Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

It’s Sibel time again.

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.
The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.
[...]
[Edmonds] says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
[...]
One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.
  Times Online

Edmonds says the file existed while she was working for the FBI.

[The FOIA request] was made […] by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.

I suppose that anonymous correspondent could in fact be Sibel Edmonds.

Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed.
“I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders,” she said, “but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.
“This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.” [Ed: It’s five years now that Edmonds has been under gag order.]

[The Edmonds story is one of] allegations of a wide network of "moles" in place at U.S. nuclear installations, who were stealing and selling information on the foreign nuclear black market, as U.S. officials either looked the other way or were complicit in the criminal activities.
[...]
Though there has been worldwide coverage of the recent blockbuster in the Rupert Murdoch-owned British paper, the U.S. media have remained entirely mum, a point which has drawn great consternation from both Edmonds and the 70's-era "Pentagon Papers" Daniel Ellsberg.
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As The BRAD BLOG reported along with the Times two weeks ago, the operation also includes allegations that high-ranking U.S. officials --- such as Marc Grossman, a former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, who served as the #3 official in the State Department under Colin Powell and Richard Armitage from 2001 to 2005 --- were involved in the sale of those secrets and may have accepted pay-offs from agents in the black market network in the bargain.
[...]
[The Sunday Times] reports that they've "obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file" referred to in the anonymous letter.
[...]
Edmonds denied being the source for the anonymous letter, telling The BRAD BLOG "absolutely not," when we asked her directly if she was its author...
In addition to references in the letter to "Recorded wiretaps pertaining to conversations between Mr. Marc Grossman...and a Turkish official at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, DC, between August 2001 and December 2001," there are references to "Internal communication within the Department of Justice between December 2005 and march [sic] 2007." Edmonds points out she has no information on such internal communications at any period after 2002, when she was fired by the FBI after whistleblower complaints to her superiors about infiltration within the translations department.
[...]
After the initial story in the Times two weeks ago, Edmonds posted a number of photographs of high-ranking U.S. officials and members of think tanks, on her website, without names or comment. The photos are believed to be those she alleges are involved in the criminal activities described in the various coverage of her explosive allegations.
[...]
Last October, in a BRAD BLOG Exclusive, Edmonds had announced she was willing to defy her gag order, in order to give the entire story to any American mainstream broadcast outlet who would allow her to do so. Not a single media operation in this country took her up on the offer.
  Brad Blog

Now that’s strange. But wait….

"I have had [American] reporters call me and tell me that I have 'stumbled on some big time national security, covert operation'," she continued, explaining that as the reason given by some for staying away from the story.
"Well, Iran-Contra was a goddamn covert operation too! Even if that's what they're telling reporters in the U.S., it doesn't make the operation any less illegal.

So the U.S. media has been told by the government that this is all a “covert” operation? Is that also the story why nobody cares about A.Q. Khan?
If you’ve looked at that page of photos, you’ve recognized some of our old friends you aren’t surprised to see. Some with experience in other bribery cases. Dennis Hastert. He had to suddenly and mysteriously spend time with his family, didn’t he? And wasn’t his name in the pot for bribery charges on the Abramoff scandal?
Larry Franklin – already busted in another case selling state secrets to Israel.
Richard Perle, who had to leave his post because of the heat surrounding his profiteering from the Iraq invasion – improperly mixing business and politics, someone called it.
Others better known, others less.
But you know, I could believe that there is a covert operation to sell nuclear plans around the world. And it could even be that there is something about the plans they’re selling that is sabotaged. They’ve done it with computer programs. But if that is what they’re doing, it seems to me that nuclear “secrets” information is a pretty dangerous game.
On the other hand, I could also believe that they’re selling nuclear secrets in hopes they can control who gets the information and who doesn’t. Because they are just that stupid some times.
As Daniel Ellsberg says:

"Sensitive" and "covert" are often synonyms for "half-assed," "idiotic," and "dangerous to national security," as well as "criminal." All of these would apply to the pattern of activities revealed by Edmonds if it were truly presidentially authorized, as is being whispered. Such activities persist, covertly, to the point of national disaster because the press neglects what our First Amendment was precisely intended to protect and encourage it to do: expose wrongdoing by officials.

Let Sibel Edmonds Speak
Just a Citizen (Sibel Edmonds website)


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

Ironic Times

Iyad Allawi [...] ran an exile organization intent on deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990's to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the C.I.A., several former intelligence officials say.

[...]

Dr. Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, used car bombs and other explosive devices... Ex-CIA officer Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed."

[...]

Dr. Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, used car bombs and other explosive devices smuggled into Baghdad from northern Iraq, the officials said. Evaluations of the effectiveness of the bombing campaign varied, although the former officials interviewed agreed that it never threatened Saddam Hussein's rule.

[...]

[O]ne former senior intelligence official recalled that "bombs were going off to no great effect."

"I don't recall very much killing of anyone," the official said.

[...]

An American intelligence officer who worked with Dr. Allawi in the early 1990's noted that "no one had any problem with sabotage in Baghdad back then," adding, "I don't think anyone could have known how things would turn out today."

  Common Dreams article

Ah, another grand CIA operation.

I'm pretty sure they're doing similar things today (in Iran, for one place) and have the same clear ignorance about how things might turn out tomorrow.

It does appear that the car bombing campaign in Iraq has increased in effectiveness now that Saddam is gone. But, the world is a better place without him, of course.

When Dr. Allawi was picked as interim prime minister [...] he said his first priority would be to improve the security situation by stopping bombings and other insurgent attacks in Iraq — an idea several former officials familiar with his past said they found "ironic."