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Am Con Mag Interview - Who's Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?


Sibel Edmonds has been interviewed by former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi for The American Conservative magazine. Edmonds was twice gagged under the State Secrets Act by John Ashcroft, and called 'credible' by Sens. Patrick Leahy and Charles Grassley, as well as DOJ IG Glenn Fine. She alleges members of Congress, top Defense and State Dept officials, and RAND employees have colluded with Turkish, Israeli, Pakistani and Saudi agents. Crimes, many of which amount to treason, include espionage, blackmail, bribery, trading political favors, laundering money, trafficking in drugs, arms and nuclear secrets and weapons technology. Edmonds also says there were pre-9/11 discussions with Turkish officials on invading and dividing up Iraq, and that the CIA was aiding and abetting 'bin Ladens' and Mujahideen (now called Al Qaeda) right up to 9/11.

Who's Afraid of Sibel Edmonds?

Sibel Edmonds has a story to tell. She went to work as a Turkish and Farsi translator for the FBI five days after 9/11. Part of her job was to translate and transcribe recordings of conversations between suspected Turkish intelligence agents and their American contacts. She was fired from the FBI in April 2002 after she raised concerns that one of the translators in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation. She appealed her termination, but was more alarmed that no effort was being made to address the corruption that she had been monitoring.

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."

But on Aug. 8, she was finally able to testify under oath in a court case filed in Ohio and agreed to an interview with The American Conservative based on that testimony. What follows is her own account of what some consider the most incredible tale of corruption and influence peddling in recent times. As Sibel herself puts it, "If this were written up as a novel, no one would believe it."

41 Comments

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A handful of crackpots run around saying Obama isn't a citizen gets front page coverage for months. An FBI Whistleblower makes extremely serious, credible, substantiated and unrefuted charges about corruption at the highest levels in our government and there's a virtual blackout of information. Not unlike the blackout for the antiwar protests prior to the illegal invastion of Iraq or the absence of coverage of pro-healthcare reform rallies, etc.... Hmmmmm?

And they say we live in a free and democratic republic.

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Maybe if Sibel Edmonds goes undercover against ACORN, she can get someone besides AmCon to pay attention to her.

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Say what you will, but not one thing she has alleged has been refuted or disproved by anyone. Before you denounce without any evidence or knowledge, I'd recommend you read her deposition which is much better and more thorough than the interview in question.

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My apologies. I replied to the wrong comment.

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oleeb, you're totally free to do whatever the neo-cons and corporatists want. Reporting on stories like this is a sure sign of a socialist agenda. Or is it fascist? Nazi? Homosexual?

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You're completely devoid of any facts here.

Nothing Edmonds has claimed has been refuted or discredited by any source official or otherwise. Can you explain that or would you simply prefer to make the unsubstantiated claim that since you don't like the publication this information appears in it must not be true?

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oleeb? Are you there? Are you getting paranoid? Please re-read my comment. I'm not attacking you, bro. Smell the snark.

And I have followed this story on Bradblog since early August.

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Sorry, my brain was apparently not functioning well this morning.

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That's an excellent point, oleeb. However, this site also runs a whole slew of sanctimonious denunciations of racist teabaggers and updates on Orly Taitz, but seemingly overlooked this story. There are two sides to the degradation of our public discourse, and by elevating trivia to crisis, we (and I'm inluding myself here) help along the sorry process.

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Part of what makes AmCon so interesting is that, for better or worse, they do not have the left-wing biases of most of us here at this site. This gives them carte blanche to be far more scathing (and truthful) about Republican perfidy than any orthodox 'liberal' source that I know. They also have sources in the Republican party that most of us don't have access to.
Also, this scandal, besides being of heartstopping proportions, if the allegations are true, is bipartisan. This means that 'outsider' sources like AmCon or Bradblog (on the left) are going to be the ones to pick up on this. If Edmonds gets anywhere in the courts with these allegations, it is going to bring down a sizable portion of both parties.

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What site the interview appears on has no bearing at all on whether or not what she is saying is true which is really the only thing that matters. Given that nothing she's got to say has ever been refuted and much of what she has claimed has actually been substantiated by Congressional investigation I wouldn't be so quick to judge her by the publication printing the story if I were you or others.

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BradBlog has been keeping up on this. He even liveblogged the deposition. I didn't realize they actually released the transcripts though. This entry doesn't really do the story justice - it's jaw dropping.

Brad's Schakowsky post is pretty damn good. It focuses on one allegation that describes Congresswoman Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL;) as having participated in a lesbian affair with a Turkish agent, and being secretly video-taped for possible blackmail purposes while doing so.

