Hardball-Isikoff & Corn – The Cheney-Libby lies and memory loss about Wilson, Plame, everything
firedoglake
November 02, 2009
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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The Ed Show – David Shuster cuts through the Cheney-Libby ‘memory issue’ muck
The Henry Raines Show
August 30, 2009 03:14 PM PDT
On a very special edition of “The Henry Raines Show”, Brad Friedman discusses the testimony of Sibel Edmonds.
[…]
Scott Horton
Antiwar Forum
August 27, 2009
Philip Giraldi, contributing editor at The American Conservative magazine and columnist for Antiwar.com, discusses the long-awaited deposition of Sibel Edmonds, Marc Grossman’s 2001 outing of CIA front group Brewster Jennings, the failure of the MSM to cover news outside the left-right paradigm, the incredible level of corruption in the U.S. government and the influence of Turkish and Israeli lobbies in Congress.
By Ron Kampeas
JTA
August 18, 2009
OBITUARY
WASHINGTON
Robert Novak, the conservative columnist whose scoops broke many a career, made his reputation as a journalist by being unafraid to attack his ideological brethren.
The same dynamic underlay the contentious and at times ugly relationship he had with fellow Jews.
Novak died Tuesday in Washington after an extended struggle with brain cancer. He was 78.
[…]
But it was an effort to defend the Iraq invasion that almost railroaded Novak’s career: He was the first to publish the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, as part of the Bush administration’s retaliatory campaign against her huband, Iraq War critic Joseph Wilson. Novak’s role in the affair contributed to the end of his long CNN career.
[…]
Novak’s attacks on the pro-Israel community repeatedly veered into the conspiratorial; he helped purvey the notion that the Iraq War was fought in Israel’s interest. He also was a rare mainstream voice endorsing the widely rejected claim that Israeli forces had intentionally attacked a U.S. naval ship in the Mediterranean Sea during the Six-Day War in 1967.
[…]
via Robert Novak: Feared political columnist, harsh critic of Israel | JTA – Jewish & Israel News
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Bob Novak dies of cancer — and his right-wing pals rush to lie about his role in the Plame case
AP
asia.news.yahoo.com
Tuesday June 10, 4:58 AM
h/t: CLG
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
by Cynthia McKinney
Black Agenda Report
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
The U.S. government has for years been engaged in a witch hunt against Muslim charities, seizing assets and persons on little or manufactured evidence of “terrorist” activities. Meanwhile, blatant spying on behalf of Israel goes unprosecuted, and is even rewarded with promotions to the highest, most sensitive levels of government. Human rights cease to exist in a legal free-fire zone in which all things Muslim or Arab are deemed subversive. All pretense of constitutional government vanishes when institutions and individuals are targeted based on ethnicity and religion. The real conspiracy against so-called “American values” is headquartered in U.S. law enforcement and “security” agencies that “wreak fear and terror inside this country’s Muslim community.”
Framing Muslims and Locking Up Their Money
by Cynthia McKinney
“The government falsified evidence and broke the law while spying on the Foundation.”
Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney delivered the following remarks to a banquet for the Dallas Muslim Legal Fund of America.
What I want to talk to you about tonight, is why you must support the Muslim Legal Fund of America even more now than ever before. I know there are some big donors in here, but everyone must donate until you feel it. Then you will know that you did something with your money. You will remember this contribution. And soon enough, you will be glad you did.
That’s because we haven’t reached a point where human rights are respected in this country. We haven’t reached a point where justice rolls down like a might stream in this country. And so, we must be prepared for times of injustice, times of abuse, times of great pain and hurt.
To illustrate my point, I would like you to consider the case of a powerful and famous organization. It had friends that lavished it with money and it learned to use its resources to achieve its goals. Pretty soon, this organization had a multimillion dollar budget. It became very powerful, some said the largest of its kind in the country. Soon, the organization became so effective that people began to take notice. People began to wonder if the organization was really American, advancing American values, or was in service to non-American or even anti-American goals? Eventually, the organization became ensnared in our country’s legal system and its supporters were accused of criminal activity. In some cases even treason! People were maligned, had their lives ruined, and some were even jailed.
…
And finally, Sibel Edmonds, who has a gag order on her, but she courageously is now speaking, says that Patrick Fitzgerald will find more than just a few guys spying for Israel if he conducts a real investigation. Sibel says that it’s basically the same people over and over again and the activities include multi-billion dollar black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes. She says that the beauty of the larger case is that you can start form any angle. If you start from the AIPAC angle, you wind up at the same people. If you start from the Valerie Plame case, you end up with the same people. The FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities had as its target Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans. On her website, Sibel Edmonds shows photographs of those involved. I went to her website and I recognized the following photographs:
Retiring former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, retiring Member of Congress Tom Lantos, and Pentagon and State Department officials.
Sibel concludes that the investigations were shut down in 2000 and in 2001 “because they ended up going to higher levels and involving maybe way too many people, US persons. I’m talking about individuals who are breaking the law, misusing the trust and abusing their power, and in some cases I would even say engaging in treason.”
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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To learn more about Cynthia McKinney’s record, visit www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com. To make a donation to her campaign fund, visit www.runcynthiarun.org. You can also send a check or money order to Power to the People Committee, P.O. Box 311759, Atlanta, GA 31153.
see
Cynthia McKinney’s Draft Manifesto
Sibelgate: US officials visiting Turkey NOW by Virginia Simson
Sibel Edmonds: Kill The Messenger (must-see video)
The Audacity of Revolution VS The Hope of Chumps by Manila Ryce (video)
by Scott Horton
Antiwar.com Blog
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
What disclosures are those? Treason.
