and dont forget our uk troops who will no doubt follow !
Actually all of NATO (minus Turkey):
NATO general in Afghanistan: Taliban train in Iran
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100530/ap_on_re_as/as_afghanistanNATO Commander In Afghanistan Says Iran Helping Taliban
http://www.rferl.org/content/nato_commander_in_afghanistan_says_iran_helping_taliban/2057300.htmlMcChrystal: NATO trying to stop Iran's help to Afghan Taliban
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1559487.php/McChrystal-NATO-trying-to-stop-Iran-s-help-to-Afghan-Taliban
This is such Bullshit, Sibel Edmonds has exposed the entire cartel who have been shipping weapons to Iran...it is right frcking here:
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?board=468.0SIBEL EDMONDS SPEAKS TO UK SUNDAY TIMES: SAYS U.S. OFFICIALS INVOLVED IN RELEASE OF NUKE SECRETS TO TURKEY, PAKISTAN, IRAN, OTHERS, POSSIBLY EVEN AL-QAEDA
[What a coincidence, Sibel said this OVER 2 YEARS AGO!!!! Look at the countries!!!!]
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5518Former 'Gagged' FBI Whistleblower Alleges Pentagon, State Department Officials Overheard Receiving Payoffs in Exchange for Classified Info; Crimes Covered Up at Highest Levels of Government
U.S. Media Scooped Again, Failed to Air Claims After Offer of Disclosure by Edmonds in Recent BRAD BLOG Exclusives... [UPDATED SEVERAL TIMES]
LAST UPDATE 1/7/8
-- By Brad Friedman [Updated --- now several times --- with a number of significant items, additional info, background, reaction and analysis from around the blogosphere, all at the end of the article.]
Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI translator who has been under a Bush administration gag order for the past 5 years, has now begun to disclose some of the classified information she has been prohibited from revealing.
"A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets," reports Great Britain's Sunday Times in the lede of their front page exclusive, headlined "For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets."
In the article, just filed tonight, Edmonds reveals details overheard on wiretaps she translated during her time at the FBI, just after 9/11. Her disclosures to the Times reveal a maze of nuclear black market espionage involving U.S. Defense and State Department officials, that resulted in the sale and propagation of nuclear secrets to Turkish and Israeli interests. In turn, that information was then sold to Pakistan and used by A.Q. Kahn for development of nuclear weapons. The secrets were subsequently proliferated to Iran, Libya, North Korea, and potentially al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden, just weeks prior to September 11th, 2001.
The explosive allegations, shared with the Sunday Times over the last several weeks, follow on the heels of two reports published late last year by The BRAD BLOG, based on our own exclusive interviews with Edmonds.
While not everything Edmonds has to reveal is reported by the Times tonight, the foreign paper's front-page feature underscores, yet again, the failure of the U.S. mainstream media to adequately report on issues of extraordinary importance to American national security.
In late October, Edmonds had told The BRAD BLOG she was prepared to reveal the information to any major U.S. broadcast media outlet, after feeling that she had exhausted all efforts to see the disturbing information properly investigated by U.S. Government agencies. She had, in fact, spent years in classified interviews with high-ranking officials from the FBI, DoJ, 9/11 Commission and both houses of the U.S. Congress, in hopes of seeing accountability brought concerning the issues of national security, which the DoJ's own Inspector General had described as "credible," "serious," and "warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI."
Despite broken promises for hearings on her case by U.S. Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA), support from Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and a number of mainstream exposés several years ago detailing aspects of her story before she was willing to break her unprecedented "States Secrets Privilege" gag order, none of the American broadcast media outlets took her up on her offer.
"She has now decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned with the US authorities' failure to act," reports the Sunday Times tonight...
In our mid-November follow-up article, the legendary 1970's whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg had excoriated the U.S. media for their failure to cover the story, even as Edmonds was risking jail in order to expose crimes and massive corruption, allegedly, in the highest levels of the government. At the time, Ellsberg told us that he believed the information she had been forced by the Administration to withhold "is far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers."
Ellsberg is known for having released thousands of pages of top-secret Defense Department documents, concerning America's involvement in Vietnam, to the New York Times in 1971, in what became a landmark whistleblower case.
"I can tell the American public exactly what it is, and what it is that they are covering up," Edmonds had promised in our October article. But it was, in fact, a UK media outlet that finally took up the Turkish-born, American citizen's offer for the whistleblower interview. The result is the release of explosive details on at least one aspect of the U.S. national security-related secrets that she is now willing to disclose.
"What I found was damning," Edmonds tells the Times about the information she learned while at the FBI concerning the nuclear blackmarket activities and proliferation of several government agencies, including her own unit at the FBI. "While the FBI was investigating, several arms of the government were shielding what was going on."
