Dick Durbin, Mike Gravel and Sibel Edmonds: When Silence is treason

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Presidential candidate Mike Gravel gave Scott Horton a terrific interview today. I recommend you listen to the whole thing.

Gravel mentions Dick Durbin's recent statement that, because he was on the Senate Intelligence Committee, he knew that the egadministration was telling WMD lies prior to the Iraq invasion, but that Durbin couldn't say anything. Gravel says that's a lie - and that he, Gravel, is living proof. In 1971, Gravel read out the Pentagon Papers on the Senate floor, entering them into the Congressional Record, and later won a court case, proving that he was right, and within his rights, to do that.

I've been meaning to bring up the Durbin brouhaha in the context of Sibel Edmonds case (of course). Downstairs, I'll tell you why it's relevant (and also a heads up about some other Sibel-related stuff coming down the pike later in the week)

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In case you missed it, late last month, Senator Dick Durbin dropped this 'bombshell' on the Senate floor (C&L has the video, courtesy of Olbermann):

""A few hundred feet away from here, in a closed room, carefully guarded, the Intelligence Committee was meeting on a daily basis for top secret breifings about the information we were receiving and the information we had in the Intelligence Committee was not the same information being given to the American people.

I couldn't believe it. Members of this administration were in active, heated debate over whether aluminum tubes really meant the Iraqis were developing nuclear weapons. Some within the administration saying of course not, it's not the same kind of aluminum tube, at the same time that members of the administration were telling the American people to be fearful of mushroom shaped clouds.

I was angry about it. Frankly, I couldn't do much about it. Because you see in the Intelligence Committee we were sworn to secrecy. We can't walk outside the door and say, "The statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that's being given to this Congress." We can't do that. We couldn't make those statements.

And so, in my frustration, I sat here on the floor of the Senate and listened to this heated debate about invading Iraq, thinking the American people are being misled, they are not being told the truth. And that's why I joined 22 of my colleagues in voting no. I didn't feel at the time that the American people knew the real facts.

So what happened? We invaded, turned loose hundreds, if not thousands of people scouring Iraq for these weapons of mass destruction, never found one of them. Looked for nuclear weapons, no evidence whatsoever."

Of course, that means that everyone in the committee knew that the American public was being lied to - and nobody said anything, until now.

It turns out, apparently, that Durbin was either lying or mistaken when he said that he "couldn't do much about it."

In the interview that Presidential candidate Mike Gravel gave to Scott Horton yesterday, Gravel explained that "any member of Congress can release all kinds of stuff if they want to, in conscience, that they think the people should know." Gravel knows of which he speaks, in 1971, he put the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional record, and was vindicated in a Supreme Court ruling.

Here's a partial transcript (mine) from the interview:

"Mike Gravel: (22 mins)Are you familiar with what happened with (Senator Dick Durbin), making the statement that he was conflicted because he could observe the fact that the President was saying one statement to the people and that the members of Congress were briefed on something else?

Scott Horton: Right - in the run up to the war... Durbin was on the Intelligence Committee and he knew that what they were telling us was lies.

MG: Right - now let's analyze that for a minute, and we'll see something very interesting. First off, Dick Durbin, making that statement, right now, in my mind is very courageous. Here's a guy, who has now got his conscience, and he's reacting to it, and made it public. What he's doing is destroying the argument of Hillary, by God, and Edwards - all of the people who voted for the war, at the same time when he knew there was a shell-game going on, and when Hillary or any of the others, say 'Well, if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have voted for it' - well, they knew *then* That's what Durbin's statement says - they knew then! But what Durbin did unfortunately not know was that the Supreme Court ruled in my case, Gravel vs US Government, about the Pentagon Papers, that a member of Congress cannot be held responsible for the secrecy of the administration. And so, any member of Congress can release all kinds of stuff if they want to, in conscience, that they think the people should know!

SH: So Durbin's excuse that he would have gone to prison if he'd told us is null?

MG: Just the opposite! And of course, he said this statement, he said: "I thought that if I released this secret information, that people would die." Well, by not releasing it, people have died. And he was not at risk for anything that he might have revealed. And none of them would be, because the operative law is what the Supreme Court ruled in my case. The problem is there's nobody, nobody has dared to do anything about this since I was in office. And even after the courtcase, I released stuff - (inaudible) and other things.

It's just very sad, the level of timdity, and the lack of conscience. I say 'lack of conscience' because this is exactly what we had during the Vietnam era - people detached themselves from the loss of life. They don't appreciate the fact that... you know, when Murtha came out and was saying 'these people are dying, this is not right' - this was quite a change of heart for him, because he's been one of the major forces in Congress supporting the military-industrial-complex which brought about the Iraq war. So, it's the timidity, it's the lack of getting your moral sights up until you realize what you are doing with the power that you have, as a Senator. So, the game-playing is on, and that's what I'm trying to cut through. I'll be able to cut through it Scott, I'll tell you, if after my press conference, next Monday, the peace groups get organized, and make a showing at the press conference, and then turn around and make this the cause, I'll have the details all lined out, what the leadership is supposed to do. I'll tell you what, they'll respond!"

(As I say, go check out the rest of the interview, lots of great sensible-sounding stuff there, including his plan to end the war (by taking specific action steps in Congress), and details about his upcoming press conference (Monday) etc.)

Which brings me to Sibel Edmonds. Again.

Sibel has told her story (that Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Marc Grossman and Eric Edelman are involved in treasonous activity) to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Some day - soon if we can get Henry Waxman to hold hearings - not only will we learn everything she knows, we'll also have to consider that many people knew all the details all along, and did... nothing! They stood by, knowing what they knew, while Richard Perle was Chairman of the Defense Policy Board. They stood by, knowing what they knew, while Doug Feith was running the Office of Special Plans, leading us into war.

It's enough to make me angry.

And to be clear, at the time, Sibel's claims weren't just 'allegations' - they'd already been investigated and proven. As Sibel said recently:

"This has been going on for five years, and it's not a case (that needs) to be investigated, that part has already been done by the Senate Judiciary Committee, by the DoJ's Inspector Generals office, so it just have to have a hearing and just put an end to it and see some oversight and accountability as a result. "

In other Sibel news, as you know, we've been demanding that Waxman hold hearings into her case - hearings that he promised would occur when Dems were in the majority. Details are available at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak. At some point later this week, we will have some new content being released, and when that gets published, we'll start with the phones again - calling Waxman's office demanding hearings. We'll need your help.

(let me know if you want to be added to an email list for announcements)

(DU, DKOS - please go kick, rec, if you think that's appropriate)

Israel's F-22 Raptor

May 6, 2007

Xymphora in full:

Outsourcing

William S. Cohen, who as far as I can tell is just an private citizen who runs a lobby company with some iffy members, has assured Israel that the United States would be inclined to allow the sale of F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets to the Israeli Air Force if Israel’s security were in jeopardy. Since Israel’s security, by definition, is always in jeopardy, Cohen is in effect announcing that the American government will turn over yet another part of its most important military secret technology to Israel (and thus, to China, as Israel immediately peddles all secret American military technology to China). Cohen’s trip was like a full state visit, with meetings with all the highest Israeli mucky-mucks, and discussions on Iran. Besides working for Israel, you have to assume Cohen is working for the manufacturers of the extremely expensive planes, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who are anticipating the need to find new markets for them. Needless to say, the ‘sale’ of such planes to Israel would be funded by American taxpayer money. It is comforting to know that the concept of outsourcing has now been taken to its logical conclusion, with lobbyists now setting American military policy.

heh.

I suspect that Xymphora was just trying to get me to write the rest of his post for him... here goes:

Sibel Edmonds from her Hijacking of a Nation, Part 2:

The American Turkish Council (ATC)

Operating tax-free and under the radar is one of the most powerful “non-profit” associations in the U.S., the American Turkish Council (ATC). Some who are familiar with its operations and players describe it as ‘Mini AIPAC;’ this description aces it. ATC followed the AIPAC model; with the direct help of AIPAC & JINSA, it created a base out of which to stretch its tentacles, reaching the highest echelons of our government. While the ATC is an association in name and in charter, the reality is that it and other affiliated associations are the U.S. government, lobbyists, foreign agents, and MIC. Investigative journalist, John Stanton, correctly describes the ATC as an extraordinary group of elite and interconnected Republicans, Democrats and corporate and military heavyweights who are spearheading one of the most ambitious strategic gambits in U.S. history.

Included in ATC’s management, board of directors, and advisors; in addition to Turkish individuals of ‘interest;’ is a dizzying array of U.S. individuals. The ATC is led by Ret. General Brent Scowcroft, who serves as Chairman of the Board; George Perlman of Lockheed Martin, the Executive Vice President; other board members include: Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, Ret. General Elmer Pendleton, Ret. General Joseph Ralston (Cohen Group), Ret. Col. Preston Hughes, Alan Colegrove of Northrop Grumman, Frank Carlucci of Carlyle Group, Christine Vick of Cohen Group, Representative Robert Wexler, Former Rep. Ed Whitfield…Basically many formers; statesmen, ‘dime a dozen generals,’ and representatives.


