Tag: Sibel Edmonds

Sex, Bribes and Videotape. And Espionage. And Money Laundering…UPDATED X2

As noted in this post on DU,  Sibel Edmonds   recently testified  in the case of Rep. Jean Schmidt (yes that Jean Schmidt)  V. 2nd District Democratic U.S. Congressional candidate David Krikorian.  

Edmonds testimony is long, and the linked post on BradBlog has five videotape segments to watch.  I’ve only watched the first three so far, but wanted to post this information on Whistleblower Edmonds’ testimony which names names and alleges some very disturbing things regarding some Congress members, their staff members, and other government employees:

UPDATE: I forgot to mention Edmonds’ testimony regarding the “outing” of Brewster Jennings–Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA cover agency, enabling her group to investigate the existence of/extent of WMD in the ME.  Edmonds’ alleged that a government official warned the Turkish government and/or Turkish/foreign “operatives” that BJ was a CIA cover agency.

UPDATE 2:  Via Edmonds’ website “In Congress We Trust–Not”:

Vanity Fair printed the story only after they made certain they were on sure footing in the face of any possible libel by lining up more than five credible sources, and after triple pit bull style fact-checking. They were vindicated; Hastert did not dare go after them, nor did he ever issue any true denial. Moreover, further vindication occurred only a month ago. On April 10, 2009, The Hill reported that the Former Speaker of the House was contracted to lobby for Turkey. The Justice Department record on this deal indicates that Hastert will now be “principally involved” on a $35,000-a-month contract providing representation for Turkish interests. That seems to be the current arrangement for those serving foreign interests while on the job in congress – to be paid at a later date, collecting on their IOU’s when they secure their positions with ‘the foreign lobby.’

Wow–$35,000 a month!  Selling out your fellow citizens and the best interests of your nation to foreign governtments/ interest groups certainly does pay well.  

more below:

Sibel Edmonds’ partial testimony via liveblogging

Dandelion Salad’s got the skinny:  http://dandelionsalad.wordpres…

Whistleblower Protection provisions quietly removed from Stim Bill

(Cross posted at the GOS)

When, in the coming days, weeks and months, the right wingnut noise machine (predictably) starts cranking up the squeeze box and running around with their hair on fire, screaming that taxpayer’s money from the “stimulus” bill is being wasted on the Democrat’s long delayed pet projects,  it will behoove progressives to remind them that: the key measure in said bill designed to help expose that waste was quietly removed from the bill late last night — and, by one of their own, a senator who touts herself as a proponent of fiscal responsibility.

Whistleblower Silenced by High Court on Secret Renditions

Ben Griffin, the British ex-Special Air Service (SAS) soldier who resigned over the illegalities involved in the U.S. extraordinary rendition program, and who has spoken out publicly on British troop collaboration with U.S. forces in these activities, was served with a UK high court gag order. According to yesterday’s Guardian:

Ben Griffin could be jailed if he makes further disclosures about how people seized by special forces were allegedly mistreated and ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law.

At least hundreds of Afghans and Iraqis have been swept up in the program run with British and American special forces, and sent to prisons in countries often thousands of miles away to face torture and indefinite detention. Other European countries, including most recently Romania and Poland, have been implicated in the rendition program.

Did Robert Gates Order Iran Speedboat Provocation?

The story of the Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz that supposedly threatened U.S. warships has been pretty thoroughly debunked by now. Now Asia Times has an article that details how the disinformation was created and spread by the Pentagon, as the Pentagon planted stories with the press, starting with CBS and CNN. Even though the encounter at sea was “not that different from many others in the Gulf over more than a decade,” the Pentagon timed the news about the supposed provocation to a trip by Bush to the region.

The key line in the Asia Times piece is right at the beginning (my bold emphasis):

Senior Pentagon officials, evidently reflecting a broader administration policy decision, used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the January 6 US-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story demonstrating Iran’s military aggressiveness, a reconstruction of the events following the incident shows.

The Dark Nexus of the World: the Edmonds Revelations & the Meaning of Deep Politics

Also posted at Invictus

The “dark nexus” of the world is where its most secretive business is conducted, such as the bribes and secret payoffs that Sibel Edmonds recently revealed were behind a nuclear proliferation ring that involved many top U.S. officials. According to a recent compelling article by Chris Floyd (whose descriptor above I have quoted), this “shadowlands” is “where covert operations, criminal networks, terrorism, high finance and state policy mingle, and battle, in profitable murk.” I believe Peter Dale Scott famously called this essential, if diabolical aspect of modern history, “deep politics.”

Floyd likens the recent Edmonds tale to that of the scandal around BCCI, “the ‘Bank of Credit and Commercial International,’ a supposed financial group that a U.S. Senate investigation called ‘one of the largest criminal enterprises in history'”.