Sunday Times 1,2,3. Philip Giraldi 1,2,3.
Now BradBlog reports to us an interview from Tuesday, February 12th 2008, in which “outed” CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson discusses (at 39:00) the allegation that former State Department official Marc Grossman tipped off the Turks and Pakistanis to her nuclear black market-monitoring CIA front company years before we ever heard of her. From Bradblog:
[Plame] says she has been following recent blockbuster series in British paper concerning U.S. nuclear secrets espionage, allegations that her [CIA] cover company, Brewster Jennings, was exposed by a former high-ranking State Department official as long ago as 2001.
Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson says the recent disclosures in the UK’s Sunday Times concerning the sale of U.S. nuclear secrets to the foreign black market, as aided by high-ranking government officials, are “stunning.”
…continued and audio
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
High Treason and Felonies by Ted Lang
FBI whistleblower ignored by media by Brian O’Farrell
by Philip Giraldi
HuffingtonPost.com
February 4, 2008
Sibel Edmonds is the FBI translator turned whistleblower who decided to go public late in 2002 and has been seeking to tell her story about high level corruption in the United States government involving Turkey and Israel. What makes her story particularly compelling is that the corruption relates to the theft and sale of United States defense secrets, most particularly nuclear technology. Sibel obtained her information while translating Turkish language telephone intercepts directed against several Turkish lobbying groups who had contact with senior officials in the Bush Administration, both at the Pentagon and in the State Department. Many of the officials involved are apparently the same neoconservatives who cooked the books to enable the rush to war against Iraq and who are continuing to urge more wars in the Middle East, most notably against Iran and Syria. Several of them are close allies of leading Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
…
Why should Sibel be heard? Mostly because her story, if true, involves corruption at the highest levels of government coupled with the sale of secrets vital to the security of the United States. One of her claims is that a senior State Department officer who has been identified as Marc Grossman, recorded by the FBI while arranging to pick up bribes from a Turkish organization, also revealed the identity of the CIA cover company Brewster Jennings to a Turkish contact in late 2001. The Turk then passed on the information to a Pakistani intelligence officer who presumably warned the AQ Khan nuclear proliferation network that the CIA was apparently pursuing. Some might call that treason and it should be noted that it occurred two years before Robert Novak’s notorious exposure of Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings which led to the conviction of Scooter Libby.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Phil Giraldi chats about Sibel Edmonds by Luke Ryland
Why Bush Wants to Legalize the Nuke Trade with Turkey by Joshua Frank
Turkey’s Drug-Terrorism Connection By Martin A. Lee (1997)
by Gary Leupp
Dissident Voice
January 28th, 2008
Sibel Edmonds on Marc Grossman
I am not one to easily embrace conspiracy theories, and in particular have found the idea that 9-11 was somehow an inside job too incredible for serious consideration. On the other hand, there are some very fishy aspects to some officials’ behavior pertaining to the attacks. Justin Raimondo has made a very good case for the fact that Mossad agents posing as “Israeli art students” were tracking al-Qaeda operatives in the U.S. before 9/11.
Over 120 Israelis were detained after 9/11, some failing polygraph tests when asked about their involvement in intelligence gathering. But they were not held or charged with any illegal activity but rather deported. As former FBI translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has revealed, there was a curious failure of the government before 9/11 to act upon intelligence pertaining to an al-Qaeda attack. Most importantly Edmonds, defying the gag order that former Attorney General Ashcroft imposed on her in 2002, is implicating Marc Grossman, formerly the number three man in the State Department, in efforts to provide US nuclear secrets to Pakistan and Israel. She suggests this was done through Turkish and Pakistani contacts, including the former head of Pakistan’s ISI who funneled funds to Mohamed Atta! Now there’s a conspiracy for you.
Edmonds claims that during her time at the FBI (September 20, 2001 to March 22, 2002) she discovered that intelligence material had been deliberately allowed to accumulate without translation; that inept translators were retained and promoted; and that evidence for traffic in nuclear materials was ignored. More shockingly, she charges that Grossman arranged for Turkish and Israeli Ph.D. students to acquire security clearances to Los Alamos and other nuclear facilities; and that nuclear secrets they acquired were transmitted to Pakistan and to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the “father of the Islamic bomb,” who in turn was selling nuclear technology to Libya and other nations.
She links Grossman to the former Pakistani military intelligence chief Mahmoud Ahmad, a patron of the Taliban, who reportedly arranged for a payment of $100,000 to 9/11 ringleader Atta via Pakistani terrorist Saeed Sheikh before the attacks. She suggests that he warned Pakistani and Turkish contacts against dealings with the Brewster Jennings Corp., the CIA front company that Valerie Plame was involved in as part of an effort to infiltrate a nuclear smuggling ring. All very heady stuff, published this month in The Times of London (and largely ignored by the U.S. media).
She does not identify Grossman by name in the Times article, but she has in the past, and former CIA officer Philip Giraldi does so in an extremely interesting article in the American Conservative. From that and many other sources, I come up with the timeline that appears below.
But first, some background on Grossman. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara and the London School of Economics, he was a career Foreign Service officer from 1976 when he began to serve at the US embassy in Pakistan. He continued in that post to 1983, when he became the Deputy Director of the Private Office of Lord Carrington, the Secretary General of NATO. From 1989 to 1992 he was Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Turkey, and from 1994 to 1997, US Ambassador to Turkey. As ambassador he strongly supported massive arms deals between the US and Ankara.