On the members - paying clients – side; their list includes all the MIC’s who’s who, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman; the Washington Lobby scene’s who’s who; The Cohen Group, The Livingston Group, Washington Group International…
[]

One Stop Shop: The Cohen Group

Like many other former statesmen, William Cohen, former Secretary of Defense, dived into the business of lobbying and consulting, and created his own Washington firm, The Cohen Group, which works for some of the largest companies in the defense industry, such as Lockheed Martin, and serves numerous foreign players. The Cohen Group is one of the primary and most active members of the American Turkish Council (ATC). Cohen’s client, Lockheed Martin, happens to be on the board of ATC, in addition to being listed as ATC’s top paying client.

The group claims on its Website that its principals have "a century and a half of combined experience in the Congress, the Defense Department, the State Department, the White House, and state and local governments" and that they “have developed extensive expertise and relationships with key international political, economic, and business leaders and acquired invaluable experiences with the individuals and institutions that affect our clients' success abroad.” Abroad indeed. With a few ‘dime a dozen generals’ and former statesmen, the firm owes its phenomenal speedy success to interests ‘abroad’ and of course, the MIC! Let’s look, with great amazement, I hope, at how this ingenious lobby venture serves as foreign agent for several influences without having to register as such; with complete immunity against any scrutiny.
[]
The Cohen Group is an excellent case, illustrating the futility of FARA, since the firm does not have to be registered. They can claim that Turkey is not their ‘direct’ client; they can argue that they are not getting paid ‘directly’ by the government of Turkey or any other foreign entity or government. They certainly can; no matter that Grossman receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from a dubious Turkish company. Does Cohen discount Grossman’s Vice Chairmanship salary accordingly? No matter that half a million dollars per year from their client Lockheed Martin is mainly for services provided to Turkey, and having the group’s second chairman serve on Lockheed’s board is another way to get around all restrictions. The incestuous relationship twists and turns: The Cohen Group on the board of ATC, The Cohen Group a paying member client of ATC, The Cohen Group as Lockheed’s lobbyist, Cohen’s men on the board of Lockheed, Lockheed on the board of ATC, Lockheed also a paying client of ATC…How is your head; spinning yet?

well done, xymph. you got me.

New Phil Giraldi article about Sibel Edmonds, Waxman

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Former CIA officer Phil Giraldi has a new piece out in the April 23, 2007 print edition of the American Conservative about Sibel Edmonds and our call to have Henry Waxman hold hearings into her case.

Giraldi is an expert in Sibel's case and features prominently in the new film about Sibel, Kill The Messenger.

I've electronically liberated the article in full, all errors are mine etc.

California Congressman Henry Waxman's Oversight & Government Reform Committee has been investigating allegations that the Bush administration might be concealing something about the Niger document forgeries, that it maliciously outed CIA operative Valerie Plame, and that it has looked the other way over massive fraudulent contracting in Iraq. These investigations are admirable and very much in the public interest. He has been less interested in pursuing another matter, however. FBI whistle blower Sibel Edmonds and her numerous supporters both inside and outside of government have been urging Waxman to hold open hearings on her claims regarding malfeasance and corruption among high-level government officials.

Edmonds is subject to a State Secrets Privilege gag order initiated at the request of the Pentagon and State Department, but she has recently elaborated on her allegations, stating that investigations already carried out by the FBI would demonstrate that three former senior officials were involved in illegal weapons sales and other activities that would justify charges of espionage and possibly even treason against them. The three are leading Pentagon neoconservatives Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, as well as former State Department number three Marc Grossman. Edmonds is no crackpot and is considered to be a credible witness, most of whose charges were substantiated both by former FBI officials in 2002 and by the Department of Justice in 2005. Waxman appears to be uninterested in pursuing the matter, however, possibly because Israeli officials and the country's defense industry are believed to have been involved in the weapons diversion activity.

Congressman Waxman is regarded as close to Israel's principal lobby, AIPAC, and even promised Jewish voters back in November 2006 that there would be no Democratic congressional committee chairmen involved with Middle Eastern policy who were not completely supportive of Israel.

As Giraldi says in Kill The Messenger:

All of these people (Perle, Feith) have been investigated by the FBI at one point or another for passing secret information to Israel.

In no cases were any of them convicted. The prosecutions were dropped… in my opinion because of political pressure not to get into this kind of case that involves
'Israel' and 'Espionage'.

I'm not yet ready to write-off the possibility that Waxman will hold hearings into Sibel's case. He has previously promised to do so, and we haven't yet heard from his office that he won't hold hearings. Congress has been in recess for the past two weeks and we'll be attempting to get him on the record one way or other this week. I've been told that a number of prominent-ish people tried to get Waxman to go on the record on Monday (yesterday) in response to Giraldi's new article to no avail - but surely he can't maintain that position, so in the meantime, no news is good news.

Oh - and for those of you who are saying 'Huh? AIPAC? Israel? I thought Sibel's case was about Turkey and the American Turkish Council (ATC)!' Sibel says that both AIPAC and the ATC both essentially operate as fronts for the same criminal organization. Or as Giraldi put it in his earlier article about Sibel's case:

On one level, (Sibel's) story appears straightforward: several Turkish lobbying groups allegedly bribed congressmen to support policies favourable to Ankara. But beyond that, the Edmonds revelations become more serpentine and appear to involve AIPAC, Israel and a number of leading neoconservatives who have profited from the Turkish connection.

I'll keep you updated, of course. Stay tuned, and thanks for your help & support, again.

Sibel Edmonds: Help me put Perle and Feith in jail

What if the FBI Hired Someone Honest to Look into 9-11?

Tue, 2007-03-13 14:27

By David Swanson

It did. Her name was Sibel Edmonds. This is her story, as she told it to me. Edmonds discusses what she knows, whom it implicates, and what she's been through and what hope there is in the new Congress to start an investigation.

Here's the audio.

Swanson: This is David Swanson with Sibel Edmonds. It's great to talk with you, thanks for being here.

Edmonds: Thanks for asking me for this interview, David.

Swanson: So I should ask, I guess, before I start, are you under any gag order? Are there things that you can and cannot talk about?

Edmonds: Well - that's a very interesting question, David, because when the government invoked the State Secrets Privilege, it was specifically for the court procedures, so there won't be any court hearings, and as far as the courts are concerned, my case is gagged and classified.

Separately, they invoked the retroactive classification order on Congress and this was for the Senate Judiciary committee in May 2004 - and the way the imposed this gag order - and I have to emphasize that this gag order was illegal, because in order for them to retroactively classify congressional investigations, the Attorney General for the Justice Department had to meet three criteria and he did not. But even though the gag order was illegal, at that time in May 2004, the Senate Judiciary committee complied with it, they complied with an illegal gag order.

But I've never had a gag order placed on me as far as the public statements, or any other investigative procedures are concerned, but as you know they have declared everything in my case, including my languages, and what I did for the FBI, classified. Now the question is whether this classification that they're using is even legal, or justified. As you know the executive branch has complete control over the classification.

Swanson: So you are not allowed to discuss what languages you speak? You're forbidden to say that?

Edmonds: Well - that's what they have ordered, and that's what the court has actually ruled in their favor - but the interesting this is if you were to go and just google my name, you will see everywhere that my language skills are all listed there - because it's public information. I mean, take a look at the implications of this, based on this classification, I can't even have my resume out there because when you put your resume, and you put your language skills, that would be violating classification. But my resume has been out there, and the government has not come to me and told me to pull my resume.

They have been playing this game because they can get away with it in court, and Congress - but as you can see, this information is readily available - it's public. The same thing is true with my university degrees - the government specifically declared my Masters degrees, my undergraduate degrees, and the topics of those studies as classified! This is the Kafkaesque thing that I have been trying to point out to people, and we haven't had much media attention on this - when they can go, in this ridiculous way, in this ludicrous way, to invoke 'privilege' and classification - even on information that is readily available in public.

Swanson: For those who still don't know what your story is, and what you did, and why the government would be taking these sorts of actions, why don't we start at the beginning and just go very briefly, but maybe if I say a couple of things, tell me if I’m wrong...

You were hired by the FBI just after September 11 when they decided that it would be a good idea to hire translators who knew foreign languages - and the foreign languages that you were hired to work on were Turkish, Farsi, and Azerbaijani. And your background is one of having lived in Iran, Turkey and the US - and having had struggles in those previous countries with repressive governments and censorship and corruption and having thought, somewhat hopefully, about the US when you came here as being a country of freedom and transparent government. Am I on the right track?

