Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Sibel Edmonds case: The real culprits of 911

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has made a number of disturbing claims about the 911 attacks, but perhaps the most disconcerting is her oft-repeated statement that the US authorities have covered up an entire organizational layer within al-Qaeda.

In the documentary, Kill The Messenger, Sibel says:
"They haven’t mentioned anybody who actually is connected to Al Qaida, in mid or higher level."

Similarly, Sibel often says:
"And I would like to give an analogy - if you take the War on Drugs, imagine if they only went after street dealers and they refused to investigate the mid-level dealers or the drug lords. This is very similar."

As we approach another 911 anniversary, it's time we learnt:
1) Who are these mid and high-level al-Qaida operatives?
2) What role did they play in planning 911?
3) What operational support did they provide?
4) Why they are still roaming free today?
5) Why did the US authorities continually exclude key participants from the official narrative?

*******

Sibel Edmonds is the most gagged woman in US history making it a little it difficult for us, the public, to have a detailed understanding of everything she knows about al-Qaida and the 911 attacks, but she has given interviews and written a number of great articles and letters which enable us to put some of the pieces together.

Immediately after the release of the 911 Commission report, Sibel wrote an open letter to Thomas Kean and the Commission in which she chided the 911 Commission panel for ignoring important issues related to the attacks, and she also made public some of her closed-door testimony to the 911 Commission.

For example, in that letter, Sibel identified specific warnings from April 2001 that:
"1) Osama bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States targeting four or five major cities;
2) the attack was going to involve airplanes;
3) some of the individuals in charge of carrying out this attack were already in place in the United States;
4) the attack was going to be carried out soon, in a few months."
As we all know, this information was not included in the Commission report, and was barely mentioned in the US media even though it was confirmed in the Chicago Tribune and FBI Director Robert Mueller was surprised that he wasn't asked about it by the 911 Commission. In fact, according to Sibel,
"(A)fter 9/11 the agents and the translators were told to "keep quiet" regarding this issue."

More importantly, for today's purposes, I want to focus on this statement from the same letter:
"The public has still not been told of the intentional obstruction of intelligence. The public has not been told that certain information, despite its relevance to terrorist activities, is not shared with counterterrorism units. This was true prior to 9/11, and it remains true today. If counterintelligence receives information about terrorism that implicates certain nations, semi-legit organizations or the politically powerful in this country, then that information is not shared with counterterrorism, regardless of the consequences. In certain cases, frustrated FBI agents have cited "direct pressure by the State Department." The Department of Justice Inspector General received detailed evidence regarding this issue. I provided your investigators with an account of this issue, the names of other witnesses willing to corroborate this, and the names of U.S. officials involved in these transactions and activities."
In order to understand this, we need to understand a little bit about how the FBI operates. 'Counterintelligence' (CI) is essentially a monitoring organization which routinely investigates various groups - such as embassies, and groups like AIPAC and the American Turkish Council (ATC) - which might be involved in criminal activity, or otherwise might be able to provide valuable information. If and when CI comes across evidence of criminality, they are supposed to forward that information and evidence to other divisions of the FBI which have the authority, and responsibility, to act on the information and arrest the guilty parties. Typically the cases will be forwarded to, for example, Public Corruption, or Narcotics, or in this case, Counter Terrorism (CT).

As Sibel indicates, prior to 911, the State Department put pressure on people at FBI HQ to block the transfer of certain cases to the actionable divisions within the FBI. Outrageously, even immediately after 911, the State Department continued to refuse CI permission to pass significant information to Counter-terrorism that was directly relevant to the 911 attacks. In other words, while the Bush administration was rushing through the PATRIOT ACT, rounding up thousands of 'suspects' and gutting the Constitution, the State Department was protecting many of the key participants in the mass murder on 9/11 in order to protect 'sensitive diplomatic relations.'

Here's Sibel describing the cover-up:
"What occurred with the 911 related investigation - be it the FBI, or the Department of Defense, or the Department of State, or the CIA or the Pentagon - they choose to basically publicize the deal at the hijacker level - and completely went about covering up certain entities that they had DIRECT evidence, DOCUMENTED evidence of the support networks - be it the financial support networks, or communications, or obtaining visas - they have not touched those individuals. Those individuals are still roaming free! Today!"

