Kill the Messenger: Sibel Edmonds

Over at DU, Randy mentioned an ' untranscribed interview between Ellsberg and Kris Welch of KPFA from Sept. '05'' - I actually hadn't heard it before (dammit!) - so I found it, and it is no longer 'untranscribed' (at least the Sibel related bits.)

Daniel Ellsberg said that Dennis Hastert received suitcases of cash at his home from Turkish heroin money and that Hastert should be in jail, along with his friends.

He also says that people in the State Department, and in nuclear labs, are paid in 'cold cash' for secrets that are sold on the nuclear black market.

He also says that a Dem Congress "could be pressed into holding genuine investigations of the torture, of the corruption, getting rid of Hastert, and starting impeachment proceedings."

All errors are mine, some snippage, usual disclaimers, etc.

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Kris Welch: I know you just met with Sibel Edmonds - what's the key thing about Sibel Edmonds' case?

Daniel Ellsberg: For several years, Sibel has been really hoping to get her case into a court, or into a hearing room in Congress. That's pretty well impossible with Republicans in charge of hearings - they won't hold any. She has told her story on a classified basis to several congressional venues, plus the 911 Commission - none of whom have done anything with it so far - it's too hot for them, essentially. You get a pretty good clue as to why the congressional people haven't pressed it in the article about her in the current Vanity Fair issue. Sibel is not yet in a position to tell all, but has been telling more and more.

Let me suggest two interviews with her that have come out since the VF article that go a good deal further than VF chose to print. VF did print ten pages and they got a lot but there was a lot that the reporter had, David Rose, that didn't get into the article, and a lot of that is in these two other interviews - both at antiwar.com, Chris Deliso and Scott Horton. In those interviews she finally reveals more of what she wished that VF had put out. Namely, if I can summarize it quickly, Al Qaeda, she's been saying to congress, according to these interviews, is financed 95% by drug money - drug traffic to which the US government shows a blind eye, has been ignoring, because it very heavily involves allies and assets of ours - such as Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan - all the 'Stans - in a drug traffic where the opium originates in Afghanistan, is processed in Turkey, and delivered to Europe where it furnishes 96% of Europe's heroin, by Albanians, either in Albania or Kosovo - Albanian Muslims in Kosovo - basically the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army which we backed heavily in that episode at the end of the century.

It was known at the time that the KLA consisted largely of drug-dealers, and they still do. They're dominating the politics, pretty much, of Kosovo right now. Now, all of these people are, for various reasons, allies, or clients, of the US - and the fact that they get a large amount of their income from the heroin trade is something the US just regards as the price of doing business with them. That means that not only is the heroin coming into our markets where it furnishes, according to Sibel based on her FBI experience, some 14% of our heroin - up from 4% before the invasion of Afghanistan.

The major effect of that is that terrorist gangs are taking a cut of this, including Al Qaeda, which essentially taxes this traffic as it goes through the various lands where each 'band' pays a percentage as they hand it off. In other words, the US is in effect, endorsing - well, 'endorsing' is too strong a word - 'permitting', definitely permitting, or 'not acting against,' a heroin trade - which not only corrupts our cities and our city politics, AND our congress, as Sibel makes very specific - but is financing the terrorist organization that constitutes a genuine threat to us. And this seems to be a fact that is accepted by our top leaders, according to Sibel, for various geopolitical reasons, and for corrupt reasons as well. Sometimes things are simpler than they might appear - and they involve envelopes of cash. Sibel says that suitcases of cash have been delivered to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, at his home, near Chicago, from Turkish sources, knowing that a lot of that is drug money.

Now these are pretty inflammatory allegations, let's say, and it's note-worthy that they haven't even been picked up by the mainstream press. The Vanity Fair article made that plain, though not in as much detail as the antiwar.com interviews - but not one major newspaper I don't think has picked up her allegations against Hastert which are very specific, and one would think very important.

Kris Welch: Dennis Hastert's name is mentioned in the Vanity Fair article issue...

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes - but in another connection - namely that he sold a legislative move of removing from a vote a resolution that he had earlier backed, raising the price, of course, of removing it - condemning Turkish genocide of Armenians.

And for the first time, a legislative leader (Hastert) had backed such a resolution which meant that it went through the committee for the first time, and was headed for a vote - in order to help a Republican in Glendale, near Los Angeles, James Rogan, who had a large Armenian constituency. So all things were moving ahead, at last, after many years of them trying to do this, and at the last moment, Hastert removed it from the vote, removed it from the calendar - and according to the information claimed by Sibel, Turkish sources were claiming to have achieved this for a price of half a million dollars - paid to Hastert. Again, this would seem a story that... certainly the Armenians are picking it up, as they should.

Kris Welch: Well, and the Turks in Turkey are now attacking Sibel Edmonds

Daniel Ellsberg: Sibel is an 'enemy of Turkey' - she was a Turkish citizen, now an American, but she has some family in Turkey who are now threatened by this exposure. Her picture was on the front-page of every Turkish newspaper - denouncing her as a 'whore,' as a 'traitor' and a turncoat of various kinds and she's had many threatening letters, including death threats. So it's a very serious situation for her, and the contrast between the news in Turkey, and the silence in America about allegations about Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, is quite a contrast.

Kris Welch: And, of course, she complains in the antiwar.com interviews that the VF article chose to focus on this Armenian story - which is not the story - and that's her problem. She says when the media does do anything about her story, they focus on 'oh - here's this poor whistleblower' instead of focusing on what the facts of her whistleblowing might be.

Daniel Ellsberg: Well, I think it's true that - as my friend and mentor Peter Dale Scott has said to me over the last 20 years or more - the American media maintain an almost unbroken silence on the connection between US policy and the drug trade, specifically the CIA and the drug trade. The silence is broken, typically, only to dismiss it, only to say 'No - there's nothing to this.' The 911 Commission, for instance, as Peter pointed out to me, went out of it's way simply to say that there was no connection between 911 and drug connections at all. Now, according to Sibel, that's absolutely wrong - that the connections through Turkey, in various ways, are very important.

Kris Welch: OK - and Sibel got this information because she applied for this after 911, wanting to do something real for her American patriotism - this is what she says she was motivated by...

Daniel Ellsberg: She is very patriotic...

Kris Welch: And these wiretaps that she translated went back to 1997... so she heard all these conversations, people bragging that they'd given this money

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes - these were people from the American Turkish Council - which is a quote 'lobbying group' - or as she has described it up till now, as a 'semi-legitimate organization'

Kris Welch: And Brent Scowcroft is on the board of directors?

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes. Brent Scowcroft is the head of board of directors - every member of the military industrial complex - Lockheed, Raytheon - everybody who does business with Turkey is a member of this group. That doesn't necessarily mean that they know... well, there's a great deal of arms trading...