Thereafter he was Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, responsible for over 4,000 State Department employees posted in 50 sites abroad with a program budget of $1.2 billion to 2000. In 1999 he played a leading role in orchestrating NATO’s 50th anniversary Summit in Washington, and helped direct US participation in NATO’s military campaign in Kosovo that same year. As Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from the beginning of George W. Bush’s administration to January 2005, he played a bit role in the Plame Affair, informing “Scooter” Libby of Plame’s CIA affiliation.
Grossman is close to the American Turkish Council (ATC) founded in 1994 as a sister organization to the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC). Its founders include neoconservatives involved in the Israel-Turkey relationship, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, as well as Henry Kissinger, Brent Snowcroft and former congressman Stephen Solarz. (Perle and Feith had earlier been registered lobbyists for Turkey through Feith’s company, International Advisors Inc. Perle was at one point making $600,000 per year from such activity). Edmonds says this is “an association in name and in charter only; the reality is that it and other affiliated associations are the US government, lobbyists, foreign agents, and Military Industrial Complex.” (M. Christine Vick of Grossman’s Cohen Group serves on the Board of Advisors.) Grossman is also close to the American Turkish Association (ATA), and regularly speaks at its events.
Both ATA and ATC have been targets of FBI investigations because of their suspected ties with drug smuggling, but Edmonds claims she heard wiretaps connecting ATC with other illegal activities, some related to 9/11. The CIA has investigated it in connection with the smuggling of nuclear secrets and material. Valerie Plame and the CIA front group Brewster Jennings were monitoring it when Bush administration officials leaked her identity in July 2003. Edmonds, Giraldi, and researchers Christopher Deliso and Luke Ryland accuse him of suspiciously enriching himself while in government service. Nevertheless he was awarded the Foreign Service’s highest rank when President Bush appointed him to the rank of Career Ambassador in 2004, and received Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award the following year.
A dual Israeli-American national, Grossman has promoted the neocon agenda of forcing “regime change” in the Middle East. “[T]he time has come now,” he declared on the eve of the Iraq invasion, “to make a stand against this kind of connection between weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. And we think Iraq is a place to make that stand first . . . the great threat today is the nexus between weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.” But he has not been as conspicuous a war advocate as Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, Bolton, and some others. (Perle and Feith, one should note, were also deeply involved in lobbying activities on behalf of Turkey as well as Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Edelman was ambassador to Turkey 2003-05 where, chagrined by the Turkish failure to enthusiastically support the US occupation of Iraq, he deeply offended his hosts.) Grossman seems less an ideologue driven to make the world safer for Israel than a corrupt, amoral, self-aggrandizing opportunist. Anyway, here is an incomplete chronology of his alleged wrongdoing, along with other relevant details.
2001
As newly appointed Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Grossman assists Turkish, Israeli and other moles — mainly Ph.D. students — godfathering visa and arranging for security clearances to work in sensitive research facilities, including the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico. FBI taps his phone 2001-2, finds he is receiving bribes (one for $15,000). Edmonds states: “I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost certainly more.”
Between August and September: Grossman warns his Turkish associates seeking to acquire nuclear secrets that Brewster Jennings (for whom CIA agent Valerie Plame works) is a CIA front.
Sept. 4: Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, the chief of Pakistan ’s intelligence service (ISI) arrives in US, meets with Grossman and other U.S. officials.
Sept. 10: Report by Amir Mateen in Pakistani newspaper Dawn ( Karachi ): “[Ahmad] also held long parleys with unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon. But the most important meeting was with Mark Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. US sources would not furnish any details beyond saying that the two discussed ‘matters of mutual interests.’”
Sept. 11: Gen. Ahmad is having breakfast in Washington with Congressman Porter Goss (R-Fla.) and Senator Bob Graham (D) when attacks occur.
(Goss had had 10 years in clandestine operations in CIA and later — September 22, 2003-May 5, 2006 — heads the organization. Graham and Goss later are the co-chairs of the joint House-Senate investigation that proclaimed there was “no smoking gun” as far as President George W. Bush having any advance knowledge of September 11.)
Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, FBI arrests people suspected of being involved with the attacks — including four Turkish and Pakistani associates of key targets of FBI’s counterintelligence operations. Sibel heard the targets tell Grossman: “We need to get them out of the U.S. because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans.” Grossman facilitates their release from jail and suspects immediately leave US without further investigation or interrogation.
Sept. 12-13: Meetings between Ahmad and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Armitage threatens to bomb Pakistan “back to the Stone Age” unless it cooperates in US attack on Afghanistan. Ahmad also meets Secretary of State Colin Powell. Agreement on Pakistan’s collaboration is secured.
Sept. 20: Sibel Edmonds, a 32-year-old Turkish-American, hired as a translator by the FBI.
According to Edmonds, she overheard an agent on a 2000 wiretap discussing with Saudi businessmen in Detroit “nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama,” and stating: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.” She also claims she listened to recordings of a high official (Grossman) receiving bribes from Turkish officials.
Early October: Indian intelligence reports that Gen. Ahmad had in summer of 2001 ordered Saeed Sheikh (convicted of the kidnapping and killing of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl) to wire US$100,000 from Dubai to one of hijacker Mohamed Atta’s two bank accounts in Florida. FBI confirms story, reported on ABC news.
Oct. 7: US-led Coalition begins air strikes against Taliban.
Oct. 8: Gen. Ahmad, Taliban supporter and an opponent of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, forced to retire from his post as director-general of ISI.
Late Oct.: Pakistani government arrests three Pakistani nuclear scientists, all with close ties to Khan, for their suspected connections with the Taliban.
2002
Early March: Edmonds sends faxes to Senators Chuck Grassley and Patrick Leahy on the Judiciary Committee, is called in for polygraph test; Department of Justice inspector general’s report states “she was not deceptive in her answers.”
