nationals" and a high-level member of
    Congress. The ACLU said the article, titled "An Inconvenient Patriot,"
    further undercuts the government's claim that the case can't be
    litigated because certain information is secret.

    In addition, a report by the Inspector General, made public in
    January 2005, contains a tremendous amount of detail about Edmonds'
    job, the structure of the FBI translation unit , and the substance
    of her allegations. The report concluded that Edmonds' whistleblower
    allegations were "the most significant factor" in the FBI's decision
    to terminate her.

    The outcome in Edmonds' case could significantly impact the
    government's ability to rely on secrecy to avoid accountability in
    future cases, the ACLU said, including one pending case charging the
    government with "rendering" detainees to be tortured.

    In the 1953 Supreme Court case that was the basis for today's
    state secrets privilege doctrine, United States v. Reynolds,
    the government claimed that disclosing a military flight accident
    report would jeopardize secret military equipment and harm national
    security. Nearly 50 years later, in 2004, the truth came out: the
    accident report contained no state secrets, but instead confirmed
    that the cause of the crash was faulty maintenance of the B-29 fleet.

    Fourteen 9/11 family member advocacy groups and public interest
    organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Edmonds
    ' case before the District Court, and many are expected to join an
    amicus brief next month supporting Supreme Court review of the case,
    including the National Security Archive.

    Edmonds is represented by Beeson, Melissa Goodman, and Ben Wizner of
    the national ACLU; Art Spitzer of the ACLU of the National Capital
    Area; and Mark Zaid, of Krieger and Zaid, PLLC.

    The ACLU's Supreme Court cert petition is online at:
    The ACLU’s National Security Project is dedicated to ensuring that U.S. national security policies and practices are consistent with the Constitution, civil liberties, and human rights.


    The appendix for the Supreme Court cert petition is online at:
    The ACLU’s National Security Project is dedicated to ensuring that U.S. national security policies and practices are consistent with the Constitution, civil liberties, and human rights.


    Further information on the case, including other legal documents
    and a backgrounder on the state secrets privilege, is online at :
    www.aclu.org/whistleblowers.

    © ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor New York, NY 10004 This is the
    Web site of the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation.

    Learn more about the distinction between these two components of
    the ACLU.
    "All truth passes through three stages:
    First, it is ridiculed;
    Second, it is violently opposed; and
    Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

    Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

  • #2
    Did Speaker Hastert Accept Turkish Bribes to Deny Armenian Genocide and

    Did Speaker Hastert Accept Turkish Bribes to Deny Armenian Genocide and
    Approve Weapons Sales?

    DemocracyNow.org
    Wednesday, August 10th, 2005

    Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds is accusing the FBI of covering up
    improper contacts and financial dealings between certain Turkish
    nationals and the office of House Speaker Dennis Hastert. We speak with
    Sibel Edmonds and Vanity Fair journalist David Rose. [includes rush
    transcript]

    Former FBI translator turned whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds is now
    appealing her case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In March 2002, she was
    fired and she has been fighting now for nearly 3 years to blow the
    whistle on US government failures prior to 9-11. She has faced fierce
    opposition from the Bush administration, the FBI and some in Congress.
    This week, she grabbed headlines again after Vanity Fair published a
    major story about her. What is making news from that piece are
    allegations surrounding Illinois congressman and Republican Speaker of
    the House Dennis Hastert.

    Vanity Fair alleges that 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.

    Sibel Edmonds speaks Farsi, Turkish and Azerbaijani. She was hired after
    September eleventh by the FBI to translate pre-9-11 intelligence
    gathered by the agency. She has publicly accused the U.S of having
    considerable evidence that Al Qaeda was planning to strike the United
    States using airplanes as weapons.

    Democracy Now contacted Congressman Hastert's office and the Turkish
    Embassy for comment. They did not return our phone calls.

    * Sibel Edmonds, former FBI translator who was hired shortly after Sept.
    11 to translate intelligence gathered over the previous related to the
    9/11 attacks. She speaks fluent Farsi, Turkish and Azerbaijani.
    * David Rose, investigative journalist and author of "An Inconvenient
    Patriot" published in the September issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

    RUSH TRANSCRIPT

    AMY GOODMAN: We're joined in our D.C. studio by Sibel Edmonds. We are
    also joined on the telephone from Britain by David Rose, an
    investigative reporter and author of the Vanity Fair article. David
    Rose, let's begin with you. Can you lay out your thesis in this Vanity
    Fair piece?

    DAVID ROSE: Well, I try to tell the whole story of Sibel Edmonds'
    treatment by the FBI and by the Department of Justice from the beginning
    until the current time in rather more detail than before, but I suppose
    what is the most striking feature is I tried to look at why the
    government has invoked the State Secrets privilege in this case. As you
    say, just as in the Maher Arar case, the government is saying that her
    case against the authorities for having her fired can't proceed because
    to let any of the evidence about what lies behind it out in court, even
    in a court which has been security cleared where the attorneys have top
    secret clearance, would jeopardize the foreign policy and national
    security interests of the United States. And, by the way, I think it's
    interesting that in his declaration about this, John Ashcroft, the
    former Attorney General, uses that formulation: foreign policy and
    national security interests.

    So, as Ann Beeson, Sibel's attorney from the ACLU, says in the article,
    `Well, what could they be trying to hide?' And that's what I set out to
    try to find out. And I think there is now considerable evidence that
    what they may be trying to hide is not simply a national security
    scandal, but something potentially much more explosive and embarrassing,
    namely, evidence that some Turksih groups, some of them officials of the
    government, some private individuals, perhaps associated or allegedly
    associated with organized crime, have been making efforts to corrupt
    elected American officials and also appointed government officials in
    the United States, and one name that has cropped up in wiretaps, which
    my informants tell me Sibel Edmonds translated, is that of the Speaker
    of the House, Denny Hastert, as you say.

    AMY GOODMAN: Sibel Edmonds, what did you learn about Dennis Hastert when
    you were an FBI translator after 9/11, listening to these pre-9/11 wiretaps?

    SIBEL EDMONDS: Good morning, Amy.

    AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us.

    SIBEL EDMONDS: Thank you. Thank you for having me back. Well, as you
    know, I'm under several gag orders, and I have been for the past three,
    three-and-a-half years. And as far as disclosing information that the
    Americans have the right to know, I have already done that. I have done
    that repeatedly for the past three years. And I have gone through the
    appropriate channels. I have gone to the United States Congress. I have
    gone to the 9/11 Commission. I disclosed information in secure
    facilities in all of these channels, including the Inspector General's
    office for the Department of Justice. And to this date, as you know, we
    have an Inspector General's report that has come out and said my
    allegations, my report have been supported by other witnesses, by other
    documents, by other facts and evidence. Three years ago, you had two
    senators coming out saying that the FBI during unclassified briefings
    have confirmed all my allegations, and they have denied none. So,
    whatever I have reported have already been confirmed.

    It's been three years, and the government still insists in invoking the
    State Secret privilege. As you know, last year they went ahead and they
    gagged the United States Congress, by the way, illegally. And according
    to my attorneys, I am the most gagged American in the United States
    history, and nobody is asking why. They aren't saying, `Why is it that
    the government is going to such length to invoke State Secret privilege,
    to gag the Congress, to classify the Inspector General's report, to stop
    the 9/11 family members' attorneys to subpoena my deposition?' And the
    answer to this question is it's not to protect any national security. It
    is not to protect any ongoing investigations, because to this day they
    have never used that. Do you know why they have never used the fact
    that, oh, maybe this is an ongoing investigation? Because the fact of it
    is that's why I blew the whistle. There are no investigations out there.
    There is no investigation whatsoever, because they are not targeting the
    true criminals. And they are not targeting those who truly masterminded
    these terrible acts against the Americans and their best interest, their
    national security.

    AMY GOODMAN: Sibel Edmonds, we contacted Congress member Hastert's
    office, the Speaker of the House, as well as the Turkish embassy, for
    comment, they did not return our phone calls. But what are you alleging
    about the Speaker of the House?