Kris Welch: and that's where a lot of this money comes from too..

Daniel Ellsberg: and a lot of that is as legitimate as arms trading ever is - as merchants of death - but it's a legal trade, perhaps unfortunately - but aside from that, there's a great deal of dealing of information in illicit arms trades including, she says, nuclear information, from our nuclear weapons labs - for which cold cash is paid - to people in the labs, and to people, she says, to people in the State Department - who have essentially given 'OKs' for various trades, or have turned a blind eye - deliberately - to it. So there are messages in these wiretaps about people getting thousands of dollars - this is small potatoes - but in the State Department they come cheap apparently!

Kris Welch: As Sibel says, the State Department is the most corrupt element of our government

Daniel Ellsberg: Yes - and that's an amazing statement (laughs) when you consider the competition. I myself was amazed to hear that, and I told her that, because my sense of foreign service officers, and the State Department in general, was that they had many flaws, and many limitations, but I would have said that corruption was not part of that...

Kris Welch: And relatively speaking, they're "the good guys" with the recent foreign policy

Daniel Ellsberg: Well, it depends who's in charge. Under Powell, to a degree, they were sidelined, they had essentially no influence. But when they're 'good'...

Kris Welch: ...They're impotent

Daniel Ellsberg: Good children are meant to be seen not heard!

But Sibel said, very flatly, and she's extremely credible to me, she said 'That's just flatly wrong. People in the State Department take cash.' Now, since she's a person who has been checked out a good deal by some of the senators she's talked to - Senator Leahy, Senator Grassley, Republican, they have always said, repeatedly, that she's extremely credible. The FBI agents we've talked to have, in every respect that was raised, have confirmed her story - that she's a very credible witness. Representative Waxman, to whose staff she's spoken has said the same. So she is very credible. That's a fact. So when she says things like this, they do deserve to get picked up and followed up, and they are not being.

Kris Welch: Well, and her credibility might have something to do with the fact that she has been completely silenced, she says the most gagged person in history, by this very little used States Secrets privilege

[SNIP - for 20 minutes Ellsberg discusses martial law & the shredding of the constitution, 'the next 911, the Reichstag fire')

Daniel Ellsberg: It's very important to get the Republicans out before the next 911 - there's one process for doing that. I think the stuff that Sibel Edmonds is talking about - it's absolutely appropriate to get rid of Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House and put him in jail, actually, and to lose him his job, and some other people.

If people will press their congress representatives - and I suppose Armenian people are already doing this, because they were directly stabbed by Hastert on this point - but the whole country, of course, needs to be concerned about Dennis Hastert. I will believe Sibel on this - that he is guilty - well, let me put it this way, he's innocent till proven guilty. I believe he has earned the right to a fair trial - probably several fair trials! And I hope he really gets them - along with Rove - he's another person who seems to have earned the right to a fair trial, as have Scooter Libby and others.

That will hamstring the administration, but not get us out of Iraq. I would hope that the scandal the Republicans have earned in this, if it can be pursued, would get us what otherwise seemed impossible, a Democratic congress, a Democratic House which can impeach. The only way to impeach Bush is to get a Democratic House in 2006 - and just putting Democrats alone in, of course, doesn't get us out of Iraq. Putting John Kerry in, I don't think, would have got us out of Iraq. We definitely need a new bunch of Democrats in there - and new leaders. I'm very pleased to see Feingold, the one senator who had the guts to vote against the PATRIOT Act - just as Barbara Lee was the one person in congress to vote against the original delegation of power to the president after 911. One person in each case, like Cindy Sheehan, one person can start something - Feingold is my candidate right now to lead on this. But that's looking forward to 2008.

In 2006, we really do need to get Democrats because venal, and cowardly, and lazy, as they may be, they are people who could be pressed into holding genuine investigations of the torture, of the corruption, getting rid of Hastert, and starting impeachment proceedings. I think they're partisan enough to follow the voters and do what the voters want - and voters would say either 'Fire these guys, like Hastert, and the President, or we fire you' - and that, as they say on Capitol Hill, they may not see the light, but they'll feel the heat.
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This is part 6 of my interview with Mathieu Verboud, co-director of the film about Sibel Edmonds, Kill the Messenger. (see Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five))

Here we talk about 9/11 (a little), FBI incompetence and some of Sibel's supporters in the film
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Luke Ryland: Right - speaking of terrible consequences - you mentioned earlier that the first thing that you heard about Sibel 's case was that it had something to do with 911. What do you know about the connections between her case and 911?

Mathieu Verboud: Some small things and some bigger things. The small things are more precise, and the larger issues are more diluted. From some private conversations with Sibel, it's our understanding that during her time at the FBI, she may have heard things, let’s say about the existence of certain tapes related to Bin Laden. I won’t go into further details and quite frankly, as far as 9/11 goes, the event, and the preparation - that's all I know.

But there are other issues related to 9/11. First is WHY was 9/11 possible. Sibel’s story helps us find an answer…

9/11 happened because the jihad needed new targets. Again, this is the backfiring component of the 1980s alliance between the U.S and Pakistan. Then, you wonder HOW 9/11 was possible. Well, you have a whole set of answers to that and these are domestic issues : lack of preparedness, complacency, incompetence, risk aversity. And it went to such absurd extremes!

Look for example at the case of Bob Wright from the counter-terrorism division of the FBI, based in Chicago. His managers refused to crack down a Hamas cell because that meant closing a case and when a case is closed, FBI agents have to open new ones to get a promotion. The thing is the FBI counter-terrorism squad in Chicago didn’t have any case waiting to be opened, maybe because Hamas was the only terrorist threat in town. Anyway, the result is the Hamas cell was just… ignored!

When you see that, you understand Bob Wright’s frustration and you wonder whether the Executive Branch, be it under Clinton or Bush, ever assessed the risk, however remote, of a major terrorist attack with commercial airliners. Everyone seemed to have forgotten that the WTC had already been bombed by Islamists in 1993. Or maybe no one cared. And 9/11 happened. Did the U.S have foreknowledge of the attacks ? Yes. Did the U.S have foreknowledge of the date? I don’t know. Did the U.S plan the attacks? I don’t know. Maybe ineptitude, indifference explain it all.

Then, with Bush, things got even worse : the lie to the nation about WMD’s, Iraq rather than Bin Laden, the politization of the intelligence community and of the judiciary, the insatiable appetite for classification, the obsene carpet-bagging in Iraq with big weapon companies calling the shots from behind the scene. And this is freedom? No, it’s a recipe for the elimination of freedom.

LR: Ok - and where does the heroin trafficking fit into Sibel's story?

Mathieu: Well, the poppy trade is interesting, but we don’t have very specific knowledge about the connections to Sibel. All we know is that for the last 30 years, Turkey has been the leading country in the world in terms of processing heroin and also that the drug business is just another business for many players in this country. It helps make money, fund illegal activities.

