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Turkish Delight: Sibel Edmonds
Why isn't this woman running for office?
Sibel Edmonds lays it all down for Congresswoman Schakowsky - how to investigate, who to investigate, what to investigate, and what's happened so far.
Of course if Edmonds got to Congress, she could have some of the powers to investigate that Schakowsky won't use.
Next time someone laughs at "conspiracies in government", point to Sibel and the incredible lack of will and incentive in Congress to investigate anything worth investigating. "I see nut-tink, I hear nut-tink, I say nut-tink". Sgt. Schultz, the official mascot of the US Government.
Sibel Edmonds lays it all down for Congresswoman Schakowsky - how to investigate, who to investigate, what to investigate, and what's happened so far.
Of course if Edmonds got to Congress, she could have some of the powers to investigate that Schakowsky won't use.
Next time someone laughs at "conspiracies in government", point to Sibel and the incredible lack of will and incentive in Congress to investigate anything worth investigating. "I see nut-tink, I hear nut-tink, I say nut-tink". Sgt. Schultz, the official mascot of the US Government.
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Dennis Hastert is a registered agent for Turkey and gets $35,000 a MONTH? What the hell is he doing? No Congressman should be able to do that!
September 26, 2009 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Edmonds with her trademark certainty accused Schakowsky of having a lesbian tryst with an unnamed Turkish spy at Jan's townhouse in Chicago on the day of Schakowsky's mother's funeral in 1999. Edmonds claimed the Turks videotaped it in an attempt to blackmail the then freshman congresswoman and her husband into doing some unspecified deed for the Turkish government.
When Schakowsky's spokesman replied that:
A) Schakowsky's mother died in 1987 not 1999
B) She doesn't and didn't have a townhouse in Chicago or anywhere else
C) And this crap is a credible as birther nonsense
Edmonds changed her story to say it may have been someone else's mother and townhouse. Then she proposed dueling lie detector tests and gave Schakowsky detailed instructions about the kind of investigation she'd like Jan to open as a member of the House Intel Committee.
Sibel Edmonds has made a lot of claims over the years that some important people like Pat Leahy say sounds credible. She was gagged by the Bush
Administration for her trouble. But finally when Obama lifts the gag order and right of the box she gets the only easily checkable facts she has completely wrong it's not helping her credibility.
September 26, 2009 10:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
That would be true *if* the birthers were basing their assertions on someone who worked in the Hawaiian birth-records office tracking down fraud who had a documented history of raising related concerns which had been corroborated by the IG and many other members of the birth-records staff.
If the Governor of HI had said he found there were indeed irregularities - and possible wrongdoing - he had corroborated those with many members of the records staff ... then it would be exactly the same as birther nonsense. But that didn't happen, so it isn't.
September 26, 2009 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate that having some basic facts wrong doesn't look good, though really the only serious one is a mother who died 12 years earlier. But I don't know how involved Edmonds was in these cases vs. having basic knowledge of case records that she's piecing together years later without having the records handy - did the casebook say mother or mother-in-law, Schakowsky's townhouse or "a townhouse" that Edmonds mistakenly concluded was hers, don't know. But these aren't the most important details, just as the font on a typewriter that may or may not have existed wasn't the most important detail of whether Bush skipped out on the Guard.
Edmonds has given enough details - even if 90% is true and 10% false, that's enough screwy stuff to investigate. We're already familiar enough with Israeli efforts to steal intelligence in Washington, and Turkey's involvement is none too surprising.
September 26, 2009 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
September 26, 2009 7:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well that's the thing. I've long thought there was a lot of smoke in Edmond's statements and there just might be some fire. She sounds very sure of herself and that certainly makes it sound appealing. But if I remember correctly, and I really ought to go back and read the whole file, she is working off her memories or notes that go back to her stint in 2001 and 2002 as a translator. As far as I know she hasn't had access to the records she cites for 7 years now. Yet she makes her claims with no equivocation at all.
I posted this earlier in kgb999's blog. I've met Schakowsky and her husband Bob. Earlier this summer they were at a Sunday afternoon living room fundraiser in the Chicago burbs for a house candidate she is lending her support to. A sunny Sunday afternoon schmooze indirectly related to the politician's own career is usually the kind of event most political spouses try to avoid. But he was there. A month ago his son died in a freak snorkeling accident down in Mexico the whole family was on. She stood by him in 2005 when he was convicted of check kiting a decade before as he tried to keep his struggling public advocacy group afloat and was sentenced to prison for 5 months.
The point I'm making is they appear to have a tight knight family and a happy marriage. They vacation together with their adult kids. She's stuck by him through his legal tribulations. He's there for her at political meet and greets when he could be playing golf. And you mean to tell me she'd sneak off after her mother's funeral or his mother's funeral when they're all grieving for a lesbian sexual escapade at somebody's townhouse?
Another thing that doesn't pass the smell test is in 1999 Schakowsky was a freshman House rep having been elected the fall before. What could a freshman congresswoman and her liberal do-gooder public advocate husband do that would make it worthwhile for the Turks to lure her into such an elaborate honeytrap?
I'm sorry this just isn't plausible at all. And as far as I know these are the first and only publicly available facts of the case so far and these "revelations" look like a spectacular failure. Maybe they started feeding her false leads toward the end of her translating tenure when she started making waves. Who knows?
And when you stop and think about it Sibel says the FBI can corroborate all this stuff, not just about Schakowsky but everybody else too. Well if they can then what the hell were the FBI doing other than idly taking notes while the Turks or whoever were supposedly corrupting great swaths of the American political elite in an effort to sell nuclear secrets all the way to Osama Bin Laden? I mean WTF? What were they waiting for? And where are Sen. Leahy's hearings on this?