Among the newly disclosed information from Edmonds, in the extraordinary front-page Times article tonight:
● Foreign intelligence agents from Turkey, Israel and Pakistan enlisted the support of high-level US officials in order to acquire a network of moles deep inside of sensitive American military and nuclear agencies, including "PhD students – with security clearance [at] Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent."
● Members of the diplomatic community were given lists of potential "moles" at the sensitive installations. Edmonds tells the Times: "the lists contained all their 'hooking points', which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to."
● Well-known US officials were then bribed by foreign agents to steal US nuclear secrets. One such incident from 2000 involves an agent overheard on a wiretap discussing "nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama," in which the agent allegedly is heard saying: "We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000."
● Nuclear secrets were then subsequently sold by foreign agents to America's enemies, including Iran, North Korea and Libya.
● Pakistani officials involved in the nuclear black market network have significant cross-over with al-Qaeda and 9/11. Officials such as the chief of ISI, Pakistan's spy agency, allegedly sent $100,000 to 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, and aides of A.Q. Kahn --- who had used the stolen secrets to develop nuclear weapons for Pakistan --- met with Osama bin Laden "weeks before 9/11...to discuss an Al-Qaeda nuclear device."
● Elements of the US government have repeatedly shut down investigations into these crimes under the guise of protecting "certain diplomatic relations."
● The US government has been aware of all of the above information since at least 2001.
Read the Times' full article for many more disturbing details and connected dots.
But we can add to at least one item of note in their report, concerning an unnamed "well-known senior official in the US State Department," allegedly heard to have received bribes as part of the network. According to the paper:
Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.
The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.
However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”
She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.
...
"In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe."
...
Edmonds said: “I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost certainly more.”
While that "well-known senior" State Department official is not named by the paper, Australia's Luke Ryland, who writes at a number of sites as "Lukery", is perhaps the world's foremost expert concerning the Sibel Edmonds story. Ryland has told The BRAD BLOG that the official, unnamed by the Times, is Marc Grossman.
Grossman was the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey ('94-'97), the Asst. Sec. of State for European Affairs ('97-'00) and served under Colin Powell and Richard Armitage at the State Department from 2001 to 2005 as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He's currently employed as the Vice Chairman of the D.C. and China-based consulting firm, The Cohen Group, founded by the former Republican Defense Secretary for Bill Clinton, William S. Cohen.
"The Cohen Group provides global business consulting services and advice on tactical and strategic opportunities in virtually every market," advertises the firm on the front page of their website.
Additional information on a related angle of Grossman's alleged involvement in these matters was reported by the prolific Ryland in 2006, on his blog, WotIsItGood4.
"The senior official in the State Department [who] no longer works there" offered the Times this non-denial denial of Edmonds' allegations: "If you are calling me to say somebody said that I took money that’s outrageous," he reportedly said. "I do not have anything to say about such stupid ridiculous things as this."
Apparently, he also doesn't have anything to say, along the lines of "I never took any such money, or did any such thing," either.
"In researching this article, The Sunday Times has talked to two FBI officers (one serving, one former) and two former CIA sources who worked on nuclear proliferation," the paper writes. "While none was aware of specific allegations against officials she names, they did provide overlapping corroboration of Edmonds’s story."
In a 15-page 2005 exposé in Vanity Fair, concerning yet another, if perhaps-related, aspect of Edmonds' allegations, British reporter David Rose detailed charges of nearly $500,000 in bribes from Turkish interests, said to have been prepared for former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL). His attorney has denied those allegations, though, in another BRAD BLOG exclusive, Edmonds challenged specific details of the denial. Hastert recently resigned from Congress, sparking speculation for his sudden departure after reports by ABC News in 2006, that he was under DoJ investigation for bribery charges related to convicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
In our October story, Edmonds had told us that, in addition to Hastert, she was prepared to name and give details of corruption involving at least "two other well-known" members of Congress. She told us at the time that they are both Republicans from the U.S. House and "one of them is recently no longer there."
For more details on the Edmonds case, in an easy to read primer, see "What The Heck is the Sibel Edmonds Case Anyway? And Why Should You Care About It?", a recent BRAD BLOG item based, in part, on the reporting of Ryland.
Whether the Sunday Times story tonight will give permission to the U.S. corporate media to finally pick up the story, and cover the many still-unreported aspects of Edmonds' charges, remains to be seen.
If any of them wish to contact us, we'll be happy, as we've offered many times, to help put them in contact with her.
As our friend Joseph Cannon mentions tonight, in relation to our coverage of the at least 4-years-overdue New York Times Magazine's Sunday cover story on the disaster of e-voting: "Journalism delayed is journalism denied."