And here's Sibel again, making the same point:
"I will give you an analogy, okay? Say if we decided to have a "war on drugs," but said in the beginning, "right, we're only going to go after the young black guys on the street level..." But we decided never to go after the middle levels, let alone the top levels...

It's like this with the so-called war on terror. We go for the Attas and Hamdis – but never touch the guys on the top."

Which people are Sibel talking about?
Sibel is talking about three different, though often over-lapping, groups of: a) Those who were directly involved in planning and/or facilitating the 911 attacks, b) Those who knowingly, specifically, intentionally provided and facilitated 'indirect' support functions for the attacks c) Those who support and finance al-Qaeda generally.

Let's begin at the highest level. In Sibel's "THE HIGHJACKING OF A NATION - Part 1" she quotes Senator Bob Graham's numerous statements that Saudi Arabia's support for some of the 911 hijackers has been hidden in the redacted 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report into 911. Sibel notes:
"What Graham is trying to establish in his book and previous public statements in this regard, and doing so under state imposed ‘secrecy and classification’, is that the classification and cover up of those 27 pages is not about protecting ‘U.S. national security, methods of intelligence collection, or ongoing investigations,’ but to protect certain U.S. allies. Meaning, our government put the interests of certain foreign nations and their U.S. beneficiaries far above its own people and their interests. While Saudi Arabia has been specifically pointed to by Graham, other countries involved have yet to be identified." (emphasis mine)

In various other interviews and articles, Sibel gives us some clues as to which 'other countries' she is pointing to. For example, in this 2006 interview, Sibel says
We're not just talking about - as they say - Saudi Arabia and Egypt - but they have glossed over the involvement of certain entities within other countries - such as Turkey, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan - many Central Asian countries.

They have absolutely covered up the involvement of certain entities - it's not necessarily only governmental - from these other countries - Central Asia - they call it "Sensitive Diplomatic Relations' - you know they are putting (military) bases there.
Please note that not only is the US establishing military bases in these countries, these countries are generally:
1) Major customers for US military hardware
2) US 'allies'
3) Anti-democracy, anti-freedom, police states
4) Major players in the heroin trade
5) Supporters of various terrorist activity

Sibel describes the US' hypocrisy (if that's the correct descriptor), particularly as it relates to Turkey, in The Highjacking of a Nation: Part 2:
"Curiously enough, despite these highly publicized reports and acknowledgments of Turkey’s role in these activities (Ed: nuclear black market, heroin trafficking, illegal arms sales), Turkey continues to receive billions of dollars of aid and assistance annually from the United States. With (Turkey's) highly placed co-conspirators and connections within the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Congress, Turkey never has to fear potential sanctions or meaningful scrutiny; just like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The criminal Turkish networks continue their global criminal activities right under the nose of their protector, the United States, and neither the catastrophe falling upon the U.S. on September Eleven, nor their direct and indirect role and ties to this terrorist attack, diminish their role and participation in the shady worlds of narcotics, money laundering and illegal arms transfer.

The ‘respectable’ Turkish companies established and operate bases in Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and other similar former Soviet states. Many of these front companies, disguised under construction and tourism entities, have received millions of dollars in grants from the U.S. government, allocated to them by the U.S. congress, to establish and operate criminal networks throughout the region; among their networking partners are Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Albanian Mafia. While the U.S. government painted Islamic charity organizations as the main financial source for Al Qaeda terrorists, it was hard at work trying to cover up the terrorists’ main financial source: narcotics and illegal arms sales. Why?" (emphasis mine)
In summary, certain US allies protect a bunch of organizations which support al Qaeda and the Taliban. Despite this, these organizations, and their host countries, are protected by the US government under the guise of protecting 'sensitive diplomatic relations' and "protecting certain foreign business relations."