But again, this started a long time ago.

LR: Getting back to the film - who did you interview?

MV: Well, there are a lot of people whom we interviewed but didn't make it to the final cut of the film, because we needed to focus on Sibel’s line of operations.

First, we have the "supporters." Coming first as a a great introduction to Sibel, is John Cole who was a Counter-Intelligence officer at the FBI in the nineties – his case is linked to Sibel’s since the very begining. The first ever article on Sibel (the Washington Post dated June 19, 2002) mentions his name as a possible co-witness. John was indeed a precious witness for us. He was born in France (laughs)… he is a true U.S patriot. He always wanted ‘to do what’s right’. John often comes back to the same point: "As a public servant, I took an oath of office to protect the country from its enemies, both foreign and domestic. So did Sibel." Well, obviously many people within the neocon community fit the portrait of a domestic enemy. John was also one of many intelligence whistle-blowers who described the risk-averse mentality, the sheer incompetence of many people in mid-management positions in the agencies.

Then, we have Ann Beeson and Ben Wizner (the two ACLU lawyers) and some prominent members of the NSWBC, the national security whisle-blowers coalition Sibel created in 2004. We also include in this group of supporters this very nice musician whom we filmed in a New York club performing the song he wrote on Sibel: Gary Hood (youtube). Gary is an early fan.

Then, we have the "experts" coming in. Their role in the film is to expose Sibel’s secret…


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Next Up: When the truth comes out from the CIA…. Probably on Monday.

This is part 5 of my interview with Mathieu Verboud, co-director of the film about Sibel Edmonds, Kill the Messenger.
(see Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four)

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Mathieu Verboud: But let me go back to how we found about a key point in Sibel’s case : its connection to the Plame case. Around May 2005, we discovered Plame’s story in a Vanity Fair article. We knew nothing about it. We learnt that Plame was Ambassador Wilson’s wife. But a few months later, we also learnt that she had been working in counter-proliferation at the CIA. And that looked odd to us. After Barlow in the 80s, then Sibel, another U.S intelligence officer, another public servant knowledgable about nuclear black market was facing the intimidation tactics from the government. Could that just be coïncidence? Particularly since Grossman was publicly known to be involved in the Plame case along with… guess whom? Steve Hadley! The man who sealed Barlow’s fate.

In November 2005, we learnt from the Turkish paper Hurriyet that Plame was investigating Turkey, but not only that: she was investigating the ATC! Our intuition had proved right.

Later, in April 2006, we confronted Sibel with this set of facts and ask her to go on the record. Sibel’s line about Plame and Brewster Jennings is just gold. She said: "During my time at the FBI, I never heard the name Valerie Plame - but if you are asking me about Brewster Jennings, that's another story, a story that I cannot comment on because I cannot talk about anything that I did at the FBI - and the targets and the details of the investigations." The message is crystal clear: there are mentions of Brewster Jennings on the wiretaps! Praises to Sibel to be so smart in front of a camera.

Coming back to Grossman, exposing his role would have been interesting for the film, but the guy being what he is, there was no way that he would have given an interview if we had brought up any kind of charges. So we decided to just let him talk, give us his vision of Turkey. This man has nerves! Turkey, for example, was known to him as being a transit point for drugs but not as the biggest opium processing country in the world. In his always soft manners, he repeatedly tried to make us look like we had ‘caricatural views’ of Turkey.

Then we tested him - we asked him about Valerie Plame - and it was amazing to see his face change! He had the nerves to say that he didn’t know anything about Valerie Plame, or about Brewster Jennings - which is simply false! As mentioned earlier, his name had already appeared publicly in the Valerie Plame's case! Anyway, we didn't point out to that simple fact and fended off.

Next, we just mentioned that there was this little woman of Turkish origin whose name was mentioned in an article in Vanity Fair speaking about FBI and Turkey… His face changed again, and he came up with this answer: "Vanity Fair? I am afraid it is not a magazine I read!" We then asked him directly about Sibel Edmonds and he said that he didn't know anything about her. Even the name was "unfamiliar".

Luke Ryland: That's hysterical. When was that interview?

MV: early May 2006.

LR: (laughs) Oh that's great. And he's never heard of Sibel Edmonds and Valerie Plame. That's fantastic. I'd love to see that footage.

MV: Well - if we ever sell this film in the U.S, we will consider adding a small chapter on him. But you know, it can backfire at us - because in the end somebody might say that there is too much speculation. And it is true that we have no factual evidence of his involvement in the case.

That’s the irony of our film. We have no proof, none! But at the same time, everything we say is documented. Every single fact, every date, is accurate – and it’s always troubling. Someone might say: 'OK the facts are all good - but the way you put things together is just mere speculation, it's just coincidence' - well this is up for a debate of course. For us, these are not coincidences.

LR: What about the connection between Sibel Edmonds and Valerie Plame - what can you tell us about that?

MV: Apart from the complexities of these matters, we have something wonderful here: a PATTERN! Richard Barlow knows too much about nuclear stuff. Hadley goes after him. Plame knows too much about nuclear stuff. Grossman and Hadley go after her. Edmonds knows too much about nuclear stuff. Did Grossman, as some believe, go after her? Well.. anything is possible.

Marc Grossman and Steve Hadley! With these two guys, we’re not faraway from the Neocon little Mafia at the Pentagon, those people who called the shots about the war in Iraq, namely Perle and Feith. Feith and his infamous Office of Special Plans. The very place from which the latest big spy case involving Israel happened in 2005. I am speaking of the Lawrence Franklin case, an assistant to Feith arrested by the FBI for having leaked highly classified Pentagon documents describing U.S policy towards Iran and its nuclear intentions to the Israeli embassy, via his friends at AIPAC. The word 'nuclear' appears once again in this case!

Each time we have tried to decompartmentalize information, a global picture started emerging. Some observers believe that one of the reasons why the Americans and the Israelis cajoled Turkey in the 90s - beside the corruption and all that - was the perspective of being granted an airspace in the Anatolia highlands. It was seen as vitally important in the case of a military confrontation with Iran. Now, this is geopolitics, big time!

At the end of the day, you end up thinking ‘Put a Neocon on top of a nuclear case and you’ll always have a smoking gun! Same activities, same networks, same people, over the years. A bunch of maybe just ten guys. All Neocons, all longtime supporters of Israel and to a lesser extent of Turkey.

In Sibel’s case, as I said before, all roads start and end in Islamabad but we have stop overs in exotic places like Washington DC, the Balkans, Chechnya, South Africa, Israel, Dubaï, and more than often the Black Sea. And let me tell you, the Black Sea fish is hard to catch.

LR: So why do you think they went after Valerie Plame?

