Lesbian Congresswomen, gay Senators and other “sinners” of the US establishment fall victims of an espionage scandal. Former FBI employee tells how Turkish intelligence gathers information on Capitol Hill.
A 34-year-old, Turkish-born woman of Azerbaijani descent, Sibel Edmonds, joined the FBI as a Turkish and Farsi translator a few days after 9/11. Her duties included translation of recordings of conversations between suspected members of Turkish intelligence and their American contacts.
However, in April 2002 Edmonds was fired after she raised concerns that one of the staff in her section was a member of a Turkish organization that was under investigation for bribing senior US government officials and members of Congress, drug trafficking, illegal weapons sales, money laundering, and nuclear proliferation.
Despite the fact that no one has ever disproved any of her revelations, no effort was made to address the corruption that she had been monitoring. That is according to The American Conservative magazine, which has had the opportunity to interview the former FBI translator.
The cases disclosed by Sibel Edmonds may well be considered the most incredible story of corruption and influence peddling in modern US history.
“If this were written up as a novel, no one would believe it,” The American Conservative quoted the woman as saying.
Before and after 9/11
According to documents that Sibel Edmonds had access to, intelligence agents repeatedly reported Al-Qaeda plans to arrange a series of large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil. Despite that, their chiefs dismissed the reports as dubious.
Moreover, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department twice invoked the State Secrets Privilege on the files so Edmonds could not tell what she knew, while the 9/11 Commission did not have a chance to see them either.
Interestingly, between 1997 and 2001, not once did anybody use the word “Al-Qaeda,” the woman says. It was always “mujahideen,” always “bin Ladens” – plural.
“There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them… People and weapons went one way, drugs came back,” Edmonds continues.
“A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium on NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the US via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Patterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats, who would never be searched, were coming with suitcases of heroin,” she explained.
Generous Turks, helpful congressmen
After having been sacked, Sibel Edmonds had revenge on her former employer by telling journalists that entire groups of American congressmen and diplomats were permanently “supported” by Turkish intelligence and lobbyists in Washington DC.
For instance, they allegedly recruited Marc Grossman for regular payouts, who was a US Ambassador to Turkey between 1994 and 1997.
On top of that, Edmonds lists several high-profile officials among his collaborators, including the 13th US Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, senior Pentagon officials, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, and Air Force Major Douglas Dickerson.
Simultaneously, she says, Grossman arranged for several US congressmen to lobby Ankara’s interests on Capitol Hill, while compensation reached up to $400,000.
“The number-one Congressman involved with the Turkish community, both in terms of providing information and doing favors, was [a former Republican Representative from Louisiana] Bob Livingston,” Edmonds said in an interview.
Bob Livingston – also the founder of the renowned lobbying group, The Livingston Group –was allegedly paid a monthly compensation of $105,000 by the Turkish Embassy in Washington DC. In total, the woman says, his family received $13 million between 2000 and 2005.
“Number-two after him was [a member of the US House of Representatives] Dan Burton, and then he became number-one in Congress until [Dennis] Hastert became the Speaker of the House. Bill Clinton’s Attorney General, Janet Reno, was briefed on the investigations, and since they were Republicans, she authorized that they be continued,” Sibel Edmonds has said.
Employing the basic instinct
Yet, what really surprises is the way the Turkish intelligence allegedly approached Janice, or "Jan" Schakowsky – a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives.
They arranged for the bisexual woman and her spouse, Robert, to be seduced by a pretty Turkish lesbian – all it took to get everything the Turkish agents needed.
Even these few examples of Edmond’s disclosures of US officials provides a glimpse of the overall scale of corruption in US governmental institutions, as well as of the activity of Turkish intelligence there.
Quite interestingly, all the US MPs who have been listed by Sibel Edmonds were the first to actively oppose the pro-Armenian resolutions concerning America’s recognition of the Armenian genocide by the Turks in 1915.
All in all, Turkish agents reportedly received numerous strategic secrets about the American military and, even more importantly, a number of compromising ties that certain politicians, diplomats and military officials established with various international criminal syndicates.