September 27, 2009 12:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
What was the FBI doing? Well that is a question that gets right to the heart of Sibel Edmonds' case as a whistleblower. Because they did little or nothing when Edmonds reported this stuff to higher ups they punished her and tried to discredit her. Those attempts at discrediting her failed miserably precisely because she had fully documented her claims and the claims were coraborated by the files she references. Not only was the FBI not following up on the criminal activities in question, the FBI had also been corrupted. Edmonds' deposition in the Ohio case makes that very, very clear.
September 27, 2009 1:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Where are Sen. Leahy's hearings on anything? "If only we had the majority I could do something." "If only we had the Presidency I could do something."
Regarding Schakowsky being a newcomer, there's more than 1 way to look at it. The 9th district is extremely stable - it had basically one Jewish congressman for 50 years - dubbed the "Knesset seat". It votes Democrat by 30-40% margins. Schakowsky hasn't dipped under 70% in an election yet over 6 elections. Bush got 34% in 2004. Get this district in your pocket and it will gain power. Schakowsky is Jewish, which ties in with how the district had 3 Jewish candidates in 1998, and likely support for the AIPAC interests that the Turkish connection feeds off of. You don't go to own politicians once they're big - they're already bought and paid for by someone else. You have to work the farm club.
That doesn't make the story true, only that Schakowsky would have made a very attractive recruit, guaranteed not a 1-term congresswoman, no threat whatsoever from Republicans, sympathetic to Israeli causes and a staunch defender, and carries more power because the Jewish lobby is organized better than most. After 10 years, Schakowsky is now tied for 183rd in seniority in the House with 21 others, tied for 114th in seniority with House Democrats. If the Democrats lose 20 seats in 2010, she's then in the top 100.
Whether she's bisexual and went in for an affair, she's human, so might have happened whether she had a happy marriage or not (and whether she was happy 10 years ago vs. this summer - all issues I don't know, but certainly an operative would be willing to exploit any possibilities). If it's taking advantage of a traumatic begrieved situation, I doubt a workable approach would be "come on over for an orgy", but comfort and sympathy has been known to work at such times.
September 27, 2009 5:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Please cite where this information comes from about Edmonds claim of Schakowsky's mother's funeral, the Congresswoman's spokesperson's reponse and the lie detector business.
September 26, 2009 5:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bradblog.
September 26, 2009 11:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for that information.
Having now gone to Bradblog and read the material in question it seems to me that Edmonds' and not the Congresswoman's points have more credibility primarily because Schakowsky's office avoids addressing specifics and instead chooses defensive rhetoric. Schakowsky's primary defense is to insinuate that Edmonds is crazy and to equate her with the birthers. What they don't do is refute any of Edmonds' claims. IMHO Edmonds' claims have more, not less, credibility as a result of the exchange as brought out by Bradblog.
I should say here that I've got nothing at all against the Congresswoman. She's actually someone I've admired for some time so I'm not predisposed to think ill of her at all. Quite the contrary. It's disturbing to see that this is her response to what Edmonds has to say.
September 27, 2009 1:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
I find the congresswoman's reaction wholey consistent with I'd expect from anyone being preposterously attacked. On top of that Edmonds got the only publicly available facts wrong. But you go ahead and believe what you want to believe.
September 27, 2009 10:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you are misreading what was there. Schakowsky's office finds one and only one piece of a very long and detailed story that they claim is wrong, but it is only a trivial and secondary fact at best and one, in the telling of such a story, that if it is wrong doesn't really change much of anything in terms of the central facts of the case. They then use that rhetorical hook to distract from the far more serious points being made in the hopes that most people would react as you are reacting to it. I see Schakowsky's argument as weak at best and extremely defensive in a way that makes me far less inclined to view Schakowsky's diversionary tactic as enough to throw out the substance of the facts laid out by Edmonds.
I can see how you reach your conclusion. I just think you are giving Schakowsky's argument a very, very large dose of unearned trust. Time will tell whether or not Edmonds or Schakowsky is being truthful here. I'm betting on Edmonds simply because she has no reason at all to pursue any of this if it isn't the truth. Schakowsky, on the other hand, has a great deal to lose if this matter is actually scrutinized and she if found to be being less than honest. Edmonds is daring all of Washington to prove her wrong and other than a few attacks on her character such as the kind made by Schakowsky's office, nobody in officialdom has taken her up on it and not because there's no reason to believe her claims have merit. No, because the state secrets act was invoked to keep this matter out of public view.
September 27, 2009 10:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Coleen Rowley, for example, ran and lost. Cindy Sheehan failed to unseat Pelosi.
I hate to rain on your patriotic ex-pat parade, but this isn't exactly a country which rewards heroic women with high public office.
What we really like is whores with big... money.
September 26, 2009 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I halfway agree, but there are a few women who've made it mostly on their own initiative - Patty Murray, Barbara Mikulski - and those are for Senate, not for House which should be easier. Cindy Sheehan didn't come across as a person for office because of her personal style (and is running against Pelosi the easiest first challenge?). Rowley I don't know.
September 27, 2009 6:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
The question isn't really about Edmond's credibility So what if obscure of her whole story are inaccurate, it does not change the real issue?
Our lawmakers have made themselves willing pawns in games of espionage and intrigue, supporting international players in OUR congress for the benefit of places so far flung from their districts 99% of their constituents couldn't find it on a map.
Seems like the law is for sale to the highest bidder.
"How much is that 'doggie in the window?"
September 26, 2009 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink