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"US journalists ignore Sunday Times scoop on FBI nuclear scandal" -- by Roy Greenslade (The Guardian) MediaGuardian.co.uk, January 22, 2008 9:50 AM

Harry Shearer, one of the voices behind The Simpsons, has used his own blogging voice to ask a pertinent question. Why has a story broken by the Sunday Times over here about nefarious goings-on in the States failed to take off in the American media? He isn't alone in his concerns. Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers some 35 years ago, is even more outraged

He writes: "For the second time in two weeks, the entire US press has let itself be scooped by Rupert Murdoch's London Sunday Times on a dynamite story of criminal activities by corrupt US officials promoting nuclear proliferation. But there is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped, and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the US Congress and the courts."

The dynamite story, headlined FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft, was a follow-up to its January 6 revelation, For sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets. It looks to me as though the Sunday Times has landed a genuine world exclusive that should surely have been broken ages ago by US-based reporters.

It revolves around accusations made by an FBI whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, who - among other things - claims that the bureau was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

/... http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade/2008/01/us_journalists_ignore_sunday_t.html


Comments

US2oz

Comment No. 886458
January 22 22:58

Great to see more coverage of the Sibel Edmonds saga.

I've been following it for a long time, AFAIK the most prolific blogger on the subject is lukery on dailykos.

What ever happened to the America I knew, where they would print 'all the news' etc. Shame.
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cybercitizen

Comment No. 886463
January 22 23:03

As a citizen of the United States, I am appalled by the corporate ownership of the American print and broadcast media and their repression of news that may embarrass or run counter to any corporatist interests. I have had to resort to reading European newspapers to find out about what is going on.

Dear Guardian, Economist, and other international news media, please help preserve America's Democracy by continuing to run these important news stories. We came to your aid during World War II. Please help us now, I implore you. Thank you for your journalistic services.
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NCDem

Comment No. 886493
January 22 23:30

The saga of Sibel Edmunds has languished in the US press for far too long. It is common knowledge that the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel supported the freedom fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980's while we turned our head and aided A Q Khan is purchasing key equipment to refine the uranium for their nuclear program. Billions of dollars of this aide was siphoned off by Pakistan as all the funds went through them before it hit the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan.
The same neocons that looked the other way are still profiting and assisting the military industrial complex that effects not only the US but the UK as well. Citizens from the UK should join with or push our American media to place this treason front and center for our discussion and future criminal proceedings.
Thanks for the efforts here on the Guardian and in the Sunday Times for the first step in this process. Join DailyKos blog in the US and search Lukery for diaries. Lukery is from Australia but his contributions to the democratic values of the US are immense. Thanks to all.
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Wulfstan

Comment No. 886503
January 22 23:39

War is profit.

The neocon plan is to start WW3.

911 was just the catalyst.

World Domination by the Bilderbergers.
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Hope4All

Comment No. 886512
January 22 23:49

i'd like to echo others here by thanking the efforts here on the Guardian. If you want more on this story read lukery on Daily Kos here http://lukery.dailykos.com/

i live in the US and i hardly ever watch the our national news. i watch BBC on cable tv and i read the news about my country from the UK online.

THANK YOU!!
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Darios

Comment No. 886526
January 23 0:06

It is really encouraging to see someone writing for the Guardian talking about the Sibel Edmonds issue.

However, and especially considering the Guardian's readership, more to the point is - why is the remainder of the UK media not also picking up the story? If there has been one story since Sept 11th 2001 that has "legs", this is it.

Moreover, what has been revealed thus far by Edmonds and dilligent bloggers following her story is that part of the trail clearly leads to UK shores (e.g. customs and excise shutting down investigations amongst other obvious links provided). Why are UK investigative journalists not relentlessly pursuing this angle as we speak?
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Victronix

Comment No. 886594
January 23 1:09

I have to reiterate this poster's striking comment:

"Dear Guardian, Economist, and other international news media, please help preserve America's Democracy by continuing to run these important news stories. We came to your aid during World War II. Please help us now. . . "

They know full well what they are ignoring. Many many people have put a LOT of pressure on US media on this issue and they are silent for a reason. What reason, we cannot know.

What we do know is that they've been silent on a lot of things since Bush got into office starting with Dan Rather's comment about the pressure to shut up being like a buring tire on the neck, then the anthrax, and so on.

Today, Congresspeople will risk public humiliation by their own constituents, being voted out of office, and worse, in order to NOT vote to impeach. Some have quietly suggested they've been threatened.

Roughly the same reasons are all likely in effect -- the covering up of criminal acts, be they war crimes, treaty violations, torture and abuse crimes, or simply the murder of our own people for profit.

You know, when there is this much resounding silence, there is a good reason, and it isn't because there's anything amiss with the relevance of the story.

Today you did your duty to help Americans and the world, but later, or tomorrow, like others here who dared to speak out, you may be hit by a wave of verbal assault from the rightwing defenders of the Bush Administration, if not worse. Just be ready for it. They don't represent the rest of the world, or thinking, compassionate, average people. They are something else, unclear what.
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sinewton

Comment No. 886640
January 23 2:26

It's shameful that the news media in the US rarely does what most US citizens at one time would have considered to be its primary job... keeping a wary eye on the US government on behalf of the people.

My thanks to the Guardian for looking out for the citizens of the US even when their own "watchdogs" behave more like lapdogs.
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madtruthjihadydaddy

Comment No. 886672
January 23 3:24

Twilight of the Psychopaths.

Barrett's article may shed some light onto the why's and how's.


http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/01/02/02073.html
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KJF1

Comment No. 886781
January 23 7:31

Looks like a genuine world exclusive to me, as well. Wonder why the US press doesn't seem to want to do it. Good for the Sunday Times and their Insight team.

On a related note, they didn't want to do a similar story about nuclear proliferation either. Joe Trento has the details here:
http://www.storiesthatmatter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=137&Itemid=1

He says the only media outlet that wrote something sensible about it was the Guardian!

A partial timeline of the Sibel Edmonds affair can be found here:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&projects_and_programs=sibelEdmonds
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sketchley

Comment No. 887021
January 23 10:14

This is the tip of the iceberg.

The Bush administration has behaved as if Tony Soprano had become President. Criminal behaviour of all kinds in every place.

Crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, torture, kidnapping, murder, theft of billions of dollars, theft of nuclear secrets, cover-ups, orchestrated deception, the list is endless.

Some of these crimes carry the threat of capital punishment in the US. I am against capital punishment but the seven main criminals should be an exception. Bush and his criminal friends should face the death penalty for their crimes, and their fortunes confiscated and handed over to the Iraqi and Afghanistani peoples.

President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan have all been found in a new study to have waged an "orchestrated campaign" of misinformation about the threat posed by Iraq.

Study: False Statements Preceded War
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-7248044,00.html


"President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews."

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/
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Hevallo62

Comment No. 887042
January 23 10:25

Dear Roy Greenslade,

Thank you.

Please watch this powerful documentary about the Sibel Edmonds Story called 'Kill the Messenger'.

http://hevallo.blogspot.com/2008/01/kill-messenger-documentary-about-sibel.html

Sibel is trying to expose the connections between the Neo Cons/others and the Turkish 'Deep State'/others.

Just press on her picture for the documentary.
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truthteller111

Comment No. 887418
January 23 12:37

Perhaps it was ignored in the American media because the Sunday Times runs unutterable bollocks week after week and they didn't believe this one either.
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...

"An Inconvenient Patriot" -- by David Rose 15th August 2005 "Vanity Fair" - September 2005 Issue

Love of country led Sibel Edmonds to become a translator for the F.B.I. following 9/11. But everything changed when she accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving Turkish nationals. Fired after sounding the alarm, she’s now fighting for the ideals that made her an American, and threatening some very powerful people.

In Washington, D.C., and its suburbs, December 2, 2001 was fine but cool, the start of the slide into winter after a spell of unseasonable warmth. At 10 o’clock that morning, Sibel and Matthew Edmonds were still in their pajamas, sipping coffee in the kitchen of their waterfront town house in Alexandria, Virginia, and looking forward to a well-deserved lazy Sunday.

Since mid-September, nine days after the 9/11 attacks, Sibel had been exploiting her fluency in Turkish, Farsi, and Azerbaijani as a translator at the F.B.I. It was arduous, demanding work, and Edmonds—who had two bachelor’s degrees, was about to begin studying for her master’s, and had plans for a doctorate—could have been considered overqualified. But as a naturalized Turkish-American, she saw the job as her patriotic duty.

The Edmondses’ thoughts were turning to brunch when Matthew answered the telephone. The caller was a woman he barely knew—Melek Can Dickerson, who worked with Sibel at the F.B.I. “I’m in the area with my husband and I’d love you to meet him,” Dickerson said. “Is it O.K. if we come by?” Taken by surprise, Sibel and Matthew hurried to shower and dress. Their guests arrived 30 minutes later. Matthew, a big man with a fuzz of gray beard, who at 60 was nearly twice the age of his petite, vivacious wife, showed them into the kitchen. They sat at a round, faux-marble table while Sibel brewed tea.

Melek’s husband, Douglas, a U.S. Air Force major who had spent several years as a military attaché in the Turkish capital of Ankara, did most of the talking, Matthew recalls. “He was pretty outspoken, pretty outgoing about meeting his wife in Turkey, and about his job. He was in weapons procurement.” Like Matthew, he was older than his wife, who had been born about a year before Sibel.

According to Sibel, Douglas asked if she and Matthew were involved with the local Turkish community, and whether they were members of two of its organized groups—the American-Turkish Council (A.T.C.) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (A.T.A.A.). “He said the A.T.C. was a good organization to belong to,” Matthew says. “It could help to ensure that we could retire early and live well, which was just what he and his wife planned to do. I said I was aware of the organization, but I thought you had to be in a relevant business in order to join.

“Then he pointed at Sibel and said, ‘All you have to do is tell them who you work for and what you do and you will get in very quickly.’” Matthew could see that his wife was far from comfortable: “She tried to change the conversation to the weather and such-like.” But the Dickersons, says Matthew, steered it back to what they called their “network of high-level friends.” Some, they said, worked at the Turkish Embassy in Washington. “They said they even went shopping weekly for [one of them] at a Mediterranean market,” Matthew says. “They used to take him special Turkish bread.”

Before long, the Dickersons left. At the time, Matthew says, he found it “a strange conversation for the first time you meet a couple. Why would someone I’d never met say such things?”

Only Sibel knew just how strange. A large part of her work at the F.B.I. involved listening to the wiretapped conversations of people who were the targets of counter-intelligence investigations. As she would later tell investigators from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (O.I.G.) and the U.S. Congress, some of those targets were Turkish officials the Dickersons had described as high-level friends. In Sibel’s view, the Dickersons had asked the Edmondses to befriend F.B.I. suspects. (In August 2002, Melek Can Dickerson called Sibel’s allegations “preposterous, ludicrous and slanderous.”)

Sibel also recalled hearing wiretaps indicating that Turkish Embassy targets frequently spoke to staff members at the A.T.C., one of the organizations that the Dickersons allegedly wanted her and her husband to join. Sibel later told the O.I.G. she assumed that the A.T.C.’s board—which is chaired by Brent Scowcroft, President George H. W. Bush’s national-security advisor—knew nothing of the use to which it was being put. But the wiretaps suggested to her that the Washington office of the A.T.C. was being used as a front for criminal activity.

/... http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9774.htm

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Sources:


Lukery (Luke Ryland) is also at: http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/ and http://lukery.blogspot.com/ and was previously at http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/ Lukery at Daily Kos: http://lukery.dailykos.com/ Lukery's Democratic Underground Journal: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/lukery

From The Sunday Times January 27, 2008
Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe
Insight: Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria in Washington
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3257725.ece

From The Sunday Times January 20, 2008
FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft
The FBI has been accused of covering up a file detailing government dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets
INSIGHT
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3216737.ece

From The Sunday Times January 6, 2008
For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets
Insight: Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece

Sibel Edmonds - "Kill The Messenger" Documentary By Zadig Productions (Produced by Bruno Nahon) with the participation of Canal + ©2006 Direction and Investigation by: Mathieu Verboud Direction and Photography by: Jean-Robert Viallet Editing and Music by: Tal Zana "Sibel Edmonds" written and played by: Cary Hood English Version by: SBS Australia ©2007 SBS Australia DVD at http://www.enhancetv.com.au/shop/product.php?productid=104342&cat=328&page=4 At Google http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1991080575212848283 through www.justacitizen.com At Youtube: Sibel Edmonds - "Kill The Messenger" - Part 1/6 - http://youtube.com/watch?v=99lH4B3slGM - Part 2/6 - http://youtube.com/watch?v=D4Tb_py9CzI - Part 3/6 - http://youtube.com/watch?v=pB64UVyp-x0 - Part 4/6 - http://youtube.com/watch?v=fCigSefXYjg - Part 5/6 - http://youtube.com/watch?v=iP2S-IileTA - Part 6/6 - http://youtube.com/watch?v=CRRvRKjRIzo cf. http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Ghost%20Dog/104
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