Shooting the messenger, Part II? (Updated)

It seems like this post hit a nerve. Just today I've gotten over 1000 hits from sites such as FARK, Digg and StumbleUpon. I'd just like to welcome these new readers to my site. Feel free to browse at will. Also, thank you to those who tagged the site in the first place.

Last year I posted a piece on how our government had essentially shortchanged whistle blowers, who had gone against their own best interests, to report corruption by contractors hired to aid us in the reconstruction of Iraq. In that post, I noted how our government seemed to be engaged in a "shoot the messenger" mentality, where they saw the whistle blowers as trouble makers, or bad apples, instead of the companies whom evidence indicated where in fact culpable of far more egregious crimes.

In this post, I will focus on the case of a former FBI translator, Sibel Edmonds who has made a series of serious allegations which if true, could be one of the biggest espionage scandals in our nation's history. Before proceeding, please note that the question mark in the title of this post reflects the fact that this is the first time I've ever come across this case, and apart from the articles cited, there seems to be very little evidence that corroborates her allegations. As you will see, however, this may be partly due to a state-secrets gag order issued by then Attorney General John Ashcroft, following a lawsuit filed by Edmonds seeking documents related to her firing by the FBI. Since then, she has been subjected to another Federal order which, as Philip Giraldi notes, "is so sweeping that it precludes even a closed hearing attended only by officials with top-secret security clearances," effectively silencing her, and retroactively classifying statements she made before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the 9/11 Commission.

This is not the first time Ms. Edmonds has been in the spotlight. In August of 2004, CBS among others wrote an article describing mismanagement and corruption at the FBI's language division. In that article, Ms. Edmonds described how, in the aftermath of 9/11, her supervisors in the division told her and others to go slow in translating documents in Turkish and Farsi, the end goal of this was to support requests for increased funding. Ms. Edmonds claims that the managers went so far as to delete her completed translations from her hard drive, as punishment for her efficiency in translating these documents. Ms. Edmonds told CBS that she submitted a complaint with management in the agency, but received no response. Next, she turned to the Justice Department and to Sen. Grassley who at the time chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee and had direct oversight over the FBI. Sen. Grassley found her to be very credible (Sen. Leahy has also vouched for her credibility).

At the time, Ms. Edmonds claims she also alerted the FBI to the fact that another translator, Jan Dickerson, belonged to a Turkish organization being investigated by the FBI's counter-intelligence unit, and that she not only had tried to recruit Ms. Edmonds, but also provided the FBI with incomplete translations of documents that left out vital information to the FBI's investigation. Information that would have revealed that Turkish operatives were working as moles within the State Department and the Pentagon. When she alerted her superiors and the special agent in charge of the investigation about what she found, no one wanted to hear about it. Shortly thereafter, not only was she fired, "her home computer was seized; her family in Turkey was visited by police and threatened with arrest if they did not submit to questioning about an unspecified 'intelligence matter.'"

The FBI never gave an explanation for her firing, but three months later admitted that Ms. Edmonds had been correct and that on at least two occasions Dickerson had left out vital information from her translations. Ms. Dickerson subsequently moved to Belgium. At the time, Sen. Grassley, among others chalked up the FBI's failure to heed Ms. Edmonds allegations as part of a culture that seeks to hide mistakes, and to shoot the messenger. The FBI claimed at the time to have addressed these problems, and that it had beefed up its language department. A review of her case by the Office of the Inspector General found that Ms. Edmonds valid complaints were a contributing factor to her dismissal. Since that time, Ms. Edmonds has campaigned to have a public hearing on her allegations, as a means of pressuring Congress (which also failed to act on her report) to investigate the matter.

Now, almost three years later, Ms. Edmonds, stating her disillusionment with the US government's failure to address her concerns is talking to the press once again and makes the following allegations:

At least three countries have embedded moles "in American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli, Pakistani, and Turkish sources, facilitated by figures in the upper echelons of the State and Defense Departments."