MV: Let me ask the question: did they go after Plame because she was investigating the American Turkish Council? That’s one tempting and plausible hypothesis! In any case, the chance that they went after her because of what she was doing at the CIA cannot be ruled out - for many reasons. Barlow’s case has shown that the U.S nuclear counterproliferation policy has been ‘sabotaged’ from the inside for decades now. History shows that whoever speaks out about these issues, whoever knows too much, shall be gagged. By the way, Barlow has also found the coïncidences between his case and the Plame case absolutely "remarkable".

Well now, thanks to whistle-blowers like Barlow, Edmonds, Cole, and patriots like Giraldi, Plame, or journalists like David Rose, Paul Sperry, Chris Deliso, the American public learns that some top U.S officials are indeed been involved in nuclear black market activities, probably to the benefit of the worst enemies of the American democracy.

Did you know that in the mid-90s Halliburton, then headed by Dick Cheney, was fined by the government for illegal dealings with Libya? Halliburton had sold equipment used for the drilling industry that could be of dual use: nuclear and non nuclear. Between 1990 to 2001, Rumsfeld, one of the Bush administration’s most strident “hardliners” on North Korea, was on the board of a Swiss firm, ABB. In 2000, ABB netted a $200 million contract with North Korea. The contract was to deliver equipment and services for two nuclear power stations. By the way, in the 1980s, Rumsfeld was busy selling U.S weapons to Saddam Hussein. They were filmed together in Iraq.

When we finished investigating, we noticed we had found nothing on Richard Armitage (laughs)…. Without him, the work looked unfinished (laughs)... As you may know, Armitage, who served at the Pentagon under Reagan, then as Deputy Secretary of State during President George W. Bush's first term, is known for his large circle of friends in the Pakistani military and ISI, as well as his connections to the Iran-Contra affair. Guess what? We recently learnt from the press that Armitage has admitted that he was among the sources of the leak of Valerie Plame!

I do believe their is more to dig about Brewster Jennings and Valerie Plame. One day, we will know the full story and we will see that Plame’s case was only connected say, one percent to Sibel‘s- but only a year ago, nobody thought that there was any connection at all. Well, after talking with David Albright, I am convinced there is at least one, and that is Turkey.

LR: Right - speaking of terrible consequences - you mentioned earlier that the first thing that you heard about Sibel 's case was that it had something to do with 911. What do you know about the connections between her case and 911?

MV: Some small things and some bigger things. The small things are more precise, and the larger issues are more diluted. From some private conversations with Sibel, it's our understanding that during her time at the FBI, she may have heard things, let’s say, about the existence of certain tapes related to Bin Laden. I won’t go into further details and quite frankly, as far as 9/11 goes, the event, and the preparation - that's all I know.

But there are other issues related to 9/11. First is WHY was 9/11 possible. Sibel’s story helps us find an answer…
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NEXT UP: Sibel & 9/11… Friday or Saturday

update: see Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six

This is part 4 of my interview with Mathieu Verboud, co-director of the film about Sibel Edmonds, Kill the Messenger.
(see Part One, Part Two and Part Three)

I'll cross-post at DU and DKOS - and hopefully get Sibel ('statesecrets') to join in the comments
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Mathieu Verboud: Turkey is interesting also because of its alliance with Israel. The Turkish military is highly connected to Israel military and Israeli weapons corporations. In the film, Giraldi explains the reasons for Israel and Turkey rapprochement back in the 80s. It is an alliance of major military and strategic importance for both countries. They signed a higly secret military agreement in 1996. When the Islamists came to power in Turkey in 1996, they could do anything but compromise the Israeli alliance. Each time they said that they wanted to do it in, Turkish Generals would go public the day afterward saying " Israel is a key ally - and we're going to continue the relationship". At the end of the 90s, all the Turkish top brass had traveled at least once to Israel and vice-versa. This is a very strong relationship. Turkey opened its airspace to the Israeli Air Force, and in particular the border zone with Syria, Iraq and Iran. In 1996 Perle, Feith and others, stressed Turkey’s strategic importance to Israel in their Clean Break paper, the infamous policy document they co-authored in favor of Israeli Prime Minister Neatanyahu, calling for all out war in the Middle east to save Israel.

From a Turkish perspective, There are lots of reasons for a rapprochement with Israel. It meant that Israel’s friends in the U.S, at the Pentagon, at the State Department or up on the Hill would then do anything for Turkey, including supplying weapons that could quench Ankara’s unsatiable thirst for weapons. To make things even ‘easier’, they used the services of know friends of Israel in the U.S : Stephen Solarz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle.

And it worked! In the 1990s, Turkish generals received dozens of billions of dollars of free military assistance from the U.S. At the time, indifferent to the fact that Turkey’s brutal repression in Kurdistan had become a growing concern for the American public, major Jewish groups in the U.S lobbied ostensibly for the Turkish cause, basically claiming that "Turkey was a victim of terrorism, like Israel." Turkish generals were delighted.

What that tells you is that Turkey has an agenda and a real one. Turkey wants to be seen as a big player in the Greater Middle-East. Several countries in the region (Israel, Pakistan, Russia) have nuclear power or want to have nuclear power (Iran), and Turkey wants to be perceived as a possible candidate for the bomb as well.

Turkey has succeeded in doing something incredible. It is the only country in the world to have been offered a nuclear alliance by two supposedly ‘enemy countries’ - Pakistan and Israel. In 1998, when Pakistan detonated its first nuclear bomb, Pakistani officials called their Turkish counteparts and offered them to be under Pakistan's nuclear umbrella - which is no small matter. The Turks said 'well - thanks for the proposal'. A few years before that, perhaps around 1995, the Israelis had extended the same proposal to Turkey. Again, Turkish generals were delighted.

Turkey has played this pivotal role for a long time and those who know Turkey will tell you that this country is thriving with excellent strategists and diplomats. Getting close to Israel to get closer to the Pentagon was a smart and well-executed move. In Turkey, things are very often based on corruption and crime, but that's another story. Turkey always featured advantageously in spy stories. There was a James Bond film with a Turkish backdrop : From Russia with Love. Ankara has always been a hotbed of spies, for example during the Second World War… There was this 1952 film, 'Five Fingers', an American film classic by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, featuring Goering’s agents spying on the U.K thanks to a traitor at the British embassy. And all those spies met each other in Ankara’s cocktail parties - it was amazing!

Luke Ryland: Ok. And Turkey already has a nuclear program, correct?

MV: To my understanding, Turkey has a civil nuclear program today – but clearly has no intention (no serious intention, according to what I read on the web anyway) to have a nuclear weapon. But diplomacy is not about having, or not having, a nuclear weapon - diplomacy is about postures, strategic moves and attitudes. Turkey wants to be seen as a country that could decide to have the bomb if they wanted to.

