http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12166
Nukes, Spooks,
and the Specter of 9/11
We're in big trouble if even half of what Sibel Edmonds says is true...
by Justin Raimondo
"The next president may have to deal with a nuclear attack," averred
ABC's Charles Gibson at Saturday
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/us/politics/05text-ddebate.html?pagew
anted=all> night's Democratic presidential debate. "The day after a
nuclear weapon goes off in an American city, what would we wish we had
done to prevent it and what will we actually do on the day after?"
It's a question that frightens everyone, and one to which there is no
easy answer: none of the candidates really rose to the occasion, and
most seemed baffled. Hillary Clinton
<http://nymag.com/images/2/daily/intel/07/09/20_hillary_lg.jpg> made
sure she used the word "retaliation
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/us/politics/05text-ddebate.html?_r=1&
bl=&ei=5087&en=00f36b3fcbb1c21a&ex=1199768400&pagewanted=print&oref=slog
" with unusual emphasis, and when pressed on the question of how she
would retaliate against "stateless" terrorists nevertheless insisted
that she would indeed retaliate against someone, because the
perpetrators had to have a "haven" somewhere within a state.
Yes, well, that's not necessarily true, but what if that "haven" is...
right here in the U.S.? Or, perhaps, in a NATO country, say, Turkey?
Say what?
Impossible, you say? Not if you believe Sibel Edmonds
<http://www.justacitizen.com/> , a former translator for the FBI who
listened in on hundreds of telephone intercepts and has now told the
London Times that several top U.S. government officials conspired with
foreign agents to steal U.S. nuclear secrets and sell them on the black
market. The Times reports
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.
:
"Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the
support of U.S. officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive
military and nuclear institutions.
"Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence
that one well-known senior official in the U.S. State Department was
being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the
information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan. The name of
the official - who has held a series of top government posts - is known
to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims. However, Edmonds
said: 'He was aiding foreign operatives against U.S. interests by
passing them highly classified information, not only from the State
Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position
and political objectives.'
"She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior
Pentagon officials - including household names - who were aiding foreign
agents. 'If you made public all the information that the FBI have on
this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal
trials,' she said."
Edmonds brought all this
<http://balkanalysis.blogspot.com/2005/03/finally-sibel-edmonds-testifie
s-before.html> to the attention of lawmakers
<http://tinyurl.com/3b7xqk> , as well as the American media, and several
news organizations filed reports - until a federal judge issued an
unprecedented <http://tinyurl.com/2jkgnj> gag order. Edmonds' story was
deemed too hot to handle: if the public were allowed to know what she
knows, according to our government
<http://www.antiwar.com/edmonds/?articleid=5954> , America's national
security would be severely impaired. Yet now she is speaking out, and
what she has to say is unsettling, to say the least.
Edmonds has named
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cm-uRQmfUU&eurl=http://letsibeledmondss
peak.blogspot.com/2008/01/sibel-edmonds-case-front-page-of-uk.html> at
least one of the officials: he is Marc Grossman
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Grossman> , a former U.S. ambassador
to Turkey, assistant secretary of state for European affairs under the
Clinton administration and undersecretary of state for political affairs
from 2001-2005. Grossman is now vice chairman of The Cohen Group
<http://www.cohengroup.net/about/teammember.cfm?id=5> , a consulting
firm founded by Bill Clinton's defense secretary, William S. Cohen.
Edmonds <http://nswbc.org/Op%20Ed/Op-ed-Part1-Nov15-06.htm> contends
<http://nswbc.org/Op%20Ed/Part2-FNL-Nov29-06.htm> that an international
nuclear smuggling ring, associated with the intelligence agencies of
Pakistan, Turkey, and Israel, has been permitted to operate in the U.S.
with impunity. Our government, she claims, knew all about it yet, in
order to placate the foreign governments involved, allowed a vast
criminal enterprise to carry out its activities, including money
laundering, narcotics trafficking, and espionage involving efforts to
steal U.S. nuclear technology.
As a translator for the FBI, Edmonds had the task of translating many
hours of intercepted phone conversations between Turkish officials and
Pakistanis, Israelis, and Americans who were targets of the FBI's
counterintelligence unit. Thousands of hours of intercepted calls
revealed a network of moles placed in various military installations and
academic venues dealing with nuclear technology. Edmonds gives us the
details, via the Times:
"Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every
month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. 'The network
appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the
United States,' she said.
"They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department
official [Marc Grossman] who provided some of their moles - mainly Ph.D.
students - with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research
facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New
Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the U.S. nuclear
deterrent."
