Big Sibel Edmonds update at 9/11 Timeline

[KJF]

The Sibel Edmonds chapter has seen a lot of new entries recently and you can find the details of the whole story here:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&projects_and_programs=sibelEdmonds

Sample:

January 14, 2002: FBI Special Agent Concerned That Translator Is Protecting Surveillance Targets and Involved in Espionage

Dennis Saccher, the FBI’s special agent in charge of Turkish counter-intelligence, invites FBI translator Sibel Edmonds into his office and shares with her his concern that Edmonds’ co-worker, Melek Can Dickerson, is protecting surveillance targets at the American-Turkish Council (ATC). He shows her several translations of wiretapped conversations that Dickerson either marked as “not pertinent,” or for which she provided only a brief summary indicating that the conversations were not important. When Edmonds tells Saccher that her department, at the request of Dickerson, no longer assigns translation tasks randomly and that certain targets, including the ATC, have been permanently attached to Dickerson, Saccher is shocked. “It sounds like espionage to me,” he suggests. At Saccher’s request, Edmonds and Kevin Taskasen, another translator, re-translate some of the conversations Dickerson had marked as “not pertinent.” They agree to schedule a meeting with supervisor Mike Feghali on February 1 (see February 1, 2002). (Washington Post, 6/19/2002; Vanity Fair, 9/2005)

Entity Tags: Melek Can Dickerson, American-Turkish Council, Kevin Taskasen, Sibel Edmonds, Dennis Saccher

[Tim Howells]

1. Thanks Kevin! (NT)

[KJF]

8. It was a pleasure

Have you read Unsafe at Any Altitude yet? You might like it.

[Tim Howells]

9. Haven't read it yet ...

... but t looks as though it's an incompetence theory,
which I definitely do not buy - I'm strictly MIHOP.
I'll try to have a look at it though.

Re Sibel Edmonds - here's an old post you might be
interested in. This should be updated because she has
more recently let out more about the neocon connection.

=================================================

SEPTEMBER 11 AND THE NEOCONS

No crime as horrific as the attacks of September 11 can be
covered up indefinitely. There will be leaks, whistleblowers,
and real investigations, albeit investigations not sanctioned
by the US government. One very promising sign is that 25
prominent US military, intelligence and law enforcement
officials have recently condemned the coverup in a letter to
the US congress, and have stated unequivocably that elements
of our government officials must be held accountable not only
for incompetence, but for intentional and treasonous
complicity:


*
"we are referring not to quasi-innocent mistakes caused by
'lack of imagination' or brought about by ordinary 'human
error'. Rather, we refer to intentional actions or inaction by
individuals responsible for our national security, actions or
inaction dictated by motives other than the security of the
people of the United States."


http://pogo.org/m/hsp/hsp-911commission-040913.pdf
Open Letter to The Congress of The United States
September 13, 2004


Signed:
-- Costello, Edward J. Jr., Former Special Agent,
Counterintelligence, FBI
-- Cole, John M., Former Veteran Intelligence Operations
Specialist, FBI
-- Conrad, David "Mark", Retired Agent in Charge, Internal
Affairs, U.S. Customs
-- Dew, Rosemary N., Former Supervisory Special Agent,
Counterterrorism & Counterintelligence, FBI
-- Dzakovic, Bogdan, Former Red Team Leader, FAA
-- Edmonds, Sibel D., Former Language Specialist, FBI
-- Elson, Steve, Retired Navy Seal & Former Special Agent,
FAA & US Navy
-- Forbes, David, Aviation, Logistics and Govt. Security
Analysts, BoydForbes, Inc.,
-- Goodman, Melvin A., Former Senior Analyst/ Division
Manager, CIA; Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy
-- Graf, Mark, Former Security Supervisor, Planner, &
Derivative Classifier, Department of Energy
-- Graham, Gilbert M., Retired Special Agent,
Counterintelligence, FBI
-- Kleiman, Diane, Former Special Agent, US Customs
-- Kwiatkowski, Karen U., Lt. Col. USAF (ret.), Veteran Policy
Analyst-DoD
-- Larkin, Lynne A., Former Operation Officer, CIA
-- MacMichael, David, Former Senior Estimates Officer, CIA
-- McGovern, Raymond L., Former Analyst, CIA
-- Pahle, Theodore J., Retired Senior Intelligence Officer, DIA
-- Sarshar, Behrooz, Retired Language Specialist, FBI
-- Sullivan, Brian F., Retired Special Agent & Risk Management
Specialist, FAA
-- Tortorich, Larry J., Retired US Naval Officer, US Navy &
Dept. of Homeland Security/TSA
-- Turner, Jane A., Retired Special Agent, FBI
-- Vincent, John B., Retired Special Agent, Counterterrorism, FBI
-- Whitehurst, Dr. Fred, Retired Supervisory Special Agent/
Laboratory Forensic Examiner, FBI
-- Wright, Ann, Col. US Army (ret.); and Former Foreign Service
officer
-- Zipoli, Matthew J., Special Response Team (SRT) Officer, DOE
*