Edmonds: Absolutely. I was a believer and I took my citizenship oath in 1995, I really took that oath, as you take any oath, seriously, and I was so proud to become a citizen of this country and have the constitution, and all the principles, and the bill of rights applying to me. As you know, those rights are non-existent in countries such as Turkey and Azerbaijan and Iran - in most places in the world, people are not even allowed to write about those rights, forget about even demanding them.

Swanson: What made you inclined to take a job with the FBI as a translator?

Edmonds: There needs to be a brief explanation - three years before I took that job, I was doing my studies in forensic science and criminal justice, and I had applied for an internship position with the FBI, not a full time or permanent job position, and at that point they were interested in my language skills, but they basically messed it up. I sent them the application, I took the polygraph test for that internship position for their language department, and somehow in 1999 they lost all that information - not only mine, but from 150 other applicants they had for language specialist positions. These documents, these files were lost within the FBI - or at least that's the explanation they gave to these applicants.

And then the 911 terrorist event took place and I'd turn on the TV and kept hearing the Director of the FBI pleading for language specialists - especially for the languages that I speak - because they were desperate for language specialists. And at that point it was a duty to go and say "Look - I have these skills, you need these skills for the nation, and I'm offering it to you." So I took this position as a contract language specialist for those languages and my top secret clearance was issued and I started working five days after 911.

Swanson: And they were in pretty bad shape, right? How many skilled translators of Turkish materials did they have at that point?

Edmonds: At that point they had no Turkish language specialists... In fact, they had an unofficial division for years, and they had people coming, on and off, from DOD, or the State Department on loan, and working on certain projects, but they did not even have a formal division for Turkish. They had a small division for Arabic language, and they also had a large division for Farsi - the language spoken in Iran.

As you know, because of the Cold War, most of the emphasis was placed on Russian languages - so they had a very large division for the Russian language. Since 1991, the need was not as great for those languages, and they never fortified the other divisions - so they had a lot of Russian translators, and a lot of Chinese translators, very few Arabic language specialists, and a mid-size Farsi department.

And more than the size, and this is quantity-vs.-quality, the department was not even managed, because the solid good working people (at the FBI) are mainly agents, but the language division is not managed by the agents - that division, for all these languages, is managed by administrative people. These people are former language specialists who have been promoted to supervisory positions who oversee the language division, and you have no direct involvement from the agents - so you have this layer of administrative people blocking the interaction between the agents and the language specialists. The second reason is that the language division is considered the most classified and sensitive unit in the entire FBI - so the clearance we had, and the access we had, was far more sensitive than the agents'. So even when an agent wanted to come to the division and work for a few minutes with a particular language specialist, that agent had to be escorted to the division, and watched, because everything is managed on a 'need-to-know' basis, and let's say an agent is coming to that division to talk with a Turkish language specialist, he may be exposed to some other information from, let's say, the Chinese counter-intelligence, or Arabic, for let's say Saudi Arabia. And they didn't want that to take place, so there was this great separation between the agents and the language specialists - and that itself brought a lot of problems with it - because you had these bureaucratic layers in the middle and the agents were very frustrated because they wanted to work directly with the language specialists.

You know, a lot of people consider the language specialists as like a clerical job, but you need to realize, when the information comes and you’re looking at all sorts of intelligence, whether it's counter-intelligence or criminal, related to all these different languages and countries, the first people exposed to it are the language specialists. Before that information gets transferred to agents or analysts, the first person who sees it is the language specialist in charge of that particular language - and that language specialist is in a position to decide whether or not, this particular piece of information, whether it's a wiretap or document, is important enough to be translated, whether or not it should be translated verbatim - in detail, or just a summary translation. So by the time that information goes to an analyst or an agent, it has already gone through this filter of the language specialist. So not only do they need to have language skills, linguistic skills, the translators also need to have training and enough information and knowledge to be able to make that decision in terms of what is important, and not, what is urgent, and not urgent.

Swanson: There's a saying in Italian "Traduttore traditore" which means "The translator is a traitor" - which is something that poets and authors think - and this gives new meaning to that phrase. If you have someone in that position who is not doing their job, who has other interests and loyalties, they're in a position of enormous power because no-one else has seen, or can understand the information that has come in.

So you took this job 5 days after 911 and you were not translating newspapers and public materials, so we can hope that someone at the State Department was doing that - you were translating wiretapped calls, transcripts and so forth, and by March of 2002 you were fired. Why were you fired? What happened in between?

Edmonds: Well - I'll try to answer that briefly, because so much information is already available on the net, in various publications that have come out that basically summarize the issues that I reported

Swanson: Ok - what's the best place for people to go?

Edmonds: They can go to my website - www.justacitizen.com - and there are plenty of documents there, both official documents and various interviews etc summarizing the case and there are court documents there.

But if I were to summarize the 3 or 4 general areas that I reported in terms of the serious problems... One had to do with, and this took place almost within the first two months I was there, that had to do with information related to counter-terrorism division dealing mainly with the 911 terror attacks - and in order to deal with it, not only did it deal with information available after 911, but the agents and the divisions went and actually retrieved a lot of documents and wiretap conversations - some of them dating back to 1999/2000 - on various suspects, or people they believed maybe were suspects.

So they wanted to review a lot of things that took place even before 911. So you were not only dealing, after 911, with information that started coming in, or being obtained after the terrorist attack, but a lot of information that either was translated - verbatim or in many cases summary translations - or things that were maybe overlooked that were retrieved, again from the archives, and this was a decision made by the higher-ups, and for some of those materials to be reviewed again to see what was missed, or what was not translated correctly etc.

Swanson: But you clearly came upon things that the FBI did not want to see made public - would have found embarrassing. Things that you made public to the extent that you were able, that things were poorly translated, things were missed, things were done wrong, and you reported to higher-ups that you had colleagues who were not doing their work properly.

Edmonds: Correct - and, again, there were two categories involved. In some cases it was either intentional or unintentional, unintentional due to incompetence - certain information that was not translated before 911 or they were translated inaccurately. And I also emphasize intentional cases that I reported.

The second category (of things that I reported) was other information that was available and there were significant issues, significant cases, that were not pursued because of 'certain diplomatic relations' and this is something that a lot of people have a hard time understanding, and that is, selective selection of information. That is, let's say certain information came from, let me give you a hypothetical example, let's say it came from Iraq, or certain Iraqi individuals, you can bet that would be processed because of the Axis of Evil Doctrine by our President

Swanson: Whereas Saudi Arabia is 'less evil', for example?

Edmonds: Absolutely! Or you would have in certain cases, there were certain cases that you had several individuals or entities from different nations, let's say, Pakistan, or Turkey, or Israel - and that information, due to pressure by the State Department, they were not transferring that information from counter-intelligence (they were obtained under counter-intelligence, ok) - to the counter-terrorism division - even though they were relevant, extremely relevant, directly relevant.

So the agents were very frustrated because, another thing your listeners hopefully will grasp here, when we say 'the FBI' it's not the entire FBI. All the agents that I worked with, they were great individuals, they were patriotic, they were as frustrated as I was - and they were outraged that these layers from the Pentagon, and the State Department, that they were interfering with their investigations - because automatically they had the right, the obligation, to transfer that information that they obtained from counter-intelligence, let's say, involving money laundering tied to some terrorist activities, by let's say, Turkish individuals, or some Pakistani individuals, or entities here in the US (whether official governmental related entities, or others) - to counter-terrorism to be pursued because they considered the relationship with Pakistan and Turkey too sensitive and they didn't want to mess it up.

Swanson: And so when you ran up against these issues - facts that you thought important that were being covered over, you went higher and higher up, correct? And so you spoke with people like Deputy Assistant Attorney General, or the Director of the FBI - did you ever get anywhere? And how high did the problem go?

Edmonds: You are right on target, because again, there's this misconception out there. People think 'OK, a whistleblower sees some wrongdoing and they just jump out there and go to the media and leak the information.' I spent 3.5-4 months - first I went to my supervisors, but they were a part of the problem. Then I went above them, I went to the division chief, then I went to the FBI headquarters, I went all the way up to the Director - Director Mueller. And I filed these issues, and when I filed them, I filed them with the supporting documents. - it was not me saying 'This is what I think is happening.' Because it was within the FBI, I was presenting them - let's say there were certain forms, certain documents - to the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility - OPR - and the amazing thing that took place was, immediately I started seeing this reaction to it towards me.

First, the FBI management accused me of having gone to congress, and disclosing this information to congress, and I had not done so at that point. I didn't believe that I needed to go to Congress at that point. They did not believe me - they said 'we are suspicious that you have been communicating with congress on these classified issues and doing this via email communication' - so I had agents coming to my house and removing my home computer - my husbands computer - without a warrant! They took it, and then took it to pieces, and they didn’t find anything - and so I said 'OK - maybe it was a misunderstanding.' Two weeks later they issued an order for me to take a polygraph test, and the polygraph test was to determine whether I had gone to Congress. Their fear was not the classification, the fear was whether this was going outside the FBI - and I passed the polygraph because I had not gone to congress at that point. Then they started removing my jobs, and as you know, finally I was terminated, and during these 3-4 months, I presented them with these 3 or 4 different categories of very important issues.

