Sibel Edmunds Is Waiting

Okay, listen up. Sibel Edmunds has been ignored long enough. For some background on the former translator working for the FBI just prior to 9/11, if you need it, you can go here. And for information about the legal case she has brought to try to get her testimony aired, you can go here.
Now, ex-CIA agent, Phil Giraldi, has some more to say about it.
Via a post by Lukery at Wot Is It Good For, we’re informed that Henry Waxman’s oversight committee is not interested in what Sibel has to say possibly due to Waxman's attachment to Israel and AIPAC.
Even though Waxman is seemingly hot to investigate the Bush administration on the forged Niger documents and Iraq contracting fraud, he apparently has no desire to look into Sibel’s claims of illegal arms sales in high government places. Has it been so long since the Iran-Contra arms deals that we should think that’s unlikely?

[Ms. Edmunds claims] 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.

Who would these three be? Our old friends Doug Feith and Richard Perle, and a former State Department official, Marc Grossman. (She also puts Dennis Hastert and our buddy Paul Wolfowitz in the pot.)
Edmonds’ testimony in the past has been considered credible, but most of it has been kept under wraps, and she has been under a gag order since giving it. Giraldi speculates that Waxman is avoiding Sibel’s claims

[…] 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.

Lukery ends his post in the comments section arguing for the possibility that a slow resolution of all these types of inquiries and investigations might be best in the long run to essentially dig out the toxin that is the current administration and GOP from its roots, but that…”If it is business as usual, and Waxman is just bowing to AIPAC’s wishes, then we have truly been taken over and it is time for pitchforks.”
Sibel’s claims are all about illegal arms deals, money laundering and drug trafficking. And it’s been my belief from way back that when you look at those three things, you’ll find essentially all of the corrupt people in top positions of power in our country, and that’s their connection to 9/11. Not too hard to figure – that’s where the money and the power are all around the globe: drug trafficking and arms dealing.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

UPDATE 2/20/18:  Glenn Greenwald Twitter thread regarding Sibel Edmonds, calling her a "pathological liar and an insane person."

Spying for Israel

Gettin' bigger, folks.

The name of "one of the [State] department's rising stars" has reportedly turned up in an indictment in the AIPAC case, as "the first higher-ranking government official to be caught up in the criminal inquiry."

  Source: Cursor

D'oh!

The indictment does not accuse USGO-2 of any wrongdoing, nor does it indicate whether he might have been authorized to talk with the lobbyist. Mr. Satterfield is not believed to be the subject of a continuing investigation. He is the first higher-ranking government official to be caught up in the criminal inquiry.

Mr. Satterfield's role in the inquiry has been known within a small circle at the State Department. Before he was sent to Baghdad, officials at the State Department asked the Justice Department whether the investigation posed any impediment to his assignment in Iraq, someone who has been officially briefed said. Officials at the State Department were advised that he could take the job.

[...]

Current and former colleagues praised Mr. Satterfield as a seasoned and careful diplomat. "I've known David Satterfield for 20 years, and he is thoroughly professional, and takes his responsibilities very seriously," said Dennis Ross, the former chief Middle East negotiator for the United States and a longtime State Department official. "He has always acted solely in American interests." Martin Indyk, Mr. Satterfield's former boss in the Clinton administration, both at the National Security Council at the White House and at the State Department, said the idea that Mr. Satterfield leaked classified information is "absurd."

  NY Times article

In which case, he might be the perfect scapegoat.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005; Posted: 2:41 p.m. EDT (18:41 GMT)

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (CNN) -- Two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a Pentagon analyst pleaded not guilty in federal court Tuesday on charges of unauthorized communication of national defense information and conspiracy involving such information.

The former AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin entered their pleas before U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis in Alexandria, Virginia.

Rosen, Weissman and Franklin will remain free until trial on personal recognizance bonds of $100,000 each. As part of the arrangement they also are required to surrender travel documents and they cannot leave the Washington metropolitan area without permission from the court. Rosen and Weissman were fired by AIPAC in April.

  CNN article

For doing nothing wrong.

A criminal complaint returned this month alleged Franklin, who once worked on the Iran desk at the Pentagon, disclosed classified information to officials from AIPAC, a pro-Israel lobbying group. Court documents also alleged Franklin conspired to communicate classified information to the representative of a foreign government, whom sources have identified as Israel.

But wait! There's more.

Why AIPAC Indictment Is Bad News for Rove

Remember the disinformation peddled by NBC news -- the story that Iran has supplied the Iraq insurgents with sophisticated new bombs? I registered my skepticism yesterday. That skepticism has been authoritatively confirmed by Juan Cole in his latest column.