    SIBEL EDMONDS: As I said, Amy, I have been giving all the details to the
    appropriate channels. And they have been confirmed. And what I have said
    all along is the fact that as far as the 9/11 is concerned, September 11
    is concerned, these departments -- and when I say `these departments,'
    the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and the Department
    of Defense -- have intentionally blocked the investigations of real --
    the real criminals in this country. And we are talking about countries
    involved. The Vanity Fair article points out to Turkey -- countries. And
    it's very interesting. To this date, we are not hearing anything about
    targeting, you know, certain Central Asian countries. They are not
    speaking about the link between the narcotics and al Qaeda. Yes, we are
    hearing about them coming down on some charities as the real funds
    behind al Qaeda, but most of al Qaeda's funding is not through these
    charity organizations. It's through narcotics. And have you heard
    anything to this date, anything about these issues which we have had
    information since 1997? And as I would again emphasize, we are talking
    about countries. And they are blocking this information, and also the
    fact that certain officials in this country are engaged in treason
    against the United States and its interests and its national security,
    be it the Department of State or certain elected officials.

    AMY GOODMAN: Could you name names?

    SIBEL EDMONDS: I have named names. I have given it to those people who
    are supposed to be representing this country through the Congress. I
    have given it to the Inspector General's office, and the report doesn't
    name names because everything was classified, but they are saying that
    my reports, my allegations, have been confirmed and have been supported
    by other witnesses, documents and evidence. I have given it to the 9/11
    Commissioners, and interestingly, the 9/11 Commissioners after having
    the meetings with me, they went ahead and they had certain meetings and
    decided to only refer to I.G. report and ask them to classify the I.G.
    report so it wouldn't come out before their report comes out. Now, we
    have to ask the questions: Why are they going to this length, to such a
    length to cover up and to gag and to classify and to invoke State Secret
    privilege? What are they covering up?

    AMY GOODMAN: Sibel Edmonds is our guest in Washington, D.C., former
    F.B.I. translator challenging her firing from the F.B.I., and on the
    line with us, David Rose from Britain, who wrote the Vanity Fair piece
    called `An Inconvenient Patriot,' the subtitle `Love of country led
    Sibel Edmonds to become a translator for the F.B.I. following 9/11, but
    everything changed when she accused a colleague of covering up illicit
    activity involving Turkish nationals. Fired after sounding the alarm,
    she's now fighting for the ideals that made her an American and
    threatening some very powerful people.' David Rose, can you talk about
    Sibel Edmonds' colleague within the F.B.I., Melek Can xxxxerson, the
    relationship and -

    DAVID ROSE: Sorry, I've got a very bad line.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you hear me?

    DAVID ROSE: Yes, I can, yeah.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you -- yeah --

    DAVID ROSE: Hello?

    AMY GOODMAN: Hi. Go ahead.

    DAVID ROSE: Let me just -- yes. I think there's one very important new
    development, which has not been reported, because it took place after
    the magazine went to press, which is that in addition to making her
    complaints against the F.B.I. and talking about the apparent evidence of
    possible espionage, which she had discovered on the part of her
    colleague, Melek Can xxxxerson, at the F.B.I., and her husband, an Air
    Force major, Douglas xxxxerson. Back in 2002, Sibel Edmonds wrote to the
    Office of Special Investigation and the Air Force Inspector General,
    which conducted a very brief investigation in the summer of 2002 and in
    September 2002, after less than three weeks, without interviewing Sibel
    herself, the Air Force Inspector General wrote to Sibel Edmonds and her
    then attorneys and said that the case was closed, that they were not
    pursuing her allegations against the xxxxersons, which I will go into in
    just a moment.

    But the new development is that just ten days ago, her attorney in
    Washington, Mark Zaid, received a message from the Office of Special
    Investigation at the Air Force saying that after this very long gap,
    nearly three years, they were reopening the investigation into the
    xxxxersons, into Can xxxxerson and her husband, Douglas, and might at
    some near future date seek to interview Sibel. Now, it may or may not be
    coincidental that, as part of the research for my article for Vanity
    Fair, I had submitted about 150 different questions about the entire
    case to the Air Force, to other parts of the Pentagon, to the D.O.J. and
    the F.B.I., and none of these questions were answered, but they did, of
    course, set out in enormous detail the various allegations that are
    being raised. Following the receipt of those questions, the
    investigation was formally reopened, which is, I think, perhaps significant.

    So as to the substance of the allegations, in essence, it's quite
    simple. What Sibel Edmonds has alleged and has indeed been alleging now
    since the end of 2001, beginning of 2002, is that towards the end of
    2001, Can xxxxerson, her fairly new colleague at the F.B.I., and her
    husband Douglas, called unexpectedly at the home she shares with her
    husband, Matthew, in Alexandria, Virginia. And over tea one Sunday
    morning, the xxxxersons suggested that Sibel and her husband might like
    to join an organization called the American Turkish Council, which is
    essentially a business group which exists to foster trade deals, mainly
    of a military nature, between America and Turkey. And they suggested
    that - according to Sibel and her husband, they suggested that if they
    did this, they might become rich. And Sibel was particularly surprised
    at this, because they also boasted that they knew an individual who had
    close links with this organization, who was also an official of the
    Turkish Embassy, and in fact, although she hadn't said so in her
    application to join the F.B.I., Can xxxxerson had at one stage worked
    for the American Turkish Council herself as an intern and clearly had
    got a close relationship with this particular diplomat.

    Well, after that - and this is all set out, by the way, in legal
    filings, and much of it is now completely confirmed by the D.O.J.
    Inspector General's report into Sibel's case, the unclassified part of
    it - following that, Sibel says that Can xxxxerson tried to stop Sibel
    listening to wiretap conversations by this particular official, who was
    a friend of the xxxxersons and also conversations by others who appeared
    to be involved in various illegal activity. So, she went to other
    officials at the F.B.I., to a particular agent, Dennis Saccher, who was
    in charge of counterintelligence and counterespionage regarding Turkey,
    who immediately suspected that this was possibly some kind of
    recruitment exercise, that she was being asked to participate in some
    kind of illegal espionage operation and perhaps was being offered some
    kind of inducement.

    It was when she started to complain about this and took her complaints
    up the ladder within the F.B.I., and eventually to the Congress, that
    she was fired, and that's the substance of the case. But clearly, given
    that the D.O.J. Inspector General has now corroborated and supported her
    allegations, and has said that many have bases in fact, and that the
    F.B.I. fired her as an act of retaliation when it should have
    investigated the claims much more seriously, the fact that the Air Force
    is now again looking at Major Douglas xxxxerson, Can xxxxerson's
    husband, who remains on active duty in Europe, is clearly of some
    significance.

    AMY GOODMAN: And David Rose, the issue of the Speaker of the House,
    Dennis Hastert, and conversations overheard that link his office with
    improper dealings with Turkish nationals, can you talk about particular
    legislation?

    DAVID ROSE: Well, there was - there were two things, I understand, which
    those who were wiretapped, whose conversations were recorded and
    translated, referred to. One was the controversial deal to sell
    helicopters, attack helicopters, to Turkey, which was an issue of great
    controversy in the late 1990s. At that point, Turkey was fighting a
    pretty hot civil war with the Kurdish separatists in the east of the
    country. There were allegations of human rights abuses and so forth, and
    some in America thought it was wrong that Turkey should be sold several
    billion dollars worth of attack helicopters in those circumstances. So
    some of the calls allegedly referred to the hope that the Congress would
    approve that very large weapons sale.

    But the second occasion or second event which is allegedly referred to
    in these wiretaps is the Armenian genocide resolution which came before
    the House in 2000. Now, the Armenian lobby has made attempts with some
    support -- I mean, Senator Bob Dole was a very great supporter of this
    back in the 1980s. The Armenians have tried to get the Congress to pass
    a genocide resolution so that - which would basically state that the
    mass murder of Armenians in Turkey that was carried out after 1915 was a
    genocide, and some countries have indeed passed such resolutions. Some
    states have in America. This resolution never really got anywhere until
    in 2000, Dennis Hastert, as House Speaker, announced he would support it.

    Now, at the time, analysts noted that there was a tight congressional
    race in California, in which the Armenian community might just swing it
    in favor of the Republican incumbent. But what is significant, the
    resolution had passed the Human Rights Subcommittee of the House. It
    passed the International Relations Committee, but on the eve of the
    House vote, the full House vote, Dennis Hastert withdrew the resolution.
    Now, at the time, he explained this by saying that he had had a letter
    from President Clinton asking him to withdraw it, because it wouldn't be
    in America's interests to have such a resolution, which, of course, was
    bitterly resisted inside Turkey, pass through the House.