Edmonds had identified by name, for the first time on the public record, the elected and appointed officials she alleges committed crimes of treason. She withheld Schakowsky's name, however, because she had said she didn't "know if she did anything illegal" following the alleged intimate relationship with the Turkish operative.

the target U.S. persons, whether they are in Congress or executive branch or whatever, first go by foreign entities to what they refer to as hooking period, and it was very common; it's a very common way of trying to find vulnerability, and that is sexual, financial, any other kinds of greeds, and it was --- it was done a lot, was being done a lot, and in some cases certain people from Pentagon would send a list of individuals with access to sensitive data, whether weapons technology or nuclear technology, and this information would include all their sexual preference, how much they owed on their homes, if they have gambling issues, and the State Department, high level State Department person would provide it to these foreign operatives, and those foreign operatives then would go and hook those Pentagon people, whether they were at RAND or some other Air Force base.

Yes, and in 2000, another representative was added to the list, Jan Schakowsky, the Democratic congresswoman from Illinois. Turkish agents started gathering information on her, and they found out that she was bisexual. So a Turkish agent struck up a relationship with her. When Jan Schakowsky’s mother died, the Turkish woman went to the funeral, hoping to exploit her vulnerability. They later were intimate in Schakowsky’s townhouse, which had been set up with recording devices and hidden cameras. They needed Schakowsky and her husband Robert Creamer to perform certain illegal operational facilitations for them in Illinois. They already had Hastert, the mayor, and several other Illinois state senators involved. I don’t know if Congresswoman Schakowsky ever was actually blackmailed or did anything for the Turkish woman.

Brad has some exclusive statements of denial from Schakowsky and rebuttals from both Edmonds and her attorney. Following his links, it seems Brad's been busy on this. If the Edmonds information is for real - and she's got pretty credible support - man our government is SCREWED UP!

And if you wonder why it isn't in the press (or congressional investigations)? Just look at some of the names she alleges have been implicated:
Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Bob Livingston (R-LA), Dan Burton (R-IN), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Stephen Solarz (D-NY), Tom Lantos (D-CA, deceased), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Marc Grossmanm, Roy Blunt, Stephen Solarz, and several more.

Several of these guys went on to lobby for Turkey. Just lovely.

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And just for fun ... the post detailing the names and allegations.

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Just for fun, the allegations detail that the sale of secrets to Turkey then led to acquisition of such technologies to Pakistan and thence to Iran, but, interestingly (and these allegations go back to the 1990's) not to Iraq (which of course borders Turkey and was none too friendly with its neighbor). And of course the fixation of these alleged conspirators was Iraq.

One of the most interesting passages, for me, was this (from the Giraldi interview):

EDMONDS: They had arrangements with various companies, some of them members of the American Turkish Council. They had arrangements with Kissinger’s group, with Northrop Grumman, with former secretary of state James Baker’s group, and also with former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft.

The monitoring of the Turks picked up contacts with Feith, Wolfowitz, and Perle in the summer of 2001, four months before 9/11. They were discussing with the Turkish ambassador in Washington an arrangement whereby the U.S. would invade Iraq and divide the country. The UK would take the south, the rest would go to the U.S. They were negotiating what Turkey required in exchange for allowing an attack from Turkish soil. The Turks were very supportive, but wanted a three-part division of Iraq to include their own occupation of the Kurdish region. The three Defense Department officials said that would be more than they could agree to, but they continued daily communications to the ambassador and his defense attaché in an attempt to convince them to help.

Meanwhile Scowcroft, who was also the chairman of the American Turkish Council, Baker, Richard Armitage, and Grossman began negotiating separately for a possible Turkish protectorate. Nothing was decided, and then 9/11 took place.

Scowcroft was all for invading Iraq in 2001 and even wrote a paper for the Pentagon explaining why the Turkish northern front would be essential. I know Scowcroft came off as a hero to some for saying he was against the war, but he was very much for it until his client’s conditions were not met by the Bush administration.

This sounds like the pact to divide Poland between the Germans and Soviets in 1939. It also shows that the supposed pillars of realpolitik, Kissinger and Scowcroft, as well as the supposed 'antiwar' Armitage (who was a prime leaker in the Plame case) were involved in the schemes.

Plame was allegedly involved in counterproliferation activities in Iran. Meanwhile Edmonds' pack of jokers were engaged in proliferation activities there. (And Edmonds alleges that her cover was blown by Grossman in 2001.)

I have to wonder what Joe Wilson (Plame's husband, not the Congressman) knew when he penned that famous editorial. Did he know his wife's cover had already been blown, and that Government officials (prominently including Armitage) were proliferators of nuclear secrets to the region? It ties up too neatly.

And of course, we still hear about the existential threat of Iran's nuclear program- from the very people who put the secrets on the market.

