Conspiracy Theories

From a discussion on Facebook, I reproduce my extensive comment:

Sibel Edmonds has pretty much told us what is going on. For several years, she talked around a gag order, then she was ordered to do a deposition, and she named names. I have the links at my blog. The Sibel Edmonds Deposition
The first many minutes of the deposition are objections and so on, but then it gets interesting.

Sibel Edmonds was a low-level interpreter at the FBI's Washington, DC, Field Office; she speaks Turkish, among other important languages. She had applied to do work for the FBI, but only in the wake of 9/11 did they suddenly want to get caught up on their backlog of untranslated information.

In the information she translated, there was a great deal to clue us in that blueprints of US skyscrapers had been sent to the Middle East, and that Al Qaeda was going to crash airliners into US skyscrapers - not surprising, since Al Qaeda had been toying with the idea for a decade.

However, the information on this came in through channels that collect intelligence on narcotics and money-laundering operations, not on terrorism. The cartels that trafficked heroin through Turkey at the time, tied in to the Turkish Deep State, were connected to Al Qaeda, and that is how the information got passed; Al Qaeda, like other terrorist organizations since the end of the Cold War, funds its terrorist operations through organized crime, and trafficking Afghan heroin is a major aspect of this.

On the other end, though, the connections went to very important US officials, both elected and appointed, from both major parties, who were on the payroll of these Turkish organized crime groups.

Consequently, a serious investigation into 9/11 would have connected key Washington politicians to transnational organized crime and even to Al Qaeda itself. These officials derailed any attempts at such investigations by using State Secrets Privelege, telling the FBI that an investigation would hurt sensitive national security and foreign relations interests, when in fact the intervening officials were protecting their own criminal activity.

None of this is now secret; do an internet research, and you can confirm everything written here.

What I find interesting is her assertions that she saw papers that showed we knew Al Qaeda was going to attack with airplanes, and that she knew blueprints of skyscrapers had gone to the Middle East.
9/11 theories have it either 1) it was the Muslims, and stop being a conspiracy-theorist, the Musims are a threat, or 2) it was an inside job, and the Muslims were just the fall guys.

The truth is that Islam lends itself to terrorism, and, while there are good people who are Muslims, a disproportionate number of the world's terrorists are Muslims. They hate infidels, and they did attack us; the intelligence community was following the development of their plans to use aircraft to attack us for a decade prior to 9/11. Documents to support this were made available during the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, and I have copies.

But, the Twin Towers were designed to be able to withstand multiple airliner hits per tower; yet, two hits took down the Twin Towers and WTC-7.

Islamic terrorists did indeed attack, but the hijacking of the aircraft and their crashing into buildings was only part of the plan; it succeeded against all odds, and did far more damage than was even remotely possible.

It is my belief they laundered drug money through computers in the towers that were still running while the people who were supposed to be operating them were contemplating jumping out of windows to escape the fire. The buildings were imploded; I believe this was in part to destroy the computers and cover up the evidence of money-laundering.

To do this required some inside help, but, as we established from the Sibel Edmonds case, there is enough corruption in the US tied to friends of Al Qaeda for the help to be available.

I have more information, and more theories that fit the facts.

The Plame case is connected to the Edmonds case; both cases give us a glimpse of the same iceberg by looking at different parts of it that broke the surface of the water.

The Terrance Yeakey case is more remote, and at first does not appear to be connected, but I believe very similar dynamics are involved.

Investigative reporter and author Jayna Davis connected the OKBOMB to the Middle East, specifically to Iraq intelligence operatives.

In my opinion, a thorough investigation of the OKBOMB would have connected the Clinton Administration to narcotics traffickers. Instead, Clinton declared that it was only right-wing terrorists, covering up the Middle East connection, and used the attack for domestic political purposes; he then won re-election, just barely.

Terrance Yeakey was a sergeant with the OKPD, a first responder at the OKBOMB. He saw something very suspicious, and was brutally murdered for what he saw. The OKBOMB and the TiNRATs, Part 1.

Do your own research. My theories are my theories, but the facts can be readily confirmed, and I tried to clearly identify what were my theories and hypotheses, and what are verifiable facts.

Campaign for the Land of the Pure, Part 5

No sooner do I post Part 4 than the plot thickens.

The news today is that Marc Grossman helped smooth over relations between the US and Pakistan, which became "unsmooth" in the wake of the Osama bin Laden operation; the result is that a new anti-terrorism intelligence team is being established with both US and Pakistani members. From AP sources: US-Pakistan form an anti-terror squad, June 2, 2011:

WASHINGTON – Bruised from their latest diplomatic clash, the U.S. and Pakistan are trying to bandage their relationship by forging a new joint intelligence team to go after top terrorism suspects, officials say.