    Well, it is slightly curious when you think about it. I mean, Dennis
    Hastert was not known, as one of the authors of Clinton's impeachment,
    for deferring to his judgment on many occasions, but on this occasion,
    he apparently did. Well, whether or not these allegations have substance
    is not something that I am able to state with any knowledge, but it is
    said that in the wiretaps that were translated by Sibel Edmonds,
    reference was made to this very controversial question of the House
    vote. One of the Turkish targets of these wiretaps claimed that the
    price for getting Dennis Hastert to withdraw the resolution would be
    $500,000. Now, I do emphasize there's no evidence at all that he
    received such a payment, but that is what is said to have been recorded
    in one of the wiretaps.

    AMY GOODMAN: We have to wrap up the discussion. We only have a few
    seconds, but Sibel Edmonds, you are taking a challenge to your
    dismissal, appealing your dismissal to the Supreme Court?

    SIBEL EDMONDS: Yes, Amy. Last week, we filed our petition with the
    Supreme Court, and in a few weeks there will be amicus filed in our
    support by 9/11 family members and other government watchdog
    organizations, and basically this is the last stop. This is the last
    channel, because, as you know, we have never been given our day in
    court, due to the State Secret privilege and the gag orders. And also I
    am pursuing this still with the Congress and I will continue until these
    issues come to light and until the Americans know what is going on in
    their government.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, Sibel Edmonds and David Rose of Vanity Fair - Sibel
    Edmonds, former F.B.I. translator, thanks very much for joining us.
    "All truth passes through three stages:
    First, it is ridiculed;
    Second, it is violently opposed; and
    Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

    Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

    Comment


    • #3
      Edmonds: FBI-ATC scandal "will make the AIPAC case look lame"

      Edmonds: FBI-ATC scandal "will make the AIPAC case look lame"

      The Weekend Interview Show
      August 13, 2005

      Transcribed for ANN/Groong

      Scott Horton: Alright, my friends, welcome to the Weekend Interview
      Show for August 13th, 2005. I'm your host, Scott Horton. My Web site is
      weekendinterviewshow.com, and also I write for antiwar.com. Everything
      you are about to hear has been confirmed by the Department of
      Justice's Office of the Inspector General. Our first guest today is
      the courageous former contract linguist for the FBI, turned would-be
      whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds.

      And I say "would-be" because the Department of Justice has invoked the
      made-up "state-secrets privilege" to prevent her from telling us the
      whole truth about what she learned while at the FBI and why the state
      is so intent on covering it up. A new article in Vanity Fair, called
      "An Inconvenient Patriot," has broken new ground in her story. Welcome
      back to the Weekend Interview Show, Sibel.

      Sibel Edmonds: Thank you, Scott. Thank you for inviting me back on
      your show.

      SH: Well, it's very nice to talk with you, always. And it's really
      kind of fun to try to question around the state-secrets privilege.

      SE: Yeah, we'll try to have fun with that part.

      SH: OK. So tell us, first of all--we know that you were a contract
      linguist, a translator, for the FBI. Which languages were you a
      specialist in?

      SE: Sure. Well, first of all, let me tell you that according to the
      Department of Justice, all my languages that I speak are considered
      top secret, classified, and state-secret case.

      SH: Oh.

      SE: Which is ridiculous. That means that even my resume would
      be considered a top-secret document. And you can go and find it
      in all the Web sites that cite my languages. So I speak Turkish,
      Farsi--this is the language that is being spoken in Iran, it's a
      Persian language--and Azerbaijani.

      SH: And for what length of time did you work for the FBI?

      SE: I worked for the Bureau for a little bit longer than six
      months. Six and a half months.

      SH: And that was from, pretty much right after September 11th through--

      SE: Three days after September 11 until March 22nd, 2002.

      SH: OK. Now, we know already that there were problems with some of
      your colleagues in the translation department, which we will discuss
      in more detail later. But now, this is a big story, why I brought you
      back on the show, is that finally a reporter has come from across
      the ocean to dig into this story, and it seems like he's unearthed
      quite a bit from others in government who have had a chance to hear
      your whole story behind closed doors.

      SE: I'm so glad that you pointed out the fact that David Rose came from
      England and spent four or five months on this story, while for three,
      three and a half years, nobody here, at least from the main press,
      has bothered to do so. And David worked diligently on this story,
      and he interviewed many officials from the FBI and from the Congress,
      and then, basically, put out this story, eleven-page story. I'm very
      thankful to David and Vanity Fair for supporting me.

      SH: It seems from reading the article that the reason he was so
      successful in being able to dig up all these facts is because you
      actually have, from the very beginning, gone through all of the proper
      channels. You've told your story to all the people who should have
      had it told to them, and so basically what David Rose did was just
      sort of follow you around and got anonymous leaks from the people that
      you actually have been allowed to tell your story to in secret, right?

      SE: See, this is why I love interviews with you, Scott, because you
      are right on the facts. Right. You're absolutely correct, because I
      testified several times before various Representatives, Senators,
      in 2002, summer 2002, and gave them my testimony. As you know,
      two Senators--Senator Grassley, Republican, and Senator Leahy--they
      came out three years ago, more than three years ago, publicly they
      said that [the] FBI during their meetings with the Senate confirmed
      all my allegations and denied none. And in fact, Senator Grassley
      said that she is very credible, because even the FBI management have
      corroborated all her stories and all her reports. And he pointed out
      the fact that he was going to turn the department upside down and
      get to the bottom of this issue. And here today, three years later,
      nobody has even touched it.

      SH: Alright, hold it right there, Sibel. We'll be right
      back, everybody, with Sibel Edmonds on the Weekend Interview
      Show. [commercial break] Alright, my friends, welcome back to the
      Weekend Interview Show. I'm your host, Scott Horton. My Web site is
      weekendinterviewshow.com. We keep all the archives for you there
      in MP3 format. I'm talking with Sibel Edmonds. Her Web site is
      justacitizen.com, and if you go there, you can sign her petition,
      begging the national government to finally lift the gag order and
      let this woman tell us the story that she has been trying to tell us
      for so many years now. And it's, you know, you do such a good job on
      these interviews, it's almost hard to tell that you have a gag order
      that forbids you from saying certain things.

      SE: Well, yes, because first of all, the gag order that they have
      issued--I have several gag orders. In fact, based on the research
      that my attorneys at ACLU conducted, I'm the most gagged person in
      the United States history, believe me or not, for someone who worked
      six months as a language specialist at the FBI.

      As you know, they gagged Congress in May 2004, [the] Department of
      Justice issued a gag order and ordered the Senators to block everything
      from their Web sites and not to comment [on] anything that has to
      do with my case. And the Inspector General's report was gagged and
      completely classified.

      They issued the state-secret privilege for the second time when the
      9/11 family members' attorneys subpoenaed my deposition. They came
      out and invoked this gag order. So there have been so many gag orders
      and some of it so ridiculous that, basically, they're gagging even
      my existence.

      And as you've just pointed out, I've provided this testimony to
      the Congress, to the 9/11 Commission, all tape-recorded, to the
      Inspector General's office, the Department of Justice, and if today
      you were to call the Congress and ask them, they would say it's under
      investigation. Well, it's been for three and a half years. And how can
      it be under investigation for three and a half years and all these
      gag orders, and we have not gotten to the bottom of this thing. And
      if criminals have not been prosecuted in this country.

      SH: Sure. And, well, what sort of criminal investigation could we
      expect from the FBI on this matter, when they're the ones who are to
      be investigated?

      SE: That's exactly the problem. You know, if you're in some company,
      or in other places, and you come across these criminal activities,
      who would you report them [to]? You would report them to the
      Department of Justice and the FBI. But what happens when you come
      across these criminal activities and find out, through the Department
      of Justice and the FBI, and the fact that they are blocking it from
      being investigated, then who do you go to? And I have been asking
      this question, and that's why I started all these court cases three
      years ago, which is being gagged and stopped, and they are fighting
      it ferociously, is just so maybe through the court system we can
      subpoena witnesses and bring out these documents so I can give it to
      the American public and say, "Here are these documents."