The other important case (that I reported on), had to do with certain public officials, corruption cases, that the FBI had obtained - and again, this was the operation that was taking place between 1997 and 2002 - and I’m talking about solid evidence. And these officials are high-profile public officials.

Swanson: People as high as say Congressman Denny Hastert?

Edmonds: Well, that information has been public, with the Vanity Fair article, and he was only one of the people, at least from the elected officials side - one of several. And they had at least 2 or 3 people in the Pentagon, and they had at least one person in the State Department - and they had this documented information, evidence, on these people actually not serving the interests of the United States - and giving out extremely sensitive information to other...

Swanson: To Turkey.

Edmonds: Well, when you say "Turkey" - not necessarily the government of Turkey that we consider an ally, but to entities that who are driven by certain interests - many of them financial interests that have to do with the military industrial complex - and they had this information, and those same individuals - not the ones from Congress necessarily, but the ones from the State Dept and Pentagon.

They were not only doing it with one country - because that operation was the sister operation of another investigation that dealt with Israel, but the FBI was not translating these from counter-intelligence to investigation units, and they were supposed to do that. They were supposed to transfer and let the counter-espionage unit in the FBI, and the criminal division handle it. But they were not (transferring these cases). So this was another case that I reported internally - and I never got anywhere with it as far as the FBI was concerned - and later, of course, when Ashcroft came out and invoked the State Secrets Privilege, Ashcroft himself inadvertently explained it! There is a sentence there saying "The State Secrets Privilege is being invoked in order to protect certain sensitive diplomatic relations and business relations of the US" - this is an exact quote from Ashcroft, explaining why the State Secrets Privilege was invoked.

Swanson: Right! 'Business relations' as though the US is a business... It's amazing to me that you put one honest person in the FBI for a few months and they end up reporting a number of different scandals and failures, and it makes you wonder what goes on the rest of the time.

And the story of what happened, you sued, and they got it thrown out on grounds of 'State Secrets' - from what I've read there have been threats to your family, a suspect colleague of yours has left the country effectively with the result that they can't be called to testify, and I guess at least some of the allegations that you've made have been confirmed, if not made public, by the Inspector General at the Justice Dept who said that you were basically fired in retaliation - is that right?

Edmonds: Absolutely, and the most amazing aspect of it is, let's say you have a Justice Dept and the FBI who is willy-nilly invoking this privilege to cover-up criminal wrongdoings, but then you have these judges in the Federal Court, due to this fear of 'Oh, I'm going to be violating some classification and helping the terrorists' or for whatever reasons, going along with it, and this happened in the lower court, it happened in the appellate court.

I don't know if you remember this, but during the appellate court hearings, these three judges closed the court to the public and the media, and after we argued our case, when the ACLU was representing my case before the appellate court, and then it was the government's attorneys turn to argue their case, they asked us, the plaintiffs - my attorneys and I - to step out of the courtroom because we couldn’t even hear what argument the government had! I mean, how can you argue in court against something that you don't even know what it is? So this is the Kafkaesque aspect of it, and what our country has come down to.

Swanson: And you're not a prisoner in Guantanamo - you're an employee of the FBI! Not that they shouldn’t have these rights either. This is the throwing out of the right to stand and hear the evidence against you that's been part of American and British justice for hundreds of years.

Edmonds: It's more than that, David. They are doing it to an American citizen. What made me really outraged was the fact that nobody in the media really reported on this. Here is an American citizen, not a terrorism suspect - and yes, they are misusing that big time, and it's against all sorts of human-rights principles that we are supposed to have here - but the fact that they are doing it to an American citizen, not someone who is a suspect in a criminal case, or terrorism case, this is an American citizen who is being deprived of her due process and her Fourth Amendment, and nobody in the media picked it up. The implications of this, now they are doing it successfully, unfortunately, to American citizens. What does it say about where we are today as a nation? And the disregard they have to the Bill of Rights, and our constitution?

Swanson: And information that the FBI made public, or gave to Congress, they classified that retroactively right? They went back and decided we should make this stuff classified after it was out there! Is there any possible respectable explanation for that kind of secrecy?

Edmonds: Absolutely not. In fact, later on in court, and this is the Project on Government Oversight - POGO - they sued the Justice Dept and they said "No. This information was available for two years. More than 30,000 websites have already downloaded it. How could you classify something that has been out there for two years?" Later, the FBI conceded and they didn't go through the lawsuit, they said 'Fine - you can publicize it.'

Despite that fact, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the congress, still didn't put those documents back online, they are still afraid to put it out there. That is the part that is so mind-boggling - which brings us to another important point. I went to Congress, I went to the appropriate committees, the Senate Judiciary committee and later I went to Congressman Waxman's committee - that's the Government Reform Committee - and I observed the classification rules, I went inside the SCIFs - these are the secured facilities they have where they can receive classified information where you can present them with documents, and details, and file numbers etc. Initially, we had Senator Grassley and Senator Leahy, a Democrat and a Republican - this was in the summer of 2002. These two senators, together, came out publicly and they said 'We started investigating this case, we have already interviewed the FBI officials, they confirmed all her allegations to us, and she's 100% credible. We need to turn the FBI upside down' - and this comment that 'We need to turn the FBI upside down' was made by Senator Grassley on CBS 60 Minutes, with 5+ million people watching.

Swanson: And what was the follow through?

Edmonds: Nothing. Initially, they promised that there would be this major public hearing, they were going to bring these witnesses - because I'm not the only witness. Some of these people's names are not public because they haven't come out to blow the whistle publicly, but they have to congress and the Justice Dept Inspector General's office filing exactly the same reports that I filed. They started doing this in 2002 in April, May.

Swanson: Are some of them still employed?

Edmonds: Some of them are retired - and you're looking at veteran FBI agents who were in charge of these operations. They want to testify under oath, they want to testify publicly, and they have filed these reports. So we got the promise from Congress that there will be a hearing, these agents will testify, they will bring in the bad guys from the FBI and have them testify under oath - and then, nothing. A deafening silence.

Swanson: A lot of Americans expected that of the Republican Congress. We've now had 2.5 months of a Democratic Congress, with Senator Leahy now the Chairman. Now Senator Leahy can do more than just write letters and complain about Senator Grassley - what has the difference been? What change have you seen?

Edmonds: Well, we are hoping to see the change. Let me first do the distinction between the Senate and the House. With the Senate, even though we have had Democrats gaining the Majority, we haven't had almost any support from almost any Senate offices. Unfortunately, somebody like Senator Feingold, who I respect tremendously, he's not on the appropriate committee - but you're looking at Senator Leahy, you're looking at Senator Akaka, they are still acting as though they are being repressed there - and they don't want to touch these issues. And of course, you know, people like Senator Clinton - and there are so many of them, and again, it's mind-boggling how these people, after getting the voters who said 'We need change,' they're not doing what they were asked to do - the reason they got re-elected, or some of them who got elected.

In the House we have a little bit more positive situation because we have some great individuals, people who I respect tremendously, Chairman Conyers, and Chairman Waxman, who have already started fairly well, and again it remains to be seen with some of the issues. I'm still hoping that they will do more, but at least we have had some positive response. We’ve got a hearing for whistleblowers through congressman Waxman's office and congressman Waxman's committee - the Government Reform Committee - introduced one of the best, I would say the only good legislation to protect whistleblowers which will include national security whistleblowers - from the agencies like the FBI, NSA, CIA etc. We are so thankful for that - but when it comes to my case, because it is so controversial, because it is so packed with damning information, they have not been willing - and this is specifically congressman Waxman's office - the Government Reform Committee - to come out publicly and commit to this hearing.

And there is nothing, David, nothing that stops them - they have subpoena power, they don't even need to use it a lot because there are so many agents, and I have their names, and they are willing to go and testify under oath. We have been asking congressman Waxman to come out publicly and say 'We are going to hold this public hearing' - and I’m going to emphasize the word 'public' - I have had closed hearings which act like these black holes - you go there and you give the information and nothing happens. This information belongs to the American public and until that happens we won't find out about some unbelievable criminal activities that are taking place within our government agencies.

So last week we started this public action campaign that you're aware of, and I'm very thankful to your website because you published that and you have been one of the supporters and you have signed on to this petition. We have 30 organizations - and this is transpartisan, David. We have the ACLU, OMB Watch, Project on Government Oversight, GAP (Government Accountability Project), National Coalition against Censorship, OpenTheGovernment.org - we have people from the right, we have libertarian organizations like Liberty Coalition, we have People For the American Way, your organization. Thirty major organizations have come together and put together this petition, serving congressman Waxman and his committee - and this happened last week - saying 'We want you to have open, public hearings on this case' - not about the whistleblower being fired - about what were the issues that were being covered up, and are still covered up, and (calling) other agents and other witnesses to testify so we can take this information to the American public and we'll see some accountability.