When Sibel first began claiming publicly that the US was covering up the role of certain allies in 911, her claims sounded so outrageous that she was largely dismissed. In 2007 it has become accepted fact. For example, when Presidential hopeful Barack Obama states that Pakistan, a US ally, is protecting Osama bin Laden, there is no about about whether this is true or not, only what to do about it. Similarly, Senator Bob Graham says in his book: "It was as if the President’s loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America’s safety."


Some Specific Examples of Hiding the Culprits
In this section, I'll take a look at some examples of organizations and individuals that were believed by the FBI to have played roles in 911 but have escaped any accountability.

American Turkish Council (ATC)
The ATC is a mini-AIPAC - a lobbying group where Turkey's business and military leaders interface with America's finest; current politicians from both parties, CEOs from the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), and former high-level officials acting as lobbyists. The ATC was being monitored by FBI counterintelligence (as well as CIA counterintelligence (Brewster Jennings)) and much of the information that Sibel learned is believed to have come from the surveillance of the ATC. Sibel says that the ATC is essentially a front organization for various criminal activity - ranging from nuclear black market, heroin trafficking and illegal arms sales - and was being "monitored in a 9/11 investigation."

Despite the ATC's role in all of this criminal activity, it is demonstrably untouchable and is alive and well today. In fact, Sibel goes as far as to say that the ATC is basically a representative arm of the U.S. government, lobbyists, foreign agents, and the MIC. It's not a surprise, therefore, that the ATC has some type of informal 'protected' status, and that the FBI can't act on any of the information uncovered in any of the counter-intelligence operations.


Melek Can Dickerson
Dickerson joined the FBI in October 2001 as a Turkish translator. She had previously worked at the ATC and two other organizations that were the targets of FBI counterintelligence. Almost immediately, Dickerson began engaging in various espionage activities including attempting to recruit Sibel and other translators into the espionage ring, intentionally covering up FBI evidence which implicated her friends at the ATC and elsewhere, stealing documents and leaking them to her friends, and falsifying "top-secret documents related to 9/11 detainees" in an attempt to falsely exonerate her guilty associates.

Sibel's claims regarding Dickerson were investigated and validated by the FBI. Remarkably, Dickerson was allowed to keep her Top Secret clearance, and was allowed to continue translating Top Secret information regarding her friends and associates, including 911 investigations, for another 6 months until she fled the US.

Top Targets of 911 Investigation
Melek Can Dickerson and her husband, USAF Major Doug Dickerson, offered to introduce Sibel to some of their friends, including two Turkish guys who belonged to the ATC and worked out of the Turkish embassy in DC. According to Sibel, "These two people were the top targets of our investigation!"

For one reason or other, these two (and maybe more) "top targets" of the 911 investigation were allowed to leave the US in mid-2002 without ever having even been interviewed. Prior to Robert Mueller's testimony at the 911 Commission, Sibel prepared a list of questions for the Commissioners to ask Mueller including:
"Director Mueller, is it true that several top targets of FBI investigations, related to support networks of terrorist activities, were allowed to leave the United States, months after the 9-11 attacks, without ever being questioned? Why?"

That question remains unanswered.


"Blueprints, pictures and building material for skyscrapers"
Another case that was apparently ignored by the US authorities was a mid-2001 wiretap that Sibel translated of a prisoner who had been arrested on narcotics charges. The FBI agents suspected that he might be involved in terrorism-related activity and wiretapped his phone calls from prison. In one phone call, this individual organized for blueprints, photos & details of the building material of the World Trade Center to be sent to (presumably) the authors of the 911 atacks who were hiding in a remote border location somewhere in the Middle East. The wiretap also "revealed illegal activities in obtaining visas from certain embassies in the Middle East through network contacts and bribery."

Immediately after 911, another wiretap captured this same individual congratulating an associate on the successful attack.

Who was this individual? Who did he phone to deliver the blueprints? Was he a mastermind of 911? Was he acting on his own initiative? If not, at whose behest (and why was he doing from jail?)? Who was he congratulating? We don't know the answer to any of these questions.