      SH: Well, you have your three branches of government to choose from.

      Obviously, your problem is with the executive branch in the first
      place, and now you say that Congress has promised that they were
      going to come to bat for you, Senators Grassley and Leahy, and they
      never did, and so all you're left now is the courts. Have you had
      any success in the courts at all?

      SE: No. To this date, they are not even allowing us any hearings. They
      go in private, and they have these private, secret conferences with
      the judges, and then the judges come out and say, "OK, you cannot have
      any hearing." So we filed with the Supreme Court last week, and by
      mid-October, we will know whether or not the Supreme Court is going
      to accept the case and question the legality of these gag orders,
      because it's unconstitutional for the government to come and say,
      "We don't even have to present any reason why we are issuing gag
      orders, because the reasons themselves are classified." I mean,
      this is so Kafkaesque, Scott.

      SH: Well, and it's interesting that the state-secrets privilege
      actually doesn't exist. There's no law that's ever been passed by
      Congress that even says such a thing. Wasn't it the Supreme Court
      that made up the state-secrets privilege in the first place?

      SE: Yes, it's based on common law, and in fact, most judges, they
      don't even know how it is applied. And therefore, that's another
      challenge that we are bringing about, for the Supreme Court to look
      into this and say, "This is time for us to clarify," you know, "what
      the hell is this state-secret privilege." If you were to go and ask
      many attorneys in the country, they would tell you, "Hey, I didn't
      know that the United States has any Official Secrets Act." And they
      get surprised, because even most attorneys don't know that we have
      this arcane, draconian common law that is being exercised to gag
      people and rid them from their First Amendment rights.

      SH: Well, Sibel, let's see if we can figure out why they're going to
      such lengths to keep you quiet. Why don't you tell me, what is the
      American-Turkish Council, or actually, let me rephrase that. Can you
      tell me what the American-Turkish Council is?

      SE: Well, sure, it's on their Web site. They are this organization,
      lobbying organization, for Turkish business and relationship between
      the United States and Turkey. It's exactly like AIPAC.

      SH: Oh, good. Oh, exactly like AIPAC?

      SE: Exactly. In fact, they have so many crossovers, if you look at
      their members, you will basically see many members that basically
      are in both organizations. And if you look at the people who are
      in the management and that are in charge of this lobbying group,
      you come across the same names.

      And which is very interesting.

      SH: That is very interesting. In fact, my next guest, after you,
      will be Bob Dreyfus, about the AIPAC spy scandal. And something
      that occurred to me last night, as I read the Vanity Fair piece,
      "An Inconvenient Patriot," about you, was that some of the things
      in--we'll try to get to this a little bit later--unnamed Department
      of Defense and Department of State employees.

      Which made me wonder whether perhaps your case is tied in with the
      AIPAC spy scandal case in any way.

      SE: Absolutely, and I cannot go into any details. And maybe some
      other investigative journalist from across the ocean will come here
      and do the rest of this article [laughs] as article part two. But
      yes, but even the AIPAC spy scandal, as far as I'm reading today,
      is just touching the surface of it. It's going to, only to a certain
      degree. It doesn't go high enough in terms of what it involves and
      how far it goes. And that's as best as I can explain.

      SH: OK. Well, thank you very much for that, and we'll see what we
      can make of it.

      SE: Sure.

      SH: Now, can I ask you how you first learned of the American-Turkish
      Council?

      SE: No, you can't.

      SH: That's not classified, is it?

      SE: No, you can't.

      SH: OK. Well, according to this article--which is written, everybody,
      by David Rose, it's in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine, it's
      called "An Inconvenient Patriot," and I'm going to go ahead, because
      the state secrets privilege has not been invoked against me so far, I
      don't think--and David Rose says in this article [that] he basically
      went and talked to the Congressional staffers who have debriefed
      you. And what they say is that while you were translating intercepts
      for the FBI, you overheard American-Turkish Council employees
      discussing criminal activity among both Republicans and Democrats and
      even including the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis
      Hastert. Can you cough or sneeze or blink twice or anything for me?

      SE: All I can tell you is these sources that David Rose interviewed,
      I'm sure because the article says they were the people who were present
      during the investigation of the Congress and their meetings with the
      FBI, so I am sure this was not based on hearsay, that they made these
      comments. I'm sure they did it based on the wiretap recordings that
      they heard and the documents, so they just didn't come, you know, and
      just said "This is what it was" without having all those documents
      and files from the FBI to go over. And I guess their statements
      were based on the evidence presented to them, both by the Inspector
      General's office, Glenn Fine briefed the Congress, because as you
      know, the report itself, the IG report, Inspector General's report,
      was classified, but they briefed the Congress. So I guess they relied
      on the documents from the Inspector General's office and the FBI to
      make those statements. I guess that was the case.

      SH: Ah, so this doesn't just come from you, but from the official
      investigations of your accusations as well.

      SE: That's what I would assume because these are Congressional sources
      who were in these investigations, and also David Rose, the article,
      points out that he spoke with certain FBI officials who were part
      of these files and case investigations within the FBI. They would
      not make just comments based on, OK, this is what we think it is,
      but would provide facts. That's my assumption. Otherwise, Vanity Fair
      would not print it.

      SH: OK. Now, the article quotes one unnamed official as saying,
      "This is the reason why Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme
      fashion. It was to keep THIS from coming out."

      SE: When you say "this," I don't know, I feel that--if you go to my CBS
      "60 Minutes" transcript from October 2002, even though they chose to
      mostly broadcast the administrative problems and issues, I had one
      statement there that said that it involved people, officials, well
      recognized names in the Department of State, the Department of Defense,
      and certain elected officials. So, I believe the source is also quoted
      somewhere else, talking about the fact that in [the] late Nineties they
      were going to have [a] special prosecutor to uncover these criminal
      activities and corruption, including the politicians. And this isn't
      in the article, but later, after the Administration changed, they
      decided to cool it and not do anything with it. So they stopped the
      investigation and they went against the initial decision of having
      special prosecutors trying and basically indicting these criminals in
      the Department of State and the Department of Defense and the Congress.

      SH: Wow, OK, well, before we get too far ahead of ourselves in, well,
      basically what was learned in these wiretaps about Dennis Hastert and
      other Republicans and Democrats involved with the American-Turkish
      Council, let's go back and discuss as much as you can say, without
      going to prison, the role of Melek Can xxxxerson in the intercept
      office where you worked at the FBI.

      SE: Oh, that information is pretty much public, Scott, because there
      have been so many reports on xxxxerson and the fact that even the
      Air Force Office of Special Investigation opened this criminal
      investigation of Douglas xxxxerson, who had access to nuclear
      information--[interrupted by music]
      "All truth passes through three stages:
      First, it is ridiculed;
      Second, it is violently opposed; and
      Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

      Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

      Comment


      • #4
        Part do

        SH: Still there?

        SE: Yeah.

        SH: Alright.

        SE: I thought there was a commercial.

        SH: Yeah, well we've got thirty seconds. Let's just go ahead and go
        out to break. It's the Weekend Interview Show. We're talking with FBI
        translator, whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. Her Web site and petition are
        available at justacitizen.com, and we'll be right back. [commercial
        break] Everybody, welcome back to the Weekend Interview Show. I'm
        Scott Horton. Web site is weekendinterviewshow.com. Also write
        for antiwar.com, as does my guest, Sibel Edmonds. Her Web site
        is justacitizen.com. And we both encourage all of you to go to
        justacitizen.com and sign the petition. What exactly is the petition
        for, Sibel?

        SE: The petition is demanding open public hearings and an investigation
        by the Congress, because, as you know, I have been providing all
        this information. All my hearings have been inside this skin, this
        secure facility, closed doors, classified, and it's way past time
        for the Congress to have open public hearings and let the documents,
        let the witnesses, speak for themselves. For three and a half years
        I've been trying to get this information out and put it out to the
        public domain. For three and a half years they have been trying to
        hide, cover, classify, and privilege this information. Obviously,
        one of these parties, either my side or that side, would be very
        afraid. Obviously, that party's not me, because I've been wanting to
        make these documents and this information public, and they have been
        relentlessly fighting to keep it under cover by invoking national
        security, state-secret privilege, and classification. So, by signing
        this petition, we can demand the Congress--not that it's going
        to do much good--but we have to try. That's why people talk about
        "eternal vigilance."