March: Grossman keynote speaker at ATC conference.
March 22: Edmunds fired, allegedly for shoddy work, security breaches.
Oct. 27: Edmonds appears on CBS’ 60 Minutes program.
Dec: Grossman visits Turkey, approves $3 billion US aid to Turkey for the Iraq Cooperation deal.
2003
March 3: In interview for Dutch television, Grossman says, “[T]he time has come now to make a stand against this kind of connection between weapons of mass destruction and terrorism. And we think Iraq is a place to make that stand first . . . the great threat today is the nexus between weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.”
May 29: Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff “Scooter” Libby asks Grossman for information about news report about the secret envoy sent by the CIA to Africa in 2002. Grossman requests a classified memo from Carl Ford, the director of the State Department’s intelligence bureau, and later orally briefs Libby on its contents.
Mid-June: Powell and his deputy secretary Richard Armitage may have received a copy of the Grossman memo.
June 10: Grossman asks the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) for a briefing on the Niger uranium issue, and specifically the State Department’s opposition to the continuing White House view that Iraq had tried to buy yellow cake. The resulting memo is dated the same day, and drawn from notes on the February 19 meeting at the CIA on the Wilson mission and other sources. Memo is classified “Top Secret,” and contains in one paragraph, separately marked “(S/NF)” for “Secret/No dissemination to foreign governments or intelligence agencies,” two sentences describing in passing Valerie “Wilson’s” identity as a CIA operative and her role in the inception of the Wilson trip to Niger. This June 10 memo reportedly does not use her maiden name Plame.
June 17-July 9: Senate Judiciary Committee holds unclassified hearings on Edmunds’ allegations.
June 19: letter from Senior Republican Senator, Charles Grassley, and Senior Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy to Inspector General Glenn A. Fine concerning Edmonds’ allegations.
July 14: Robert Novak reveals Plame’s CIA identity.
July 22: Edmonds files suit against the Department of Justice, the FBI, and several high-level officials, alleging that she was wrongfully terminated from the FBI in retaliation for reporting criminal activities committed by government employees.
Aug. 13: letter from two senators to Attorney General Ashcroft concerning Sibel Edmonds’ allegations.
Aug. 15: 600 victims of the 9/11 attacks file suit (Burnett v. Al Baraka Investment & Dev. Corp.), request from Edmonds deposition providing evidence for US government foreknowledge of 9-11 attacks.
Sept. 22: Goss made CIA Director (resigns May 5, 2006).
Oct. 18, 2002: Attorney General John Ashcroft invokes the State Secrets Privilege (requested not by Justice Department but by State department) in order to prevent disclosure of the nature of Edmonds’ work on the grounds that it would endanger national security, and asked that her wrongful termination suit be dismissed, in effect placing Edmonds under a gag order.
Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Ca.) expresses outrage at gag order, promises that a Democratic majority in Congress would conduct hearings. (This has not been done.)
Oct. 28: Letter from two senators to FBI Director Robert Mueller concerning Sibel Edmonds’ allegations.
Dec. 11, 2003, Attorney General Ashcroft again invoking the State Secrets Privilege, files a motion calling for Edmonds’ deposition in Burnett v. Al Baraka case be suppressed and for the entire case to be dismissed. The judge, seeking more information, orders government to produce any unclassified material relating to the case. In response, Ashcroft submits further statements to justify the use of the State Secrets Privilege.
Dec: Grossman back in Turkey to approve Turkey ’s eligibility to participate in tenders for Iraq’s reconstruction.
2004
Grossman achieves Foreign Service’s highest rank when President Bush appoints him to rank of Career Ambassador.
Patrick Leahy calls for investigation; Sen. Orrin Hatch, Republican Chairman of the Senate, blocks it.
May 13: Ashcroft retroactively classifies all material that had been provided to Senate Judiciary Committee in 2000 relating to Edmond’s lawsuit, as well as the senators’ letters that had already been posted on-line by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO).
June 23: POGO files lawsuit against Justice Department for classifying material it had published; Justice Department fails to get the case dismissed.
July 6: Edmonds suit dismissed on state secrets grounds.
July: Edmonds files appeal. On same day, Inspector General releases unclassified summary of a highly classified report on an investigation that had concluded “that many of her allegations were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI’s decision to terminate her services. . . Rather than investigate Edmonds’ allegations vigorously and thoroughly, the FBI concluded that she was a disruption and terminated her contract.”
August: Edmonds founds the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) to address US security weaknesses.
December: Grossman the key speaker at an ATC Conference held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel.
2005
Grossman receives Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award.
January: Grossman quits his government job. Eric Edelman, another former ambassador to Turkey, takes job of Under Secretary of Defence for Policy.
January: Pakistani nuclear engineer A.Q. Khan confesses to having been involved in a clandestine international network of nuclear weapons technology proliferation from Pakistan to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
Feb. 5: Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf announces he has pardoned Khan. US response is mild.
March: Grossman made vice-chairman of Cohen Group.
Feb. 18: Justice Department under new attorney general backs away from claim that documents posted by POGO were classified.
April 21: In the hours before the hearing of her appeal, three judges issued a ruling that barred all reporters and the public from the courtroom. During the proceedings, Edmonds was not allowed into the courtroom for the hearing.
May 6: Edmonds’ case dismissed, no reason provided, no opinion cited.
May 14: In open letter, Edmonds states the governments wants to silence here to “protect certain diplomatic relations” and to “protect certain U.S. foreign business relations.” Says the “foreign relations” mentioned in the gag order “are not in the interest of, or of benefit to, the majority of Americans, but instead serve and protect a small minority.”