In diplomatic terms, this is major, because having the bomb means your status changes. Besides harbouring jihadists, Pakistan has a nuclear bomb, and that’s status! Geopolitical perceptions of Pakistan are forever changed now because of that combination: the bomb + Bin Laden. It's not the same country as it was in the 1970s, when nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan had not yet imagined he could become the father of the Pakistani bomb. Turkey knows what status is. So Turkey’s message is ‘ We too can play rough. and we can go for the bomb too'.

Keep in mind these words from Seymour Hersh in his book 'The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy': "the size and sophistication of Israel's nuclear arsenal allows men such as Ariel Sharon to dream of redrawing the map of the Middle East aided by the implicit threat of nuclear force."

LR: Ok - so which other American power brokers were helping AQ Khan?

MV: That is a key question and the little we know is already very disturbing. Many in the Reagan and the George HW Bush administration ‘protected’ the Pakistani nuclear connection!

Watch the film Atomwaffen für Al-Qaeda (Nuclear weapons for Al-Qaeda) by German director Egmond Koch. Everything is documented…


MV: Koch tells CIA whistle-blower Richard Barlow's story and Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan's story. Barlow was a brilliant CIA officer who knew almost everything about Pakistan’s nuclear program. For that reason, he was deposed by Congress in the mid–80s and, just like Sibel, the Republican administration crushed him because he told the truth during the hearings: he told Congress that Pakistan had the bomb and the U.S had never done anything really to stop it...

In 1989, and I am quoting Seymour Hersh here : "Barlow was forced to resign, under threat of firing, in what he alleges was retaliation for his persistent investigations into nuclear smuggling and his heated objections to yet another misleading congressional briefing on Pakistan."

Koch’s film confirms that. Every year, despite CIA reports highlighting Pakistan‘s progress towards the bomb, President Reagan used to sign a false waiver certifying that 'Pakistan doesn’t have the bomb.' Reagan lied for legal reasons (international law imposes tight import-export control on countries engaging in nuclear proliferation) and also for geopolitical reasons (public exposure of Pakistan’s efforts and U.S knowledge of it would have had dire consequences on U.S Congress funding for the CIA’s secret war against the Soviets in Afghanistan).

So Ronald Reagan was lying, and of course, everyone in charge knew that. At the time, one official was highly instrumental in making sure that the U.S complacency towards the Pakistani nuclear effort would never be exposed, and that man was Stephen Hadley. Hadley is the paramount example of the incestuous relations between the military industrial complex and the Executive Branch. Look at what you can read about him on his profile at Right Web that documents, with utter precision I have to say, the profile of prominent Neocons.

Quote : "Starting as a policy analyst for the DOD in 1972 during the first Nixon administration, Hadley has steadily moved up the ladder in the national security community. On the corporate side of the military-industrial complex, Hadley was a partner in a major DC law firm representing major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing." In passing, these two companies are board members of the American-Turkish Council.

Continuation of quote : "Also, outside government, he became affiliated with two policy institutes advocating hawkish positions in U.S. policy and international relations. Before becoming Rice’s top assistant, Hadley has held a variety of positions in the Defense Department and National Security Council. During the administration of George H.W. Bush, Hadley served under DOD Secretary as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy with responsibility for security policy toward NATO and Western Europe, on nuclear weapons and ballistic missile defense, and arms control."

It didn’t take long for Barlow to discover that Hadley had called the shots in his case. He decided to depose Hadley in his court case, but it was eventually in vain. Almost 20 years later, we learn that Hadley is a key part of the Valerie Plame leak. How surprising is this?

Today Hadley is National Security Advisor, Valerie Plame has lost her job and Barlow lives in a van driving the roads of West America…

LR: Moving on. I know that you interviewed Marc Grossman and that you cut it out of the film - can you talk about the interview at all?

MV: Knowing the players in the game, and knowing the business that they engage in, and this being a small world, and Grossman having served long years in Turkey and Pakistan, having served for NATO, having also met with ISI chief (Pakistani intelligence service) on a much-hyped but still mysterious meeting in the morning of September 11, at the time of the attacks, Grossman being a pillar of the ATC, so on and so forth, one could assume that this man would not be far away from those dealings - legal or illegal, it doesn’t matter!

Some observers presume he was on Sibel’s wiretaps, possibly tipping off Turkish friends about… let’s say… the risk posed to them by Brewster Jennings, the company CIA officer Valerie Plame used as a cover.
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dailykos thread
DU thread

NEXT UP : Valerie Plame and Sibel Edmonds … wednesday or thursday

update: see Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six

I have a new post over at wotisitgood4 about the fact that Sibel's corrupt boss at the FBI translation unit is now basically the only gatekeeper between the FBI agents and all Arabic speaking terrorists.

Here are some reviews of Kill The Messenger from the French press. Most reviews have been translated from the French original by babelfish with an assist by me - which has resulted in some clunkiness.

Le Figaro.

“a woman to cut down” - the true story of a woman recruited by the FBI after September 11 then sanctioned for her uprightness.

Perhaps the Public imagined that with the Children of Tranquility Bay (film on a center for young difficult Americans, rewarded in Fipa), programmed last May on France 2, Mathieu Verboud and Jean-Robert Vialley had reached a peak in the originality of the writing. But the public didn't count on this new investigation worthy of the best whodunnit by John Grisham…

The difference is that this is a true story. That of Sibel Edmonds, called “the most explosive woman of September 11”, an involuntary detonator of a politico-legal explosive business.

“It is while working on the phenomenon of “Whistle Blowers”, these employees who denounce the illegal intrigues their incredible owners and stories (Enron, pharmaceutical laboratories…), that we could come into contact with it”, tells Mathieu Verboud.

Shortly after September 11, this American born in Iran and having grown up in Turkey, who speaks Persan, Azeri and Turkish, is recruited by the FBI to translate kilometers of phone-tappings. Corruption, drugs, money laundering, companies screens, nuclear black market… what she will discover is amazing. But when spies infiltrated within the department of translation try to recruit her, she decides to inform her bosses. It is there that her life gets rocked…

Attempt at intimidation, reprisals, Sibel Edmonds is finally laid off… She turns to the Congress, then towards the Dept of Justice, but the Bush Administration chooses to muzzle this too-awkward witness, “to kill the messenger” like one says to the FBI, by exhuming an old law: the “secret States' privilege”. In short: Silence or the prison. Why? To hide what?