What do these insiders know that we do not? The best clues at
this point come from the statements of one of the signatories
of the letter, Sibel Edmonds. She has stated:


*
"You get to a point ... where you have money laundering
activities, drug related activities, and terrorist support
activities converging ... We are not talking about only
governmental levels ... I keep underlining semi-legit
organizations and following the money.


"If they were to do real investigations we would see several
significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country.
And that is something that they are not going to let out. And,
believe me; they will do everything to cover this up."


http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/050704SibelEdmonds.shtml
Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds Calls Current 9/11
Investigation Inadequate, Jim Hogue, Baltimore Chronicle and
Sentinel, May 07, 2004
*


So what are these "semi-legit organizations" that she refers
to, and how do they interface with the "governmental levels"?
Sibel Edmonds can only speak in generalities, because Attorney
General John Ashcroft first imposed a series of sweeping and
unprecedented gag orders on her, and then took the further
precaution of retroactively classifying all of her previous
statements including all interviews she has given and her
testimony before Congressional committees.


Luckily the US Airforce Inspector General slipped up and
named one of the apparently suspected "semi-legit"
organizations in an unclassified letter to Mrs. Edmonds.
The named organization is the American Turkish Council (ATC).


*
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=391
Did Pentagon Reveal Name of Edmonds' 'Semi-Legit' Group?
balkanalysis.com, August 05, 2003
*


Neoconservative leaders have been prominently associated
with the American-Turkish Council. Neocon godfather Daniel
Pipes is on the board of directors:


*
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/98
Daniel Pipes: Prophet, by Leonard Getz, Lifestyles Magazine,
June 2000
*


Paul Wolfowitz addressed the ATC in March of 2001.


*
http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2001/s20010326-depsecdef.html
Remarks by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz,
Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Washington, DC, Monday, March 26, 2001.
DoD Website
*


Richard Perle gave the keynote speech at an ATC conference in
March of 2002.


*
http://www.byegm.gov.tr/YAYINLARIMIZ/CHR/ING2002/03/02x03x19.HTM
Perle: "Turkey would support the US during an operation in Iraq",
Turkish Press Review, March 19, 2002
*


Perle together with Douglas Feith founded another shady non-
governmental organization called International Advisors Inc.
that is also deeply involved in activities of the governments
of Turkey and the United States. These activities have been
extraordinarily lucrative for Perle and Feith. This has led to
strenuous allegations of conflict of interest on the part of
these officials. The allegations are laid out in joint letters
to President George W. Bush, and DoD General Counsel William J.
Haynes, cosigned by several Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish
organizations. In addition to Wolfowitz, Perle, and Feith,
Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman is also named.


*
http://www.hairenik.com/armenianweekly/february_2003/politics003.html
Joint Letter Recommends Review of Policy Toward Turkey
Armenian Online Weekly, February 2003


http://www.ahiworld.com/091702_letter2.html
Letter To DoD General Counsel William J. Haynes
September 6, 2002
*


Richard Perle has attempted to falsely deny his association
with International Advisors Inc, but he was caught out:


*
http://www.aaiusa.org/wwatch/051301.htm
New Questions About Feith, by James Zogby, Washington Watch,
May 13, 2001
*


On the subject of the Neocons' shady dealings with non-
governmental organizations associated with Turkey, also see:


*
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest20020823
Turkey, Israel and the US, by Jason Vest, The Nation,
August 23, 2002
*


THE BALKANS CONNECTION


Neocons and Neolibs view Turkey as central to their
geopolitical agenda. According to rightwing journalists Jacob
Heilbrunn and Michael Lind, who enjoyed strong connections
inside the Clinton administration, the real motivation for the
NATO campaigns in the Balkans in the 1990's really had little
to do with concerns about ethnic cleansing. In an article
titled "The Third American Empire", they state:


*
"President Clinton is depicting his decision to send 20,000
troops into Bosnia as a natural outgrowth of America's European
alliance. But instead of seeing Bosnia as the eastern frontier
of NATO, we should view the Balkans as the the western frontier
of America's rapidly expanding sphere of influence in the
Middle East ... The regions once ruled by the Ottoman Turks
show signs of becoming the heart of a third American empire ...
The main purpose of NATO countries, for the foreseeable future,
will be to serve as staging areas for American wars in the
Balkans, the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf."