In fact, in July 2002, FBI Director Robert Mueller "maintained... that the 19 al-Qaida hijackers operated independently in the U.S. and were an isolated case" telling the joint congressional 911 inquiry:
"As far as we know, the (hijackers) contacted no known terrorist sympathizers in the United States,"

Mueller was effectively lying (although he may have technically given himself wiggle-room). As Sibel said, the US authorities
"completely went about covering up certain entities that they had DIRECT evidence, DOCUMENTED evidence of the support networks - be it the financial support networks, or communications, or obtaining visas... They have absolutely covered up the involvement of certain entities - it's not necessarily only governmental - from these other countries"

Of course, it's not just Mueller who knows what Sibel knows. I'll finish with two more quotes. The first is from an interview with Chris Deliso

Deliso: You think they [the government] know who they are, the top guys, and where?

Sibel: Oh yeah, they know.

Deliso: So why don't they get them?

Sibel: It's like I told you before – this would upset "certain foreign relations." But it would also expose certain of our elected officials, who have significant connections with high-level drugs- and weapons-smuggling – and thus with the criminal underground, even with the terrorists themselves.

And finally, in Kill The Messenger, Sibel says:
"I am not the only one who knows about this. Too many people know this!

The fraudulent 9/11 Commissioners, every single one of them knows about my case and the details, and the names, and all the specifics.

Several people within the U.S Congress do know.

Everybody in the FBI, involved, they know!

Everybody in Department of Justice, they know!

My goal has been exposing the criminal activities: money laundering, narcotic activities, and nuclear black market, converging with terrorist activities.

Put out the tapes, put out the wiretaps! Put out those documents! Put out the truth! The truth is going to hurt them, the truth is going to set me free!




Everybody knows except us.

It's time we knew.

Let Sibel Edmonds Speak
Call Embarrass Waxman. Demand public open hearings:
DC phone: (202) 225-3976
LA phone: 323 651-1040
Capitol switchboard phone: 800-828-0498

(let me know if you want to be added to my email list which announces whenever I have a new Sibel-related post. Subject: 'Sibel email list')

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The link between heroin and terrorism may be the most revealing key to the overall situation.

The heroin industry in Afghanistan and on the Pakistani border was essentially invented by the CIA in the 1980s as a means of funding its pet jihad against the Soviets. However, the drug trade continued even after the Soviets pulled out in 1989, and Pakistan's ISI continued to profit from it.

Just before he left office in 1993, George H.W. Bush signed a clemency order freeing Pakistani heroin smuggler Aslam Adam, allegedly on the request of Jesse Helms, who was close to the Pakistani regime.

In 1994, when the Taliban offensive had endangered the flow of heroin which was supporting the Chechen revolt, Pakistan intervened with the Taliban leadership to ensure the continued flow of drugs. Pakistan's ISI became the patron of the Chechens, whose fighters received training at CIA-sponsored camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Other national movements were involved with the drug trade in the 1990's as well, including the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Bosnian Muslim Army. The Central Asian terrorist groups that the US is currently sponsoring as a means of containing Russian and Chinese power in the area also have drug ties.

All these groups have received support from the US, the CIA, and various Neocons. Other nationalities that feature prominently in the drug trade -- such as the Kurds and the Turks -- are US allies as well. We might even include the Saudis, who were certainly involved in drug profit money-laundering back in the BCCI days and may not have stopped even after BCCI collapsed.

Putting all these facts together, it would seem fair to conclude that the drugs-and-terrorism nexus is entirely a US creation, carried on by US allies and binding the US tightly to those allies even when their behavior is less than scrupulous.

There is just one glaring anomaly with in the pattern: al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is said to have acted as the protector of the Afghan heroin trade, in return for a 15% cut, and to have its own heroin pipeline to Turkey. Al Qaeda also has links to many of the US-supported drug-trafficking groups. And al Qaeda is most strongly affiliated on a national level with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In short, there would seem to be every reason to regard al Qaeda as just one more member of the family.

And yet, we are told, al Qaeda is our mortal enemy, sworn to our destruction.

There is something intensely strange here, something that doesn't add up no matter how hard you stare at it. I'm not wise enough to say whether it's false flags all the way down, or whether there really is an al Qaeda that fell out with the CIA at some point after the fall of Communism and has been acting as the bad boy in the family ever since.