The Pitiless Microcosm of Washington

The business could have stopped there. But this is just the beginning for the small translator, flag-carrier for “whistle blowers”, a long struggle which the film-makers capture. A crusade for the right to the truth. And for the public, a diving haletante (?) in the twists and turns of the espionage. “When a woman leaves in war, she is never innocent" continues Mathieu Verboud. If a whistle blower can cause an earthquake, imagine when it is about September 11. It was thought that she knew an enormous secret. But the objective was also to show how the world of information had managed the terrorist attacks, the political pressures and the incompetence of the bureaucracy. ”

A work of really good investigation which required ninety days of filming and which took on board the film-makers during six months in the life of this “woman to be cut down”: "She authorized us to follow it all the more easily - as the press did not support her. She uses her public image like a strategy. But she gave us total freedom - so long as we did not ask about her specific secret.”

Their film thus points the failures of the internal investigations of the FBI, the hazardous methods, the flip-flopping, lies of the heartless microcosm of Washington, fully supported with testimonies, official speeches and recorded footage. Thus they follow senior officials, federal employees, intelligence agents (FBI, the CIA, NSA) who did not hesitate to come forward: “They needed to speak. In the information also, there are honest people. I wanted to show that the political power was certainly instrumental, but never the State had handled them as much”, insists Verboud.

The camera tracking faces, expressions, faintnesses. The result is the height of the ambition. Their accounts, pure and hard, are so rich in revelations and leaves the audience, incredulous, flabbergasted or disgusted, and will have the feeling of watching a psychological thriller which mixes suspense and reflexion. Just some lengths will be reproached. It certainly is a complex business.

This documentary which could have been only one investigation into how the Bush Administration defies national security, goes well beyond.

Putting in prospect the strange bonds between the American politicians, Turkey, Israel, Pakistan, diplomats, secret service, multinational weapons procurement, nuclear programs - léaire (?), this film casts an unexpected light on the global environment and the crisis in the Middle East."

Le Monde.

The history of Sibel Edmonds could be used to make a John Grisham 'whodunnit.' A few days after the attacks of September 11, the young woman of Turkish extraction is recruited by the FBI. She is in charge of the translation of the phone-tappings, the interrogations and the documents within the framework of the antiterrorist fight. Sibel Edmonds speaks Persian, Farsi and Azeri.

In December of the same year, she is contacted by a colleague from the FBI who tries to recruit her for the account of a mysterious Turkish lobbying organization. By denouncing this manifest case of espionage and by revealing that the FBI hides information over September 11, Sibel Edmonds found herself at the heart of the incredible business of State.

After the Children of Tranquility Bay, a beautiful documentary on the American camps of behavior modification, the film-makers Mathieu Verboud and Jean-Robert Viallet have made a film full with suspense and revelations about these men and these women - the "whistleblower" ("those who blow a whistle") - which denounce the dysfunctions of an organization or an administration. An attractive diving (?), sometimes a little difficult, in the mysteries of the reason of State in America.

AP (france)

The much-awaited documentary "Kill The Messenger" is showing Tuesday on Canal+. Mathieu (Verboud) and Jean-Robert Viallet met Sibel Edmonds whose life was transformed into nightmare after her ousting from the FBI. In a 84 minute film, they deliver the impressive testimony of Sibel Edmonds.

The young woman is 32 years old when she is recruited by the FBI as a translator, four days after September 11, 2001. She is charged with translating wiretapped conversations, some related to the 9/11 attacks. Sibel Edmonds was born in Teheran from Turkish parents, and spent the first 18 years of her life in Teheran and in Turkey, before landing in the U.S and marrying an American.

But her world gets turned upside-down when she discovers that a colleague is involved with illegal activities implicating Turkish officials. The filmmakers report the rest of Sibel's story. She reports the incident to her superiors and gets fired from the FBI. After her firing, she goes to the U.S Congress. Months pass and Sibel Edmonds realizes that nobody makes the slightest move. The young woman tells her story to the media. Time has come for Attorney General John Ashcroft to classify the whole Sibel Edmonds case as a"State Secret." If the young translator continues to speak, she'll go to prison. Determined, yet powerless, Sibel Edmonds suffers two years of loneliness.

In 2003, the Bush government accepts the creation of a commission whose role is to investigate the government and intelligence failures that led to 9/11. Sibel Edmonds then will carry out a long battle in order to expose her case: Turkish spies infiltrated the FBI and the government is apparently aware of these spies. July 24, 2004, the 9/11 Commission Report comes out, but Sibel's testimony is not included. The young woman is regarded as a "whistle-blower", she is joined in her fight by intelligence agents from the FBI, the CIA and NSA. The two filmmakers find leads pointing to the role of Turkey, Israel and Pakistan. In the 80's, at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S and Turkey were instrumental in helping Pakistan acquire nuclear power. Turkey appears to have acted as a back-door conduit for some of those
operations. Later on, Israel came into play, too. At the time, the CIA knew everything but turned a blind eye, even when Pakistan started selling its technology to friendly countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya. By then, nuclear proliferation had gone out of control and the U.S let it go. In the 90's, when the Talibans were in power in Afghanistan, some nuclear equipment even landed in the hands of Usama Bin Laden.

In addition, American-Turkish Council (ATC), a powerful American lobby, has for many years facilitated trade of the weapons with the assistance of Israel. And it is in an indirect way that Sibel Edmonds denounces the secrets of these diplomats and secret agents with her superiors. In spite of this, the young translator finds herself entangled in a spy case whose ramifications are beyond the knowledge of the young woman and the TV viewer at the same time. Besides being thorough, the investigation is captivating and alarming. Sibel's case is so complex that it look like a labyrinth without exit.

Armenews

"Film on Canal+ Don't miss - based on Vanity Fair's investigation - Sibel EDMONDS/FBI, Turk-English translator who translated the communications between the Speaker of the House and Turkish officials to receive bribes in order not to allow the resolution of the genocide to Congress in 2000

The life of Sibel Edmonds took a nightmarish turn when she was fired for mysterious reasons. Young translator having joined the FBI after September 11, she was sanctioned for her uprightness. Indeed, it discovered that one of her colleagues covered illegal activities of Turkish and American officials . She immediately informed her superiors of them. Their answer was to fire her. But the young woman decided to inform the media. Having allowed the cameras of Mathieu Verboud and Jean-Robert Viallet to follow her in her search for truth, she defies the FBI today.

The muzzled truth

A WOMAN TO BE CUT DOWN is a true espionage thriller on the only American citizen who dared to defy the F.B.I so that the truth bursts, and to ensure the Americans the safety that their government owes them.

“This real-life Whodunnit” is especially the history of Sibel Edmonds and her combat: how a translator, link of the complex chains of American information, discovers wiretaps blaming officials from America her allies. How it will defy those which threaten it, to overcome its fears and to defend the freedom which justifies its work for the country. And how, in the name of this same principle, the American authorities will prevent Sibel from speaking.

There is a true phenomenon around the translator, who has broad public support. Last April, Sibel Edmonds received from Paul Newman the “2006 First Amendment Award”, eminent distinction decreed by the PEN Club, an association in support of writers and the freedom of expression.