June 20: Edmonds writes: “(In) April 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset who had been providing the bureau with information since 1990, provided two FBI agents and a translator with specific information regarding a terrorist attack being planned by Osama Bin Laden. For almost four years since September 11, officials refused to admit to having specific information regarding the terrorists’ plans to attack the United States. The Phoenix Memo, received months prior to the 9/11 attacks, specifically warned FBI HQ of pilot training and their possible link to terrorist activities against the US. Four months prior to the terrorist attacks the Iranian asset provided the FBI with specific information regarding the ‘use of airplanes’, ‘major US cities as targets’, and ‘Osama Bin Laden issuing the order.’ Coleen Rowley likewise reported that specific information had been provided to FBI HQ.”
July 20: Unidentified as a “retired state department official” Grossman tells AP that a classified State Department memo disputed the legitimacy of administration claims that Iraq sought to acquire uranium from Niger, also contained a few lines about Plame Wilson’s CIA employment, marked as secret.
August 5: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) petitioned for the Supreme Court of the United States to review the lower courts’ application of the State Secret Privilege in both lawsuits. The ACLU claims that the courts conflated the State Secrets Privilege and the Totten rule.
Sept. 28: Washington Post cites unnamed former administration source (Grossman) as stating that the outing of Plame was “Clearly . . . meant purely and simply for revenge.”
Oct. 28: In Patrick Fitzgerald’s indictment of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Grossman is the Under Secretary of State mentioned as giving information about Plame to Libby.
November: Grossman attends lavish Turkish Ottoman Dinner Gala, receives award from Turkish lobby group, the Assembly of American Turkish Association (ATAA) in Chicago.
Nov. 28: the Supreme Court declined to review the decisions made in the Edmonds case.
2006
March: Grossman the key speaker at the ATC annual conference.
June: Grossman key speaker at MERIA Conference, discussing Turkey’s importance to US and Israel.
Sept. 2006: a documentary about Sibel Edmonds’ case called Kill The Messenger (”Une Femme à Abattre”) premiers in France. (watch film here)
2007
January 24: Grossman first to testify in Libby trial. Says he informed Libby of Plame’s involvement “in about 30 seconds of conversation” in June 2003.
November: Grossman subpoenaed by defense in AIPAC trial.
Nov. 26: Grossman, now Vice Chairman of the consulting firm the Cohen Group, attends a major Security Conference in Riga, Latvia.
2008
January: Edmonds posts, without comment, photos of current and former officials and Turkish associates on website: Richard Perle, Eric Edelman, Marc Grossman, Brent Snowcroft, Larry Franklin, Ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Roy Blunt (R-Mo), Dan Burton (R-Ind.), Tom Lanton (D-Ca.), Bob Livingston (ex-House Speaker, R-La.), Stephen Solarz (D-NY), Graham Fulle (RAND), David Makovsky (WINEP), Martin Markovsky (WINEP), Yusuf Turani (president in exile of Turkmenistan), Prof. Sabri Sayari (Columbia University, WINEP), Mehmet Eymur (former head of Turkish counter-terrorism).
Jan. 6: The Times of London carries story, “For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets.” States that a high official “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.” Claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials — including household names — who were aiding foreign agents.
“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.”
Jan. 22: White House issues statement declaring its intention to approve sale of nuclear secrets to Turkey; Joshua Frank writes on January 25, “It appears the White House has been spooked by Edmonds and hopes to absolve the US officials allegedly involved in the illegal sale of nuclear technology to private Turkish ‘entities’.” Frank identifies Grossman as one of these officials.
* * * * *
Edmonds is tirelessly and fearlessly campaigning for Congressman Waxman, now chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to hold hearings. She says that FBI agents and even former Turkish intelligence officials are willing and able to validate her charges. But the congressman hesitates, perhaps fearing the storm of indignation that explosive evidence will produce in a country sick of its politicians, the lying neocons, and the war. Should they discover that, while disseminating disinformation about foreign nukes in order to fearmonger and build support for aggressive war, some of these officials were actually peddling nuclear secrets — committing treason while receiving honors for their patriotic service — the response could be explosive.
The Office of Special Plans under Abram Shulsky and Douglas Feith cherry-picked the intelligence vetted through the New York Times to terrify people into supporting an attack on Iraq. Democratic leaders have in the past urged an investigation of that spooky office, but furnished the opportunity since November 2006, they have declined to hold hearings. The Italian parliament conducted a study of the Niger uranium hoax, fingering neocon Michael Ledeen as a key suspect in forging documents designed to provide a casus belli before the Iran attack. Congress does nothing to follow up. In effect they are saying that the administration has a right to lie to the people. The presidential pardon granted Libby is a clear statement that it’s okay to punish whistleblowers like Joseph Wilson. The Supreme Court refuses to hear Edmonds’ appeal. It seems that all three branches of government compete to coddle the most unscrupulous and lawless officials, while marginalizing or punishing honest citizens who expose the rot.
The publication of the National Intelligence Estimate undercutting the administration’s case for attacking Iran indicates that there are in the US intelligence community persons alarmed by the administration’s lies and efforts to justify more aggression based on lies. It enrages the neocons who, with Norman Podhoretz in the lead, have been praying for Bush to bomb Iran. The arrest and conviction of Feith subordinate Larry Franklin shows that within the FBI there are forces disturbed at the close connections between the neocons, Israeli intelligence, and the Israel lobby and are willing to take action against lawbreaking. But Feith and Perle have both been investigated before, Perle for discussing classified information with Israeli Embassy staff in an FBI-monitored phone call in Washington in 1970. But the cases dropped for apparent political reasons. Perhaps the Grossman story will gain some traction. Maybe it will prove egregious enough that the tide will turn. Maybe Bush’s last year of office will see the neocons’ thorough exposure, humiliation and defeat.