UPDATE 12:06pm PT: Several notable reactions, furtherances of today's Sunday Times front page stunner...
● As usual, Luke Ryland offers tons of info, analysis, links and background in his dKos coverage (cross-posted at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak). Just a couple of the notable passages offering additional context on the story, from his coverage today:
The Times article then notes something that I reported 18 months ago. Immediately after 911, the FBI arrested a bunch of people suspected of being involved with the attacks - including four associates of key targets of FBI's counterintelligence operations. Sibel heard the targets tell Marc Grossman: "We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans." Grossman duly facilitated their release from jail and the suspects immediately left the country without further investigation or interrogation.
Let me repeat that for emphasis: The #3 guy at the State Dept facilitated the immediate release of 911 suspects at the request of targets of the FBI's investigation.
...and this...
high-level Pentagon officials were maintaining 'dossiers' on the sexual and financial proclivities of their underlings in order to be able to blackmail them.
I know that many of you have been (rightly) concerned about FISA, and many of you have (rightly) been confused by the inexplicable behaviour of Democrats in Congress, and wonder why they behave as though they are being blackmailed.
Now you know.
● Rightwing blogger and "9/11 conspiracy theory debunker", Pat Curley, a previous --- and we would add, irresponsible --- critic of Edmonds' at ScrewLooseChange, offers what can only be seen as an ersatz apology for his previous coverage, in his item on today's news. Still, we note he has yet to retract, or issue a specific apology to Edmonds, for comments made in his previous irresponsible coverage. Given the focus of the Screw Loose Change site, we'd think journalistic integrity would be paramount, and that he'd add a retraction/apology to his previous coverage, if he's actually had the change of heart today's post would seem to indicate.
● Blogger Joseph Cannon describes the piece as a "BOMBSHELL!" and offers additional details on Pakistan's ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad --- who is central to the Times story, and Edmonds allegations --- including his relationship to both al-Qaeda, and a very cozy relationship with the neo-Cons in D.C. Writes Cannon:
Get the picture? Valerie Plame was trying to stop Khan in his tracks. But Armitage stopped Valerie Plame in her tracks. Armitage and his neocon comrades are good buddies with Mehmood Ahmad, who was engineering this trade in nukes.
● And, speaking of the Plame angle, her former CIA classmate, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson of NoQuarter notes this, about Edmonds claims of payoffs to Grossman, Hastert and others, in his coverage this morning:
The role that foreign money and intelligence officers have played in U.S. politics is not a Sibel Edmonds fantasy. The woman is simply trying to tell folks what she heard. This matter needs to be investigated. I do not believe that Sibel is making up what she heard.
UPDATE 1:14pm PT: Further reaction from the 'sphere...
● Our friend, RAW STORY investigative journalist, Larisa Alexandrovna, a longtime expert on this particular foreign affairs/nuclear black market beat, adds some thoughts and details on her at-Largely blog (and also cross-posted to Huffington Post.)
She too confirms the unnamed State Dept. official from the story to be Marc Grossman, and writes: "The Times could have published the name and also provided the denial from Grossman's camp. I find it incredibly disturbing that they would not name the official."
Noting that her source for this information is not Edmonds, she also adds the following about some of the other unnamed officials referred to in the story:
Those senior DOD officials that are not mentioned the Times, all but one are no longer in government. They are alleged to be Doug Feith, Richard Perle, among others. There is also one person who is part of these allegations, still serving in a high level position at the DOD. His last name begins with an E.
[My money is on this guy: Ambassador Eric S. Edelman is the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. His last assignment was as Ambassador to the Republic of Turkey from July 2003 to June 2005. From February 2001 to June 2003, he was Principal Deputy Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs. Prior to being assigned to the Office of the Vice President, he was Ambassador to the Republic of Finland, 1998-2001. From June 1996 to July 1998, he served as Executive Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State. Mr. Edelman was Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy, Prague, Czech Republic, from June 1994 to June 1996. From April 1993 to July 1993, he served as Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large and Special Advisor to the Secretary of State on the New Independent States. Mr. Edelman’s areas of responsibility were defense, security and space issues. Mr. Edelman served as Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Soviet and East European Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) from April 1990 to April 1993. From April 1989 to March 1990, he was Special Assistant (European Affairs) to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Mr. Edelman served at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow 1987-89, where he was head of the external political section. He had responsibility for Soviet policies in the third world in the Office of Soviet Affairs at the Department of State from 1984 to 1986. Previously, Mr. Edelman served as Special Assistant to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, 1982-84; a staff officer on the Secretariat Staff, 1982; a watch officer in the State Department Operations Center 1981-82; and a member of the U.S. Middle East Delegation to the West Bank/Gaza Autonomy Talks Delegations, 1980-81. A career Foreign Service Officer, Mr. Edelman entered the Senior Foreign Service in 1992. He is a recipient of the Secretary of Defense’s award for Distinguished Civilian Service (1993) and the State Department’s Superior Honor Award (1990 and 1996). Mr. Edelman received a B.A. in History and Government from Cornell University in 1972, and a Ph.D. in U.S. Diplomatic History from Yale University in 1981.]...as she goes on to include this additional excoriation of the Times' unwillingness to name names, and of the dangers of outsourcing national security to the global marketplace:
That the Times ran these allegations (she is under a state secrets gag folks, so it is not like she is gagged for lying) is encouraging. But that they omitted all names from the allegations is unethical. The point of a free press is not to protect the powerful against the weak, but to protect the public from the powerful. The Times was willing to stick a toe in, but was not willing to risk upsetting a foreign government (This is, after all, a British paper).