Revealed secrets

The work of the film-makers, at Sibel's side, explores the stakes of secrecy, was since the first day blocked by the State which justifies the threats against the young woman. Since September 11, 2001, the safety of the United States however allows innumerable distortions to the sacro-sanct personal freedoms. But higher interests seem to dictate the policy of the Bush administration…

Agents of the American Intelligence Community nevertheless “remain patriots” who validated the investigations of Mathieu Verboud. Those carry out in Turkey, Israel and to Pakistan, in the slides of the ministries for Justice and the Foreign Affairs, the F.B.I and the Pentagon. They join other significant businesses and mix business with weapons, technological espionage, nuclear black market, heroin traffic, money laundering, corruption - in particular with the American Congress - and serious threats, directly relating to national security.

A captivating and alarming investigation."

L'Humanite

"“To always deny, always hide”. This is the currency of the American secret service. Sibel Edmonds learned to her costs.

Recall the facts. Only two months after having been employed by the FBI translation department, this woman of Turco-Iranian origin will be approached by Turkish spies within the service. After having referred about it to her superiors, she is laid off without explanation, and decides to attack in justice the FBI.

In vain, her lawsuit is rejected without reason and the Minister for Justice issues the secrecy of State on the business, thus prohibiting her from speaking about her discoveries. This documentary with the simple but effective realization plunges us in the slides of the administration Bush and it is far from being reassuring!"

L'Express

"Who? Shortly after September 11, Sibel Edmonds, American of Turkish origin, is approached by the FBI to become translator in one of the most secret units. Patriotically, she accepts the job.

What? Quickly, the film demonstrates the presence of spies in the pocket of Turkish lobbies. It tells of the hierarchy, which dismisses her whole case. Sibel tries to warn the Congress, then justice, of her discoveries. But Justice Minister John Ashcroft stamps her entire case with "States Secrets"

Why? Mathieu Verboud and Jean-Robert Viallet reveal, in a palpitating investigation, the combat of this young woman against the FBI initially, then against the American authorities, whose lies hide behind the sacro-holy safety of the State"

Libération

Sibel Edmonds is 32 years old when she is contacted for the first time by the FBI, a few days after September 11, 2001. Like numerous other translators, this American, usually speaking Turkish and the Persian language, is committed to make up for lost time of the American information to decipher thousands of hours of phone-tappings.

A few weeks later, Sibel translates sulfurous conversations about money laundering, trafficking of weapons and drug, and corruption implicating American, Turkish and Israeli political personalities... Two months later, Sibel is approached by one of her translator colleagues and her husband. They propose to her, without ambiguity, a financial arrangement if she does not transmit all information which she translates. Informing her bosses at once, Sibel Edmonds enters an infernal process which lasts nearly five years. Because all her direct higher interlocutors and direction of the FBI order her to keep silent. And when she alerts the Department of Justice, she is immediately fired from the FBI and is formally prohibited from speaking. This extremely rare procedure, Secret State Privilege, obliges her to keep her silence, even in front of a judge, in the name of the secrecy of State.

The documentary clearly aims at presenting Sibel Edmonds like an angry, passionate American. The title says it all, since her combat becomes extensive since she created a coalition of "whistle blowers", a term indicating those which denounce the dysfunctions of the State, she gathers a hundred former members of the FBI, NSA, the CIA and Justice...

It is difficult to really understand why Sibel is silenced: the deep lack of curiousity of the American agencies about counter-espionage or a corruption installed at the most top of the State? One can only choose.

also - some emails from viewers

Gary Hood has a song called "Sibel Edmonds" which is included on the soundtrack to the movie. You can see them perform it live on youtube

"Don't tell me its just the way that it goes

I need to know what Sibel Edmonds knows.

And so do you."

This is Part Three (see Part One, and Part Two) of the extended interview I did with Mathieu Verboud, Co-Director of Kill The Messenger.

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Mathieu Verboud: Sibel’s case fits in a bigger picture and this picture is ghastly! And the more we learnt about her case, the more it ‘synchronised’ with the bigger picture. It is terrifying! We are not facing a smoking gun but a smoking ‘bomb’, if such an expression exists! And Sibel is the detonator.

But she has enemies. Enemies she can’t name, or only by saying "U.S officials"

These officials are no ordinary people. Their story is not limited to their connection to Sibel, far far from it! First, for decades now, they have been open agents of influence for the state of Israel. On many occasions, both Perle and Feith (not to mention their like-minded friends Harold Rhode, Michael Ledeen, Stephen Bryen) have been investigated by the FBI for passing secret information to Israeli officials. And none of what I tell you is secret, it’s been public record for… what… over three decades! The FBI started wiretapping Perle in 1970… Feith got caught in 1982.

How often did we hear, when talking to people about Perle and Feith, that besides their blind allegiance to the cause of the Israeli settlers, these two guys are in it for the money? Constantly.

They have a long story that goes far beyond the scope of this discussion. But their most significant feature is of course their vision of international relations. They always call for unbridled use of war to clear a path for U.S interests. At all cost. At all times. All targets are welcome: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, why not France… Feith is the first high-ranking official in U.S history to have systematically opposed all kind of arms control. All in the name of freedom! They don’t care if that means putting U.S national security at risk.

Perle and his clique have shaped, many now say ‘hijacked’, U.S foreign policy when they were in government but also when they were out of government. Under Clinton, many of these Necons were recruited by major U.S weapons corporations, which means they were never far from Pentagon policy makers. So these modern day ‘doctor Strangelove’ are amazingly powerful - to the point that this has become now a major concern even for traditional supporters of Israel in government agencies, like the Pentagon, the FBI or the CIA. The war in Iraq has been a catalyst for that, if not a wake up call. It's about time!

Someday, someone will write a book about Richard Perle’s story – One thing is sure: this man likes waging his own jihads using other people's blood. Very similar to the Iranian government, ready to fight Israel in Lebanon to the last drop of Lebanese blood - but never their own blood!

These people live in a world of proxy wars – a world where they control things from behind the scenes, but where no strings are attached to the deals they cut because they ultimately just put their influence on the line when others spill their blood, ultimately to make them richer and mightier.

Luke Ryland: These are the kind of people that Sibel has faced since September 2001. Do you have people in the film who talk specifically about them and their activities?

MV: Yes. In the film, we expand on these notions with ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi, who recently wrote a very interesting article about Sibel. He has suspicions that Douglas Feith and Richard Perle may have helped, or been instrumental, in establishing false end-user-certificates that enabled weapons to be sent over to the Chechen guerillas - many of them being very closely linked to Al-Qaeda.

Of course, Giraldi touches also on Perle and Feith’s connections in Israel and Turkey, their links to Israeli and U.S defense contractors, including major ones (Feith was a consultant for Northrop Grumman), always playing both sides of the fence, dealing with a variety of dubious characters across the globe.