And so far we have received no response, David. We have 15000 citizens who have signed this petition, we have 30 major organizations, we have had hundreds if not thousands of people calling in the past few days, and we are still waiting to hear from Chairman Waxman's office to publicly say that 'Yes, we are going to hold these public hearings,' and have these witnesses, these veteran agents, these high level FBI people who are willing to testify, to testify. We want to introduce these documents that have no information that is 'state secrets' or that will hurt our national security - but information that will let the public know that here we have appointed officials and elected officials who are out there engaged in treason!

Now, some people may consider the way I'm characterizing this as maybe outrageous, or an exaggeration, but I don't know what else to call it, David. When you have people, for greed, for money, selling out information, covering up cases, giving out our true State Secrets information to entities - whether or not they're allies, Israel or Turkey or Pakistan - these people are engaged in treason.

And these cases are documented, the files, the wiretaps, go back to 1997, 1998. They are documented, there are documents, there are witnesses and we need to expose these people and we need to see criminal indictments against these people - and it will (happen). All we need is for this hearing to take place, for people to testify, and for the documents to be introduced, then you're going to see criminal indictments against these people.

Swanson: That's extremely well said, and I think it's exactly right. This is the purpose that Congress serves - to hold public hearings, not to issue reports quietly from friendly witnesses, but to use the power of the subpoena, and putting people under oath, and in front of cameras - and this congress has not done this on the fraud that took us into this war, and has not done it on the mis-steps that allowed 911 to occur, and this is what we put a Democratic majority in the there for in hope of, and we have yet to see it.

If people want to get involved and help push for this to happen with your case, how can they do that?

Edmonds: The best thing they can do, and the time to do it is right now because we just released this petition, they were just served last week with this petition signed by 15,000 people and signed by 30 organizations, is for all your listeners to call Congressman Waxman's office, both the committee's office and his personal office, and demand - send letters, call, because calling is effective, send letters and emails, and say 'We want you to come out publicly and commit to his hearing, and have this public hearing take place' because they listen.

Unfortunately we don't have a good, independent mainstream media - otherwise we wouldn't be in this position in the first place, David. You mentioned Iraq, and the illegal war - with all these cases, unfortunately, our mainstream media acted as enablers. They sit in the middle there and they didn’t do what they were supposed to do, they're still not doing it, and they're leaving the public in the dark. So because we don't have the mainstream media we have people like you. We have websites like yours, we have some of these great organizations who are doing it on behalf of the public.

Swanson: And we have some very talented film-makers, I haven’t seen it yet, but who have made a documentary of your story, right?

Edmonds: Yes David - and it's ironic, because here it took these French producers, coming from France, on behalf of this Channel2 French network to put together for a year and a half, these directors and the producers worked on this case to document it. And they also did a lot of investigative work - but they had to come from France to put it in place here on a case, on an issue that implicates US officials, and has implications for the American public. And the Vanity Fair article that you mentioned, that was done by this great reporter, David Rose, who is British, he lives in England - he had to come and do a one year investigation to that piece out, and I don't know what our mainstream media reporters are doing, but we are depending on foreign nations, and other countries, to do what our own mainstream media should be doing here.

And again, as I said, that's why it's up to these organizations, activists like you and your listeners to take that two minutes, maybe less than two minutes, and call Chairman Waxman, and remind him that he's the Chairman, there's no obstacle.

This case is not allegation, it's not a case that needs to be investigated, that has already been done. Even the Dept of Justice's own Inspector General's Office has put out a report vindicating the case. We have had bipartisan congressional statements saying that this is credible, and absolutely confirming it. So this is not taking something that is unknown. He's the Chairman, he has the power, there's nothing that stands in his way, this is a confirmed case, let's see some justice and accountability.

I don't want anything my job, about why I was fired, about why they did these wrongdoings - yes, they did it to me, that is me personally being affected, and it also sends a chilling message to other whistleblowers - but that is secondary. The most important thing is there are individuals who are engaged in acts of treason, okay. People from the State Dept, people from the Pentagon - some of these individuals are already under some quasi-investigations. I mean, we hear things about Douglas Feith, we are hearing things about Richard Perle, but trust me, they are not putting everything that there is out there. Because when you are looking at organizations like the American Turkish Council here, and you see the sister organization is AIPAC. AIPAC helped form the American Turkish Council - look at the board members, look at the people. You will see the same people involved in both fronts, because it is the same operation. And you come across the same individuals over and over again. You know, I don't understand how the case only ended up stopping with Larry Franklin - and I still can't believe that the evidence that they had from the parallel investigation didn't get its way into the court. You need to look at individuals like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Marc Grossman, Dennis Hastert, and others. And documented evidence they have collected on these people. What are they doing with this information?

Swanson: It's an excellent question. All of those people and more need to be subpoenaed and put under oath, and on camera, and we need to get some information to the public, without which we're not going to have a democracy. So I would encourage everyone to take your suggestion, and call Congressman Henry Waxman, and ask for open, public hearings on this issue. And go to where? The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition website?

Edmonds: If you could publish the information - Luke Ryland has put together an action campaign page with all of that information with Congressman Waxman's office phone number, fax information, email etc. It's a very good website done by Luke Ryland, and I would appreciate it if you would add that information so your listeners can go to that website and also the phone numbers for Chairman Waxman so that they can call and contact, that would be great (see contact details below).

Swanson: We will do that, no question. Thank you very much for taking this time to open some eyes to what still needs to be looked into.

Edmonds: Thank you David, and thank you for everything you have been doing, because as I said, our only basically is you people, us, and those of us who are saying 'Let's defend our country against all enemies - not foreign,, but also domestic' - and that's what you have been doing so we are thankful for everything you have been doing. Thank you.

-----------------------
Contact Information
Congressman Henry Waxman (contact page)
In Washington, D.C.
2204 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-3976 (phone)
(202) 225-4099 (fax)
Ask for Michelle Ash ( Michelle.Ash@mail.house.gov ) & David Rapallo ( David.Rapallo@mail.house.gov )

In Los Angeles
8436 West Third Street, Suite 600
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 651-1040 (phone)
(818) 878-7400 (phone)
(310) 652-3095 (phone)
(323) 655-0502 (fax)

House Government Reform Committee ( contact page)
By Mail or Phone:
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-5051

Please also contact Congressman John Conyers, asking him to support hearings by Chairman Waxman.

Email: John.Conyers@mail.house.gov

Washington, DC
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
Ask for Elliot Mintzberg.

National Security Whistle Blowers: The ‘Undead’?

CQ HOMELAND SECURITY – SpyTalk
Jan. 26, 2007 – 7:29 p.m.

By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

You’d think a guy who helped bring down a corrupt congressman would get the thanks of a grateful government.

But you, of course, would be wrong.

Like so many other disillusioned ex-CIA, FBI and other erstwhile spooks, Haig Melkessetian’s career was derailed for telling the truth.

Today, he’s another casualty of Iraq, one of the growing number of national security “undead” in Washington’s intelligence demimonde, “entities that are deceased yet behave as if alive,” according to Wikipedia’s take on the horror flick creatures—“animated corpses,” bureaucratically speaking.

Melkessetian, a former security aide and Arabic translator to Jerry Bremer, the first American proconsul in Iraq, now works in a far lesser job for a U.S. government contractor in the Virginia suburbs.

His first sin: Telling Pentagon officials how screwed up things were in Iraq.

A Beirut-raised former Special Forces operative, Melkessetian told Pentagon officials early in the war that the contractor he worked for had sent unqualified personnel to Baghdad. It was typical of the war’s mismanagement, he said.

Half the linguists he worked with did not speak fluent Arabic, he reported. One was a Russian linguist who spoke no Arabic at all.

That contractor he was working for was the now-notorious MZM, whose president, Mitchell Wade, had an unusually close relationship with then-Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, and other high-level politicians with national security connections.

When Wade tried to involve Melkessetian in an MZM scheme to put together a congressional delegation to Saudi Arabia, led by Cunningham, to brush up the kingdom’s post-9/11 image, the former soldier balked: There were too many Saudi connections to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Eventually, of course, Cunningham went to jail for steering contracts to MZM in exchange for $2.4 million.

Wade, too, will almost certainly go to jail, after he finishes telling federal investigators about every palm he greased on Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and perhaps the CIA, as part of his plea agreement.

Meanwhile, a federal prosecutor in San Diego has given the House Appropriations, Armed Services and Intelligence committees a Jan. 31 deadline for turning over records related to Cunningham and contractor earmarks.

Sibel Edmonds
Melkessetian’s story is all too typical.

Take John M. Cole, a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent whose 18-year career took a nosedive when he came to the rescue of Sibel Edmonds.

