FBI Burying Doc Showing US Officials Stole Nuclear Secrets? 347
BoingBoing is reporting that the FBI may be burying the existence of a document that proves US officials stole nuclear secrets for eventual sale to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. "One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file. Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an 'outright lie.'"
Instead of the BoingBoing snippet ... (Score:5, Informative)
The BoingBoing writeup is so irritatingly fragmentary it's hard to tell what it's even saying. Which is a good description of BoingBoing in general, actually.
Re:Instead of the BoingBoing snippet ... (Score:2, Informative)
However, the timesonline article posted by parent gives a lot more detail and is a little more persuasive in lending credence to her claims. It references a lot of anonymous and questionable sources, but at least it references something. Even questionable details, again IMHO, are preferable to getting overly excited based on something so thin.
Other countries with nuclear secrets (Score:4, Informative)
Pakistani nuclear head's comments in 2004 (Score:4, Informative)
While a lot of biased and unfounded propaganda is directed against us, the Western world never talked about their own hectic and persistent efforts to sell everything to us. When we bought inverters from Emerson, England, we found them to be less efficient than we wanted them to be. We asked Emerson to improve upon some parameters and we suggested the method .
At that time we received many letters and telexes and people chased us with figures and details of equipment they had sold to Almelo, Capenhurst, etc. They literally begged us to buy their equipment. We bought what we considered to be suitable for our plant and very often asked them to make changes and modifications according to our requirements.
Re:Why would they have to steal nuclear secrets? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Art of War Chapter 13 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Art of War Chapter III (Score:4, Informative)
(1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.
(2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.
(3) He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.
(4) He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.
(5) He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.
18. Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
I hate it when people only quote half of it, like "judge, not lest ye be judged"
It's funny that the way to LOSE a war according to the art of war is to have the army in a distant land and run the people into recession in order to fund that war (that you should be using the supplies from the fallen army/land to restock).
"Steal" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:More attention (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gee... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm thinking that perhaps the claim is not that the governments of Turkey and Israel are involved, which, in the case of Israel at least, is implausible, but that the criminals involved are Turkish and Israeli nationals. It isn't clear which is meant, but this is a lot more plausible.
Re:More attention (Score:2, Informative)
Except ms Edmonds is the most gagged person is US history and her story has been confirmed by several other (former) FBI agents and the FBI itself.
All she wanted was to testify in public before the 9/11 commission. This was denied and she was forbidden to speak to anyone about what she knew by the supreme court (some indication that it is interesting to say the least).
More on her story [justacitizen.com].
Re:Possibly because of the Valerie Plame thing? (Score:5, Informative)
Plame was never outed because of an attempt to use a charge of "nepotism" to discredit Joe Wilson. That cover story never made any sense. Who cares if the guy's wife was at the CIA and suggested him for the Niger investigation? It only barely made more sense if the concept was that the CIA was somehow deliberately sabotaging the Iraq war - which also never made any sense.
Plame was outed because her organization was investigating the nuclear black market including the A. Q. Khan network and its connections to Iran. That investigation would have inevitably led back to the people in the US State Department and the US nuclear agencies who were on the payroll of the black marketers. So Plame's operation had to be shut down.
Keep in mind that Scooter Libby was once Marc Rich's attorney - and Rich is supposed to be one of or the money man behind this operation. Exactly how deep Dick Cheney's involvement is unclear at this point, but there is no doubt that Marc Grossman at the State Department was involved in the outing, and it is likely that Libby got his information from him.
Re:Double standards... (Score:5, Informative)
The CIA recruited a Russian scientist to deliver faked nuclear design documents to Iran. Most of the documents were genuine, but there were flaws in the design.
The problem was that the Russian scientist quickly identified the flaws and realized that not only would the Iranian scientists see them quickly, too, destroying the idea that they were legitimate, but that the rest of the design would be valuable to the Iranians. He pointed this out to his CIA handler, who dismissed the concerns as not important.
So the Russian, before delivering the designs to his Iranian connection at the IAEA, added notes to them pointing out the flaws in an effort to make the documents more believable. He did this without the knowledge of his handler, apparently.
It is clear from this that the intent as explained to the Russian of trying to fool the Iranians into building a flawed design was ITSELF a cover story. The real purpose was simply to get the plans into Iranian hands, thus justifying the concept that Iran had a nuclear weapons program (for which there is zero evidence other than a laptop the providence of which no one can ascertain, and which is very likely a forgery along the lines of the Niger documents.)
The document under discussion is totally different. An anonymous letter sent to The Liberty Coalition, a DC-based transpartisan civil and human rights watchdog organization. A subsequent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, asking for information referring to that case number, resulted in a denial from the FBI that such a case exists. The letter referred to the FBI case document. The FBI case document, the contents of which Edmonds knows, was described by her as follows:
"The case in question, she told The BRAD BLOG, careful to avoid categorical defiance of her gag order, "concerns 1996 to 2002 information, targeting Turkish counter-intelligence, and it involves U.S. officials both appointed and elected."
What Edmonds has alleged, based on what she knows from documents she translated at the FBI, is that Marc Grossman, a State Department employee, tipped off the nuclear black marketers that Valerie Plame's organization was in fact a CIA operation. The anonymous letter which is referred to above also made this claim,
The document in question is an FBI case file, not a CIA operation. So it is not the same as the Iranian false flag operation.
Edmonds has made it clear that there is no "national security" involved in this situation. What is involved is the intent to protect certain elected and appointed government officials from charges of treason, which at the same time would embarrass several national governments such as Turkey, Israel, and others.
Re:Instead of the BoingBoing snippet ... (Score:4, Informative)
Not clear to me from either article how exactly the Times knows that this file does in fact exist? Is it from a document from that same whistleblower.
"But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file."
If the Times claims they have that document, I tend to believe it. Owned by Murdoch or not, it's still one of the most respectable newspapers in the world -- and in this case, that they print it despite being owned by NewsCorp even adds some extra credibility to the story. :)
Re:Which party will be embarrassed if it comes out (Score:2, Informative)
The Times declined to name names, even though she said she would. Edmonds has provided a "rogues gallery," of the perps [justacitizen.com] -- uh, sorry, alleged perps -- which includes Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Dennis Hastert, Brent Scowcroft and Marc Grossman, who is described in the Times article as a "well-known senior official in the US State Department."
For the most part, this activity appears to have been driven by pure avarice, selling accessible, desired product (nuke "secrets," arms, drugs, etc), with the perps pocketing cash.
By the bye, here is the latest statement from Daniel Ellsberg [bradblog.com] of Pentagon Papers fame.
Re:Sounds like a plan (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_federations_by_military_expenditures [wikipedia.org]
The world total military spending: 1,200,000,000,000
US only military spending 623,000,000,000
http://www.dopmagazin.com/elementi/20070830_230631headUpAss.jpg [dopmagazin.com]