There are more names, including members of Congress and people serving in the FBI. This is what happens when basic government services as well as the most sensitive government functions are outsourced to the global marketplace.
...
You can see why Edmonds had to be silenced for "diplomatic reasons." As though diplomatic (read: business) relationships are more important than national security.
UPDATE 11:38pm PT: More reaction and analysis coming in late tonight...
● Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com and a contributing editor for The American Conservative adds a great deal of linked context and background in his detailed coverage of the Times piece. He says of Edmonds allegations: "if true, it's the story of the decade."
He frames his article around last night's Presidential Debate, in which ABC's Charles Gibson asked the Democratic candidates a remarkable question, in light of the Edmonds allegations today. "The next president may have to deal with a nuclear attack," Gibson said. "The day after a nuclear weapon goes off in an American city, what would we wish we had done to prevent it and what will we actually do on the day after?"
None of the candidates rose to the occasion and most seemed baffled, writes Raimondo, who sums of the details of this whole sordid tale this way...
Corruption and a massive cover-up organized at the highest levels of government – America's nuclear secrets and technology looted on a massive scale, and sold to our enemies via a network set up by our alleged foreign "friends," while the threat of nuclear terrorism hangs over our country like a thick fog of fear, and warmongering politicians scare us into going along with the program – if even half of what Edmonds alleges turns out to be true, then we are all in some very big trouble.
...before closing with this eerie reminder...
As Edmonds says, "we have the facts, we have the documents, we have the witnesses. Put out the tapes, put out the documents, put out the intercepts – put out the truth."
If a nuke ever goes off in an American city, it will probably have been stolen from our own arsenal – once the American people wake up to that scary fact, the rest will follow automatically.
Ramaindo also reminds us of the following terrific video, put together by Luke Ryland last Summer, featuring Edmonds, in her own words, along with a few FBI colleagues, and Sen. Grassley singing her praises of "credibility" on 60 Minutes, from 2002. Well worth watching (less than 10 mins)...
UPDATE 1/7/08, 1:43pm PT: Over at Op/Ed News, Mike Mejia offers this additional information, concerning Grossman's ties to the Valerie Plame Wilson/Scooter Libby CIA leak case, in his coverage of the Times story...
Grossman, besides being a former policymaker at State, is known publicly as Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s first witness in the Scooter Libby trial. Libby was accused of perjury in the investigation of former CIA operative Valerie Plame, who was part of a CIA front company monitoring the global nuclear black market. At least one story claimed Grossman himself had leaked the identity of Plame’s front company, Brewster-Jennings, to Turkish agents in June, 2001. Though the story was never picked up by the mainstream media, if true, it would lead credence to the idea that the Brewster Jennings operation had already been compromised before the retaliation against Plame’s wife, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, by members of the Bush Administration.
Grossman is also being subpoenaed by the defense in the AIPAC espionage trial, along with several other officials who may have passed classified information to the powerful Israel-connected lobby group.
In addition, the Times article mentions Pentagon officials selling nuclear secrets to Turkey and Pakistan. AIPAC case figure Larry Franklin is discussed by Edmonds in the article. The whistleblower has suggested in separate interviews that Franklin’s supervisor at the Pentagon, Douglas Feith has been involved in the scandal, as well as prominent neoconservative and Feith associate Richard Perle.
UPDATE 1/7/08, 5:07pm PT: Former New York Times contributor, Dave Lindorff at Baltimore Chronicle,
http://www.baltimorechro...8/010708Lindorff.shtml\">covers in detail, asks how Edmonds' story might tie in to the recent, and still unexplained, cross-country flyover of a B-52 with nuclear-tipped weapons on board, and closes by asking appropriately enough: "Meanwhile, there is enough in just this one London Times story to keep an army of investigative reporters busy for years. So why, one has to ask, is this story appearing in a highly respected British newspaper, but not anywhere in the corporate US media?"