        That's ridiculous. That IS eternal vigilance. We HAVE to be vigilant.

        SH: And for all the people out there who are always wondering,
        "Yeah, but what can I do?" Well, this is what you can do. This is
        one concrete step you can take. Go to justacitizen.com and sign
        Sibel's petition. After all, the Congress is, you know--never mind
        the judges and the Executive Branch--it's the Congress that are our
        representatives. They're supposed to be the oversight and the check
        and balance on the executive power. If we don't control the House of
        Representatives, we don't control this government at all.

        SE: Well said. And as far as xxxxerson goes, I'd like to point out
        to one fact that hasn't been, really been, you know, they haven't
        been talking about it that much, out there. In September 2002 there
        were three investigations, active investigations, on xxxxerson:
        one by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, one by [the]
        Department of Justice Inspector General's office, and the third
        one by the Senate Judiciary Committee. And in September 2002, while
        these three active investigations were taking place, [the] xxxxersons
        fled the country. They left their house, their car, and they fled
        the country. And they were allowed to leave the country. And they
        haven't come back. It's been three years, and they haven't come back.

        SH: Well, it's even worse than that, right? Because this guy, Douglas
        xxxxerson, the husband, he continued to be employed by the US military,
        right? Didn't he have a job at NATO, or something?

        SE: Correct, and with access, unlimited access, because of his
        clearance, to nuclear secrets, nuclear information of the United
        States.

        SH: Alright, well, let's get back to why that ought to concern
        anybody. Who is this guy, Douglas xxxxerson, and what did you ever
        have against him?

        SE: As far as I know, Douglas xxxxerson was stationed in Turkey
        between 1992 and 1997. During those years, he came under certain, some
        investigation, and I don't know much about that investigation--that
        focused on certain bribery that he accepted, and I don't know by whom,
        and I don't have any details on that. And then he came to [the] US,
        and he was--even though he had this access and clearance, he was in
        touch with certain organizations, and that's plural, again, and some
        of these organizations, I would call them "semi-legit." And while his
        wife worked for--this article in Vanity Fair says she worked for two
        years for [the] American-Turkish Council, but at the same time for
        two years, she was also working for this organization called ATA,
        American Turkish Association, and again, that information is public.

        So, she was working for these two organizations. And ATC has a lot
        of front organizations, like through ATA. ATAA has chapters all over
        the United States. They have hundreds of chapters. They have it in
        various states, and several in Turkic states.

        SH: And this woman, Melek Can, when she came and got her job working in
        the FBI, it says in this article that on two different official pieces
        of paperwork, she neglected to mention the fact that she had worked for
        the American-Turkish Council, who, it turns out, were, at least partly,
        the target of the intercepts that she was overhearing and reporting on.

        SE: Well, I cannot talk about the targets; however, that's
        correct. Melek Can xxxxerson, in her application, did not disclose
        because in order to get the top-secret clearance, you have to disclose
        everywhere you have worked, every organization you have been [a]
        member of, and she had left every single one of those empty, blank,
        as if she has never worked in her life, she never been [a] member of
        any organization. Then, after I reported this issue in January 2002
        within the FBI, they opened one investigation. During the questioning,
        she was still telling them that, no, she never worked anywhere else,
        and this was her first job that she had held, and she had never worked
        for any foreign organization or lobby firm, that she had not been
        [a] member of any organization. So, yes, that is correct.

        SH: Interesting. So here, from--we have this semi-legit organization,
        the American-Turkish Council, and this woman who worked for
        them for years comes and gets a job at the FBI, helping with the
        translation. And now, I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to talk
        about this, but the Vanity Fair article goes into pretty astounding
        detail as to how this woman--and I think you and I have discussed
        this part before--how she said, "You know, what we ought to do,
        instead of dividing up the intercepts randomly, I ought to get all
        the important ones, and you ought to overhear all the stuff that
        doesn't matter." And then, according to this Vanity Fair article,
        your common boss, Mike Feghali, took her side.

        SE: Correct. There is much more on Mike Feghali, and he himself is or
        was under investigation, both by the Inspector General's office and the
        Congress, because his case goes even beyond xxxxerson, which is very
        interesting. And he's still there, in charge of Arabic translations,
        a division of FBI, Washington field office.

        SH: Alright, we gotta take another break. We'll be right back,
        everybody, with Sibel Edmonds. [commercial break] Alright, my friends,
        welcome back to the Weekend Interview Show. I'm Scott Horton, talking
        with Sibel Edmonds.

        Now, Sibel, you had a different boss at the FBI, I guess, the guy who
        was the customer of your information, a guy named David Saccher, right?

        SE: Dennis Saccher.

        SH: Oh. Dennis. My mistake. Now, who exactly was he? And I guess
        in this article it says that he sort of took your side against Mike
        Feghali and Melek Can xxxxerson, right?

        SE: Well, of course. In the FBI, at least for the language
        division, you have two, basically, two supervisors. One would be
        the administrative supervisors, who actually have no control over,
        or supervision over, your actual work and investigations. They just
        take care of your hours and your schedule, etc., which was Mike
        Feghali. He was not an agent. Then the agent was in charge of the
        main department of language that I was working for, because I did
        work for several languages: Farsi, Turkish, and Azerbaijani.

        But for the Turkish division it was Dennis Saccher, special agent
        Saccher.

        SH: OK. Now, he expressed concern to you, according to this article,
        that perhaps there was some espionage going on there, on the part of
        Melek Can xxxxerson. I'm curious, was that before or after Melek Can
        and her husband had come to your house and tried to recruit you and
        your husband?

        SE: Well, it was around the same time, and in fact, before even I
        found out about it, he was reporting it to the FBI headquarters and his
        bosses, his supervisors, special agents, about suspicious activities
        by xxxxerson in terms of certain wiretap information that were being
        blocked and documents that she was forging signatures on and various
        other cases that he had come across. And this was even before I was,
        I started reporting the issue to the FBI management.

        SH: Well, then, when he found out about the new arrangement where
        Melek Can xxxxerson was assigned all the important stuff and you
        were assigned all the unimportant stuff, he had you go back and
        re-translate and take a look at some of the things which she had
        marked as "not pertinent," right?

        SE: Correct. He asked me and another language specialist to go and,
        to go over, all those pieces of communication that were stamped as
        "not pertinent to be translated" by xxxxerson. And some of them were
        really long conversations. But to go back and translate them and find
        out whether or not the information there was pertinent or not.

        SH: And did you find that she had mostly been correct in marking
        things as "not pertinent"?

        SE: No, just the opposite. Just through our first batch, first ten,
        twelve communications that communications were blocked, we came across
        extremely important, pertinent information that had to do with illegal
        activities between certain foreign elements and certain agencies in
        the United States.

        SH: And when you reported this to your superiors, YOU are the one
        who got punished.

        SE: Initially, actually, they came and they wanted to give me a
        raise and promotion for--in return, they asked me to just leave
        it alone and not to report it further up, to the headquarters. And
        that's how it worked within the FBI's language division. There was,
        there were things like that happening all the time. And after I
        insisted that this needed to be investigated, and went higher up,
        they started threatening me and retaliating against me. They busted
        my home and confiscated my home computer, my husband's home computer,
        and they forced me to take a polygraph. And then, later, they fired me.

        SH: And also it says in the Vanity Fair article that Melek Can
        xxxxerson herself actually threatened you.

        SE: Correct. That occurred in January, 2002.

        SH: And if I remember correctly, the quote was something to the effect
        of, "Why are you doing this? You could be getting your family, back
        in Turkey, in danger."

        SE: Correct.

        SH: And did anything ever come of this threat?

        SE: Well, yes, my--I really don't feel like going through that, because
        that's really hard for me to speak about, because my family's life
        has changed. They've had to come to the US, they've had political
        asylum. In fact, the Congress helped them to apply for political
        asylum based on documents they received from Turkey that had various
        threats in it.

        But that is not the point that I really want to make, as far as the
        country goes, and that's why I usually tell people I don't think the
        issue here is about whistleblowing, being fired, being wrong, 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 won't know about what's going
        on within their agencies and in their government, even within their
        Congress. And that is the focus point, and I have been trying--what I
        have written to the state and to the Congress, and 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 country to
        focus, 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% related to [the] 9/11 terrorist attack
        in the United States, and they are giving this illusion that they are
        pursuing these cases, but they are not. If the case is, touches upon,
        certain countries or certain high-level people, certain sensitive
        relations, then they don't. But on the other hand, they go, like,
        they talk about lower-level criminal activities that--lower-level
        people like Atta and Hami (ph).