Do you notice how there are 250,000 tons of missing munitions in Iraq, such that it is not necessary for the Baath military intelligence to import very many from elsewhere?

Damn straight. I should have made that point myself.

Jerome a Paris on Daily Kos has a fine run-down on the administration's attempts to foment a new war with Iran.

So far, we're missing one key element: The personal touch. The right-wing propaganda machine has yet to direct a great deal of personal invective toward the Iranian president -- the (ulp!) elected president -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Conservatives love to demonize. When the Murdochian hordes tell us the Ahmadinejad eats babies, when the tabloids "reveal" that he wears a dress, then you'll know that war is nigh.

  Joseph Cannon post: Iran, Ledeen, Rove, AIPAC, and more

Karl Rove's only full-time foreign-policy advisor is Michael Ledeen, a rabid anti-Arab, pro-Israel activist. The FBI is investigating Ledeen for procuring forged documents (shown here) on nonexistent WMD, which George Bush used to justify his war on Iraq. When Joseph Wilson exposed the farce, Rove helped "out" Wilson's CIA wife. Did Ledeen procure the documents for Rove, and how might he have done that? The story includes multinational stool pigeon Rocco Martino, Italian spy Francesco Pazienza, wanted CIA spy Robert Seldon Lady, and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, who's under charges of giving US secrets to Israel.

  Bellaciao article

Here it is:

KARL ROVE, MICHAEL LEDEEN SPIES PROCURED FORGED NIGER DOCUMENTS

I'm almost sorry I'll be gone by the time this can of worms spills all over the White House.

Or maybe that's why Georgie is on his vacation. Gettin' a little hot in the White House kitchen.

AIPAC investigation goes on quietly

Recall that Larry Franklin has been indicted.

Justin Raimondo discusses what we can expect next.

Two other defendants – Steve Rosen, a longtime top official of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and his aide, foreign policy director Keith Weissman – are expected to be indicted shortly. The charges involve passing top-secret information to the government of Israel: word is out that American law enforcement wants to talk to any Israeli diplomats who may have been involved with these transactions or may have knowledge of them. It's no secret that the Israeli diplomat directly involved is Naor Gilon, chief political officer at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, who has been mysteriously recalled just in time to avoid having to claim diplomatic immunity.

Rosen and Weissman were fired back when the story came out, presumably to avoid charges against AIPAC.

Remember what classified info Larry Franklin passed on to the Israelis...

Larry Franklin, a Pentagon analyst in the Near East and South Asia office who worked for the Defense Department's Office of Special Plans confessed last August to federal agents he had held meetings with a contact from the Israeli government during which he passed a highly classified document on U.S. policy toward Iran, these sources said. The document advocated support for Iranian dissidents, covert actions to destabilize the Iranian government, arming opponents of the Islamic regime, propaganda broadcasts into Iran, and other programs, these sources said.

Ahem. "Covert actions to destabilize the Iranian government..."

A six-count indictment charged him with conspiracy to share classified information with people not authorized to receive it.

[...]

Franklin has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His trial date was set for Sept. 6. He faces a maximum sentence of 55 years if convicted of all counts.

  Reuters article

And remember that Larry Franklin comes to you via Rumsfiend's secret Office of Special Plans.

The clear import of the Niger uranium forgeries is that, far from being a "mistake," the intelligence was fixed.

Who fixed it? Who coordinated the effort to lie us into war? These questions are being raised by multiple investigations into illegal activities at the highest reaches of this administration.

[...]

The outing of Wilson's wife as a CIA agent, who supposedly got him his mission to Niger as an act of nepotism, was their revenge. At the root of their fury, however, was a real need to cover their trail, because it leads directly to the root question in all this tangled thicket of plots and counterplots: Who forged the Niger uranium documents?

[...]

If Patrick J. "Bulldog" Fitzgerald is now making inquiries into how those 16 words got into Bush's speech, and is now busy tying this effort into those who planted information about Plame in the media through journalistic "cutouts," then he is also homing in on the essence of the matter – who were the forgers?

[...]

[Former military intelligence and CIA counterterrorism agent, Philip Giraldi's] answer:

"A couple of former CIA officers who are familiar with that part of the world who are associated with a certain well-known neoconservative who has close connections with Italy."

  Raimondo article

Who is that? None other than Michael Ledeen.

My, my, my.

Raimondo's article also details the "covert actions", including arms deals through some of our favorite neocons.

Read it.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.