Why, indeed, Dave.
01/05/08 "Sunday Times" -- - - A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.
Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.
She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.
Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.
Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.
The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.
However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”
She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.
“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.
Her story shows just how much the West was infiltrated by foreign states seeking nuclear secrets. It illustrates how western government officials turned a blind eye to, or were even helping, countries such as Pakistan acquire bomb technology.
The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort. But rather than shut it down, investigations by law enforcement bodies such as the FBI and Britain’s Revenue & Customs have been aborted to preserve diplomatic relations.
Edmonds, a fluent speaker of Turkish and Farsi, was recruited by the FBI in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Her previous claims about incompetence inside the FBI have been well documented in America.
She has given evidence to closed sessions of Congress and the 9/11 commission, but many of the key points of her testimony have remained secret. She has now decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned with the US authorities’ failure to act.
One of Edmonds’s main roles in the FBI was to translate thousands of hours of conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets that had been covertly recorded by the agency.
A backlog of tapes had built up, dating back to 1997, which were needed for an FBI investigation into links between the Turks and Pakistani, Israeli and US targets. Before she left the FBI in 2002 she heard evidence that pointed to money laundering, drug imports and attempts to acquire nuclear and conventional weapons technology.
“What I found was damning,” she said. “While the FBI was investigating, several arms of the government were shielding what was going on.”
The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.
They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.
In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed location by someone in the Turkish diplomatic community who was working for the network.
The Turks, she says, often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract suspicion. Venues such as the American Turkish Council in Washington were used to drop off the cash, which was picked up by the official.
Edmonds said: “I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost certainly more.”
The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.
Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attachés in the Turkish embassy.
Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.
The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.
Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan’s nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme.
Khan caused an alert among western intelligence agencies when his aides met Osama Bin Laden. “We were aware of contact between A Q Khan’s people and Al-Qaeda,” a former CIA officer said last week. “There was absolute panic when we initially discovered this, but it kind of panned out in the end.”
It is likely that the nuclear secrets stolen from the United States would have been sold to a number of rogue states by Khan.
Edmonds was later to see the scope of the Pakistani connections when it was revealed that one of her fellow translators at the FBI was the daughter of a Pakistani embassy official who worked for Ahmad. The translator was given top secret clearance despite protests from FBI investigators.
Edmonds says packages containing nuclear secrets were delivered by Turkish operatives, using their cover as members of the diplomatic and military community, to contacts at the Pakistani embassy in Washington.
Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or somehow aided the attacks.
Edmonds said the State Department official once again proved useful. “A primary target would call the official and point to names on the list and say, ‘We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans’,” she said. “The official said that he would ‘take care of it’.”
The four suspects on the list were released from interrogation and extradited.
Edmonds also claims that a number of senior officials in the Pentagon had helped Israeli and Turkish agents.
“The people provided lists of potential moles from Pentagon-related institutions who had access to databases concerning this information,” she said.
“The handlers, who were part of the diplomatic community, would then try to recruit those people to become moles for the network. The lists contained all their ‘hooking points’, which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to.”
One of the Pentagon figures under investigation was Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst, who was jailed in 2006 for passing US defence information to lobbyists and sharing classified information with an Israeli diplomat.
“He was one of the top people providing information and packages during 2000 and 2001,” she said.
Once acquired, the nuclear secrets could have gone anywhere. The FBI monitored Turkish diplomats who were selling copies of the information to the highest bidder.
Edmonds said: “Certain greedy Turkish operators would make copies of the material and look around for buyers. They had agents who would find potential buyers.”
In summer 2000, Edmonds says the FBI monitored one of the agents as he met two Saudi Arabian businessmen in Detroit to sell nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama. She overheard the agent saying: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.”
Edmonds’s employment with the FBI lasted for just six months. In March 2002 she was dismissed after accusing a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving Turkish nationals.
She has always claimed that she was victimised for being outspoken and was vindicated by an Office of the Inspector General review of her case three years later. It found that one of the contributory reasons for her sacking was that she had made valid complaints.
The US attorney-general has imposed a state secrets privilege order on her, which prevents her revealing more details of the FBI’s methods and current investigations.
Her allegations were heard in a closed session of Congress, but no action has been taken and she continues to campaign for a public hearing.
She was able to discuss the case with The Sunday Times because, by the end of January 2002, the justice department had shut down the programme.
The senior official in the State Department no longer works there. Last week he denied all of Edmonds’s allegations: “If you are calling me to say somebody said that I took money, that’s outrageous . . . I do not have anything to say about such stupid ridiculous things as this.”