The move comes after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented the Pakistanis with the U.S. list of most-wanted terrorism targets, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Wednesday. The list includes some groups the Pakistanis have been reluctant to attack, U.S. officials said.

It's one of a host of confidence-building measures meant to restore trust blown on both sides after U.S. forces tracked down and killed al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden during a secret raid in Pakistan last month.

But it also amounts to a new test of loyalty for both sides. The Pakistanis say the U.S. has failed to share its best intelligence, instead running numerous unilateral spying operations on its soil.

U.S. officials say they need to see the Pakistanis target militants they've long sheltered, including the Haqqani network, which operates with impunity in the Pakistani tribal areas while attacking U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

[snip]

A series of high-level U.S. visits has aimed to take the edge off. Marc Grossman, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell met with intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha last month. Last week, the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, held a day of intensive meetings with top Pakistani military and civilian officials.

Marc Grossman, it will be recalled, was implicated in the Sibel Edmonds case for connections to the Turkish Deep State. He allegedly is on the payroll of Turkish organized crime which, in turn, is involved in trafficking Afghan heroin and various kinds of military technology.

For example, we have an excerpt from A Marc Too Far by Philip Giraldi, February 15, 2011:

Hillary Clinton has appointed Marc Grossman her special AfPak representative to replace Richard Holbrooke. Readers of TAC might well recall the Grossman saga as related by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. Per Edmonds, Grossman was involved in suspected illegal activity connected to the Turkish and Israeli governments and was under investigation by the FBI.

Part of Sibel Edmonds' interview went as follows, picking up the account after Grossman had to return to the United States from Turkey:

GIRALDI: So Grossman at this point comes back to the United States. He's rewarded with the third-highest position at the State Department, and he allegedly uses this position to do favors for "Turkish interests" — both for the Turkish government and for possible criminal interests. Sometimes, the two converge. The FBI is aware of his activities and is listening to his phone calls. When someone who is Turkish calls Grossman, the FBI monitors that individual's phone calls, and when the Turk calls a friend who is a Pakistani or an Egyptian or a Saudi, they monitor all those contacts, widening the net.

EDMONDS: Correct.

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 mig ht 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).

And, in the words of Edmonds herself at a post entitled Resurrecting the Neocons: Marc Grossman in ... Richard Perle & Douglas Feith in Queue, February 16, 2011 (links and formatting are in the original):

And here is what many Americans won't be getting from the US media:

- The investigative reports on Marc Grossman and his role in planting moles in US nuclear facilities:

An unnamed high-ranking State Department official helps a nuclear smuggling ring connected to Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan and Pakistan's ISI to plant "moles" in US military and academic institutions that handle nuclear technology, according to FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. The State Department official apparently arranges security clearance for some of the moles, enabling them to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities, including the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent. The high-ranking State Department official who is not named by Britain’s Sunday Times is said to be Marc Grossman...

- John M. Cole, a former FBI Counterintelligence and Counterespionage Manager, has publicly confirmed FBI's decade long investigation the former State Department Official, Marc Grossman:

John M. Cole, a former FBI Counterintelligence and Counterespionage Manager, has publicly confirmed the FBI's decade long investigation of the former State Department Official Marc Grossman. Cole worked for 18 years in the FBI's Counterintelligence Division. According to Cole, as in over one hundred cases involving Israeli espionage activities directed against the US government, the Grossman case was covered up and buried despite mountains of evidence that was collected.

Here is the public response from John Cole after the publication of The American Conservative magazine's cover story:

"I read the recent cover story by The American Conservative magazine. I applaud their courage in publishing this significant interview. I am fully aware of the FBI's decade-long investigation of the High-level State Department Official named in this article, Marc Grossman, which ultimately was buried and covered up. It is long past time to investigate this case and bring about accountability..."

-Marc Grossman was the originator of the Plame Leak:

Marc Grossman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, prepares a memo about former ambassador Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger to ascertain the truth or falsity of claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from that nation (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). The memo refers explicitly to Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a CIA official and identifies her as Wilson's wife, using the name "Valerie Wilson." The second paragraph of the memo is marked with an "S," denoting that Wilson is a covert operative for the agency.

-In late December 2005, Grossman joined Ihlas Holding, a large and alleged shady Turkish company which is also active in several Central Asian countries. Grossman is reported to receive $100,000 per month for his advisory position with Ihlas.

-In May 2010, DLA Piper, one of the world’s largest international lobby-law firms, hired Marc Grossman as their front man for their Turkish operations. The man in charge of one of DLA Piper major accounts-Turkey is none other than our good ole Dennis Hastert. That makes two former FBI criminal targets for one firm;-)

Grossman's career began at the US Embassy in Pakistan from 1976 to 1983; he was there when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the jihad began. From there, he went to NATO, then served in Turkey for years. As such, he had the opportunity to be in on the ground floor when heroin money began to be used to fund the insurgency against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and had the opportunity to interface with the Turkish Deep State to help move that heroin westward.