Or maybe Waxman, Rep. Conyers and others in positions to honestly confront this most mendacious of administrations will continue to dither, feeding the assumption of the most vicious, cynical and corrupt that they are indeed above the law. And earning the contempt of those naïve enough to expect serious congressional oversight of a rogue regime.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Arrest warrants being issued by states for Bush by ladybroadoak
Sibel Edmonds: No Voice – No Title (video)
UK Times: Brewster Jennings outed by ‘treasonous’ US govt official in 2001, not 2003 by Luke Ryland
Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe by Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria
Sibel Edmonds (archive of posts)
CIA Leak/Plame Case (posts prior to end of June 2007)
CIA Leak Case (posts since end of June 2007)
by Justin Raimondo
antiwar.com
January 28, 2008
The Valerie Plame case is, by journalistic standards, ancient history, and naturally any follow-up on a once-important story is considered bad form. Yet there is an interesting – and rather scary – new twist to the narrative. It turns out that Scooter Libby and friends weren’t the first to “out” CIA agent Plame, whose alleged employer, a company known as Brewster Jennings, was really a cover for a CIA unit investigating nuclear proliferation issues.The London Times reveals that a former top U.S. State Department official tipped off Turkish agents about Brewster Jennings’ CIA connection, according to Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator assigned to produce English-language transcripts of intercepted conversations of Turkish targets – in this case recordings of Turkish embassy officials and a top State Department official discussing, among other things, Brewster Jennings’ relationship to the CIA.
As the Times reports, the recordings were made “between the summer and autumn of 2001. At that time, foreign agents were actively attempting to acquire the West’s nuclear secrets and technology. Among the buyers were Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s intelligence agency, which was working with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the ‘father of the Islamic bomb,’ who in turn was selling nuclear technology to rogue states such as Libya.”
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
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UK Times: Brewster Jennings outed by ‘treasonous’ US govt official in 2001, not 2003 by Luke Ryland
Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe by Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria
by Luke Ryland
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
Luke’s blog post
January 26, 2008
The UK’s Sunday Times has another article today, Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe, in their series about the penetration of US agencies by a criminal network of Turkish, Israeli and US government officials stealing nuclear secrets and selling them on the black market to the highest bidder.
The focus of this new Times article is the original outing of Brewster Jennings, the CIA cover company that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for. The article confirms that Marc Grossman, former # 3 State Dept official, and former Ambassador to Turkey, warned his Turkish associates to be wary of Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front operation. This disclosure occurred in the summer of 2001, two years prior to the outing of Valerie Plame.
The FBI warned the CIA about Grossman’s activities and Brewster Jennings was dismantled shortly thereafter.
Given the libel laws in the UK, the Times has not published Marc Grossman’s name again in this piece, but long-time observers of this case all recognize that Grossman is the unnamed official in this article, as well as the previous two articles.
From the Times:
The claims that a State Department official [Marc Grossman] blew the investigation into a nuclear smuggling ring have been made by Sibel Edmonds, 38, a former Turkish language translator in the FBI’s Washington field office.
[…]
She has previously told The Sunday Times she heard evidence that foreign intelligence agents had enlisted US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.Her latest claims relate to a number of intercepted recordings believed to have been made between the summer and autumn of 2001. At that time, foreign agents were actively attempting to acquire the West’s nuclear secrets and technology.
More from the Times:
One group of Turkish agents who had come to America on the pretext of researching alternative energy sources was introduced to Brewster Jennings through the Washington-based American Turkish Council (ATC), a lobby group that aids commercial ties between the countries. Edmonds says the Turks believed Brewster Jennings to be energy consultants and were planning to hire them.
We know that the FBI was running a counter-intelligence operation against the Turkish diplomatic community, the American Turkish Council (ATC) and other groups such as the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (A.T.A.A.)
Times:
But [Sibel] said: “[Grossman] found out about the [proposed Brewster Jennings] arrangement… and he contacted one of the foreign targets and said… you need to stay away from Brewster Jennings because they are a cover for the government.
“The target… immediately followed up by calling several people to warn them about Brewster Jennings.
“At least one of them was at the ATC. This person also called an ISI person to warn them.” If the ISI was made aware of the CIA front company [Brewster Jennings], then this would almost certainly have damaged the investigation into the activities of Khan. Plame’s cover would also have been compromised, although Edmonds never heard her name mentioned on the intercepts. Shortly afterwards, Plame was moved to a different operation.
Plame was moved because Brewster Jennings was dismantled due to the FBI discovering that Grossman had blown the cover. Plame has been forbidden by the CIA to refer to her work, or even the fact that she worked at CIA, prior to 2002.
In Joe Wilson’s book, The Politics of Truth, he says that he met his future wife, Valerie Plame, at an American Turkish Council (ATC) event at the residence of the Turkish ambassador in Washington DC in 1997. At the time, both the ATC and the Turkish diplomatic community were targets of FBI investigations.
Incidentally Wilson was on the Defense subcommittee of the board of the ATC, and he was personally and professionally close to ATC Chairman and former National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft. Scowcroft recently appeared in a Rogue’s Gallery, apparently indicating that he is one of the guilty parties in Sibel Edmonds’ case.
Wilson’s consulting company, JC Wilson International Ventures, appears to have some Turkish clients, some of which may have come through his involvement at the ATC.
Clearly there are a number of potential conflicts of interest here. I don’t have any theory as to what was going on here, there are more questions than answers. Wilson had business interests with the ATC, and he was friendly with ATC Chair Brent Scowcroft, who was apparently a target of these investigations. The idea of a CIA agent dating, then marrying, someone so closely aligned with a target also gives the appearance of a conflict of interest.
