BOMBSHELL! Sibel Edmonds speaks (Updated thrice)

Note: I rarely ask readers to publicize Cannonfire posts. But on this occasion, I beg you to spread links either to this story or to the Sunday Times piece which provides its backbone. You should also tell people about lukery's new Kos diary.)

LATEST UPDATE: Sibel has named all names.

A while back, Sibel said that she would spill all beans to a major news organization, and damn the consequences. Today, London's Sunday Times has published at least some of what she has to say.

Israel, Turkey and Pakistan, she says, have planted moles in ultra-secure United States institutions involving our nuclear security -- including Los Alamos. (According to Joseph Trento, Pakistan has acted as something of a "cut out" for Saudi Arabia on nucelar matters.)

“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.

Her story shows just how much the West was infiltrated by foreign states seeking nuclear secrets. It illustrates how western government officials turned a blind eye to, or were even helping, countries such as Pakistan acquire bomb technology.

The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort. But rather than shut it down, investigations by law enforcement bodies such as the FBI and Britain’s Revenue & Customs have been aborted to preserve diplomatic relations.

The moles were not just protected -- they were aided by high-ranking U.S. personnel.

The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. 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 who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities.

Why would Americans do such thing? Good old-fashioned bribery plays a large part...

In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed location by someone in the Turkish diplomatic community who was working for the network.

The Turks, she says, often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract suspicion. Venues such as the American Turkish Council in Washington were used to drop off the cash, which was picked up by the official.

Wrap your minds around that: Betraying your country for a mere $15,000.

Sibel brings in a name that should be very familiar to Cannonfire readers:

The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.

Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attachés in the Turkish embassy.

Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11.

Ahmad -- or Ahmed, the transliteration more often seen -- has been persuasively accused of funneling $100,000 to Mohammed Atta. Although he no longer controls the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA, Ahmed has been called the major player in Pakistan's enormous drug trade.

More than any other Pakistani, Ahmed was responsible for the creation of the Taliban. There are those who say that he arranged the escape of Osama Bin Laden and comrades into his country; others say that Ahmed is the real leader of Al Qaeda.

Benazir Bhutto blamed Ahmed for the first assassination attempt against her. We may never know if he engineered the attack that succeeded.

How the hell could Ahmed get away with all of this? This man's name should be as notorious as Osama Bin Laden's -- yet few Americans have heard of him. Why?

The series of bribes outlined by Sibel Edmonds goes some ways toward offering an explanation. But the strange fact is that Ahmad has also maintained strong ties to the American neoconservative movement. Forgive the self-quotation:

The ISI Director worked closely with the CIA for many years, and it is known that he met with Richard Armitage, a key player in the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations. (Armitage helped stop Valerie Plame's efforts against nuke proliferation, and signed the infamous PNAC letter which laid the groundwork for the Iraq debacle.)

Back to the Times story:

The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan’s nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme.

Get the picture? Valerie Plame was trying to stop Khan in his tracks. But Armitage stopped Valerie Plame in her tracks. Armitage and his neocon comrades are good buddies with Mehmood Ahmad, who was engineering this trade in nukes.

Edmonds was later to see the scope of the Pakistani connections when it was revealed that one of her fellow translators at the FBI was the daughter of a Pakistani embassy official who worked for Ahmad. The translator was given top secret clearance despite protests from FBI investigators.

The FBI's behavior cannot be excused as mere sloppiness.

The times received substantial confirmation of Edmonds' story from CIA and FBI sources:

One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,” the source said.

Some of the most intriguing material appears at the beginning of the Times piece.

She approached The Sunday Times last month 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.

The reference almost certainly goes to Louai al-Sakka, whom we have dealt with before. As we detailed in our earlier post, Sakka (or Sakra) was almost certainly giving information to Western intelligence in 2001, at which point he was in Germany. Later, in 2005, while he languished in a Turkish prison, he was visited by a group of Americans who promised him freedom if he testified falsely against Syria -- or so he has claimed.

The strange pattern keeps repeating itself: The terrorists have ties to factions within the American security apparat.

The Times has not published all of Sibel Edmonds' story. She fingers one well-known State Department official as a recipient of Turkish bribes. The accused individual strongly denies the claim, and the Times will not publish his name. (Libel laws are more stringent in the U.K.)

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US 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.

Who can the mystery man be? I'm thinking either Armitage -- who is second-in-command at State -- or Marc Grossman, who was United States Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2001. Grossman also played a still-nebulous role in Plame-gate. Not only that: He met with General Ahmed on or around September 11, 2001!

(Update: BradBlog confirms that Edmonds tagged Grossman. Keep in mind that Armitage and Grossman are thisclose. She names Grossman in the earlier videotaped interview which I'm including below.)

Grossman's name has previously come up in stories about Sibel Edmonds:

Furthermore, the language specialist has repeatedly stated in past interviews that investigations into pre-9/11 terrorist financing activities were blocked “per State Department request”, leaving open the question whether it was Mr. Grossman, then Undersecretary of State for European Affairs, who actively hindered investigations into the Turkey-Bin Laden link.

Yes, I know that this has been a long, dense post. But the story is pretty simple, really, when boiled down to its essence.

Terrorists had a lot of drug money. They used that money to buy officials in the U.S., who allowed moles to enter our most sensitive installations.

The overall objective? Remember, this all comes down to giving the Bomb to our enemies. The ramifications of that scenario are almost too terrible to contemplate.

That's the guts of it. After the jump, I'll quote some older stories which may help shed light on the above. Hit PERMALINK below.

Sakka and the spooks: I'm still not sure why news reports about this man triggered Edmonds to go into action. But the following may be of interest.