Edmonds is the former FBI language specialist who surfaced in June 2002 with a strange tale of how she had been fired by the Bureau after telling supervisors that a foreign intelligence ring had penetrated the translators’ unit where she worked, among other sensitive issues.

Now why would they do that?

You can’t find out much, because then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft invoked a “state secrets privilege” to stop her suit against the FBI for wrongful dismissal.

A gag order prevents her from adding details to another of her sensational charges, that government eavesdroppers had intercepted the Sept. 11 hijackers plans.

Edmonds, born in Iran of Turkish origins, also claims she discovered unsavory links between U.S. defense and intelligence officials, weapons makers, Israel, and Ankara.

“I wanted to meet her because I wanted to help her,” says Cole, who resigned from the FBI after years of writing unanswered reports about lax security and mismanagement of the translations unit, which handles electronic intercepts of foreign spies, among other materials.

“I thought that I could be of some assistance to her,” Cole says in “Kill the Messenger,” a new documentary film about her case, “because I knew she was doing the right thing. I knew because she was right.”

Cole tells how he had “talked to people who had read her file, who had read the investigative report, and they were telling me a totally different story” than FBI officials, who had only perfunctorily investigated her allegations.

“They were telling me that Sibel Edmonds was a 100 percent accurate, that management knew that she was correct.”

But they buried it.

In 2004, after months of harassment by superiors for his defense of Edmonds, Cole resigned.

A year later, the Justice Department’s Inspector General concluded: “the evidence clearly corroborated Edmonds’ allegations.”

In response, the FBI said it was taking another look at the Edmonds case.

“That investigation is continuing,” it said on Jan. 14, 2005.

In response to a query on Friday afternoon, the FBI produced a 2005 press release on improvements in the translation unit. It was not able to provide further clarification by the end of the day.

Many More
Edmonds, meanwhile, had gone on to create something uniquely Washingtonian: a home for the national security undead.

Launched in 2004, her National Security Whistle Blowers Coalition now has over 60 members, disillusioned former CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, Pentagon, Homeland Security and State Department officials.

People like ex-FBI agents John Vincent and Robert Wright, who saw their careers go south after they blew the whistle on problems in the Bureau’s counterterrorism cases.

And Kevin Cleary, a U.S. Customs investigator whose nearly three decades in law enforcement went off the rails after he “uncovered and reported drug-related public corruption,” including “the compromise of a federal drug interdiction program,” according to his biography on the whistle blower Web site.

There’s Shawn Carpenter, the Sandia National Laboratory employee who was fired after telling the FBI that “hundreds of computer networks at major US defense contractors, military installations and government agencies were being systematically compromised, and sensitive information was being stolen by hackers.”

Edmonds is not the easiest person to get along with, say some whistleblowers who have resigned from or declined to join her organization.

So a number of important whistle blowers remain outside the organization.

People like Mike German, whose forthcoming book, “Thinking Like a Terrorist” covers some of his 16 years as an undercover FBI agent, which ended when he blew the whistle on the corrupt management of a counterterrorism case.

And John Roberts, a 13-year FBI veteran whose career ended after he described alleged favoritism and cover-ups within the bureau on “60 Minutes.”

Roberts told the program he witnessed things “just disappear,” “vaporize” or be “glossed over” in internal investigations that ended without anyone being disciplined.

And then there’s the whistleblowers who suffer in silence, especially at the CIA, where going public is often impossible because of security restrictions.

Occasionally, one busts out, like Gary Berntsen, who led the agency’s first paramilitary team into Afghanistan after 9/11.

In 2005, Berntsen filed suit against the CIA for holding up and over-classifying his book, “Jawbreaker,” which refuted the claims of U.S. officials that Osama bin Laden was able to escape from Tora Bora in 2001 because they didn’t know he was holed up there.

“He was there,” Berntsen says, “and could have been caught.”

With the help of Pakistani agents, it is believed, bin Laden escaped.

Kill the Messenger
During the Vietnam war, a single national security whistle blower, like Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon official who leaked a classified, sordid history of U.S. machinations in Vietnam, could cause an uproar, even play a role in bringing down an administration.

Today, with so many of them walking around Washington, they’re almost ho-hum.

And nothing seems to happen despite their airing their hair-raising tales.

None have had Ellsberg’s impact or notoriety. Most Americans have never heard of any of them.

“Once you start hearing these names, it’s going to become more real to you, the concept of national security whistleblowers,” Edmonds said at the 2004 press conference announcing the formation of her group.

The idea, she said, “was to have a strong group, and go at it collectively and together, not one, not two, not three, but together.”

Army of the Undead.

In the 2005 movie, terrified residents of a small town in Australia only belatedly realize that “you have to shoot a zombie through the head to stop it,” Washington Post film critic Desson Thomson said in his review.

In 1973, Nixon administration operatives proposed to “‘incapacitate” Ellsberg “ totally” to prevent him from giving an antiwar speech, murder the investigative columnist Jack Anderson, and fire-bomb the liberal Brookings Institution.

War can really make people do crazy things.

BACKCHANNEL CHATTER
CIA spokesmanPaul Gimigliano took strong exception to last week’s SpyTalk column , in which several anonymous CIA and other intelligence sources described the Agency’s Baghdad operations as virtually paralyzed by sectarian violence in the capital’s streets.

We also quoted outgoing National Intelligence Office chief John D. Negroponte telling the House Intelligence Committee that “not everybody’s bottled up in the Green Zone.”

But here’s Gimigliano’s e-mail in full:

With his recent piece, “Spying in Baghdad,” Jeff Stein did a great disservice to his readers and the men and women of CIA. While there is much about our operations overseas that we cannot discuss publicly, Agency officers throughout Iraq take risks each day to gather intelligence that makes a critical difference to our country. Some of that information is tactical, helping save the lives of American and Iraqi soldiers, and some is strategic, helping our government understand trends in the region.

We know better than anyone the gaps in our knowledge about Iraq. But we also know that CIA’s achievements there are rooted not in the Green Zone, but in the “Red Zone” beyond. Many of our officers in Iraq operate outside the Green Zone every day. To say that violence has “kept the CIA indoors” is simply wrong. And the anonymous source, cited as claiming CIA officers “spend their days playing cards and watching DVDs,” is badly misinformed. Had Mr. Stein contacted the Agency before running his story, CIA would have tried to correct his misimpressions.

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.

THE HIGHJACKING OF A NATION

November 15, 2006


Part 1: The Foreign Agent Factor

By Sibel Edmonds



In his farewell address in 1796, George Washington warned that America must be constantly awake against “the insidious wiles of foreign influence…since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

Today, foreign influence, that most baneful foe of our republican government, has its tentacles entrenched in almost all major decision making and policy producing bodies of the U.S. government machine. It does so not secretly, since its self-serving activities are advocated and legitimized by highly positioned parties that reap the benefits that come in the form of financial gain and positions of power.

Foreign governments and foreign-owned private interests have long sought to influence U.S. public policy. Several have accomplished this goal; those who are able and willing to pay what it takes. Those who buy themselves a few strategic middlemen, commonly known as pimps, while in DC circles referred to as foreign registered agents and lobbyists, who facilitate and bring about desired transactions. These successful foreign entities have mastered the art of ‘covering all the bases’ when it comes to buying influence in Washington DC. They have the required recipe down pat: get yourself a few ‘Dime a Dozen Generals,’ bid high in the ‘former statesmen lobby auction’, and put in your pocket one or two ‘ex-congressmen turned lobbyists’ who know the ropes when it comes to pocketing a few dozen who still serve.

The most important facet of this influence to consider is what happens when the active and powerful foreign entities’ objectives are in direct conflict with our nation’s objectives and its interests and security; and when this is the case, who pays the ultimate price and how. There is no need for assumptions of hypothetical situations to answer these questions, since throughout recent history we have repeatedly faced the dire consequences of the highjacking of our foreign and domestic policies by these so-called foreign agents of foreign influence.

Let’s illustrate this with the most important recent case, the catastrophe endured by our people; the September Eleven terrorist attacks. Let’s observe how certain foreign interests, combined with their U.S. agents and benefactors, overrode the interests and security of the entire nation; how thousands of victims and their loved ones were kicked aside to serve the interests of a few; foreign influence and its agents.


Senator Graham’s Revelation
It has been established that two of the 9/11 hijackers had a support network in the U.S. that included agents of the Saudi government, and that the Bush administration and the FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship.

In his book, "Intelligence Matters," Senator Bob Graham made clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties in the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Here is an excerpt from Senator Graham’s statement from the July 24, 2003 congressional record on the classified 27 pages of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11: “The most serious omission, in my view, is part 4 of the report, which is entitled Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters. Those 27 pages have almost been entirely censured [sic]….The declassified version of this finding tells the American people that our investigation developed information suggesting specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States. In other words, officials of a foreign government are alleged to have aided and abetted the terrorist attacks on our country on September 11, which took over 3,000 lives.”

