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.'"
Double standards... (Score:3, Interesting)
Each American citizen has an investment in government, predicated on that whole "By the people" schtick that a few goofballs advanced. Why can't we see that a bunch of bureaucrats are causing this investment to depreciate more rapidly than the dollar?
counting down the days until (Score:4, Interesting)
10... 9... 8...
Re:*Shudders with fear* (Score:3, Interesting)
And no, I don't believe the Government has a secret fleet of unicorns.
Re:Double standards... (Score:2, Interesting)
Each American citizen has an investment in government, predicated on that whole "By the people" schtick that a few goofballs advanced. Why can't we see that a bunch of bureaucrats are causing this investment to depreciate more rapidly than the dollar?
Having said that, covering up is nothing new, and getting caught is nothing new. Most people in America are just happy to have enough money for food, shelter, and gas for the car, there's no time to worry about the guys that are causing the problems that make most Americans only able to just afford food, shelter, and gas for the car, and that's the way the guys with slightly more power like it. This is the way the the people with a lot of power WILL keep it, with their last dying breath.
It all feeds into itself, unfortunately, and the only way to break (restart?) the cycle is a revolution...before, people were labeled as communists for thinking such things...now they are called terrorists. The proletariats/bourgeoisie structure still applies today, as far as I see it. Even if "we" did "rise up", we would fall victim to the allure of power, and it would happen again. Look at the separation from the British Commonwealth -- early Americans were so happy, and wrote a list of rules so that it wouldn't happen to them...so, the succeeding Americans just wrote laws that amended the original to override what they didn't like.
I don't mean to sound so cynical, it's just the human/social development life cycle that's near impossible to resist/avoid.
Re:Instead of the BoingBoing snippet ... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Alas, I wouldn't know, as my workplace uses Smartfilter, and since BoingBoing was critical of Smartfilter once, they're on a permanent screw-over list -- even though they have more or less the same content as Slashdot, Smartfilter (now endorsed by the Iranian government! Oppress your serfs today!) blocks them as "Nudity".
Ah, to be able to block hundreds of thousands of people critical of me with but a click. Must be nice to be a professional censor.
Re:Art of War Chapter 13 (Score:3, Interesting)
It's like most conspiracy theories involving government taking part in bad actions... it's a lot more comforting to believe that our government is almighty and in control doing bad things, rather than believing that shit can and does happen beyond their control. It seems like many prefer the illusion of unjust order, rather than the reality of chaotic events that can not be controlled or stopped by all the might we have invested our faith in.
Nothing to see here. Move along. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:More attention (Score:3, Interesting)
I was, in fact, alive at the time, but not old enough to remember.
At that age, I watched *M*A*S*H* and actually thought it was set in Vietnam, and couldn't grasp why Alan Alda was laughing and everyone in reality was pissed off.
People don't scale. Organizations are hell. Centralized power, while tactically helpful, can lead to strategic woes.
The fact that Watergate a) is not an isolated behavior pattern, and b) takes a long time to expose should be an important input into the political debate.
Strikingly, the anti-big-government candidates seem to be doing poorly in the primaries.
Possibly the federalist argument is not what the electorate cares to hear, but one wonders...
Re:Double standards... (Score:1, Interesting)
First, most classified matter I've seen is so because of where it's born. If I write a memo to my boss requesting a vacation using a classified machine, it's classified. I can get it declassified by requesting same and, after approval, it almost certainly would be. Why would I do that, though? Do you really want me wasting your tax dollars that way?
Second, if you were truly interested in what the government is doing, or spending money on, try reading the budget submissions from the related agencies and the funding bills. For instance, since you mentioned the Manhattan program, let's try DOE/NNSA. For this year's funding request see http://www.cfo.doe.gov/budget/08budget/Content/Volumes/Vol_1_NNSA.pdf [doe.gov]. You're probably interested in the section that starts on page 53. The office of the President takes that and makes a budget submission -- See http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/pdf/appendix/doe.pdf [whitehouse.gov]. Then, for what they were authorized to spend and do, try http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c110:1:./temp/~c110HxtKyt:e379988: [loc.gov]
You already knew all that, though, of course. No? What? Too much like work? Yes, it certainly is easier to whine than dig for those answers you claim you want.
The common thing I've noticed about conspiracy theories is that so much of our time is wasted on what's not available that the nagging issue of what *is* available will be reliably ignored. Let's justify this laziness by telling ourselves that this is what "they" want you to know. It just must not be true, right?
Lemmings. Gotta love 'em. Their life is so short
Re:Numb From the Neck Up (Score:3, Interesting)
It's marketing for Star Wars. Which was the Bush/Cheney admin's main military programme priority, before their old employee Osama gave them the excuse for the much more powerful, lucrative and immediate Terror War (and its juicy Invade Iraq subsidiary). But the Terror War, and even Iraq, have limited (though huge) earning potential. With Star Wars, the sky's the limit (pun intended
Kill the Messenger! (Score:5, Interesting)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1991080575212848283&q=kill+the+messenger&total=348&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 [google.com]
Also i have a special section on my website dedicated to the subject, tho the page is pretty half assed: http://www.hongpong.com/sibel_edmonds_9_11_the_turkish_spy_scandal [hongpong.com]
Essentially here is my understanding of what this weird scandal means:
Sibel edmonds was hired by the FBI shortly after 9/11 to digest the backlog of foreign-language wiretaps run by the counter intelligence division. However Sibel also could listen to English-language conversations recorded on those lines. Within three months she heard extensive conspiracies involving the American Turkish Council, which were being actively covered up by Melek Can Dickerson, who was working alongside Sibel in the translation unit.