In researching this article, The Sunday Times has talked to two FBI officers (one serving, one former) and two former CIA sources who worked on nuclear proliferation. While none was aware of specific allegations against officials she names, they did provide overlapping corroboration of Edmonds’s story.
One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,” the source said.
How Pakistan got the bomb, then sold it to the highest bidders
1965 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s foreign minister, says: “If India builds the bomb we will eat grass . . . but we will get one of our own”
1974 Nuclear programme becomes increased priority as India tests a nuclear device
1976 Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist, steals secrets from Dutch uranium plant. Made head of his nation’s nuclear programme by Bhutto, now prime minister
1976 onwards Clandestine network established to obtain materials and technology for uranium enrichment from the West
1985 Pakistan produces weapons-grade uranium for the first time
1989-91 Khan’s network sells Iran nuclear weapons information and technology
1991-97 Khan sells weapons technology to North Korea and Libya
1998 India tests nuclear bomb and Pakistan follows with a series of nuclear tests. Khan says: “I never had any doubts I was building a bomb. We had to do it”
2001 CIA chief George Tenet gathers officials for crisis summit on the proliferation of nuclear technology from Pakistan to other countries
2001 Weeks before 9/11, Khan’s aides meet Osama Bin Laden to discuss an Al-Qaeda nuclear device
2001 After 9/11 proliferation crisis becomes secondary as Pakistan is seen as important ally in war on terror
2003 Libya abandons nuclear weapons programme and admits acquiring components through Pakistani nuclear scientists
2004 Khan placed under house arrest and confesses to supplying Iran, Libya and North Korea with weapons technology. He is pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf
2006 North Korea tests a nuclear bomb
2007 Renewed fears that bomb may fall into hands of Islamic extremists as killing of Benazir Bhutto throws country into turmoil
All of the media is propagating the Neo-Con rhetoric. This usually happens before some false flag so that they can say "see, you should have listened to us"
But we know that Rockefeller/Rothschild oversee these false flags, so they may be setting the neo-cons up for a fall, not sure (the NWO loves genociding their idealists).
In any case, the bottom line is that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Fleisher, etc. should be in jail instead of planning new false flag horrors on the american people.
There is more than enough evidence from Sibel Edmonds to indict them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Originally posted by Geek Squad:~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sibel 'names names' (in pictures!)Over at Sibel's website, she has published
"Sibel Edmonds’ State Secrets Privilege Gallery" - twenty one photos of people.
Sibel doesn't say anything about the photos - or the people in the photos - but we can reasonably presume that they are the 21 guilty people in her case.
Sibel has broken the photos into three different groups.
The first group contains current and former Pentagon and State Department officials.
Richard Perle
Douglas Feith
Eric Edelman
Marc Grossman
Brent Scowcroft
Larry Franklin
The second group is current and former congressmen
Dennis Hastert - Ex-House Speaker (R-Il)
Roy Blount - ( R, Mo)
Dan Burton - (R - IN)
Tom Lantos - (D- CA)
?
Bob Livingston - ex-Speaker of the House (R-LA)
Stephen Solarz (D-CA)
The 3rd group includes people who all appear to work at think tanks -
primarily WINEP, The Washington Institute for Near East PolicyGraham E. Fuller - RAND
David Makovsky - WINEP
Alan Makovsky - WINEP
?
?
Yusuf Turani (President-in-exile, Turkistan)
Professor Sabri Sayari (Georgetown, WINEP)
Mehmet Eymur (Former Turkish Spy Chief MIT)
As you can see, there are a couple of 'Question Marks' instead of photos. I'm not sure why that is the case.
I'll have some more later, obviously.
http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2008/01/sibel-names-names-in-pictures.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
More:
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=6231.msg79603#msg79603 BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 10/29/2007 5:30AM
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5197
EXCLUSIVE: FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Will Now Tell All - and Face Charges if Necessary - to Any Major Television Network That Will Let Her
She's Prepared to Name Names, Including Those of Two 'Well-Known' Congress Members Involved in Criminal Corruption
The 'Most Gagged Person in U.S. History' Tells The BRAD BLOG She's Now Exhausted All Other Channels...
-- By Brad Friedman
Attention CBS 60 Minutes: we've got a huge scoop for you. If you want it.
Remember the exclusive story you aired on Sibel Edmonds, originally on October 27th, 2002, when she was not allowed to tell you everything that she heard while serving as an FBI translator after 9/11 because she was gagged by the rarely-invoked "States Secret Privilege"? Well, she's still gagged. In fact, as the ACLU first described her, she's "the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America."
But if you'll sit down and talk with her for an unedited interview, she has now told The BRAD BLOG during an exclusive interview, she will now tell you everything she knows.