The Third American Empire, by Jacob Heilbrunn and Michael Lind,
New York Times, January 2, 1996
*


There are striking connections between the campaigns in
former Yugoslavia and the events of September 11. These
connections involve the Pentagon very directly, but also
involve several non-governmental "semi-legit" organizations
as described by Sibel Edmonds as well as terrorists,
drug traffickers, and money launderers.


The Afghan "Jihad" run by the CIA gave bin Laden his start,
but the relationship did not end when the Soviets withdrew
from Afghanistan. During the 1990s The Clinton administration
authorized the Pentagon to import Afghan Jihadists into Bosnia
and to train and deploy them to fight against the Serbs in
support of the NATO campaign.


*
"By 1993, there was a vast amount of weapons- smuggling
through Croatia to the Muslims, organised by 'clandestine
agencies' of the USA, Turkey and Iran, in association with a
range of Islamic groups that included Afghan mujahedin and the
pro-Iranian Hezbollah. Arms bought by Iran and Turkey with the
financial backing of Saudi Arabia were airlifted from the
Middle East to Bosnia — airlifts with which ... the USA was
'very closely involved'.


"The Pentagon's secret alliance with Islamic elements allowed
mujahedin fighters to be 'flown in' ... By the end of the 1990s
State Department officials were increasingly worried about the
consequences of this pact ... US officials claimed that one of
bin Laden's top lieutenants had sent operatives to Bosnia, and
that during the 1990s Bosnia had served as a 'staging area and
safe haven' for al-Qa'eda and others."


http://www.antiwar.com/spectator/spec19.html
How we trained al-Qa'eda, Brendan O'Neill, The Spectator,
6 September 2003
*


According to investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, a former
Naval Officer who has worked with NSA, the Pentagon program
was assisted enormously by an organization called the Bosnia
Defense Fund, again a non-governmental organization created
by neocon operatives:


*
Via something called the Bosnia Defense Fund, these countries

deposited millions of dollars into U.S. coffers to buy weapons
for the Bosnians ... According to Washington K Street sources,
the law firm that established the Bosnia Defense Fund was none
other than Feith and Zell, the firm of current Pentagon
official and leading neo-con Douglas Feith. Feith's operation
at Feith and Zell was assisted by his one-time boss and current
member of Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle. Both
Feith and Perle advised the Bosnian delegation during the 1995
Dayton Peace talks.


http://power.consumercide.com/clark-critq.html
Wesley Clark for President?, Another Con Job from the Neo-Cons,
By Wayne Madsen
*


Yet another quasi-non-governmental organization (QUANGO), to
use the British term, is Military Professional Resources Inc.
MPRI is a very high powered private military advisory firm that
employs a great many generals and admirals and other luminaries
selected from the US military and intelligence communities.
They were very active in the conflicts in Croatia, Kosovo and
Bosnia. The tremendous profits available to MPRI and other
privately run military organizations is the subject of an
article by UPI's Business Correspondent, Sam Vaknin:


*
Big money is involved. The Los Angeles Times quoted, in its
April 14 issue, Equitable Services, a security industry
analyst. In 1997, it predicted the international security
market would mushroom from $56 billion in 1990 to $220 billion
in 2010. This was long before the boost given to the sector by
Sept. 11.


http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20020717-092201-5132r
Analysis: Private armies - I, by Sam Vaknin, UPI Senior
Business Correspondent, 7/17/2002
*


So let's see what we have here. We have a non-governmental
military company liasing with terrorists associated with bin
Laden. Neoconservatives play key roles. Everyone stood to
gain tremendous financial and political windfalls as a result
of the terrorist attacks of September 11. Does this sound
like the world of "semi-legit" organizations involved in
terrorism and international affairs that Sibel Edmonds
claims is implicated in September 11?


Oh yes - and drugs and money laundering are indeed a big part
of all this. The Kosovo Liberation Army was one of our key
allies in the Balkan conflicts.


*
"The U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist
organization, indicating that it was financing its operations
with money from the international heroin trade and loans from
Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama
bin Laden ... Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the
brother of a leader in an Egyptian Jihad organization and
also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an
elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict. (US Congress,
Testimony of Ralf Mutschke of Interpol's Criminal
Intelligence Division, to the House Judicial Committee,
13 December 2000) ...