However, there was also evidence that the FBI was tracking an international criminal network that includes the big name neocons (Feith and Perle among others) which was funnelling and covering for nuclear secrets pilfered from the national nuclear laboratories (ever notice their shitty security?) and routed to brokers in Pakistan, Turkey and Israel.
Additionally the Turks were caught by the FBI wiretaps doing cash/secret handoffs from the ATC to the State Department. Once 9/11 occurred, it seems that then-State Dept official Marc Grossman was helping get foreign spies who had foreknowledge of 9/11 out of the United States, after the FBI had become very interested in talking to these guys. The wiretaps and intelligence fragments finger real people - and Kill the Messenger details how Sibel was momentarily a famous 9/11 whistleblower because of this. 60 Minutes ran a special with very heavily edited footage and has never released the raw footage of the interview. (yes in fact even the highly controversial Israeli art student 9/11 conspiracy theory appears to fit here)
Finally, this criminal network was deeply opposed to the CIA's counter proliferation operations - attempting to block turkey and pakistan from getting more nuke bits. So therefore Scooter Libby fits in quite differently than widely known. He used to be a lawyer for billionaire israeli-american fugitive Marc Rich, the moneyman for arms trafficker Viktor Bout. These guys seem to roughly be part of this same network. There is apparently an FBI recorded conversation of Marc Grossman tipping off the Turks/and/or Pakis to Brewster Jennings' status as a covert front company. This was certainly treasonous!
Also there is an important revolving door dimension: lobbyists, retired generals, military industrial complex. Turkey is able to convert laundered drug money into funding for the military industrial purchases - its something like 25% of GDP.
this is all a great example of an orwellian cryptocracy getting tangled up in all the criminal evidence it observes. oops. kinda like the federal reserve logging all that drug money moving around.
i realize all of this sounds quite bottom-of-the-barrel everything and the kitchen sink kind of super conspiracy. But hey, it does in fact have odd threads that go back to the weirdest events of the Bush administration - and before. Sorry. I'm offering this stuff in good faith: there is just too much material to ignore.
Re:Gee... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sibel Edmonds has evidence that a number of countries and organizations are involved in this, including members of governments, organized crime groups, and front groups for various nationalities. She points the finger primarily at the ATC, a Turkish-American front organization, which operates similarly to AIPAC, the Jewish American front organization.
Edmonds says you can start examining the situation from any start you want - the Plame case, the AIPAC espionage trial, her gagging case - they all end up with the same group of people in the US and Turkish governments, in the ATC and AIPAC organizations, and in organized crime figures like Marc Rich (pardoned by Bill Clinton, if you remember, in exchange for some thousands of dollars in bribes.) The scale of the criminal organization is massive and crosses over drugs, weapons smuggling, and the nuclear black market. She says "senior elected US officials" are guilty of massive treason - and that means senior Senators and Congressmen - and possibly even Dick Cheney, if not Bush himself. Keep in mind that Scooter Libby was once Marc Rich's attorney.
The sad part is that Sibel, after years of trying to get a Senator to front the classified info she has in her head, finally decided to risk jail by offering to go on any national broadcast news show and tell all as long as it was unedited. No US media would take her up on it, so she has been forced to go outside the country to the Times. This shows how deep the corruption goes - no US media will reveal what she knows.
This country is almost literally being run by organized crime - and not even Italian organized crime! - at this point. It reminds me of the Warren Ellis comic, "Reload".
Re:Why the gag order? (Score:5, Interesting)
Edmonds WAS the "investigation." She was translating documents that had been mis-translated before by FBI personnel who were apparently in the pay of those being investigated. When she brought this to the attention of her superiors, she was fired in retaliation. The FBI internal affairs investigation confirmed this.
The "investigations" you are referring to were ongoing and were being sabotaged inside the FBI itself. The people involved even tried to recruit Edmonds to continue the sabotage, which she refused to do. Once she was fired and went outside the FBI to Congress, the DoJ gagged her.
There is nothing here involving "national security". The gag order was intended to prevent her from revealing that, as she puts it, "senior elected US officials" are engaged in wholesale treason. She has provided information to several US Senators in a secure facility inside Congress. She testified before the 9/11 Commission - and her testimony was reduced to a footnote in the final report. She was promised by Henry Waxman that her case would be number one on his list when the Democrats came to power in January - since then, his office has refused her calls.
The reality is that what she knows is so dangerous to the stability of the US government that I'm surprised she's still breathing - although of course if she ended up dead, that would be pretty much a problem for these people, too, especially as you can imagine she has some sort of "dead man" trigger set up so that the info gets revealed anyway.
I, personally, think she SHOULD just dump it all on her Web site. In fact, after the Time Online article two weeks ago, she posted several pictures of certain officials on her Web site without comment. You are supposed to understand that these are the people involved.
Without some sort of legal immunity, however, and given the Guantanamo situation, it obviously is a very great risk for her to just defy the ban without having enough public impact as a result that it would blunt any attempt to "disappear" her.