        SH: Well, alright, so let's get into that criminal activity, then. The
        semi-legit organization that, I think, you most often are referring to
        here, I believe I can deduce, is the American-Turkish Council, which
        is headed by Brett Scowcroft, the former National Security Advisor
        of the United States, and is packed with the leaders of Raytheon,
        Motorola, Boeing, Lockheed, Martin Marietta, and some of the most
        powerful company names in the military-industrial complex.

        SE: Correct.

        SH: Now, is the ATC just one of the many semi-legitimate organizations
        that you're referring to? Or is most of this story focused on the
        ATC itself?

        SE: It's one of, it's one of many. There are many, there are many
        organizations.

        SH: And many organizations that you actually were overhearing.

        SE: I cannot talk to you about what I was overhearing, but, as I have
        pointed out, there are several organizations.

        SH: OK. And you mentioned, when you talked about criminal activity,
        drug running, money laundering, weapons smuggling--

        SE: And these activities overlap. It's not, like, OK, you have certain
        criminal entities who are active in [the] nuclear black market,
        and then you have certain criminal activities who are bringing the
        narcotics from the East. You have the same players. When you look
        into these activities at [a] high level, you come across the same
        players. They are the same people.

        SH: Well, when we're talking about those kind of levels of liquid cash,
        to my mind we also have to include major banks, too, right?

        SE: Financial institutions, yes.

        SH: Did you learn of anything which implicated Brett Scowcroft or,
        and/or, the leadership of the ATC in this corruption?

        SE: As I said, I do not talk about this information, and Vanity Fair
        has gotten through various sources, official sources, the information
        about the ATC and they have written an article about it, but I do
        not talk about targets.

        SH: I understand. And David Rose, in fact, did write in the Vanity
        Fair article that there wasn't anything that he knows of that you
        found that directly implicated Brent Scowcroft.

        SE: And again, that depends on who was the source, and the sources of
        the information that particular source provided, but I can't confirm
        or not confirm it.

        SH: I see. I want to get a promise out of you that when they finally
        lift this gag order, that I get to interview you first. I got a long
        list of questions that I can't ask.

        SE: Sure, and believe me, once that is lifted, the state-secrets
        privilege, and once the court case actually begins, and we have the
        witnesses and we can subpoena documents, it will be public and it
        will be major. And it will make the AIPAC case look lame, actually.

        SH: Oh! It will make the AIPAC case look lame!

        SE: Correct.
        "All truth passes through three stages:
        First, it is ridiculed;
        Second, it is violently opposed; and
        Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

        Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

        Comment


        • #5
          Part dree

          SH: --in April of 2001, that was even confirmed by Mueller, the
          director of the FBI.

          SE: Absolutely, and there was actually an article in [the] Chicago
          Tribune in July 2004, saying that even Mueller expressed surprise
          that during the hearings, the 9/11 commissioners didn't ask about
          this. And guess what?

          Nobody reported all these omissions, and now they're putting this,
          and the commissioners are saying, "Oh, we don't recall." Well, what
          would happen if you hit them with 20 cases? And I'm talking about 20
          affidavits from expert and veteran agents.

          SH: Well, basically, this is all around the question of prior knowledge
          and who knew what-when, before the attack.

          SE: And also what happens afterwards, and I started working three days
          after September 11th, but a lot of documents and wiretaps on why it
          happened, that I was translating, well, some of them dated back to 1997
          and 1998. So even after September 11, covering up these investigations
          and not pursuing some of these investigations because the Department
          of State says, "You know what? You can't pursue this, because that
          may deal with this particular country. If these are countries that
          these investigations deal with, are not one of the 'axes of evil,'
          we don't want to pursue that." I mean, that--the American people have
          the right to know this. I mean, this is just--they're getting this
          grand illusion as if there are some investigations, when there are
          not. You know, they're coming down on these charities as the financing
          of Al Qaida. Well, if you were to talk about financing of Al Qaida,
          a very small percentage comes from these charity foundations. [The]
          vast majority of their financing comes from narcotics. Look, we had
          4 to 6% of the narcotics coming to the US, coming from the East,
          coming from Pakistan and Afghanistan via the Balkans into the United
          States. Today, three, four years after September 11th, that has
          reached 15, over 15%. How is it getting here?

          Who are getting the proceedings from this narcotics?

          SH: Right. Well, you have the same people who make it illegal to
          drive up the price? Maybe not. I don't know. Now, listen, when you
          talk about the State Department and sensitive diplomatic ties with
          foreign countries that they would prefer not [to] stepped on, I'm
          sorry, but the word "Israel" is just screaming on the inside of my
          head here. I guess you can't give me any indication to, yes or no,
          that's what you're talking about.

          SE: Well, what is interesting with [the] Vanity Fair article,
          I don't know how many people picked up on that, but they're saying
          Turkic--Turkish counTRIES. It's a plural, people. And to look and say,
          OK, you're looking at this region of the world that nobody is referring
          to in the War Against Terror. OK, you're looking at Kyrgyzstan and
          Kazakhistan and Uzbekistan, and these are the countries that now we are
          busy establishing bases in. And a large portion of their GDP depends
          on narcotics. And there's a presence, Al Qaida presence, in these
          countries. We don't hear anything about Balkan countries and, again,
          their direct ties and their direct relevance to Al Qaida. They are not
          even naming these countries. The role that Pakistan played before and
          the role that Pakistan is playing today. So, as I said, as I have said
          before, there are several countries, there are several organizations,
          and not just say, isolate just one country or one organization.

          SH: Alright, everybody, it's the Weekend Interview Show. We'll get
          right back after this break to wrap up with Sibel Edmonds. Her Web
          site is justacitizen.com. [commercial break] Alright, my friends,
          welcome back to the Weekend Interview Show. I'm Scott Horton, and
          I'm talking with Sibel Edmonds. Her Web site is justacitizen.com and
          you can read what she writes at antiwar.com/edmonds. Now, we've only
          got a few minutes left here, but I want to get to your appearance on
          Democracy Now earlier in the week. In referring to officials at the
          State Department, you used the word "treason."

          And I wonder whether this is specifically referring to the September
          11th attacks and whether you have information that indicates complicity
          on the part of American elites who are part of the semi-legit
          organizations that funded September 11th, or are we talking "seven
          degrees of Kevin Bacon" here?

          SE: Again, it's hard to talk about this around the gag order, but
          this is what I have been saying for [the] past three years. That's
          what I refer to in the transcript of CBS "60 Minutes." These people
          who call themselves Americans, and these people who are using their
          position, their official position within these agencies, some of
          them in the Department of Defense, some of them in the Department
          of State, and, yes, what they are doing is using their position
          and their influence against the United States national security and
          against the best interests of its people. And that is treason, be it
          giving information to those that are either quasi-allies, and I would
          underline "quasi," because if you're talking about evil, Axis of Evil,
          I'm referring to quasi-allies who, one day, will be another Al Qaida,
          and who are already engaged in activities that are damaging to our
          country, security, and its interests. And that is treason.

          SH: If I had--go ahead.

          SE: Sure, go ahead.

          SH: No, please finish.

          SE: So that's what I was referring to. And what would you call someone
          who--let's say if they were to go after Douglas Feith, OK? And if
          they were able to establish that Douglas Feith, with his access to
          information, willingly, intentionally, used his position, used the
          information he had, and gave it to those that would one day use it,
          or maybe right now are using that information against the United
          States. Would you call that treason?

          SH: Well, if it's an overt act to benefit an American enemy, then,
          yep, that's treason.

          SE: Correct. And as I said, those lines are so blurry, because there
          are certain countries that we call allies that--I wouldn't call
          them allies.

          They--these people are--these countries are quasi-allies.

          SH: OK. Now I'm going to go ahead and name some people who I suspect
          inside the State Department and the Pentagon, and I suppose you won't
          be able to answer affirmative or negative on any of these. But I'm
          very curious when I read about this kind of corruption going on in
          the State Department, I immediately think--well, particularly in the
          first term--I immediately think of John Bolton and David Wimser[ph]. Do
          those names mean anything to you?