Everything she hasn't been allowed to tell since 2002, about the criminal penetration of the FBI where she worked, and at the Departments of State and Defense; everything she heard concerning the corruption and illegal activities of several well-known members of Congress; everything she's aware of concerning information omitted and/or covered up in relation to 9/11. All of the information gleaned from her time listening to and translating wire-taps made prior to 9/11 at the FBI.
Here's a handy bullet-point list, as we ran it in March of 2006, for reference, of what she's now willing to tell you about.
"People say, 'why doesn't she just come forward and spill the beans?' I have gone all the way to the Supreme Court and was shut down, I went to Congress and now consider that shut down," she told The BRAD BLOG last week when we spoke with her for comments in relation to our story on former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's original attempt to move a resolution through the U.S. House in 2000 declaring the 1915 massacre of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in Turkey as "genocide."
"Here's my promise to the American Public: If anyone of the major networks --- ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX --- promise to air the entire segment, without editing, I promise to tell them everything that I know," about everything mentioned above, she told us.
"I can tell the American public exactly what it is, and what it is that they are covering up," she continued. "I'm not compromising ongoing investigations," Edmonds explained, because "they've all been shut down since."
"She's Very Credible"
She has, in fact, spent years taking every reasonable step to see that the information she has goes through the proper channels. The Supreme Court refused to hear her whistleblower lawsuit, even in light of the Department of Justice forcing the removal of both her and her own attorneys from the courtroom when they made their arguments concerning why it was that she still had to remain gagged under the "States Secrets Privilege."
On the morning that the SCOTUS refused to hear her case, the facade cracked on the front of the building. In a ridiculously ironic metaphor which would have been rejected by any credible screen-writer, a chunk of marble --- just above an allegorical statue representing "Order" and just below the words "Equal Justice" --- came crashing to the ground.
She has met with, and told her story to, U.S. senators including Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Patrick Leahy, both of the Senate Intelligence Committee, both who found her extremely credible. 60 Minutes producers may remember when Grassley told them, "Absolutely, she's credible...And the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story."
In fact, the FBI itself has done so. Their Inspector General found her allegations, as described in the unclassified version of his report, to be "credible," "serious," and "warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI."
As far back as 2002, Grassley and Leahy co-wrote letters on Edmonds' behalf to Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and DoJ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, calling on all of them to take action in respect to the allegations she's made.
"Certain officials in this country are engaged in treason against the United States and its interests and its national security," she said during an interview an August 2005 interview on Democracy Now. That comment followed 60 Minutes' revelation years before alleging that Edmonds had information revealing that a "Turkish intelligence officer" she worked with at the FBI "had spies working for him inside the US State Department and at the Pentagon."
She's briefed many legislative offices --- as well as the 9/11 Commission --- in regard to her claims, and now, she says, she's even prepared to tell the media "the names of every single Congressional office who has received the names of the witnesses" to the crimes she's detailed.
When we spoke last week, Edmonds seemed to reserve most of her frustration for Congressman Henry Waxman's office. Waxman is the Democratic Chairman of the U.S. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
After briefing members of his security-cleared staff "inside the SCIF" --- a high-security room in the U.S. Capitol, specially created for discussion of highly sensitive information --- Edmonds says she was told on several occasions, prior to the 2006 Election, that her case would be one of the first heard in his committee, once he became Chairman.
"I even gave names of former and current FBI agents who were willing to go to Waxman's office and give more information on all of this," she said.
"Before the elections, I had a promise from Congressman Waxman's office." She claims they told her, before the election, "the only reason they couldn't hold hearings, was because the Republicans were blocking it."
"They said 'your case will be one of the first ones we will hold investigations on,'" she told us. Now, however, since the Democrats have become the majority in the House, Waxman's office is "going mum." They won't even respond to her calls.
The congressman's office did not respond to several requests for comment on this story.
Two Other "Well-Known" Congressmen
Aside from the allegations she's already made concerning Hastert, as we reported in some detail in early 2006, following up on a Vanity Fair exposé in 2005, Edmonds says there are at least "two other well-known" members of Congress that she's prepared to name as well.
"There are other Congressional people, whose names have not come out," she explained. "As [Waxman's office knows] I'll be able to give them file numbers and investigations, including investigations by the IRS. I will be giving details one by one, not just allegations."
"But," she added, "unfortunately nobody wants to have an investigation like that."
For the record, she told The BRAD BLOG, the other two "well-known members" are from the House, both Republican, and "one of them is recently no longer there."
So far, she says, "those names have not been public."
"Kafka-esque"
Since leaving the FBI, and in the wake of her years-long ordeal, which she frequently describes as "Kafka-esque," Edmonds has founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
In addition to the support she has received, at various times, from members of Congress, she's received a great deal of support from members of the national security whistleblower community and government watchdog organizations.
