You know, it would be improper of me to smear the reputation of one of our nation's officials (and a fellow Republican no less); perhaps I should explain why his name came up?
Well, there's the (non-)story of Sibel Edmonds... from CBS News 60 Minutes "Lost in Translation", dated October, 2002:
Edmonds put her concerns about the FBI's language department in writing to her immediate superiors and to a top official at the FBI. For months, she said she received no response. Then, she turned for help to the Justice Department's inspector general and to Sen. Charles Grassley, whose committee, the Judiciary Committee, has direct oversight of the FBI.
"She's credible," says Grassley. "And the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story."
Why is it a non-story? Because, with few exceptions, the Sibel Edmonds story has not made it into the mainstream media. And, when it has - as in the 60 Minutes piece quoted above - only the least explosive of her allegations were addressed.
But, the story has come out. Deposed in the Ohio case Schmidt v. Krikorian, Sibel actually names the names of those who were, according to the information she saw when working as a translator for the FBI, working for the Turkish Deep State (a convergence of Turkish government officials, Turkish big business, and Turkish organized crime). (At first, due to legal maneuvering, the video is rather tedious; but, it gets very interesting later on.)
From Who's Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?, by Sibel Edmonds and Phil Giraldi, November 1, 2009:
A Department of Justice inspector general's report called Edmonds's allegations "credible," "serious," and "warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI." Ranking Senate Judiciary Committee members Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) have backed her publicly. "60 Minutes" launched an investigation of her claims and found them believable. No one has ever disproved any of Edmonds's revelations, which she says can be verified by FBI investigative files.
John Ashcroft's Justice Department confirmed Edmonds's veracity in a backhanded way by twice invoking the dubious State Secrets Privilege so she could not tell what she knows. The ACLU has called her "the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America."
Edmonds described a foreign intelligence network. In it, the State Department's number three guy at the time, Marc Grossman, would help conduct espionage, including pointing out to this foreign network which elected officials might be vulnerable to being recruited for treasonous activities. From farther down in the article:
GIRALDI: And Grossman received money as a result. In one case, you said that a State Department colleague went to pick up a bag of money...
EDMONDS: $14,000
GIRALDI: What kind of information was Grossman giving to foreign countries? Did he give assistance to foreign individuals penetrating U.S. government labs and defense installations as has been reported? It's also been reported that he was the conduit to a group of congressmen who become, in a sense, the targets to be recruited as "agents of influence."
EDMONDS: Yes, that's correct. Grossman assisted his Turkish and Israeli contacts directly, and he also facilitated access to members of Congress who might be inclined to help for reasons of their own or could be bribed into cooperation. The top person obtaining classified information was Congressman Tom Lantos. A Lantos associate, Alan Makovsky worked very closely with Dr. Sabri Sayari in Georgetown University, who is widely believed to be a Turkish spy. Lantos would give Makovsky highly classified policy-related documents obtained during defense briefings for passage to Israel because Makovsky was also working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
GIRALDI: Makovsky is now working for the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy, a pro-Israeli think tank.
EDMONDS: Yes. Lantos was at the time probably the most outspoken supporter of Israel in Congress. AIPAC would take out the information from Lantos that was relevant to Israel, and they would give the rest of it to their Turkish associates. The Turks would go through the leftovers, take what they wanted, and then try to sell the rest. If there were something relevant to Pakistan, they would contact the ISI officer at the embassy and say, "We've got this and this, let's sit down and talk." And then they would sell it to the Pakistanis.
GIRALDI: ISI—Pakistani intelligence — has been linked to the Pakistani nuclear proliferation program as well as to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
So, this network included elected and appointed officials in the US government on one end, and wound its way through narcotics- and arms-smugglers to terrorists, including Al Qaeda and the Taliban, on the other end. Skipping down:
GIRALDI: So the network starts with a person like Grossman in the State Department providing information that enables Turkish and Israeli intelligence officers to have access to people in Congress, who then provide classified information that winds up in the foreign embassies?
EDMONDS: Absolutely. [snip]
One US official whose name came up was Congressman Roy Blunt. From Sibel Edmonds: The Traitors Among Us, by Brad Friedman, dated March, 2010:
According to Edmonds, Representative Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) — likely to run for a U.S. Senate seat in 2010 — was "the recipient of both legally and illegally raised... campaign donations from... Turkish entities."
Is there truth to this? Well, consider this:
Of course, one legal, documented $1000 donation is nothing. Once these guys start steering money to someone, that money comes from many different directions.
More on that to follow... :)
No comments:
Post a Comment