          SE: Well, first of all, I'm not going to answer that question at
          all. But you also should pay attention to the fact that some of these
          people have been there for awhile. And some of those people have had
          their roots in there even in [the] mid-1990s.

          SH: Ah, so more career officials, rather than political appointees.

          SE: Or maybe a mixture of both.

          SH: Maybe a mixture of both. Thank you very much for your time today,
          Sibel.

          SE: Thank you, Scott.

          SH: I sure wish they'd let you talk.

          SE: Well, maybe one day.

          SH: OK. Take good care. Everybody, we're going to be right back talking
          with Bob Dreyfus, all about the Israeli spies in the Pentagon. Stay
          tuned.
          "All truth passes through three stages:
          First, it is ridiculed;
          Second, it is violently opposed; and
          Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

          Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

          Comment


          • #6
            Turkish contribution to campaign fund to be investigated

            Turkish contribution to campaign fund to be investigated

            WASHINGTON (AP) - A watchdog group filed a complaint Tuesday urging
            U.S. government election officials to investigate whether House
            Speaker Dennis Hastert's campaign fund illegally accepted campaign
            contributions from foreign nationals.

            The complaint from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government
            - a self-described nonpartisan, progressive group - relied upon an
            article published in the September issue of Vanity Fair to argue the
            FEC should pursue the matter.

            The account in Vanity Fair says a former fired FBI translator, Sibil
            Edmonds, has reported having heard Turkish wiretap targets boast
            that they had a covert relationship with Hastert. It says the targets
            reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in
            secret payments in exchange for political favors and information.

            The group, whose executive director, Melanie Sloan, is a former federal
            prosecutor and counsel to House Democrats, suggested that the Illinois
            Republican's campaign fund could have received hundreds of unitemized
            contributions of $200 (162.43) or less from foreign nationals in 2000
            and 2001 because Hastert raised so much money in small amounts.

            Name and address information is not required for such small donations.

            "The sheer number of small contributions should have raised a red
            flag," Sloan said in a statement. "Hastert's campaign committee was
            obligated to ensure that no laws were being broken. It's now time for
            a thorough investigation into Hastert's finances." Hastert spokesman
            Ron Bonjean ridiculed the complaint.

            FEC spokesman George Smaragdis said the agency, traditionally, has
            no comment when complaints are initially filed.

            08/16/05 16:08 EDT
            "All truth passes through three stages:
            First, it is ridiculed;
            Second, it is violently opposed; and
            Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

            Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

            Comment


            • #7
              Hastert funding is under scrutiny

              Aurora Beacon News, IL
              Aug 17 2005

              Hastert funding is under scrutiny
              ~U Investigation sought: Group which has ties to Democrats wants
              claims of impropriety examined

              By Ed Fanselow Staff WRITER

              WASHINGTON - A magazine story alleging a covert relationship between
              a group of Turkish nationals and House Speaker Dennis Hastert
              has prompted a group of leading Democrats to call for a federal
              investigation into the claims.

              The story, published in the September issue of Vanity Fair magazine,
              relies on an uncorroborated account from a former FBI translator, who
              says she overheard Turkish wiretap targets - who were the subject of
              counter-intelligence investigations - brag of funneling thousands of
              dollars into Hastert's campaign fund in exchange for political favors.

              The translator told the magazine that the donations were to be made
              in payments of less than $200, which do not have to be itemized under
              Federal Election Commission rules.

              The Yorkville Republican himself was never heard in the recordings, the
              translator told the magazine, and the story's author admitted that the
              Turks supposed claims may have been nothing more than "hollow boasts.
              "

              Still, the story caught the eye of the Citizens for Responsibility and
              Ethics in Washington (CREW), which on Tuesday filed a complaint with
              the FEC calling for "a thorough investigation into Hastert's finances."

              The group, founded by the former senior counsel to House Democrats,
              was responsible for drafting a complaint against House Majority Leader
              Tom DeLay, R-Texas, for which he was admonished last year.

              In a written statement, CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan suggests
              that the translator's claims warrant a closer look since Hastert
              recorded an inordinately high amount of small, unitemized donations
              between 1996 and 2002.

              According to the FEC, the Hastert For Congress Committee reported more
              than $480,000 in donations of less than $200 during that 7-year period.

              By comparison, DeLay reported receiving less than $100,000 during
              the same span.

              "The sheer number of small contributions should have raised a red
              flag," Sloan said.

              John McGovern, a Hastert spokesman, called the allegations
              "outlandish."

              "These are ridiculous and reckless claims from a Democratic front group
              that have no basis in reality," he said Tuesday. "It's just not true."

              According to the Vanity Fair report, the Turks were apparently looking
              for Hastert to help derail a 2000 House resolution designating the
              killings of thousands of Armenians in Turkey during the 1920s as
              genocide.

              The controversial issue has long been a source of hostility between
              the two countries as well as between Americans of Armenian and
              Turkish descent.

              The magazine alleges that Hastert originally supported the resolution,
              only to reverse his position and withdraw it from consideration on
              the House floor.

              Another Hastert spokesman told the magazine, though, that the speaker's
              about-face came only after a personal appeal from then-President
              Bill Clinton.

              "To insinuate anything else," the spokesman said, "just doesn't
              make sense."
              "All truth passes through three stages:
              First, it is ridiculed;
              Second, it is violently opposed; and
              Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

              Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

              Comment


              • #8
                SE: Well, sure, it's on their Web site. They are this organization,
                lobbying organization, for Turkish business and relationship between
                the United States and Turkey. It's exactly like AIPAC.

                SH: Oh, good. Oh, exactly like AIPAC?

                SE: Exactly. In fact, they have so many crossovers, if you look at
                their members, you will basically see many members that basically
                are in both organizations. And if you look at the people who are
                in the management and that are in charge of this lobbying group,
                you come across the same names.
                Hovik,

                After reading the quotation from an article I did NOT post, do you still think what I told you is wrong? You still think putting the microscope on turkey's government alone is right?

                Comment


                • #9
                  Turkish Official Talks Of Bribing House Speaker To Kill Genocide Bill

                  TURKISH OFFICIAL TALKS OF BRIBING HOUSE SPEAKER TO KILL GENOCIDE BILL

                  Vanity Fair is reporting in its September 2005 issue that a Turkish diplomat spoke about arranging for $500,000 in illegal payments to House Speaker Dennis Hastert in order to kill a congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide, in the fall of 2000.

                  Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, had asked Sibel Edmonds, one of F.B.I’s Turkish interpreters, to review more than 40 recorded conversations of "a senior official" at the Turkish Consulate in Chicago, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations in Washington, D.C., according to Vanity Fair.

                  The subject of the wiretapped conversations sounded like attempts to bribe several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans. "Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes," the magazine said.

                  In the wiretaps, the Turkish callers frequently used the nickname "Denny boy," to refer to the Republican Congressman from Illinois, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. The Turks monitored by the F.B.I. said they had "arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks. Under Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings. Hastert himself was never heard in these conversations," Vanity Fair’s David Rose wrote.

                  The magazine’s examination of Speaker Hastert’s federal filings for the years 1996-2002 showed his campaign committee to have received close to $500,000 in un-itemized payments - the second highest amount in such contributions for all Congressmen. Vanity Fair stated that there was no evidence that such payments were in fact made by these Turkish subjects. "Nevertheless, a senior official at the Turkish Consulate [in Chicago] is said to have claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000."

                  David Rose reported that Edmonds told congressional investigators: "The recordings contained repeated references to Hastert’s flip-flop, in the fall of 2000, over an issue which remains of intense concern to the Turkish government - the continuing campaign to have Congress designate the killings of Armenians in Turkey between 1915 and 1923 a genocide. For many years attempts had been made to get the House to pass a genocide resolution, but they never got anywhere until August 2000, when Hastert, as Speaker, announced that he would give it his backing and see that it received a full House vote. He had a clear political reason, as analysts noted at the time: a California Republican incumbent, locked in a tight congressional race, was looking to win over his district’s large Armenian community. Thanks to Hastert, the resolution, vehemently opposed by the Turks, passed the International Relations Committee by a large majority. Then, on October 19, minutes before the full House vote, Hastert withdrew it. At the time, he explained his decision by saying that he had received a letter from President Clinton arguing that the genocide resolution, if passed, would harm U.S. interests."

