French filmmaker Mathieu Verboud is set to release a new documentary for
European television this fall which will reveal important new insights into the
case of former FBI translator and president of the National Security Whistleblower�s Coalition Sibel Edmonds.
Edmonds, a Turkish-American whose wrongful termination lawsuit was
suppressed by the government�s invocation of the all-too-common �state
secrets privilege�, reported to her superiors espionage and deliberate
mistranslations on the part of fellow Turkish translator Melek Can Dickerson.
It seems Ms. Dickerson had relationships with targets of FBI investigations
working at the Turkish Embassy and the American Turkish Council, a
fact which meant that anything she translated was likely to be false. However,
instead of receiving a promotion for bringing Ms. Dickerson�s� espionage to the
attention of her bosses, Edmonds was fired after she went in frustration to the
U.S. Senate.
The FBI refused to investigate Edmonds� claims, at least in part,
because the contract linguist had discovered quite a messy scandal: the content of the mistranslated documents
revealed that some very powerful people in the U.S. government, allegedly
including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, were connected to foreign organized
crime. Even worse, these foreign criminals connected to the high and mighty in
the U.S. were also connected internationally, through the heroin trade and
associated money laundering, to international terrorist organizations like al
Qaeda.
Okay, take a deep breath and take a step back: it�s not a pretty
picture. According to what we know so far from Sibel Edmonds� many interviews
and from the groundbreaking story on her case from Vanity Fair, �An
Inconvenient Patriot�, Edmonds found that within the U.S. a nest of Turkish
spies, some working at the Turkish embassy, others affiliated with namely the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA),
the American Turkish Associations (ATA) and
the American Turkish Council (ATC),
were involved in espionage, bribery, illegal lobbying, drug trafficking and the
infiltration of U.S nuclear research labs.
Separately, from
a former CIA Counterterrorism official, Phillip Giraldi, who himself was
once based in Turkey, we know that some arms sales meant for Turkey and Israel
were actually meant for resale to countries like China and India- and perhaps even
to international terrorists -- using fake
end-user certificates. So we have Turkish nationals at the embassy and NGOs
stealing U.S. secrets for sale to the highest bidder, reselling arms meant for
Turkey, bringing in drugs from Europe, and pouring money into bribes and
lobbying activities.
To understand how these activities fit together- Americans must first
understand what Europeans call the Turkish �deep state.� In 1996, a car crash in a town called
Susurluk revealed the �link between politics, organized crime and the
bureaucracy� in Turkey. As it turns out, its crippled economy in the 1990s
meant Turkey had become the European equivalent of Colombia -- a state almost
completely dependent on the Turkish mafia and by extension, the Southwest Asian
Heroin trade. Which is where the Turkish �deep state� comes in -- it becomes
very difficult to determine where the �government� ends and the �mafia� begins.
What we do know from Sibel Edmonds and other sources is this: Turkey�s secular
establishment, including the Turkish military and intelligence services (MIT),
as well as political parties associated with former Prime Minister
Tansu Ciller, appear to have been more connected to the Turkish mafia than
the Turkish Islamic Parties that Washington
abhors. Furthermore, it appears from reading into some of Edmonds�
statements that the Turkish mafia was partnered with Osama Bin Laden�s al Qaeda
network in the drug trade, meaning Turkey�s secular establishment was more
connected to al Qaeda pre-9/11 than were the Islamists in Turkey. Which is
quite ironic, to say the least.
If you think this story sounds too convoluted to be true, and you feel
the instinct to dismiss Edmonds� claims, think again. Every investigation into
the whistleblower�s charges, from the Senate Judiciary Committee to the Department
of Justice�s Inspector General Report, has found that Edmonds� story is
corroborated within the FBI, which means her translations, not those of Melek
Can Dickerson, were the correct ones.