In the Edmonds case, it was alleged that money from these organized crime activities gets moved into the political campaigns of important American officials, thus ensuring that higher-ups are in a position to kill any investigation into these criminal activities. For example, from Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11 Investigation Inadequate by Jim Hogue, May 7, 2004:

JH: Here's a question that you might be able to answer: What is al-Qaeda?

SE: This is a very interesting and complex question. When you think of al-Qaeda, you are not thinking of al-Qaeda in terms of one particular country, or one particular organization. You are looking at this massive movement that stretches to tens and tens of countries. And it involves a lot of sub-organizations and sub-sub-organizations and branches and it's extremely complicated. So to just narrow it down and say al-Qaeda and the Saudis, or to say it's what they had at the camp in Afghanistan, is extremely misleading. And we don't hear the extent of the penetration that this organization and the sub-organizations have throughout the world, throughout their networks and throughout their various activities. It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap -- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific. And this money travels. And you start trying to go to the root of it and it's getting into somebody's political campaign, and somebody's lobbying. And people don't want to be traced back to this money.

Is Edmonds credible? From Found in Translation FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds spills her secrets by Philip Giraldi January 28, 2008:

Both Senators Grassley and Leahy, a Republican and a Democrat, who interviewed her at length in 2002, attest to Edmonds's believability. The Department of Justice inspector general investigation into her claims about the translations unit and an internal FBI review confirmed most of her allegations. Former FBI senior counterintelligence officer John Cole has independently confirmed her report of the presence of Pakistani intelligence service penetrations within the FBI translators' pool.

Interestingly, Grossman met with Mahmud Ahmed, the head of Pakistan's ISI, on September 4, 2001. Seven days later, the 9/11 attacks occurred, and it was later learned that Ahmed had sent Mohammed Atta (on of the attackers) $100,000 prior to the attacks.

By the way: Hillary Clinton, who appointed Grossman to his position as AfPak Representative, is also connected to foreign organized crime, in particular to ethnic Albanian cartels that traffic Afghan heroin through the Balkans and on to the rest of Europe.

Based on all this, it looks to me like Grossman's job is to make sure that certain connections remain buried while the appearance is given that terrorists are being brought to justice. Some mid-level terrorists will be questioned and tortured, but the guys that finance terrorism through organized crime will be untouched, leaving the terrorist infrastructure basically intact. The reason is simple: upset this infrastructure, and key officials in Pakistan and in the US will have their connections to organized crime exposed.

From 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

CD: Can you elaborate here on what countries you mean?

SE: It's interesting, in one of my interviews, they say "Turkish countries," but I believe they meant Turkic countries – that is, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and all the 'Stans, including Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and [non-Turkic countries like] Afghanistan and Pakistan. All of these countries play a big part in the sort of things I have been talking about.

CD: What, you mean drug-smuggling?

SE: Among other things. Yes, that is a major part of it. It's amazing that in this whole "war on terror" thing, no one ever talks about these issues. No one asks questions about these countries – questions like, "OK, how much of their GDP depends on drugs?"

CD: But of course, you're not implying...

SE: And then to compare that little survey with what countries we've been putting military bases in --

From 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us to Stop Fighting Now' An interview with FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds by Christopher Deliso August 15, 2005:

SE: You know how they always talk about these Islamic charities funding the terrorists, right?

CD: Yes...

SE: Well, and this is not a firm statistic, just a sort of ratio... but these charities are responsible for maybe 10 or 20 percent of al-Qaeda's fundraising. So where is the other 80 or 90 percent coming from? People, it's not so difficult!

The Full Gamut: A Blunt Instrument, Part 1

In my previous post, I mentioned the name of Congressman Roy Blunt, Republican from Missouri and candidate for the US Senate in 2010, as a name to name....

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... :)

Turkey's True Colors

First, let's review, in its entirety, Erdogan and the Israel Card by Steven J. Rosen, Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2010:

The deaths of nine Turkish citizens in the Gaza flotilla incident would have brought a severe reaction under any circumstances. What is nonetheless striking in this incident is the unbridled anger and fiercely hostile reaction of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish public. Mr. Erdogan said Israel was guilty of "state terrorism" and a "bloody massacre." His foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said "This attack is like 9/11 for Turkey," comparing it to a premeditated act of aggression that took 2,900 lives.

Mr. Erdogan does not always display such reactions to allegations of human rights violations. Last year, he defended Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for killing half a million Sudanese Christians and non-Arab Muslims. In March 2010, he denied that Turks ever killed Armenian civilians. He labeled a U.S. congressional resolution on the Armenian deaths "a comedy, a parody." He said that the Turkish military garrison stationed in Cyprus since 1974 is "not an occupier" but "[ensures] the peace." On tens of thousands of Kurds killed by Turkish security forces from 1984 to 1999, he says nothing.