In his book Graham reveals, “Our investigators found a CIA memo dated August 2, 2002, whose author concluded that there is incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists within the Saudi government. On September 11, America was not attacked by a nation-state, but we had just discovered that the attackers were actively supported by one, and that state was our supposed friend and ally Saudi Arabia.” He then cites another case, “We had discovered an FBI asset who had a close relationship with two of the terrorists; a terrorist support network that went through the Saudi Embassy; and a funding network that went through the Saudi Royal family.”

The most explosive revelation in Graham’s book is the following statement with regard to the administration’s attitude on page 216: “It was as if the President’s loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America’s safety.” Further, he states that he asked the FBI to undertake a review of the Riggs Bank records on the terrorists’ money trail, to look at other Saudi companies with ties to al-Qaeda, to plan for monitoring suspect Saudi interests in the United States; however, Graham adds: “To my knowledge, none of these investigations have been completed…Nor do we know anything else about what I believe to be a state-sponsored terrorist support network that still exists, largely undamaged, within the United States.”

What Graham is trying to establish in his book and previous public statements in this regard, and doing so under state imposed ‘secrecy and classification’, is that the classification and cover up of those 27 pages is not about protecting ‘U.S. national security, methods of intelligence collection, or ongoing investigations,’ but to protect certain U.S. allies. Meaning, our government put the interests of certain foreign nations and their U.S. beneficiaries far above its own people and their interests. While Saudi Arabia has been specifically pointed to by Graham, other countries involved have yet to be identified.

In covering up Saudi Arabia’s direct role in supporting Al Qaeda, the 9/11 Commission goes even a few steps further than the congress and the Executive Branch. The report claims "there is no convincing evidence that any government financially supported al-Qaeda before 9/11." Their report ignores all the information provided by government officials to Congress, as well as volumes of published reports and investigations by other nations, regarding Muslim and Arab regimes that have supported al Qaeda. It completely disregards the terrorist lists of the Treasury and State Departments, which have catalogued the Saudi government's decades of support for Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Why in the world would the United States government go so far to protect Saudi Arabia in the face of what itself declares to be the biggest security threat facing our nation and the world today?

Why is the United States willing to set aside its own security and interests in order to advance the interests of another state?

How can a government that’s been intent upon using the terrorist attacks to carry out many unjustifiable atrocities, prevent bringing to justice those who’ve been established as being directly responsible for it?

More importantly, how is this done in a nation that prides itself as one that operates under governance of the people, by the people, for the people?

How did our government bodies, those involved in drafting and implementing our nation’s policies, evolve into this foreign influence-peddling operation?

In order to answer these questions one must first establish who stands to lose and who stands to gain by protecting Saudi Arabia from being exposed and facing consequences of its involvement in terrorist networks activities. In addition to identifying the nations in question, we must identify the interests as well as the actors; their agents. Let’s look at Saudi Arabia as one of the successful foreign nations that have mastered the art of ‘covering all the bases’ when it comes to buying and peddling influence in Washington DC, and identify its hired ‘agents’ and ‘agents by default.’

Foreign Agents by Default
Although when it comes to our complex diplomatic threading with Saudi Arabia the easiest answer appears to be the ‘oil factor,’ upon further inspection the Saudi’s influence and role extends into other areas, such as the Military Industrial Complex and the too familiar Lobbying Games.

According to the report published by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Saudi Arabia is America’s top customer. Since 1990 the U.S. government, through the Pentagon’s arms export program, has arranged for the delivery of more than $39.6 billion in foreign military sales to Saudi Arabia, and an additional $394 million worth of arms were delivered to the Saudi regime through the State Department’s direct commercial sales program. Oil rich Saudi Arabia is a cash-paying customer; a compulsive buyer of our weaponry. The list of U.S. sellers includes almost all the major players such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing.

The report by FAS establishes that despite the show of U.S. support demonstrated by this astounding quantity of arms sales, Saudi Arabia’s human rights record is extremely poor; see the U.S. State Department’s 2000 Human Rights Report. Saudi Arabia’s position as a strategic Gulf ally has blinded U.S. officials into approving a level and quality of arms exports that should never have been allowed to a non-democratic country with such a poor human rights record.

Further, there are indications of Saudi’s active role as a player in the nuclear black-market. According to Mohammed Khilewi, first secretary at the Saudi mission to the United Nations until July 1994, the Saudis have sought a bomb since 1975; they sought to buy nuclear reactors from China, supported Pakistan's nuclear program, and contributed $5 billion to Iraq's nuclear weapons program between 1985 and 1990. While the U.S. government vocally opposes the development or procurement of ballistic missiles by non-allies, it has been very quiet in Saudi Arabia’s case, considering the fact that it possesses the longest-range ballistic missiles of any developing country.

The Military Industrial Complex certainly seems to be a winner in having the congressional report pertaining to the Saudi government’s role in supporting the 9/11 terrorist activities being classified. The exposure would have meant grounds for U.S. sanctions and retributions; it would have risked the loss of billions of dollars in revenue from its ‘top customer.’ These companies don’t even have to officially register as foreign agents; after all, their strong loyalty and unbreakable bond with foreign elements exists by default; it is called mutual benefit. They are ‘Foreign Agents by Default.’

This holds true for other parties and players involved within the MIC network; the contractors and the investors. Let’s look at one of these famous and influential players; another foreign agent even if only by default; a man who defended the Saudis against a lawsuit brought by the 9/11 victims’ family members; a man who happens to be the senior counsel for the Carlyle Group, which invests heavily in defense companies and is the nation's 10th largest defense contractor with ties to the Saudi Royal Family, Enron, Global Crossing, among others; James Baker; Papa Bush’s Secretary of State. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, Baker was reportedly at a Carlyle investor conference with members of the Bin Laden family in the Ritz Carlton in Washington DC, while Bush Sr. was on the payroll of the Carlyle group.

The Carlyle Group, a Washington, DC based private equity firm that employs numerous former high-ranking government officials with ties to both political parties, was the ninth largest Pentagon contractor between 1998 and 2003, an ongoing Center for Public Integrity investigation into Department of Defense contracts found. According to this report, overall, six private investment firms, including Carlyle, received nearly $14 billion in Pentagon deals between 1998 and 2003. Considering the fact that Saudi Arabia is the top buyer of the U.S. weapons industry, Carlyle’s investment and its stake, and of course Jimmy Baker’s far reaching influence within the Pentagon and congress, everything seems to come together and fit perfectly to shield this foreign interest no matter the price to be paid by the American public.

The political action committees (PACs) of the biggest defense companies have given $14.2 million directly to federal candidates since Clinton's first presidential bid, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). In 1997 alone the defense industry spent $49.5 million to lobby the nation's decision-makers.

Between 1998 and 2004, for the six-year period, Boeing Company spent more than $57 million in lobbying. For the same period of time, Lockheed Martin poured over $55 million into lobbying activities. Northrop Grumman exceeded both by investing $83 million in lobbying, and based on a report issued by POGO, it contributed over $4 million to individuals and PACs.

With ‘dime a dozen’ generals on their boards of directors, numerous high-powered ex congressmen and senators at their disposal in the ‘K Street Lobby Quarter,’ tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations, and billions of dollars at stake, the Military Industrial Complex surely had all the incentives to act just as foreign agents would, and fight for their highly valued client; the Saudi Government. They appear to have had all the reasons to ensure that the report would not see the light of the day; no matter what the effect on the country, its security, and its interests.

K Street Lobby Quarter
The fact that Saudi Arabia pours large sums into lobbying firms and public relations companies with close ties to congress does not come as a big surprise. The FARA database under the DOJ website lists Qorvis Communications as one of Saudi Arabia’s registered foreign agents. In 2003, for only a six months period, Qorvis received more than $11 million from the Saudi government. Another firm, Loeffler Tuggey Pauerstein Rosenthal LLP, another registered foreign agent, received more than $840,000 for the same six-month period, and the list goes on. Just for this six month period the government of Saudi Arabia paid a total of more than $14 million to 13 lobbying and public relations companies; all registered as foreign agents.

Why do the Saudis spend nearly $20 million per year in lobbying activities in the U.S. via their hired agents? What kind of return on investment are they getting out of the United States Congress?

Let’s take Loeffler’s group and examine its value for the Saudi government, since it was paid over $3 million in three years between 2003 and 2005. The firm was founded by former Republican Congressman Tom Loeffler of Texas. Loeffler served in the Republican Leadership as Deputy Whip, and as Chief Deputy Whip during his third and fourth term. He was a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Energy and Commerce Committee and Budget Committee. In the two Bush campaigns for governor, Loeffler, who contributed $141,000, was the largest donor. In 1998, he served as national co-chair of the Republican National Committee's "Team 100" program for donors of $100,000 or more, and afterwards held the same title during George W. Bush's presidential campaign. Loeffler’s generosity extends to the members of congress as well. In 6 years, he has given more than $185,000 to members of congress, 97% of it going to only Republican members. During the same six-year period, Loeffler’s firm received more than $18 million in lobbying fees.