According to the Turkish newspaper Zaman, 2000 was the year when the Americans "turned" Sakka, who received an unspecified (but large) amount of money from the CIA. More than that: He received protection during his time in Turkey -- while he ran those Al Qaeda training camps.

Then came his mysterious sojourn in Germany in 2000-2001. During this period, he appears to have met Atta -- and then he went "underground.

Germany's BND -- their version of the CIA -- aided Sakka while he was on the run. This, despite the fact that Sakka was considered a wanted man in Germany, due to his role in earlier terror plots.

In late 2005, after Sakra’s arrest in Turkey (see July 30, 2005), the German television news show Panorama will report that the German BKA (Federal Office of Criminal Investigation) suspects the German BND (Federal Intelligence Service) to have helped Sakra escape from Germany in late 2001. Supposedly, German police had learned where he was staying in Germany, but the BND enabled him to escape via France to Syria in order to prevent further investigations about him. Panorama will report that Sakra was secretly still working for Syrian intelligence and was giving them information about al-Qaeda’s leadership. Sakra will go on to mastermind a series of suicide bombings in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2003...

We cannot know what Sakka was up to in Syria, but one thing seems clear: Western intelligence placed greater value on his services than on bringing a 9/11 plotter to justice. His protection continued in the face of the 1999 plots, the 9/11 tragedy, and the 2003 bombings. It ended only when he decided to go after Israeli ships.

At his 2005 trial, his lawyer offered an intriguing observation:

Sakra’s lawyer will claim that if Sakra revealed all that he knew, “a few states would collapse.”

And now for some previously-published words about General Mehmood Ahmed:

According to various accounts:

1. He wired money to Mohammed Atta shortly before the World Trade Center attacks.

2. He employed R.G. Abbas, a Pakistani agent who -- while pointing toward the WTC complex -- told an undercover FBI informant that "those towers are coming down."

3. He arranged the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

4. He sent fighters against India to be trained in Al Qaeda camps -- essentially using Osama Bin Laden's jihadist movement as a cut-out.

5. He helped arrange the escape of thousands of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters into Pakistan.

6. He is said to have have arranged -- or so runs a widely-held belief -- the fake arrest of WTC attack mastermind Khaled Sheihk Mohammed.

Here is what Sibel said about Ahmed last year, in a phone call with lukery (when she still felt bound by the gag order):

"You seem to know how to connect some of these dots; do so pretty well. Yet, even some of the savvy media here don't get it (or don't want to!). You picked the Zogby report, even though it was written a while ago (good research); cleverly put it together with Mahmud, Grossman, and even Brewster Jennings....

Joe Wilson met his wife, Plame, at ATC (American Turkish Council) in 1997. Look up his book, it is there.

Brewster Jennings, Plame, dealt with ATC, ATA, and Turkey a lot. Her UC job took him* to Turkey more than 4-5 times to Turkey between 1997 & 2001. This info has been printed on the front-page of main Turkish papers.

IAI, International Advisors Inc, owned & operated by Perle & Feith, was set up & registered as 'Agents for Turkey.'"

Also see lukery's piece here:

The letter noted that Under Secretary Feith was a registered foreign agent for Turkey from 1989-1994 while serving as a principal for International Advisors Inc., and that he was a special assistant to Richard Perle at the Defense Department, while Perle was a paid consultant for IAI for Turkey. Feith negotiated an $800,000 contract for IAI with Turkey in 1989 and a $600,000 annual contract through 1994. They proposed that this should require Mr. Feith and Mr. Perle to remove themselves from matters concerning US-Turkey relations.

The letter also urges the President not to give Turkey any of the $228 million authorized by Congress for Turkey at the initiative of the Defense Department, until an investigation is made into the circumstances of its initiation. "When Richard Perle was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security from 1981-1987 during the Reagan Administration, he led the successful effort to give massive grant military aid to Turkey," they wrote, adding that Feith was on his staff at the time. "Wolfowitz and Grossman actively supported sending high levels of arms to Turkey. Weapons supplied by the US were used by the Turkish army against the Kurds since 1984 and are being used at the present time."
[snip]
The World Policy Institute and the Federation of American Scientists have documented the US arms trade with Turkey and its harmful effects on US interests in a comprehensive joint report, "Arming Repression: US Arms Sales to Turkey During the Clinton Administration.""

A reader named Tom sent in this interesting response:

While Mahmood undoubtedly is a "most taboo suspect" re: 9/11 financing and the Pak military role in cultivating Taliban/al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Iran, etc. there are many other top ISI/Army officers -- including Musharraf himself -- playing similar roles.

Despite his cultivated image as a "pro-Western, anti-extremist" leader, Musharraf initiated the provocative "Kargil" fiasco that nearly led to nuclear war between India and Pakistan in the 1990s. A protege of former ISI director Hamid Gul, Musharraf himself (like Gul, Mahmood Ahmad) has always sought to destabilize Afghanistan as a wedge against India (the so-called policy of "strategic depth"). It was Musharraf who facilitated the rise of various Kashmiri jihadi groups (Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT], Jaish-e-Mohammed [JeM]) -- al-Qaeda associates still in existence!

Additionally, Musharraf was instrumental in continuing General Zia and Gul's nuclear proliferation policies as Pak military cash cow (known and covered-up by successive US administration's from Carter to Bush II).

In my opinion, it is a mistake to view these events, up to and including Bhutto's assassination, as the actions of "rogue" elements within the Pakistani military establishment. Indeed, these elements are the establishment, Musharraf included.

Having said this, we should also not forget that Pakistan's ISI continues to be instrumental in the explosive growth of Afghanistan's drug trade. These too, are hardly the actions of "rogue" operatives, but rather constitute a formidable reservoir of funds for various ISI "black operations." Just like the CIA!

My final question is: What is the role of Israel in all of this? Remember, the moles were Israeli as well as Turkish and Pakistani.