And "while the FBI was investigating," says Edmonds, "several arms of
the government were shielding what was going on." An entire wing of the
national security bureaucracy, associated with the neoconservatives
<http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html> , has long profited from
representing Turkish interests in Washington: this group includes not
only Grossman, but also Paul Wolfowitz
<http://thestressblog.com/2006/05/10/philip-giraldi-on-sibel-turkey-isra
el-the-neocons-and-the-mic/> , chief intellectual architect of the Iraq
war and ex-World Bank president; former deputy defense secretary for
policy Douglas J. Feith
<http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Douglas_Feith#Turkey> ;
Feith's successor, Eric Edelman
<http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2005/11/eric-edelman-bio-part-one.html
; and Richard Perle
<http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest20020823> ,
the notorious uber-neocon whose unique ability
<http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/17/030317fa_fact?printable=tru
to mix profiteering and warmongering forced him to resign
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2894059.stm> his official capacity
as a key administration adviser.
Edmonds draws a picture of a three-sided alliance consisting of Turkish,
Pakistani, and Israeli agents who coordinated efforts to milk U.S.
nuclear secrets and technology, funneling the intelligence stream to the
black market nuclear network set up by the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan
<http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/pakistan/khan.htm> . The
multi-millionaire Pakistani nuclear scientist then turned around and
sold his nuclear assets to North Korea, Libya, and Iran
<http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1742
0> .
This was no "rogue" operation, but a covert action executed by Gen.
Mahmoud Ahmad <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmad> , the chief
of Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, at the time. The Turks were
used as intermediaries because direct ISI intervention would have roused
immediate suspicion. Large amounts of cash were dropped off at the
offices of Turkish-American lobbying groups, such as the American
Turkish Council <http://www.americanturkishcouncil.org/> in Washington,
which was reportedly picked up by at least one top U.S. official.
This Pakistani-Turkish-Israeli Axis of Espionage, operating through
their respective embassies, systematically combed Washington officialdom
for potential moles, compiling lists that, according to Edmonds and the
Times, "contained all their 'hooking points,' which could be financial
or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what
stuff they had access to." Nice work
<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9774.htm> , there.
This sounds a lot like the setup the handlers of convicted
<http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/01/20/analyst.sentence/> spy Larry
Franklin <http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001074.html> worked with
to glean information from the rabidly pro-Israel Franklin and pass it
off to Israeli embassy officials, including former Israeli ambassador
Danny Ayalon <http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7625> ; Naor
Gilon
<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=659844&contr
assID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1> , the former
political officer at the embassy; and Rafi Barak
<http://tinyurl.com/2cfx42> , the former deputy chief of mission. And
there is indeed a connection to the Franklin case, according to the
Times,
"One of the Pentagon figures under investigation was Lawrence Franklin,
a former Pentagon analyst, who was jailed in 2006 for passing U.S.
defense information to lobbyists and sharing classified information with
an Israeli diplomat. 'He was one of the top people providing information
and packages during 2000 and 2001,' [Edmonds] said."
Franklin delivered
<http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2005/franklin_indi
ctment_04aug2005.htm> his "packages" to AIPAC officials Steve Rosen
<http://www.forward.com/articles/fbi-affair-costs-lobby-dynamic-director
-rosen/> and Keith Weissman
<http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Keith_Weissman> and their
Israeli handlers for ideological reasons, but others, such as Grossman -
according to Edmonds - did it for money. Grossman angrily denies the
charge. In any case, apparently large cash transactions were recorded on
the tapes Edmonds translated, in which U.S. officials were heard selling
the nation's nuclear secrets. As the Times relates:
"Well-known U.S. officials were then bribed by foreign agents to steal
U.S. nuclear secrets. One such incident from 2000 involves an agent
overheard on a wiretap discussing 'nuclear information that had been
stolen from an air force base in Alabama,' in which the agent allegedly
is heard saying: 'We have a package and we're going to sell it for
$250,000.'"
A vast criminal enterprise supported by at least three foreign
intelligence agencies acting in concert with top U.S. officials,
including some "household names" - if true, it's the story of the
decade. Yet that isn't all. The really scary aspect of this labyrinthine
network of foreign agents, and their American dupes and collaborators,
is its connections to terrorist organizations, specifically al-Qaeda
<http://www.amconmag.com/09_22_03/cover.html> .
To begin with, Gen. Ahmad is suspected
<http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=mahmood_ahmed> of
having wired a large amount of money into Mohammed Atta's Dubai bank
account shortly before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. More ominously, the
Times reports: "Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were
taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or
somehow aided the attacks."