The firm’s managing director happens to be William L. Ball. Ball served as Chief of Staff to Senators John Tower (R-TX) and Herman Talmadge (D-GA). In 1985, he joined the Reagan Administration as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs. Later he was assigned to the White House to serve President Reagan as his chief liaison to the Congress. Wallace Henderson is also a Partner; he was Chief Counsel and Chief of Staff to Representative W. J. Tauzin (R-LA), Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator John Breaux (D-LA).

By having foreign agents such as the Loeffler Group, in addition to their foreign agents by default, the MIC, the Saudis seem to have all their bases covered. Former secretaries and deputy secretaries with open access to the current ones, former congressmen and senators who used to be positioned on strategically valuable committees and know the rules of the congressional game, and millions of dollars available to be spent and channeled and re-channeled to various PACs go a long way toward ensuring results. Money counts. Money is needed to bring in votes. Professional skills and discretion are required to get this money to various final destinations. The registered foreign agents, the lobby groups, are geared for this task. The client is happy in the end; so are the foreign agents and the congressional actors.


Other Savvy Nations
Of course, the sanction and legitimization of far reaching foreign influence and strongholds in the U.S., despite the many dire consequences endured by its citizens, is not limited to the government of Saudi Arabia. Numerous well-documented cases can be cited for others such as Turkey, Pakistan, and Israel, to name a few.

I won’t get into the details and history of my own case, where the government invoked the state secrets privilege to gag my case and the congress in order to ‘protect certain sensitive diplomatic relations.’ The country, the foreign influence, in this case was the Republic of Turkey. The U.S. government did so despite the far reaching consequences of burying the facts involved, and disregarded the interests and security of the nation; all to protect a quasi ally engaged in numerous illegitimate activities within the global terrorist networks, nuclear black-market and narcotics activities; an ally who happens to be another compulsive and loyal buyer of the Military Industrial Complex; an ally who happens to be another savvy player in recruiting top U.S. players as its foreign agents and spending million of dollars per year to the lobbying groups headed by many ‘formers.’ Turkey’s agent list includes generals such as Joseph Ralston and Brent Scowcroft, former statesmen such as William Cohen and Marc Grossman, and of course famous ex-congressmen such as Bob Livingston and Stephen Solarz. Turkey too seems to have all its bases covered.

Another well-known and documented case involves Pakistan. Over two decades ago Richard Barlow, an intelligence analyst working for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney issued a startling report. After reviewing classified information from field agents, he had determined that Pakistan, despite official denials, had built a nuclear bomb. In the March 29, 1993 issue of New Yorker, Seymour Hersh noted that “even as Barlow began his digging, some senior State Department officials were worried that too much investigation would create what Barlow called embarrassment for Pakistan.” Barlow's conclusion was politically inconvenient. A finding that Pakistan possessed a nuclear bomb would have triggered a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to the country, and it would have killed a $1.4-billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad. A few months later a Pentagon official downplayed Pakistan's nuclear capabilities in his testimony to Congress. When Barlow protested to his superiors, he was fired. A few years later, the Executive Branch would slap Barlow with the State Secrets Privilege.

As we all now know, Pakistan provided direct nuclear assistance to Iran and Libya. During the Cold War, the U.S. put up with Pakistani lies and deception about their nuclear activities, it did not enforce its restrictions on Pakistan's nuclear program when it counted, and as a result Pakistan ended up with a U.S.-made nuclear weapons system. Yet again, after 9/11, the Bush administration issued a waiver ending the implementation of almost all sanctions on Pakistan because of the perceived need for Pakistani assistance in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who ironically were brought to power by direct U.S. support in the 1980s in the first place.

Weiss, in the May-June 2004 issue of the Bulletin states: “We are essentially back where we were with Pakistan in the 1980s. It is apparent that it has engaged in dangerous nuclear mischief with North Korea, Iran, and Libya (and perhaps others), but thus far without consequences to its relationship with the United States because of other, overriding foreign policy considerations--not the Cold War this time, but the war on terrorism.” He continues: “But now there is a major political difference. It was one thing for Pakistan, a country with which the United States has had good relations generally, to follow India and produce the bomb for itself. It is quite another for Pakistan to help two-thirds of the "axis of evil” to get the bomb as well.”

FARA & LDA
An agent of a ‘foreign principal’ is defined as any individual or organization which acts at the order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign principal, or whose activities are directed by a foreign principal who engages in political activities, or acts in a public relations capacity for a foreign principal, or solicits or dispenses any thing of value within the United States for a foreign principal, or represents the interests of a foreign principal before any agency or official of the U.S. government.

In 1938, in response to the large number of German propaganda agents in the pre-WWII U.S., Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was established to insure that the American public and its lawmakers know the source of propaganda intended to sway public opinion, policy, and laws. The Act requires every agent of a foreign principal to register with the Department of Justice and file forms outlining its agreements with, income from, and expenditures on behalf of the foreign principal. Any agent testifying before a committee of Congress must furnish the committee with a copy of his most recent registration statement. The agent must keep records of all his activities and permit the Attorney General to inspect them. However, as is the case with many laws, the Act is filled with exemptions and loopholes that allow minimization of, and in some cases complete escape from, warranted scrutiny.

There are a number of exemptions. For example, persons whose activities are of a purely commercial nature or of a religious, academic, and charitable nature are exempt. Any agent who is engaged in lobbying activities and is registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) is exempt. The LDA of 1995 was passed after decades of effort to make the regulation and disclosure of lobbying the federal government more effective. However, LDA also has serious and important loopholes and limitations that can be summed up as: Inadequate Disclosure, Inadequate Enforcement, and Inadequate Regulation of Conduct. The recent congressional scandals make this point very clear.

In addition, neither act deals with an important issue: Conflict of Interest. Many of these agents, with their loyalty to the foreign hand that feeds them, end up being appointed to various positions, commissions and special envoys by our government. Recall Kissinger and his appointment to head the 9/11 Commission, and of course the recent revelation by Woodward on his advisory position to the current White House. Take a look at Jimmy Baker’s current appointment on the Iraq commission. Same goes for the father of all the ‘dime a dozen generals’, Brent Scowcroft, and one of his new protégés, General Joseph Ralston. In short, neither FARA nor LDA creates meaningful oversight, control, or enforcement; neither deals with conflict of interest issues, and neither provides any deterrence or consequences for unethical or illegal conduct.


It used to be congressional ‘pork projects’ and ‘corporate influence’ that raised eyebrows now and then; here and there. Gone are those days. Today the unrestricted and uncontrollable money game and influence peddling tricks within the major decision-making and policy producing bodies of the U.S. government have reached new heights; yet, no raised eyebrows are registered. Sadly, today, a new version of ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ would have to be produced as a documentary.

The other day I received a request to sign on to a petition put forth by a group of 9/11 family members urging the congress to reopen the investigations of 9/11 and declassify the infamous 27-pages which deal with foreign governments, U.S. allies, that provided support for those who carried out the attacks on our nation. My heart goes out to them. I do sympathize with them. I am known to take on similar propositions and methods of activism myself. However, looking at the realities, seeing what it takes to get things done in Washington, realizing how this beast works in the Real Sin City, I would encourage them to look at the root cause, rather than the symptoms. There are only two ways I can see that can bring about what they have been fighting for and what the majority of us desire to see in terms of bringing about Truth, Oversight, and Accountability; Justice.

The family members, and their supporters, us, either have to tackle the major cause; the corruption of our government officials via unrestricted and undisciplined ‘revolving doors’ and ‘foreign influence & lobby’ practices, and push for expedient meaningful reforms by the new ambitious congress, and have them prove to us their worth. Or, they may as well give up their long-held integrity, go bid high for one or two former statesmen, hire a few dime a dozen generals, and buy themselves a couple of ex-congressmen turned lobbyists; that will do the job.

Link
http://www.nswbc.org/Op%20Ed/Op-ed-Part1-Nov15-06.htm


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Sibel Edmonds is the founder and director of National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). Ms. Edmonds worked as a language specialist for the FBI. During her work with the bureau, she discovered and reported serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence that had national security implications. After she reported these acts to FBI management, she was retaliated against by the FBI and ultimately fired in March 2002. Since that time, court proceedings on her case have been blocked by the assertion of “State Secret Privilege”; the Congress of the United States has been gagged and prevented from any discussion of her case through retroactive re-classification by the Department of Justice. Ms. Edmonds is fluent in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani; and has a MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, and a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University. PEN American Center awarded Ms. Edmonds the 2006 PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award.


© Copyright 2006, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Information in this release may be freely distributed and published provided that all such distributions make appropriate attribution to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.