An anonymous letter, apparently written by an FBI official, obtained by the Times and others outlining many of the facts in this case, states that much of this information was given to the Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald who was investigating the 2003 outing of Plame, and the information was also given to the Scooter Libby defense team but apparently neither side decided to use this information for their own purposes.
The Times:
“Phillip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, said: “It’s pretty clear Plame was targeting the Turks. If indeed [Grossman] was working with the Turks to violate US law on nuclear exports, it would have been in his interest to alert them to the fact that this woman’s company was affiliated to the CIA. I don’t know if that’s treason legally but many people would consider it to be.””
Marc Grossman has again (anonymously) denied the charges against him, however in an interview this week, Phil Giraldi wondered why neither Grossman nor any of the others were actively working to exonerate themselves:
“Quite honestly, if I were Marc Grossman, who allegedly is now making $3 million a year working for the Cohen Group, I would be kind of concerned about my personal reputation where people are saying that I was taking money, and I would want to straighten out the record and I would want to the FBI to produce a definitive statement about me, and (Grossman) hasn’t demanded that. He hasn’t gone after that, and none of the other people in this case have gone after that, so I’m wondering why, if these people are innocent, they aren’t making a more serious effort to demonstrate that they are.”
I wonder too.
Significantly, since the Times began this series three weeks ago, the White House has quietly moved to legalize the sale of nuclear technonlogy to Turkey in an apparent attempt to ‘Exonerate Neocon Criminals’ who have been illegally selling this technology for a decade. Congress has 90 days to block this legislation, otherwise it becomes law. If Turkey wants and deserves nuclear technology, this decision should be made openly and transparently, not the result of stealth decisions made by this administration to hide crimes of senior US officials.
We need public open hearings to determine which officials have been supplying the nuclear black market before this becomes law.
see
Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe by Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria
Phil Giraldi chats about Sibel Edmonds by Luke Ryland
White House in panic over Sibel Edmonds? by Luke Ryland
Why Bush Wants to Legalize the Nuke Trade with Turkey by Joshua Frank
Turkey’s Drug-Terrorism Connection By Martin A. Lee (1997)
Sibel Edmonds: Kill The Messenger (must-see video)
CIA Leak/Plame Case (posts prior to end of June 2007)
CIA Leak Case (posts since June 2007)
by Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria in Washington
The Sunday Times
January 27, 2008
AN investigation into the illicit sale of American nuclear secrets was compromised by a senior official in the State Department, a former FBI employee has claimed.
The official is said to have tipped off a foreign contact about a bogus CIA company used to investigate the sale of nuclear secrets.
The firm, Brewster Jennings & Associates, was a front for Valerie Plame, the former CIA agent. Her public outing two years later in 2003 by White House officials became a cause célèbre.
The claims that a State Department official blew the investigation into a nuclear smuggling ring have been made by Sibel Edmonds, 38, a former Turkish language translator in the FBI’s Washington field office.
Edmonds had been employed to translate hundreds of hours of intercepted recordings made during a six-year FBI inquiry into the nuclear smuggling ring.
She has previously told The Sunday Times she heard evidence that foreign intelligence agents had enlisted US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.
Her latest claims relate to a number of intercepted recordings believed to have been made between the summer and autumn of 2001. At that time, foreign agents were actively attempting to acquire the West’s nuclear secrets and technology.
Among the buyers were Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Paki-stan’s intelligence agency, which was working with Abdul Qadeer Khan, the “father of the Islamic bomb”, who in turn was selling nuclear technology to rogue states such as Libya.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Phil Giraldi chats about Sibel Edmonds by Luke Ryland
White House in panic over Sibel Edmonds? by Luke Ryland
Why Bush Wants to Legalize the Nuke Trade with Turkey by Joshua Frank
Turkey’s Drug-Terrorism Connection By Martin A. Lee (1997)
CTV911 on Feb 4, 2011 Continue reading
by Robert Parry
Global Research, November 28, 2007
Consortium News – 2007-11-26
In the history of the American Republic, perhaps no political family has been more protected from scandal than the Bushes.
When the Bushes are involved in dirty deals or even criminal activity, standards of evidence change. Instead of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that would lock up an average citizen, the evidence must be perfect.
If there’s any doubt at all, the Bushes must be presumed innocent. Even when their guilt is obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense, it’s their accusers and those who dare investigate who get the worst of it. Their motives are challenged and their own shortcomings are cast in the harshest possible light. Continue reading
by Mark Karlin, Editor and Publisher
www.BuzzFlash.com
After Downing Street
BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG
November 23, 2007
As we’ve noted before, BuzzFlash feels personally invested in the exposing of the White House treason surrounding the outing of Valerie Plame, which resulted in impairing our national security when it comes to tracking weapons of mass destruction. Following up on a David Corn commentary shortly after the infamous Bob “The Traitor” Novak column, BuzzFlash helped Corn raise the alarm about the dangerous and illegal significance of the identification of Plame as a CIA operative.
So it is with astonishment that we have watched the mainstream media ignore or dismiss the revelation by once White House loyalist Scott McClellan that Cheney and Bush were likely involved in the outing and knowingly sent him out to lie to the press about the role of the two key messengers: Libby and Rove.
You’ve no doubt heard by now that the McClellan admission was made in a first person excerpt from a book being printed early next year by Public Affairs Press (affiliated with the Perseus Group).While the first person confirmation of what anyone with a pea for a brain knew all along caromed across the Internet, the Washington Post and the New York Times gave it the cold shoulder, among other mainstream media outlets.