The report originally appeared in the Times of London on January 6, 2008 with a follow-up report on January 20, 2008, after which time it was picked up by the American Conservative piece cited above. As noted above, Ms. Edmonds was a translator hired by the FBI following the September 11 attacks. She is fluent in Turkish and Farsi and was tasked with translating documents from Turkish diplomatic and political targets. According to the January 6 piece:

A backlog of tapes had built up, dating back to 1997, which were needed for an FBI investigation into links between the Turks and Pakistani, Israeli and US targets. Before she left the FBI in 2002 she heard evidence that pointed to money laundering, drug imports and attempts to acquire nuclear and conventional weapons technology.

The investigation centered on the American-Turkish Council, which was created in 1994 to promote Turkish interests in the US. The Council ,according to Giraldi, was founded by among others, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and former congressman Stephen Solarz. According to the January 6 article, Edmonds alleges that while the investigation was going on, several arms of the US government were actively hampering it. She also alleges that Turkey and Israel have moles planted in military and academic institutions handling nuclear technology, stealing sensitive information which eventually was sold to Pakistani sources. She claims that the Turks acted as conduits for Pakistan's ISI and surmises that the information, particularly that relating to nuclear secrets, was passed to A.Q. Khan and his network since at the time, Khan was very closely tied to the ISI. Even more troubling, is the revelation that another translator working at the FBI was the daughter of a Pakistani embassy official who worked for the Pakistani General in charge of the ISI, raising the specter of a conflict of interests that could potentially harm the investigation which also had him as a target. According to the January 6 piece in the Times, this translator was given a top secret security clearance over the objections of FBI invesitgators.

Edmonds further alleges that after 9/11 when many foreign operatives (4 Pakistani and Turk) were taken in for questioning by the US government, because of suspicions that they had known or aided the attacks, a State Department official intervened on their behalf at the request of the a primary target of the investigation. Giraldi in his article claims that the State Department official in question is Marc Grossman who at the time was the third highest ranking official at State and a former ambassador to Turkey. Edmonds, further alleges that Grossman had been recorded on one occasion making arrangements for picking up a $15,000 bribe from the ATC. Following his intervention, on behalf of the operatives, these were set free and allowed to leave the country. Grossman, who now works for the Cohen group (founded by former Defense Secretary Richard Cohen) has strongly denied the allegations.

As if this was not enough, Edmonds also alleges that Grossman tipped off his Turkish contacts about Brewster Jennings (of Valerie Plame fame), the firm used as a front by the CIA to gather information on weapons proliferation, information which was then passed via Turkey to Pakistani sources, including the A.Q. Khan network. Moreover, Edmonds accuses Grossman of abetting the infiltration of Israeli and Turkish moles into American research labs by godfathering their visas and enabling their security clearances.

Edmonds also claims that she reviewed a transcript in which moles in US military and academic community involved in nuclear technology carried out several transactions involving the sale of nuclear material or information relating to nuclear programs, every month, with Pakistan being a primary, but not only, buyer. Additionally, in the summer of 2000, the FBI recorded a meeting between Turkish officials and two Saudi businessmen in Detroit in which nuclear information stolen from an Air Force base in Alabama was offered for $250,000.

In the American Conservative article, Giraldi reports on Edmonds claim that:

beginning in 1999, the FBI was investigating senior Pentagon officials who were assisting agents of foreign governments, including Turkey and Israel. Edmonds has not publicly named names at the Pentagon, but a website linked to her appears to be a non-incriminating instrument for identifying suspects without doing so directly. Its “rogues gallery” includes photos of Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. Perle was chief of the Pentagon’s prestigious Defense Policy Board when Edmonds was working at the FBI, and Feith was undersecretary of defense for policy.

If true, this would be an explosive allegation, since both of these people had considerable influence with the Bush administration.

The Times provides by way of corroboration, confirmation by two FBI agents (one working, one retired) and a two former CIA agents of information relating to her story. One of the things these agents corroborated was the fact that Turkey is a known trader in nuclear technology.