But either way, it seems incontrovertible that al Qaeda is one of ours and can only be understood with that as a starting point.

This doesn't necessarily point directly to the US government or the CIA. If you look back at the 80's, you can see the roots of the present situation in the rogue CIA guys like Shackley and Clines, in Jesse Helms and his connections with Latin American neo-fascists, and in all the doings of Iran-Contra. Many of the Neocons have ties to that 80's nexus. So do Jack Abramoff and his pals (such as Dana Rohrabacher) -- and Duke Cunningham and his pals.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a shadow government -- but there's certainly a bunch of people who know a bunch of other people, and who all have their reasons for being interested in covert hugger-mugger in the Middle East and Central Asia and for keeping very, very quiet about it.

lukery said...

thnx starroute - great comment. thnx. i'm on the road. will have a more substantive response later.

lukery

Yankee Doodle said...

Great post, Lukery.

I'm coming at this from some different directions, but I am arriving at substantially the same place.

I think Sibel had predicted that.

And, that's why they don't "off" Sibel -- too many people know about this, all they would do is call attention to this and make her a martyr.

"it would seem fair to conclude that the drugs-and-terrorism nexus is entirely a US creation"

I think that's going too far.

This may have been born in the 1980's, but it came of age in the post-Cold War period, when state sponsors of terror were harder to find. It was a natural evolution. Both the terrorists and the narcotraffickers have a common enemy: the government. The terrorists and guerrillas are armed, and can provide security; the drug runners have money.

This has now, however, gone far beyond that -- again, it is evolving.

"I wouldn't go so far as to call it a shadow government"

Close. I'm doing a series of posts on this, coming at it from different directions, and you almost anticipated the title of one.

Christopher said...

The almost complete blackout of information on 9/11 by the mainstream media is, to my mind, the most interesting part of the whole matter. You speak of Sibel's testimony and the involvement of Saudi Arabia in the event. It goes, as you imply, way beyond that. Very specifically it involves Saudi, Pakistani, organized crime which includes elements of the U.S. covert/black operative community which you have not and probably will not touch on. The absurdity of the governments story, the coverning up of almost every fact, the lack of any normal investigation of the events based on forensic evidence, all this is completely astonishing to me.

But, perhaps more interesting than that, is the refusal of the left to go into this matter. If I were, for example, to post this oist on DKOS, I would be assailed by banshees screaming for my head--because it has happened to me there.

To anyone that reads this on the left: what the hell are you afraid of? Why is it beyond the pale to believe your gov't is involved even indirectly in 9/11? I can assure you that government people are involved in all forms of corruption including the drug trade and have been from the beginning of that trade. What is wrong with the left in America?

Anonymous said...

The intersection of terrorism with organized crime -- even aside from the single element of drug smuggling -- is certainly of interest.

A few years ago, I was collecting notes on what is sometimes called the "Indian Mafia" but which largely seems to be a collection of Muslim terrorists who regularly find refuge in Pakistan after causing one sort of mayhem or another in India. Dawood Ibrahim is the best known figure of this sort -- see, for example, here or here or, for the most complete version, here.

One of eight sons of a struggling policeman, Dawood started off as a petty crook but soon formed his own gang and gradually eliminated his rivals among the city's traditional crime bosses, say Bombay police. By the 1980s, his gang, D Company, had become Bombay's most powerful, drawing its strength from the city's minority Muslims. The syndicate grew rich smuggling black-market gold and consumer goods into India's closed economy and forced its way into the country's sizzling Bollywood film industry.

In 1985, beset by gang wars and prosecutions, Dawood fled to Dubai, the freewheeling financial center of the United Arab Emirates. From there, he continued to expand his operations across Asia. In the U.A.E., Dawood's men ran high-stakes gambling rings, fixed cricket matches, and threw lavish parties where Indian actors and sports stars mixed with Arab emirs. Dawood pushed his syndicate into narcotics and arms trafficking, construction, real estate, and hawala, the underground bankers who move millions of dollars around the world each day with barely a trace. "It's like a corporation of the underworld," says Dhananjay Kamalakar, who oversees the Bombay police's organized-crime unit. "There are monthly salaries for foot soldiers, legal defenses for those arrested, and extra pay for contract killers."