                  In another wiretapped conversation, "a Turkish official spoke directly to a U.S. State Department staffer." Vanity Fair reported. He "suggested that the State Department staffer would send a representative at an appointed time to the American-Turkish Council office, at 1111 14th Street NW, where he would be given $7,000 in cash."

                  A congressional source told the magazine that Edmonds testified that "she’d heard mention of exchanges of information, dead-drops - that kind of thing.... It was mostly money in exchange for secrets.... Another call allegedly discussed a payment to a Pentagon official who seemed to be involved in weapons-procurement negotiations. Yet another implied that Turkish groups had been installing doctoral students at U.S. research institutions in order to acquire information about black market nuclear weapons. In fact, much of what Edmonds reportedly heard seemed to concern not state espionage but criminal activity. There was talk, she told investigators, of laundering the profits of large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder."

                  The main focus of Vanity Fair’s expose is the controversial firing of Sibel Edmonds for complaining to her bosses at the F.B.I. that she believed one of her Turkish co-workers was leaking confidential information to the Turkish officials who were being investigated by the F.B.I. The Bush Administration has banned Edmonds from talking to anyone about her case and has prevented her from filing a lawsuit for her mysterious dismissal.

                  Besides the bombshell about the Turkish plot to bribe Hastert in order to prevent the passage of a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide, one wonders why the F.B.I. would wiretap for several years the Turkish Consulate in Chicago, and even more intriguing, the offices of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations. What did the F.B.I. suspect about these Turkish-American non-profit groups that merited such intrusive surveillance?

                  Even more incredible is the allegation that officials working at the Pentagon and State Dept. were receiving cash payments from Turkish sources. Is there a Turkish network that has bought its way and infiltrated the highest levels of the U.S. government?

                  The fact that Edmonds is prevented from talking about her work and filing a lawsuit could be due to the U.S. government’s intent to file charges against these Turkish entities and its desire not to have the case jeopardized by Edmonds’ actions. It could also be that Washington is trying to cover-up the suspected illegal activities of these Turkish groups in order to protect their co-conspirators at the top echelons of the Bush Administration.

                  The ACLU has appealed Edmonds’ case to the Supreme Court. We hope that the highest court of the land would hear her case, thereby revealing to the American public what the U.S. government has discovered about the activities of the suspected Turkish diplomats and Turkish American organizations.

                  By Harut Sassounian; Publisher, The California Courier
                  "All truth passes through three stages:
                  First, it is ridiculed;
                  Second, it is violently opposed; and
                  Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

                  Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Turks Scare Themselves by Claiming

                    Turks Scare Themselves by Claiming
                    Armenians Spend Millions on Lobbying

                    By Harut Sassounian
                    Publisher, The California Courier

                    Hundreds of Turkish "scholars" are hired by various centers, institutes and
                    foundations in Turkey to write and publish articles and books on Armenian
                    issues, in general, and the Armenian Genocide, in particular.
                    Almost all of these centers, funded directly or indirectly by Turkish
                    governmental sources, have been set up to produce anti-Armenian propaganda
                    which is translated into dozens of languages and mailed to libraries,
                    parliaments, scholars and journalists around the world.
                    Despite the millions of dollars spent on this propaganda war, the Turkish
                    government is apparently not satisfied with the results. Foreign Minister
                    Abdullah Gul announced last month that Ankara was devoting even more
                    resources to this campaign in order to flood the world with revisionist
                    materials on the Armenian Genocide.
                    One of these Turkish propaganda mills, appropriately located in Ankara, is
                    called the Institute for Armenian Research (Ermeni Arastirmalari
                    Enstitusu), a division of the Center for Eurasian Strategic Studies. This
                    so-called Institute has been publishing a periodical since 2001 that is
                    exclusively dedicated to denigrating Armenians.
                    Last week, Fatma Sarikaya, a Board member of the Turkish Forum, translated
                    into English and posted on the Forum's web site a summarized version of an
                    article on the Armenian-American lobby, written by Dr. Senol Kantarci, a
                    researcher at the Institute for Armenian Research. The article was
                    originally written in Turkish and published in the Institute's periodical
                    in 2001, under the title: "The Armenian Lobby: The Creation of the Armenian
                    Diaspora in America and the Lobby's Activities."
                    While Kantarci's Turkish article remained unknown and unread, Sarikaya's
                    English translation attracted widespread attention after it was posted on
                    several Turkish and Armenian web sites. Her version had a more sensational
                    title: "Money spent by the Armenian Lobby in America: In 1994 alone, the
                    Armenian Assembly of America spent $7,000,000, most of it on lobbying the
                    Congress."
                    Not surprisingly, the article contains many historical and factual errors
                    that even a high school student, let alone a "researcher" with a Ph.D.,
                    would not make. Before refuting the ridiculous Turkish claim that
                    Armenian-Americans spend astronomic sums to lobby Congress, let's focus on
                    some of the other assertions made by the author.
                    Kantarci wrote that Armenian students started arriving in America as early
                    as 1840. He said that these young men were "raised with hate for the Turks.
                    Though small in number, this elite group of Armenians was very effective in
                    creating anti-Turkish sentiments in America." Kantarci is trying to make
                    the point that Armenians have been campaigning in America against Turkey
                    for 165 years. What he does not say is why these young Armenians from
                    Turkey were so anti-Turkish? What had the Turks done to them and their
                    families, even before the Genocide, to cause them to have such intense
                    feelings against Turks?
                    To justify the advances scored by Armenian political activists in recent
                    years and excuse the Turkish setbacks, Kantarci wrote: "Hundreds of
                    Armenian lobby groups were founded in America. The total number is
                    staggering when considering they all have branches in all corners of the
                    land. Excluding the
                    religious groups, the number of Armenian establishments is 1,046. With the
                    religious groups this number reaches 1,228. The aim of all these
                    establishments is making anti-Turkish propaganda...."
                    Kantarci further claimed that, while the Armenian population in America is
                    estimated between 800,000 and one million, "their representation in
                    Congress is far beyond proportion." This is obviously false, as there are
                    no Armenian-Americans at all in the Senate and only two House members are
                    partly of Armenian origin.
                    After misstating the names and activities of many Armenian-American
                    organizations, Kantarci made his biggest mistake by claiming: "In 1994
                    alone, the Armenian Assembly of America spent $7,000,000 - most of it on
                    lobbying the Congress."
                    The claim that Armenians spend huge sums to lobby Congress completely
                    freaked out some Turks. For example, one Turk after reading Kantarci's
                    article, wrote on a Turkish web site that even though he loves eating
                    basturma very much, he would be forced to give it up, because most of the
                    basturma sold in the U.S. is made by Armenians. He said he feared that a
                    part of the money he pays to the Armenian shop owner for the basturma would
                    go towards Armenian lobbying efforts.
                    Kantarci's reported lobbying figures are completely false. The Armenian
                    Assembly and all other Armenian groups collectively do not spend even a
                    tiny fraction of the $7 million claimed in his article.
                    According to the publicly available figures for the latest three years of
                    tax returns of the Armenian Assembly, the organization has spent on
                    legislative lobbying just $30,000 in 2003; $27,000 in 2002; and $100,000 in
                    2001. For the year 1994, the Assembly informed this writer that it had
                    spent a total of $272,000 on governmental, legal and lobbying efforts. One
                    can safely assume that less than $100,000 of that amount may have been
                    spent strictly on lobbying the Congress. This is a far cry from the $7
                    million
                    claimed by this Turkish "scholar."
                    The facts clearly point out that Armenians spend very little on lobbying.
                    On the contrary, it is the Turkish government that spends millions of
                    dollars to hire the best American lobbying firms that money can buy. When a
                    country is trying to cover up a massive crime like genocide, it does need
                    to spend millions of dollars. Even then, as the Turks found out, it is a
                    total waste of their money. You cannot hide a genocide, no matter how much
                    money you spend!
                    But when you have the truth on your side, as Armenians do, you don't need
                    to spend millions on lobbying!
                    "All truth passes through three stages:
                    First, it is ridiculed;
                    Second, it is violently opposed; and
                    Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

                    Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

                    Comment

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