As we reported last Spring, Veteran FBI counterintelligence agent John Cole has said he's "talked to people who had read her file, who had read the investigative report, and they were telling me a totally different story" than that given publicly by FBI officials. "They were telling me that Sibel Edmonds was 100 percent accurate," he said, "management knew that she was correct."
Famed "Pentagon Papers" whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has described Edmonds as "extremely credible." In a 2005 interview on KPFA, Ellsberg said, "FBI agents we've talked to have, in every respect that was raised, have confirmed her story - that she's a very credible witness."
More than 30 groups, from across the political spectrum --- including the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the September 11th Advocates, the Liberty Coalition, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), OMB Watch, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and People for the American Way (PFAW) --- all signed a letter in March of this year calling on the House Oversight Committee to "hold public hearings into the case of FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, and the erroneous use of the State Secrets Privilege to shut down all court proceedings in her case."
That petition was sent almost precisely one year after The BRAD BLOG originally reported on a public petition to Congress, demanding they hold public hearings. More than 30,000 people, Edmonds says, have now signed that petition since it was first announced.
"Exhausted Every Channel"
In a speech given over the Summer in D.C. at the American Library Association (ALA, video here), Edmonds detailed the "Kafka-esque" nature of her unprecedented gag-order. Among the information still-regarded as "classified" under the States Secret Privelege: the fact that she was a translator for the FBI, where she was born, what languages she speaks, the date of her birth, the universities she attended, and the degrees she earned.
In fact, the interview that CBS's 60 Minutes aired with her in 2004, was later retroactively classified by the Department of Justice under the same "privilege"!
But enough is enough. She's now ready to tell all. To the public. But not (yet) to us. She will speak, however, to any broadcast network that would like to have her.
"I have exhausted every channel. If they want to, they can bring criminal charges against someone who divulges criminal activity, and see how far they're going to get."
But will any of the corporate mainstream networks take her up on the offer? It'd certainly be an explosive exclusive.
"I don't think any of the mainstream media are going to have the guts to do it," she dared them.
So whaddaya say 60 Minutes? We've given you scoops before that you ended up turning down --- and likely later regretted. Will you be smart enough to take this one?
"You put me on air live, or unedited. If I'm given the time, I will give the American people the exact reason of what I've been gagged from saying because of the States Secrets Privilege, and why it is that I'm the most gagged person in the history of the United States."
"My feeling is that none of them have the guts to do that," she dared them, before charging, "they are all manipulated."
"I keep using the word Kafkaesque..." she paused, during her speech at ALA, clearly showing her exasperation, "because...," she continued slowly, "...I really can't come up with a better word."
http://www.atlargely.com/2008/01/sibel-speaks-pa.htmlSibel Speaks Part II: Naming Names...
Update Below
I have decided that after years of not getting anyone to publish what I have found out about the Edmonds case, I am simply going to give you folks some names. I won't explain what the allegations are, or how these people might fit together or even if they fit together. I also don't claim to have all the names or know the full story by any means. But I am certain, that brilliant bloggers, researchers, and journalists will finally figure it out:
UPDATE: I have made some changes to the list. I have removed Lantos, despite what I have heard being confirmed by Sibel's gallery of people. I have added Kissinger too.
I have also added some extra points of information for some of the players some of the players (I will fill out the rest as time permits). And, I have added some names to the "phrases group."
Richard Perle: Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, under Bush. Member of JINSA, WINEP, PNAC, Co-Chair and Director of Hollinger (think Conrad Black). See also Hutchison Whampoa. See also Trireme Partners LLP.
Doug Feith: Defense Undersecretary of Defense for Policy during the Bush administration's first term. Lost his security clearances in 1982 for allegations of passing classified NSC documents to the Israeli embassy. Headed the Office of Special Plans (OSP) to cook up intel for the Iraq war. Founded Feith & Zell law firm, major client Northrup Grumman. Also started a lobbying company, International Advisors, Inc., major client, Turkey. Perle joined him in this venture.
Eric Edelman
Marc Grossman
Larry Franklin
Dennis Hastert
Roy Blunt
Dan Burton
Bob Livingston
Stephen Solarz
Graham Fuller
David Makovsky
Alan Markovsky
Enver Yusuf
Sabri Sayari
Mehmet Eymur
Henry Kissinger (He is not shown in Sibel's gallery, but I believe him to be on of the MIA photos)
And a few phrases for you folks to play around with (in no particular order):
Gray Wolves
Shanghai Cooperation Organization
RAND Corporation
PNAC
East Turkmenistan
Iran
Syria
Foreign Policy
King Faisal
ISI
Northrup Grumman
American Turkish Council
WINEP