Pakistani and/or Turkish operatives arrested or held for questioning in
the wake of the 9/11 attacks? Well, that's the first I've heard of it.
However, the U.S. authorities did round up a large number
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/03/07/wspy07.
xml&sSheet=/news/2002/03/07/ixworld.html> of Israelis
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWpWc_suPWo> , including these guys
<http://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.usa.congress/browse_thread/
thread/a0b47085f1a45e2/4cba7cfbd2ac762f?hl=en&lnk=st&q=%22spy+rumors+fly
+on+gusts+of+truth%22> , and held them for several months before
extraditing them back to their home country.
Even more alarming is the reason Edmonds approached the Times with the
story, "after reading about an al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his
role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey."
That's a reference to this Nov. 2 story
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2936761.ece>
in the Times, which details the career of a top al-Qaeda kingpin, one
Louai al-Sakka
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/20/AR20060
32000802.html> , who claims to have trained several of the 9/11
hijackers at a camp situated outside Istanbul in the resort area of the
Yalova mountains.
Now that's curious: a Muslim fundamentalist training camp in a country
run by a fanatically secular
<http://www.discoverturkey.tv/beta1/page.php?s=page&pid=959&seo=/Turkish
%2BMilitary> military that would normally not tolerate such activities.
As the Times puts it: "Turkish intelligence were aware of unusual
militant Islamic activity in the Yalova mountains, where Sakka had set
up his camps. But they posed no threat to Turkey at the time."
Not a threat to Turkey, eh? All too true: the terrorists' target was the
U.S. The al-Qaeda recruits trained by Sakka were specifically chosen by
the top leadership of al-Qaeda - i.e., bin Laden
<http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/07/alqaeda.911/index.html> - to
carry out the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. That they
were nurtured and steeled for their mission under the noses of our NATO
allies in Ankara seems bizarre - until one begins to take Sibel Edmonds
seriously. Then the whole horrifying picture starts to fall into place.
The darkest secrets of 9/11 are buried at the end of the trail laid out
in Edmonds' testimony. As Luke Ryland
<http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/02/28/luke-ryland/> , the world's
foremost expert on the Edmonds case, writes
<http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2008/01/sibel-edmonds-case-fro
nt-page-of-uk.html> :
"The Times article
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.
then notes something that I reported
<http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2006/07/sibel-911.html> 18 months
ago. Immediately after 911, the FBI arrested a bunch of people suspected
of being involved with the attacks - including four associates of key
targets of FBI's counterintelligence operations. Sibel heard the targets
tell Marc Grossman: 'We need to get them out of the U.S. because we
can't afford for them to spill the beans.' Grossman duly facilitated
their release from jail and the suspects immediately left the country
without further investigation or interrogation.
"Let me repeat that for emphasis: The #3 guy at the State Dept.
facilitated the immediate release of 911 suspects at the request of
targets of the FBI's investigation."
Corruption and a massive cover-up organized at the highest levels of
government - America's nuclear secrets and technology looted on a
massive scale, and sold to our enemies via a network set up by our
alleged foreign "friends
<http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=3232945&C=europe> ," while the
threat of nuclear terrorism hangs over our country like a thick fog of
fear, and warmongering politicians
<http://weblogs.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/blog/2007/04/cheney_nuc
lear_terrorist_attac.html> scare us into going along with the program -
if even half of what Edmonds alleges turns out to be true, then we are
all in some very big trouble.
In light of the Edmonds revelations, we have to reconsider the
implications of the question Charles Gibson opened with during the ABC
Democratic debate:
"The day after a nuclear weapon goes off in an American city, what would
we wish we had done to prevent it and what will we actually do on the
day after?"
Perhaps congressman Henry Waxman
<http://www.house.gov/waxman/contact.htm> , who solemnly pledged to
launch a public investigation into the allegations made by Edmonds, will
wish he had kept his promise. Maybe even the national news media, which
has been offered this story repeatedly <http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5197>
, by Ms. Edmonds and her supporters, will wish they had covered it.
Fortunately, we don't need the "mainstream" media to get the truth out
to the American people. With the new technology of the computer age, we
can do an end run around the media. This YouTube video is shocking:
As Edmonds says, "we have the facts, we have the documents, we have the
witnesses. Put out the tapes, put out the documents, put out the
intercepts - put out the truth."
If a nuke ever goes off in an American city, it will probably have been
stolen from our own arsenal - once the American people wake up to that
scary fact, the rest
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40490000/jpg/_40490061_forcedm_gavel
300.jpg> will follow automatically.