Revenge. The shift from gangster to terrorist came in 1993, after rioting targeted Bombay's Muslims. Bent on revenge, Dawood engineered the smuggling into India of tons of explosives provided by Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, say U.S. and Indian law enforcement. The bombings that followed made Dawood India's most wanted man. The ISI then made Dawood an offer: If he relocated to Pakistan's port city of Karachi and kept working with the ISI, it would guarantee him control of the nation's coastal smuggling routes. For 12 years now, Dawood has called Pakistan home, where he is believed to own shopping malls, luxury homes, and shipping and trucking lines that smuggle arms into India and heroin into Europe. India's FBI, the Central Bureau of Investigation, puts D Company's annual income in the hundreds of millions of dollars and says it has up to 5,000 members.

In Pakistan, Dawood has ties to several terrorist groups, say U.S. officials, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed by India for October's bombings in New Delhi, which killed at least 60, and a bloody 2001 attack on India's Parliament. He has allegedly met with al Qaeda leaders and even made a deal to share his smuggling routes with al Qaeda operatives.

Anonymous said...

Sibel Edmonds is a distraction and a limited hangout artist. It is SO transparent what's going on Lukery. Sibel Edmonds is repeatedly gagged so as to build up her (false) credibility in preparation for if and when she is needed to cement the limited hangout. Then she can be un-gagged and simpletons will automatically assume whatever she says will be the truth, and of course what she will say will NOT be "9/11 was an inside job", but instead will be at most some variation of the official myth but with a twist, like "a small clique of people in the C.I.A. allowed the "hijackers" to proceed unmolested because they wanted 9/11 to happen", which will be followed by the old game of naming a few scapegoats to be blamed for the whole thing, then that will be that. Pretty simple really. Lukery, the woman you're obsessed with is part of the cover-up.

"What did Al Qaeda have to do with 9/11?"

Absofuckinglutely nothing. The American intel. community and some elements in the military and other agencies are the real perpetrators. 9/11 was an INSIDE JOB. Here's a clue: "Al Qaeda" isn't in control of the U.S. Air Force. "Al Qaeda" wouldn't be able to rig the Twin Towers and WTC # 7 for controlled demolition to fall right into their footprints. "Al Qaeda" wouldn't be able to make the Cheney regime incriminate itself by having the steel debris shipped off at breakneck speed to India and China to be melted down;
stonewalling and underfunding the 9/11 whitewash commission, refusing to testify unless Bush and Cheney are together, behind closed doors, with their attorneys present and with nothing they say recorded and no transcript made, not placed under oath; keeping the at least eighty-five Pentagon security cameras' tapes classified making it obvious that what hit it wasn't a Boeing 757, etc. Come on Lukery. Sibel is part of the cover-up, like Daniel Hopsicker and Sander Hicks. They're disinfo specialists, leading genuine researchers down rabbit holes. A better use of a blog would be not recording every sneeze and fart of Sibel Edmonds but instead realizing what she is and making the focus of your blog GENUINE matters of 9/11 truth, like the controlled demolition of the Twin Towers and # 7 building, the standdown of the Air Force that would be necessary for the plan to succeed, the Cheney regime's cover-up after the fact, etc. Otherwise this blog will be nothing more than part of the problem, part of the cover-up. Your choice Lukery.

priscianus jr said...

Anonymous,
Sibel Edmonds knows what she knows. She doesn't know everything nor did she ever claim to know everything nor did Lukery ever claim she knows everything. You make some good points but you don't have to be abusive.

priscianus jr said...

And BTW, just because it was an inside job doesn't mean "Al Qaida" had nothing to do with it. What you're not getting is that the "thing" commonly referred to as "Al Qaida" is not just a bunch of scruffy fighters in Afghanistan, it's an underworld international empire of illegal drugs, weapons, banking, software, etc. that has, shall we say, business connections with significant elements of the US government (and other governments). That's where your "inside job" fits in.