Kill the Messenger: Sibel Edmonds

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