In the January 20 piece, the Times claims that although the Liberty Coalition (a human rights group) submitted a FOIA request with the US government for file No. 203A-WF-210023, which it claims is related to the case presented by Ms. Edmonds, the FBI responded by stating that no such file exists. The Times counters, stating that it "obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file." This it uses to argue that the FBI may be engaged in a cover-up relating to Ms. Edmond's allegations. Edmonds claims that she informed the Congress, the 9/11 Commission and Justice Department of the contents of the file that the FBI claims does not exist.

In Giraldi's piece we get a lot more information on the file requested from the FBI. According to him, the Times learned of the file from anonymous letters written by FBI employees who are frustrated by the "premature closure of cases dealing with foreign spying, particularly when those cases involve Israel, and the State Department has frequently intervened to shut down investigations based on 'sensitive foreign diplomatic relations.'" Additionally, Giraldi reports that the gag order imposed on Ms. Edmonds was requested not by the FBI, but rather by the State Department and Pentagon, who employed many of the individuals she identified as being involved in criminal activities.

What's more, according to Giraldi, although Rep. Henry Waxman, prior to the Democratic victory in the 2006 legislative elections, had promised Ms. Edmonds to pursue these allegations fiercely, has since then failed to follow through, going so far as to refuse to take her calls. He surmises this has to do with Rep. Waxman being a strong supporter of Israel, who is nervous not only of exposing the role of the Israeli lobby in the corruption described by Edmonds, but also the damage it would do to both the Democratic and Republican parties, both of whose members have been involved in the same.

As Giraldi notes, critics of Edmonds say that she only saw snippets of information as a translator and that what she saw could have been part of a large counter-intelligence sting operation, like the one that netted the A. Q. Khan network. If so, then her allegations could be explained. However, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, her allegations do seem to carry some weight, and should galvanize us, as Americans, to ask more questions of our government and to demand an investigation to get at the truth.

Israel, Turkey and Pakistan may be our allies, but that does not mean that we can't be betrayed. As an example, if this network does exist and has enough power to block investigations into its existence, then what would happen if Pakistan's government were to fall only to be replaced by one more anti-American in persuasion? Imagining this in Turkey is less realistic, but not implausible. As for Israel, we know that they have engaged in this sort of espionage before as the case of Jonathan Pollard should remind us, even as he and his wife continue to lobby the Bush administration for a pardon. Even more troubling, however, is the impact this network of moles, if true, has had on our nuclear non-proliferation efforts. After all, one of Edmonds most explosive allegations is that unlike what our media reported following the discovery of the A.Q. Khan network, a lot of its technological know-how came not only from North Korea and Russia among others, but also from the United States, with the complicit participation of officials in our government. That more than anything, should push us to demand a full accounting of these very serious allegations.

That said, most of this remains unsubstantiated, for the reasons described above. As such, although we should also take pause about the allegations, given the degree of credibility Sen. Grassley, a republican, and Sen. Leahy, a democrat, give Ms. Edmonds, it is something we need to look into. Unless we get to the bottom of this, we would just continue the pattern I identified in my post in August, of burying our heads in the sand, while also shooting the messenger.

Update

As I noted in my post, there are many things that could explain away Ms. Edmonds allegations, such as a sting operation to get at the A.Q. Khan network or other targets. In that light, I wanted to point to Steve Clemons' post on the matter, which makes a stronger case for skepticism on our part.

Also, here are a few other blogs and a 2005 article in Vanity Fair discussing Edmonds allegations.

The first is No Quarter, which provides some background into the Turkish mafia and its power within the Turkish political establishment.

The next is a post by George Smiley at In from the Cold, which is a bit more skeptical of the matter.

The last is the Vanity Fair article on Sibel Edmonds from 2005 titled "An Inconvenient Patriot" (note that this article comes from a third source, as I could not find the original article on the Vanity fair website).

It has come to my attention that there is a French documentary called "Kill the Messenger," which covers a lot of this story. I've also discovered that Philip Giraldi whom I cite above, is one of the interviewees featured in the film, something he did not divulge in his article. This of course does not mean that the story, or details are false, I just thought it was important for people to know that he does have an interest in this case, beyond mere reportage.

Finally, here's part 1 of 6, of the film on Youtube.