"The KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics.
Albania and Kosovo lie at the heart of the 'Balkan Route'
that links the 'Golden Crescent' of Afghanistan and Pakistan
to the drug markets of Europe. This route is worth an estimated
$400 billion a year and handles 80 percent of heroin destined
for Europe. (House Judiciary Committee, 13 December 2000)"


http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_14195.shtml
Danger! War Criminals!, by Edward Teague, December 3, 2004.
*


Further foreshadowing the events of September 11, the Muslim
extremists imported by the Pentagon into Bosnia committed
atrocities against their own Muslim populations, believing
(correctly) that the atrocities would be attributed to the
Serbs and would help precipitate NATO intervention on the side
of the Muslims. At least three major atrocities attributed to
the Serbs are now believed to have been the work of our Muslim
allies - i.e. "false flag" attacks, self-inflicted for
political purposes.


*
http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/iran.htm
Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia
into Militant Islamic Base, Congressional Press Release,
US Senate, January 16, 1997. See the section, "Self-Inflicted
Atrocities"
*


Well, anway ... for what it's worth this is part of what I'm
currently looking at, and this is where I see the September 11
investigations heading. I wish I could tie it all up in a neat
package. My hat is off to all the investigators doing the real
digging and all the insiders doing the leaking at great risk to
themselves. May the leaks become a flood.


Tim Howells

[KJF]

10. The Trentos aren't really incompetence people

They have a HOP Level of at least 3.

I thought stuff like this might be of interest to you:

Throughout the 1980s the United States used its intelligence services to divert blame from Iran and Hezbollah onto Libya as part of its entanglement in Iran-Contra with the so-called moderate Iranians with whom the Reagan administration dealt. Ever since international arms dealer Edwin Wilson had been captured and imprisoned in the early 1980s American intelligence and the White House had labeled Libya and its leader, Muammar Qadhafi, a rogue nation with a terrorist leader. The intelligence operation went so far that the United States actually recruited a gang of Lebanese criminals to pretend to be a cell of Libyan-backed terrorists conducting violent acts around the world (see chapter 7). These activities, all choreographed by the CIA, were fed to allies such as West Germany as authentic intelligence that implicated Libya for terrorist acts that were either fake or were, in reality, authorized by Iran and carried out by Hezbollah and other surrogate groups. (p. 64-5)

For example:

A few weeks later (after the air strike on Libya in 1986) The Wall Street Journal and other news organisations were leaked stories by CIA sources that a plot to bomb a movie theatre in Berlin had been organized by the Libyan Peoples Bureau in East Berlin. That leak allowed the administration to quell the criticism over the bombing of Qadhafi's compound.
In fact the whole thing was a ruse. The CIA arranged a series of phone calls from Hamdan's apartment in Cyprus to suspected terrorists in Germany. "The idea was to convince German intelligence and police there was a terrorist cell," says one CIA officer who worked the case. According to CIA sources, a young cousin of the Hamdans living in West Berlin, Hossein Issa, was told a package would be coming in - carried by Ali Hamdan and a friend - and he was told to hold but not open it. It was strongly implied by Jamal Hamdan that the package contained explosives. (p. 90)

When the people the Germans thought were carrying the explosives (which actually never existed) were arrested, the CIA stepped in and had them released.

In Trento's account, Hezbollah is doing the bombings and the CIA is covering up for it, because of Iran-Contra and related dealings. The CIA-orchestrated cover-up enabled Iran to carry on bombing.

[Tim Howells]

14. OK - thanks - very interesting ...

I liked Prelude to Terror too - some interesting material there too.
I'll put Unsafe on my list to read.

Wow. Sometimes I wonder just how many genuine terrorist acts would
be left if we could eliminate all of the ones sponsored by The US
and Israel and Russia. Have you read "Profits of War" by Ari Ben
Menashe? According to Menashe the Likud Party manages enormous
slush funds generated by illegal arms trafficking. (Menashe
personally managed one of the largest of the these). When it came
to spending the money, the largest part went to funding the Likud
party candidates and their campaigns. The second largest
expenditure was to fund "Palestinian terrorism" around the world.