This also means that the aforementioned Turkish organizations, and certain
Turkish diplomats, were indeed under
FBI investigation. And all this put together means that people like
Dennis Hastert probably were -- and perhaps still are -- on the
payroll of Turkish �deep state� interests.
A recent article
published in the U.K. Guardian about the well-connected Kurdish Baybasin clan
also gives important backing to the former translator�s story. The article
details how Europe�s �Pablo
Escobar,� Huseyin Baybasin, has �alleged that he had received the
assistance of Turkish embassies and consulates while moving huge consignments
of drugs around Europe, and that Turkish army officers serving with Nato in
Belgium were also involved." This information, of course, dovetails most
precisely with what Sibel Edmonds has been hinting at for over three years now:
that targets of FBI investigation linked with the Turkish embassy and Turkish
organizations were involved in narcotics trafficking. It is clear the Baybasin
gang and the secular factions in Turkey had a seemingly symbiotic relationship;
the government providing the traffickers diplomatic passports and thus free rein
to travel around the world without fear of prosecution. Also involved in the
scandalous Turkish drug running are the very notorious, Pope-killing Grey Wolves, a
fascist organization connected to human rights abuses in Turkey.
As for who else besides Hastert might have been on the payroll of Mr.
Baybasin and friends, we turn next to the Executive Branch. In an interview with Chris
Deliso of antiwar.com, Edmonds hinted at key roles played by some powerful
unelected officials -- important neconservatives like Marc Grossman of
the State Department and Richard
Perle and Douglas
Feith, formerly of the Defense Department. If we hit the rewind button and
go back to a CBS
60 Minutes� interview in October, 2002, we remember the ex-contract
linguist stated that Turkish targets of FBI investigation spy inside the U.S.
State Department and at the Pentagon in order to �obtain the United States
military and intelligence secrets.� It doesn�t take a genius to conclude that
Grossman, Feith and Perle might have
been the persons to whom she was referring in 2002. 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.
Perle and Feith are an interesting case in this hidden scandal. Their
consultancy, International
Advisors (IA), has done extensive work for the Republic of Turkey, though
it is questionable who is
paying the invoices. Ms. Edmonds rhetorically asked the question of Phoenix
radio personality Charles Goyette in January 2006, �For what [were they paid]?
One could imagine, hypothetically, that passing state secrets might be one
�service� provided to the Turkish mafia/government by IA. But would Perle and
Feith have gone beyond that? Would they have introduced the Turkish mafia types
to Denny Hastert, and counseled �deep state� interests in how to skirt U.S.
campaign finance laws? After all, the Turks were reported to have made their
initial payments from 1996-1998 through �unitemized (less than $200)
contributions,� after which they allegedly delivered suitcases of cash to the
speaker�s front door. Someone had to teach them the intricacies of campaign
finance law: was it IA? What we do know is that Perle was a key architect of
the Israeli/Turkish alliance forged in the late '90s, and that Edmonds case
also is connected
to the AIPAC spy scandal -- leaving lots of room for speculation on how the
rest of the story pans out.
As messy and ugly as this, for lack of a better phrase,
�Turkish DeepState Gate� scandal appears, the consequences of continuing to do
nothing about it -- of allowing the government�s outrageous use of �state
secrets� to insure Dennis Hastert, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Marc Grossman
and others are never investigated -- could be horrific.
Ms. Edmonds plans to take petitions
to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months to finally force full
and open hearings on her case. She will try to do the type of lobbying that
does not involve foreign bribery or ill-gotten gains. This will be the simple
type of petitioning guaranteed every citizen by the Constitution under the
First Amendment, a long forgotten portion of the Bill of Rights. Americans
aware of the situation can only hope, and do everything in their power to
insure, that Ms. Edmonds� type of lobbying prevails.
Mike
Mejia is a freelance writer with a degree from the Monterey Institute of
International Studies, where he specialized in International Trade and Arms
Proliferation. He currently resides in an undisclosed location in the American
Heartland and can be contacted at lenlarga@yahoo.com.