Could it be that there is something more to Mr. Erdogan's rage against Israel than just a spontaneous reaction to the loss of life here?

Turkish elections, 13 months away, hold the answer. Backing for Mr. Erdogan's party has fallen to 29%, the lowest level since it won power in 2002 and far below the 47% it scored in July 2007. So Mr. Erdogan decided to play the Israel Card.

He tested this tactic in January 2009, in a confrontation with Israeli President Shimon Peres at Davos. Mr. Peres asked him in front of the cameras: "What would you do if you were to have in Istanbul every night a hundred rockets?" Mr. Erdogan shot back, "When it comes to killing you know very well how to kill." Thousands of Turks applauded Mr. Erdogan's performance, greeting him with a hero's welcome and a sea of Turkish and Palestinian flags upon his return home to Ataturk Airport.

Mr. Erdogan's anger at the Israeli blockade is even more popular among his countrymen. In fact, 61% of Turks surveyed in one poll did not find his rage sufficient. "The public is in such a state that they almost want war against Israel," the pollster commented. "I think this is widespread in almost all levels of society." Mr. Erdogan has become a hero in the Muslim world, where he is seen as the "new Nasser," in the words of one Saudi writer.

The truth is that friendship toward Israel was always limited to the Turkish secular elites, including the military chiefs. Turkey is fertile ground for Mr. Erdogan's demagoguery because many ordinary people are raised to dislike Israel and—dare it be said—Jews. In April 2010, the BBC World Service Poll found negative views of Israel among 77% of Turks.

Jews as a people fare no better than the Jewish state. In the 2009 Pew Global Attitudes survey, 73% of Turks rated their opinions of Jews as "negative." Meanwhile, 68% of Turks rated their opinions of Christians as "negative."

Turks don't like the United States much more than they do Israel. The same BBC poll found negative views of the U.S. among 70% of Turks, one of only two countries where perceptions of the United States actually worsened after the election of Barack Obama (positives fell to 13% from 21%, and negatives increased to 70% from 63%).

Nor is it the case that anti-Americanism in Turkey is primarily a response to U.S. support for Israel. Many Turkish citizens view the U.S. as anti-Muslim and see the war on terror as an anti-Muslim crusade across the Middle East. Turks resent the rich "imperialist" superpower and believe that the U.S. invaded Iraq for oil.

Islamists and the Turkish left suspect that the U.S. and NATO propped up a succession of Turkish governments backed by the military. Others believe that the U.S. supports the Iraqi Kurds and may plan to create a Kurdish state in Iraq. And most remain convinced that members of the U.S. Congress who vote for Turkish genocide resolutions do so under the influence of Armenian-Americans, who are more numerous than Americans of Turkish origin.

Anti-American feelings in Turkey exist independently of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, but these three phenomena are mutually reinforcing and convergent. More disturbingly, parallels to these trends pervade much of the Muslim world. What the flotilla incident demonstrates is that igniting this tinderbox of hostility toward Israel, Jews and America does not take much of a spark.

Now, this is particularly telling.

The elites in Turkey and the elites in Israel have something in common: they have extensive, illicit influence on our federal government. We know from the Sibel Edmonds case that many American officials, both elected and appointed, from both sides of the aisle, are on the payroll of Turkish lobbyists and even Turkish organized crime, much of which is linked to Islamic terrorists, including Al Qaeda. As you read the literature associated with the Sibel Edmonds case, you discover that Israel has its own illicit network in the US (not that this should be a "discovery").

Turkey isn't really our ally. They were when there was a Soviet Union, but with the absence of that unifying threat and the rise of politicized extremist Islam (which is the true Islam), Turkey is looking more like the Caliphate every day.

Israel is a true ally of the US but, like America, it has its own problems. One issue is that Israel, like any other country, conducts intelligence operations to learn about its enemies and about its allies. Since Israel's survival is, in many ways, tied to America's capabilities and intentions, Israel understandably targets America with some of its intelligence operations. This is illegal under American law, but understandable.

Where the moral line gets crossed is when US government officials participate in espionage, the result of which is that US nuclear technology and other critical defense information gets passed to hostile foreign entities such as Al Qaeda via a more-or-less circuitous route that includes Israel, Turkey and Pakistan.

Turkey, in particular, has received US foreign aid to buy military hardware and "offsets" which allow that hardware to be produced in Turkey (meaning the jobs and the industrial infrastructure for high-tech defense items are in Turkey, not America) - all this supported by corrupt politicians who get various kinds of kickbacks to make the deal go through.

Now we are finding out what we should have known all along: this is becoming a threat, immediately to Israel, and less immediately to the US.

All because corrupt government officials are on the payroll of foreign powers.

Enjoy!