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Numerous of Edmonds allegatgions have been investigated by Congress and found credible.

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I don't know how good it is. Schakowsky's response is her mother died in 1987 and she's never owned or occupied a townhouse. Her mother's funeral when she's grieving and surrounded by family sure as hell doesn't sound like a good time for some supposed bisexual Turkish femme fatale to start making moves does it?

Edmonds is right whens she says "If this were written up as a novel, no one would believe it." She got every publicly available fact wrong about Schakowsky. Maybe that's why the media isn't buying it.

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You haven't cited one "publicly available fact about Schakowsky" Edmonds got wrong. You've only offered your own speculation. The media bought the Iraq lies, so it can't really be held as a good judge of veracity... now can it?

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What part of "her mother died in 1987" and "Schakowsky never owned a townhouse" don't you understand?

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Have you verified any of that? Seems like you should.

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Would verifying it matter? Conspiracy theorists usually aren't convinced by things like "facts."

Schakowsk'y office put out a statement. It seems it would be easy for you to verify whether or not her mother died in 1987.

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Actually, it won't be so easy. Birth and death records are not public in Illinois.

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Has anyone verified anything Edmonds has said? I'm sympathetic to her case but these are easily checked facts that make her look whacked. Have any of her other assertions been proven right or wrong? She's made a lot of them over the years. Somebody ought to be able to verify at least a few of the ones that don't require nat'l security archives.

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I think that's why all to controversy. Every time anyone tried to get details that would allow verification, Bush slapped her with a state secrets based gag order. So, it's sort of impossible to point to a lack of previous verification to attack her credibility.

Her deposition was just released a few weeks ago. If the press wants to do it's job, now is the time to verify or debunk.

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Edmonds indicates in the interview the Israelis added the congresswoman as an "asset" in 2000; she didn't say how long the Turk had been blackmailing her, and it could have been for years. Ownership of the townhouse, or even long-term occupancy, is irrelevant.

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That should read "Edmonds indicates in the interview the Turks added the congresswoman as an "asset" in 2000; she didn't say how long they had been blackmailing her"; don't know how the word "Israelis" worked itself in there, but somehow, I'm not surprised it did.

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Funny, the congressional investigations have no problem with anythng that she's said.

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Scott Horton is taking this seriously too:

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/09/21/sibel-edmondss-big-day/

Horton doesn't strike me as the gullible type.

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I still stand behind my statement the article in question:Exclusive: Schakowsky Responds to Edmonds Claim, Vehemently Denies Lesbian Tryst With Turkish Agent is quite good. (link above screwed up somehow). I also stand behind my observation that Edmonds has some pretty credible supporters.

Here's her response to Schakowsky:

I am, and have been, reporting intercepted communication of targeted operatives; more or less verbatim.
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1) This particular operation(s) was based in IL; not DC.
The timeline covered 1996-2002 (January).
The targeted townhouse in question was in IL. The operatives discussed their plans to bug the townhouse in detail. Is this a townhouse she owned/owns? I don't know. Did it belong to the female operative? I don't know. Did the set up take place? Yes; confirmed by the FBI surveillance team; Chicago-Field Office.
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2) The female operative in question was to accompany Mrs. Schakowsky to the funeral for 'the mother' and stay with her afterwards.
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3) What the targets wanted from Mrs. Schakowsky had to do with their operations in IL. Her husband's role was important in that operation.

On the one hand Edmonds could be just making it all up. But on the other, her role was that of translator. She would only know the picture from the communications she was translating. I wonder if the mother of Schakowsky's husband is still alive and if not, when she died.

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I haven't kept up on Edmonds lately but does she have these transcripts? Did she write detailed notes every night after work back while she was a translator? Does she have anyone at the Chicago FBI field office surveillance team who corroborates what she says with real proof? She's very sure of herself but when confronted by facts her story changes.

So a Turkish agent struck up a relationship with her. When Jan Schakowsky’s mother died, the Turkish woman went to the funeral, hoping to exploit her vulnerability.

The timeline covered 1996-2002 (January).

Schakowsky's mother died in 1987. Now we're speculating it was her mother in law who died?

They later were intimate in Schakowsky’s townhouse, which had been set up with recording devices and hidden cameras.

Schakowsky doesn't have a townhouse. But maybe it was somebody else's townhouse now?

This kind of backpeddling doesn't make her look good.

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Yes, speculating 100%. She is saying that the phrase "the mother" was interpreted by herself as the congresswoman's mother. I'm pretty sure in Turkish culture for a married woman, that phrasing could also apply (and may more correctly apply) to her mother-in-law. Again, my impression is that in Middle Eastern culture the woman is usually integrated into the husband's family. If there WERE a funeral for his mother in the time period I think it certainly makes it a bit more difficult to trivially reject the Edmonds testimony and would represent classic Washingtonspeak. But that's my own thought; I haven't heard anyone else proffer this idea.