In the meantime, we suspect that the White House hit men gave McClellan and his publisher the same treatment that they have given other “made men” that ratted on them: the brass knuckles and warnings to back off if they cared about their families.
As one blogger noted: “John Dillulio calls them ‘machiavellian mayberries’ and suggests that they politicize everything–yet a week later he backs down completely. Paul O’Neill says that they planned on invading Iraq from the beginning, he is savaged by the machine.”
So the publisher, within a day backed off the first person quote by McClellan, with a rather bizarre claim that the book wasn’t finished yet, even though it was the publisher that posted the quotation on its website. McClellan was in seclusion, of course, no doubt being waterboarded by some of Cheney’s crew.
In an all too fitting and tragic irony, the mainstream media only took notice of the damning revelation of criminal behavior – certainly in the high crimes and misdemeanors category, as Valerie and Joe Wilson charge – on cue from the White House once the publisher recalled the first person quotation, which is indeed quite a remarkable feat, since clearly it would only be done under pressure, since it is hard for a publisher to post a first person quote and then claim that it was premature. What kind of credibility does that leave you with? But it was probably preferable than running a publishing house with two broken arms and a pencil rammed through your ear.All along, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald noted in his investigation that a cloud of suspicion hung over Dick Cheney, and he all but said that Cheney was the key culprit. In fact, Scooter Libby’s crime – the one he was convicted for – was integrally related to an obstruction of justice essentially revolving around the reality that he was covering up for Cheney.
Long forgotten – and barely noticed during the trial – was a document introduced during the case that directly implicates Bush. And the notes on the document that point at Bush as being a co-conspirator were written by Dick Cheney.
Truthout.org covered this crucial link to Bush, including a copy of the handwritten note:
Copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced at trial by attorneys prosecuting former White House staffer I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case.
Bush has long maintained that he was unaware of attacks by any member of his administration against [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson. The ex-envoy’s stinging rebukes of the administration’s use of pre-war Iraq intelligence led Libby and other White House officials to leak Wilson’s wife’s covert CIA status to reporters in July 2003 in an act of retaliation.
But Cheney’s notes, which were introduced into evidence Tuesday during Libby’s perjury and obstruction-of-justice trial, call into question the truthfulness of President Bush’s vehement denials about his prior knowledge of the attacks against Wilson.
The revelation that Bush may have known all along that there was an effort by members of his office to discredit the former ambassador raises the question: Was the president also aware that senior members of his administration compromised Valerie Plame’s undercover role with the CIA?
Further, the highly explicit nature of Cheney’s comments not only hints at a rift between Cheney and Bush over what Cheney felt was the scapegoating of Libby, but also raises serious questions about potentially criminal actions by Bush. If Bush did indeed play an active role in encouraging Libby to take the fall to protect Karl Rove, as Libby’s lawyers articulated in their opening statements, then that could be viewed as criminal involvement by Bush.
Last week, Libby’s attorney Theodore Wells made a stunning pronouncement during opening statements of Libby’s trial. He claimed that the White House had made Libby a scapegoat for the leak to protect Karl Rove – Bush’s political adviser and “right-hand man.”
“Mr. Libby, you will learn, went to the vice president of the United States and met with the vice president in private. Mr. Libby said to the vice president, ‘I think the White House … is trying to set me up. People in the White House want me to be a scapegoat,'” said Wells.
Cheney’s notes seem to help bolster Wells’s defense strategy. Libby’s defense team first discussed the notes – written by Cheney in September 2003 for White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan – during opening statements last week. Wells said Cheney had written “not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others”: a reference to Libby being asked to deal with the media and vociferously rebut Wilson’s allegations that the Bush administration knowingly “twisted” intelligence to win support for the war in Iraq.
However, when Cheney wrote the notes, he had originally written “this Pres.” instead of “that was.”
In another story on Truthout at the time of the Libby trial, it details other documents that indicate Cheney had claimed authorization from Bush to disclose classified information from a National Intelligence Estimate in order to try and discredit Joe Wilson.
It should also be remembered that Bush retained a private attorney in regards to the Libby case, a highly curious move for an innocent president. Furthermore, Bush promised to get to the bottom of the leak himself and fire anyone involved after the CIA formally requested a Justice Department investigation into Valerie Plame’s outing, because of the potential harm it had done to national security. As we now know, Bush, if he kept his word, would have ended up firing Dick Cheney and himself.
It is a testament to the persistent tacit alliance of the corporate media with the Republican Party (to ensure favorable big media regulations, tax cuts, and anti-trust favors) that damage done to the national security of the United States — authorized in all likelihood by the President of the United States and most certainly orchestrated by the Vice-President of the United States — is either roundly ignored or dismissed as insignificant.
Scott McClellan did not pen a rogue statement in his forthcoming book. What he said is entirely consistent with the information disclosed at the Libby trial, and even – ironically – with the defensive strategy of Libby’s own legal team, which was to position “Scooter” as a fall guy for the White House.
That may have, indeed, been the sole true assertion made on behalf of Mr. Libby.
BUZZFLASH EDITOR’S BLOG
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
George Bush, Traitor and Liar in Chief by Larry Johnson
Impeachment on the Thanksgiving Table: McClellan’s Dish by Dave Lindorff
Olbermann: O’Reilly vs The USO + Lies and Consequences + Books and Liars + Worst (videos)
Hardball: What Did Bush Know and When Did He Know It? (video; CIA Leak)
McClellan implicates Bush, Cheney in Plame lie by Tim Grieve
Cheney’s Handwritten Notes Implicate Bush in Plame Affair
Dandelion Salad 