Tim

[LARED]

2. For those that might be interested

Edmonds is the translator hired by the FBI after 9-11 to help its woefully inadequate staff translate documents and wiretaps pertaining to the attacks in languages such as Farsi and Turkish. As she has told the Voice in past and recent interviews, she was given a top secret security clearance. She soon discovered that there were what she describes as two enemy moles with possible connections to 9-11 working both in the FBI and with the Air Force in weapons procurement for Central Asia, at one point. These were the Dickersons: Douglas with the Air Force and his Turkish-born wife, Melek Can Dickerson, with the FBI as a translator monitor. After they were subpoenaed for a court hearing, they left for Belgium in September 2002 and have not been heard from since.

Among other things Edmonds told her FBI superiors, she had discovered that Melek Can Dickerson affixed Edmonds's name to a printout of inaccurate translations. Properly translated, she says, these wiretaps revealed a Turkish intelligence operative in communication with his spies in both the Pentagon and the State Department.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0428,mondo1,55041,6.html

For what it's worth, this sounds to me like the FBI stumbled onto CIA assets in the FBI. The CIA made it go away.

[Bolo Boffin]

3. And without all these crappy CD/no plane stuff floating around...

It would have been a lot harder to bury these real stories.

IMHO, this shouldn't be in a crackpot CT forum, even your version of it, which is an interesting take. You think the spying was going the other way round. And that's why everybody official who's looked into it has added their weight behind the gag order. Nicely done.

[LARED]

4. I think a number of things could have happened

All point to a disastrous PR and intelligence nightmare for the CIA and this administration, hence Edwards was gagged.

It is possible the Dickersons were simply CIA inside the FBI to provide the CIA with intelligence on FBI activities. A constant theme seen pre 9/11 was the FBI trying to arrest and prosecute CIA assets, and they may simply have been inside the FBI in order to prevent CIA assets from getting arrested. The Dickersons also could have been tasked with tampering with translations that could have incriminated US intelligence assets oversees inside of monitored groups. If these scenarios are true (or others like them) it would be a PR nightmare to explain something like this in light of 9/11. It would also potentially seriously damage ongoing intelligence efforts.

Another possibility is that the Dickersons were double agents playing both sides. (I think the most possible as they now live overseas) Again if this were true it is a another PR nightmare with even worse intelligence implications.

My take on Edwards is that she was trying to change an institution well insulated from the public eye, and quite capable of protecting itself. She popped her head over the fence at a time when the CIA and FBI were hunkered down in a crisis not seen before. She was gagged not to cover up some government plot to destroy the WTC, but rather to protect an institution that failed to protect America on 9/11. No one in the FBI, CIA, the Congress, or the ultimately the President was going to let Edwards possibly damage the intelligence effort with her revelations of incompetence and bureaucratic infighting.

[KJF]

7. The Dickersons were CIA agents?

That's more CT than me. Well done LARED, have you been reading Mike Ruppert secretly?

[mhatrw]

5. DU definitely needs a limited hangout forum. n/t

[Bolo Boffin]

6. The neat thing about the Internet is...

you can build it.

[mirandapriestly]

11. delete double post

[mirandapriestly]

12. bwahahahahah

that is so ironic and you know it is too, just like you know Bush isn't going to invade Iraq, or I guess I should say you don't know he is going to , but you want to make people think he might.

[greyl]

13. I didn't know you were trying to convince people that bush wants to invade Iraq.

;)

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Bolo Boffin]

23. Tell the no-planers that.

This is apparently where they fled to after the Truth Movement's rejection of them.

I'm curious, though, how you guys did that. Did you get together and have an election? Did everybody have a big fight and agree to split up the rube market as best you could attract them? Because from here, it just looks like the People's Front of Judea badmouthing the Judean People's Front.

I prefer to address the fallacies as they are presented by the CT advocate. I'm glad you've managed to avoid the no-plane set of CTs. I assure you not everyone here has been able to do so, and we must take them all as seriously proposing it. Civility and all. Of course, you are over in the NIST thread talking a bunch of trash and posting links to a blogger who's currently spinning Mumbai conspiracy theories. Sorry about that. Maybe we can get you the facts and you can save yourself from this dead-end.

[ftr23532]

15. This one most definitely deserves a good 'ol fashioned...

...:kick:

Excellent work!

[wildbilln864]

16. kick ! n/t

[wildbilln864]

17. So, I'm wondering....

if president elect Obama knows the situation with Ms. Edmonds. And what is his position on it. :shrug:

[seemslikeadream]

18. ~~CONSPIRACY~~

[david_watts]

19. Good question

Good question

[wildbilln864]

20. Thank you and welcome to the DU dungeon.

:hi:

[david_watts]

21. Thanks for the welcome

Thanks for the welcome ......