Those who know Sibel’s case will add Turkish generals, NATO officials, and most probably the Turkish mafia to this picture gallery.

This should not sound like a surprise. How many times did we find Neocon fingerprints on dirty policies with Central Asia, on this legendary Silk Road that has now become the Eldorado for jihad, US Army wargames, CIA’s secret prisons, oil, gas, weapons, heroin trade, arms trafficking, nuclear black market, high technology transfers, mafia activities…? All too often!

And Sibel’s enemies have such a direct access to policymakers that you wonder at times whether they are not part of a ‘shadow government’.

One example. In 2000, the newly-elected House Speaker Dennis Hastert (a man we know is involved in Sibel’s case for having allegedly accepted Turkish bribes in the late 90’s) needed a senior foreign policy adviser. Who got the job ? Nancy Dorn, a top lobbyist for the government of Azerbaijan (a ‘Turkic’ country). This created enormous embarrassment up on the Hill. A former Reagan and Bush administration official, Nancy Dorn had also represented the government of Pakistan as well as Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, a controversial Hong Kong company closely tied to Red China. Hutchinson Wampoa whose interests in Panama sparked a loud and nasty round of conservative hand-wringing about a Chinese attempt to take control of the Panama Canal! Hutchison Whampoa Ltd’s owner, Li Ka-Shing was a shareholder of the BCCI, a bank closed in 1991 after a $12-billion bankruptcy scandal. The BCCI, whose director was Saudi banker Khalid Bin Mahfouz, had funneled money to Islamist charities and also to the Pakistan’s nuclear program. By the way, Khalid Bin Mahfouz’s sister married Usama Bin Laden…

LR: Wow - Hastert, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, China, BCCI, Bin Laden, the Islamic bomb… !

MV: (laughs)… the story is not over. In 2003, Hutchison got interested in the buyout of Global Crossings, a U.S telecom giant and also a Pentagon contractor. Guess who Global Crossing retained as a consultant to help overcome the Pentagon’s resistance to the company's proposed sale to a Red China proxy? The then chairman of Pentagon’s advisory Defense Policy Board: Richard Perle himself.

OK, let’s add Perle to this funny picture…. the story is not over yet.

During the 90’s, Loral, a U.S manufacturer of satellite and military electronic systems, was under State Department and Pentagon scrutiny for leaks of embargoed technology to China…. At the time, space systems, satellites, missile technology, avionics were highly ‘sensitive’ stuff… and a major source of interest for Turkey (already a good client of Loral) and Israel, these two countries being, as you know, compulsive buyers of U.S hi-tech weaponry.

During that decade, the State Department, the CIA and the DIA had already compiled evidence that Israel had violated US export regulations by transferring missile, laser and aircraft technology to China, with official reports dating back the pattern to 1983! During the Gulf War in 1991, U.S troops found that Iraqi tanks were equipped with U.S technology illegally obtained by Israel, then sold to China who eventually sold it to the Iraqi.

Coming back to Loral. Who did Loral retain in 1998 then in 2001 to help settle its dispute with the Pentagon and the State Department? Douglas Feith, always an ardent supporter of ambitious missile defense systems, and Richard Perle.

Wherever they are, these people always end up in a situation of conflict of interest. When it too obvious that they look like the fox in a henhouse, they still have the possibility of planting their friends in the right spots.

LR: Like the Dickersons?

MV: (laughs)… Right! Let me give you an unbelievable example of that. In 2000, in the last months of the Clinton Administration, a panel was established by Congress in order to counter "back door" technology leaks to China. This ‘China Commission’ had already established Israel as a supplier to Beijing of radar systems, optical & telecom equipment, drones & flight simulators. OK, guess who was appointed in 2001 to this China Commission, with the support of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz ? An ex-assistant to Richard Perle by the name of Stephen Bryen. Bryen was this ex Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer who had to resign in 1979 after he was overheard in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials! Now guess who brought ‘Bryen the fox’ into the hen house by appointing him? Speaker Dennis Hastert!

This story is still not over!

Guess who else is a member of this China Commission? Michael Ledeen, a long-time friend of Perle and Feith! A man with an impeccable record! In an excellent article ("Serving two Flags" Counterpunch, February 2004), author Stephen Green states that Ledeen, hired by Perle in 1983 as a Pentagon consultant on terrorism, had his security clearances downgraded from Top Secret-SCI to Secret, after one of his bosses, Noel Koch, the Principal Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, had urged the FBI to investigate him for passing classified materials to a foreign country, believed to be Israel. Ledeen was also a key player in the Iran-Contra affair too. After 9/11, while Feith and Perle were pushing for war against Iraq, Ledeen was pushing for another simultaneous war against Iran. History repeats itself!

For some reason, many within this Neocon mafia are Jewish. And this, we have to say, raises all sorts of concerns. Mainly because these people’s behaviors help fuel a growing anti-Jewish sentiment everywhere in the world and that’s not good news. So much so that today many Israeli observers believe that the Neocons have become detrimental to Israel’s interests.

Again, there's a major piece of history to be written here and it so happens that Sibel Edmonds is entangled in this web. As Christopher Deliso says, Sibel by herself is a connecting dot to many things. She is the missing piece that helps assemble (or understand) almost the whole puzzle. We agree. She's amazing, and what she knows but cannot tell (because of the gag order on her) is amazing too!

LR: Her story is amazing, indeed. When I'm trying to understand this whole story, I struggle to get my head around which part of the story is ideological, if any, and which elements are about pure financial greed - particularly with respect to Israel, for example.

MV: Well, you’d better be talented if you are really greedy, because cash is not going to pop up like this. You have to make things work, you have to grease the machine. So, let’s say Richard Perle is extremely talented. He has always suceeded in preserving his private business interests, even when he was in government. He has his priorities straight. He is a good mechanic!

LR: Right - do you see that there's much ideology on the Turkish front? Or is the Turkey scenario just a useful platform to sell arms, or to move heroin etc?

MV: If we put together all the evidence we have in Sibel’s case, many roads lead to Turkey obviously – wiretaps targets are Turkish, those who wanted to recruit Sibel are linked to Turkish interests, U.S officials allegedly involved in arms trafficking are connected to Turkey, but the question is 'which Turkey?'

In Turkey, you have the army, the MIT (intelligence service), connected in countless ways with the warlords, the baba families (drug barons), the extreme right… you also have the Kurds. You have many players in Turkey! And all these people play with weapons, narcs, money.

I guess that in the case of Turkey, we should speak more of strategy than of ideology. Maybe selling arms, moving heroin are just means to an end, the end being maybe increased power or increased political leverage.

And this is where Israel comes in…
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NEXT UP: The Israel-Turkey connection…

update: see Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six