Kill the Messenger: Sibel Edmonds

On Saturday Feb 3, there will be a private screening of the movie about Sibel Edmonds' case, ‘Kill the Messenger,’ in DC at Busboys & Poets. I can't be there, unfortunately. Dammit.

After the movie there will be a moderated panel discussion covering the following topics: the current state of the U.S. Main media, unconstitutional government secrecy, and national security whistleblowers.


From the invitation:
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The panel will include experts on media, secrecy and whistleblowers; below is a list of confirmed panel members:

Mathieu Verboud, Film Director, Kill the Messenger- In 2005, Mathieu Verboud and Jean Robert Viallet co-directed “The Lost Children of Tranquility Bay,” an investigative documentary on ultra violent boot camps for troubled teens in the U.S. “Kill The Messenger,” “Une Femme a abattre,” is the second film co-directed by Verboud and Viallet. This exclusive investigative piece tells the story of Sibel Edmonds, an ex-FBI employee fighting to expose a major espionage case, and its subsequent cover-up by the US government.

James Bamford, Author, Investigative Journalist - Mr. Bamford is a bestselling author and one of the country's leading writers on intelligence and national security issues. His books include The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets, the only two books on the ultrasecret National Security Agency, and most recently A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies, which Time called “probably the best one-volume companion to the harrowing events in the war on terrorism since 1996.” Mr. Bamford has also written for many magazines, including investigative cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine and The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and is a contributing writer for Rolling Stone. He recently won the 2006 National Magazine Award for Reporting, the highest honor in the magazine industry. He also spent a decade as the Washington Investigative Producer for the ABC News program, World News Tonight, and was a distinguished visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Robert Parry, Investigative Journalist, Consortium News- Mr. Parry is an investigative journalist. During the 1980’s he worked for Associated Press and Newsweek, and broke a number of Iran-Contra stories. He was the first journalist to report on Oliver North’s activities in the White House basement, and the first to describe the Nicaraguan Contras’ involvement with Cocaine traffickers. In 1995, he established Consortium News as an online publication dedicated to investigative journalism. Mr. Parry has written several books, including Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the press and “Project Truth” and Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.

Ben Wizner, Attorney, ACLU- Ben Wizner has been a staff attorney at the ACLU since 2001. He is counsel in the ACLU's challenge to the rendition to torture of an innocent German citizen (El-Masri v. Tenet), as well as in the ACLU's suits seeking to expose FBI and Pentagon surveillance of domestic groups and individuals. He was part of the legal team representing Sibel Edmonds in her suit challenging her unlawful termination by the FBI. Ben is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law.

Stephen Kohn, attorney, KK&C; Chairman of the Board, National Whistleblower Center- Mr. Kohn is one of the nation's foremost experts in the area of whistleblower protection. Mr. Kohn wrote the first legal treatise on whistleblowing and has successfully litigated many of the nation's landmark whistleblower cases, including Sibel Edmonds’ case. He is a former Clinical Supervisor at the Antioch School of Law. He has a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law, an M.A. in Political Science from Brown University, and a B.S. in Social Education from Boston University. Mr. Kohn is the author of numerous books and law review articles on whistleblowing and the rights of political dissidents.

Kristina Borjesson- An award-winning print and broadcast journalist for more than twenty-five years, Kristina Borjesson is a noted media critic and investigative journalist. Her latest book, Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11: Top Journalists Speak Out contains a series of candid conversations with leading US journalists, including national security and intelligence reporters, examining mainstream press coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war. Most recently, Borjesson has been producing an investigative documentary for HDNet’s Dan Rather Reports. The program focuses on key individuals in the US government responsible for generating and disseminating the false information used to take the US to war in Iraq.


Background: “Kill the Messenger,” a documentary produced by Zadig Productions, directed by French filmmakers Mathieu Verboud and Jean Robert Viallet, has been featured in prime time on Canal + in France and on Be TV in Belgium, and will also be aired in Australia, on SBS. The documentary explores the abuses behind the State Secrets Privilege as invoked in FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds’ case as well as highlighting the travails and persecution of US national security whistleblowers.


The filmmakers, Verboud and Viallet, spent nearly two years interviewing witnesses and researching the invocation and implementation of the state secrets privilege in Edmonds’ case. Based on their documented findings and interviews with experts such as David Albright, Philip Giraldi, John Cole, Joseph Trento, Glenn Fine, and others familiar with Edmonds’ case, the film presents a terrifying picture of Turkish networks’ activities in global nuclear black-market, narcotics and illegal arms trafficking activities in the United States, and examines the extraordinary efforts of officials within the US Government to insure that the secrecy surrounding Edmonds’ case be maintained at any cost – from Edmonds’ termination from the FBI, to invoking the State Secrets Privilege, to gagging the US Congress.


The filmmakers, Verboud and Viallet, spent nearly two years interviewing witnesses and researching the invocation and implementation of the state secrets privilege in Edmonds’ case. Based on their documented findings and interviews with experts such as David Albright, Philip Giraldi, John Cole, Joseph Trento, Glenn Fine, and others familiar with Edmonds’ case, the film presents a terrifying picture of Turkish networks’ activities in global nuclear black-market, narcotics and illegal arms trafficking activities in the United States, and examines the extraordinary efforts of officials within the US Government to insure that the secrecy surrounding Edmonds’ case be maintained at any cost – from Edmonds’ termination from the FBI, to invoking the State Secrets Privilege, to gagging the US Congress.


To view the trailer, an exclusive interview with the directors, background information, and more Click Here

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The panel will be recorded, and I'll post the video here when it becomes available.

I understand that there will be a number of journalists at the screening - with any luck, we will soon see some more articles written about Sibel's case. About time, don't you think?

In case you missed it, Jeff Stein wrote an article in Congressional Quarterly quoting the movie on Monday:

“I thought that I could be of some assistance to her,” (John M. Cole, a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent) 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.

John Cole was actually working on a related case to Sibel's - and he too has reported the details of the case to both the Dept of Justice's Inspector General and Congress.

From the Vanity Fair article about Sibel:

"Now 44, (John Cole) joined the F.B.I. in 1985. By the late 1990’s, he was running undercover operations in the Washington area, focusing on counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence. Later, while playing a key role in the 9/11 investigation, he became the F.B.I.’s national counter-intelligence program manager for India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. "

Did you catch that? The FBI drove their key counter-intelligence manager for Pakistan and Afghanistan (and 911) out of his job because he defended the "100% accurate" Sibel. Read that again, and then line up to see the movie when it gets released in the US.

In the meantime, we'll have some action items for you in the coming weeks to help support Sibel. We have some good news on the way. Stay tuned.

Oh - and you can see the reviews of the movie from France here.

I'm going to be offline for 2 weeks immediately after the screening of the movie, but my buddy Miguel will be posting any media followup at sibeledmonds.blogspot.com