The transcripts mention several town houses, and more to the point seem to indicate FBI field teams verified the taps. According to 60 minutes:

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.
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“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.”

The IG says she's pretty credible - an elected official in charge of FBI oversight says she's pretty credible. Who are we to say she's not?

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For starters Schakowsky and her husband aren't middle eastern, they're Americans. I've met them both. Saw them together at a Sunday living room fundraiser for another candidate here in the Chicago burbs a few months ago. Her son in law died recently in Mexico in a freak snorkeling accident on a family vacation they were all on. The point I'm making is they're a pretty tight family from what I've seen. It's pretty odd (not to mention ugly) to speculate that she took the occasion of her mother's death, her husband's mother's death or anyone's death to ditch him for a little tryst, let alone a lesbian one. Her press spokesperson's reaction to that wasn't "Washingtonspeak" or a non-denial denial. It's the response of press secretary outraged at such an accusation.

From what I've heard we only have Sibel's word of what's on the transcripts. Have they been released? She says the Chicago FBI field office can verify what she says. Have they? 60 Minutes wasn't talking about Schakowsky were they? Let's not confuse the issue here.

And what exactly is it that the Turkish government supposedly went to such great lengths to seduce and blackmail her to get her husband to do for them?


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"And what exactly is it that the Turkish government supposedly went to such great lengths to seduce and blackmail her to get her husband to do for them?"

Especially in 1987, when, if memory serves, Schakowsky was working for PIRG or some other interest group.

Man, who knew the Turks had tentacles reaching even into Illinois public interest groups back in the 1980s? They make the KGB look like amateurs.

Seriously, folks, this doesn't pass the giggle test. I know we're all supposed to be hating on all things big-D Democrat right now, but can't we step back and have a little bit of perspective?

If we were speculating on Sarah Palin right now, the cohort here would be ripping us for wasting our time on titillating irrelevancies.

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That last bit about 'titillating irrelevancies' was itself irrelevant, and wrong. The subject here is blackmail, not lesbian affairs.

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Well, lost in the conversation here is that, in spite of the titillating allegations against Schakowsky, there is no suggection of wrongdoing.

Rather, other than Schakowsky, there seems to be the usual suspects, trading on their dual loyalites and playing tinpot imperialist on their own, i.e., the Perles, Feiths and Wolfowitzes. As for Hastert, a slug like him probably isn't going to get the premier lobbying gigs, so he had to settle for a third-tier foreign client.

Another galling comment of hers (at least to a Chicagoan) is the idea that Hastert is a Chicagoan. He's Downstater, and his connections to the "cesspool" of Chicago politics is almost nonexistent. Edmonds seems to be going for a unified theory of Turkish(?!) influence on the American government, when it looks like the utterly amoral neocons are once again guilty of conducting Middle East policy without the interference of quaint notions of the consent of the elected officials charged with carrying out that policy.

It simply makes no sense otherwise. Turkey might have had real leverage over the US when we wanted to stage our invasion of Iraq, but that leverage is long past its use by date.

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I didn't read it that way. It seems to be more a story of how easily foreign governments could slip into our porous government apparatus via 'capitalism' ( and did you catch the galling [for me] part where Edmonds says Reno allowed an investigation to continue because the targets "were Republicans?"). It seems that owing to our obsessions and myopia, Americans were willing to sell state secrets to a perceived harmless 'buyer.'
Parallel this with how easily characters like Chalabi were able to provide convenient information (at a price) to Dick Cheney. There was no unified Turkish conspiracy. Rather, there was hubris, greed, ignorance, and a total contempt for the law at the highest levels of our government. It continues today.

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Pearle, Feith and Wolfowitz come out looking like the traitors that they are in that interview. A whole slew of wingnuts ought to be in jail.

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Rule of Law Anyone??

How about it Eric, Barack, Nancy, Harry, Rahm???

Any interest in the Rule of Law??

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haaaaaaaaaa! did you hear Obama's speech to the UN? He is all for treaties, accountability and international law having consequences.

just not for US, especially the torturers

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You're right. I don't agree with the economic philosophy of paleoconservatives and libertarians, but both camps have provided insight and ferocious critique both of policy missteps that led to our current ecomomic meltdown (and f*ck Wall Street, it's still a recession out here in the real world) and our catastrophic foreign policy that continues, stupidly, unabated. Also, I couldn't be the least bit interested in dogmatic Leftist gibberish; it's time came and went. Long ago. Thankfully.

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This was intended as a reply for diachronic.

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got it.

And it is still a dire and deepening recession here, about nine miles from Wall Street.

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