All right, welcome back to Antiwar Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
Thanks for listening.
One of my favorite reporters is also a good friend of mine.
She's Larissa Alexandrovna, the managing investigative news editor of RawStory.com.
Welcome, Larissa.
Hey, Scott.
Thanks for having me.
It's good to talk to you again.
You've got a couple of great articles at RawStory worth going over here and explaining in detail.
Let's start with the Israeli bombing of a Syrian site of some kind on September the 6th.
I think we at least know that much, right?
Well, no, we do know it was an Israeli bombing, despite all the confusing press reports.
And we know that they bombed the site in Syria.
We know that whatever they bombed was some sort of military facility.
That's true.
And we also know it wasn't a nuclear facility of any sort.
The rest is what we don't know.
Well, I talked to Philip Giraldi on the show, I think it was last week.
Yeah, last week.
And he told me that the belief inside the intelligence community is that this is some kind of hoax, I believe were his words.
A hoax?
Yeah, some kind of hoax was basically being perpetrated by, well, whoever was behind the raid.
Which part of the hoax?
The actual bombing?
No, no, no, not that it didn't happen, but that all the accusations around it basically are false.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's no question.
Everyone I've talked to believes that it's pure propaganda, that they hid anything nuclear related.
And if you recall, when this first happened, the reports coming out in the always dependable Sunday London Times and also New York Times and Washington Post were that it was absolutely a nuclear facility that had a nuclear reactor and that the attack blew apart a nuclear weapons cache.
The next cycle of propaganda was that Israeli commandos had in fact infiltrated the facility, swooping down, you know, all ninja-like, collected radioactive materials as samples of some sort as evidence, as proof.
And then later it was that there was no nuclear materials gathered, but it was satellite imagery, and that based on the satellite imagery, the Israelis attacked a nuclear reactor that was still under construction but wasn't fueled up yet.
And then the weirdest one of all of these was Al Jazeera reported that the U.S. actually had bombed the facility using nuclear tactical missiles.
Which I think we can tell from, well, assuming that the satellite photos they've released are accurate or reliable at all, that doesn't look like it's been nuked to me.
Well, it was absolutely not nuked, and there were absolutely no nukes there.
There's nobody, nobody, and I kid you not, nobody who believes that anything of a nuclear facility existed there was being constructed there.
The people I've talked to with their U.S. intelligence there, in various other intelligence organizations all over the world there, also specialists in the particular field of atomic energy, there is absolutely no way this is any form of a nuclear facility.
And any comparison to the North Korean structures is absolutely wrong.
Well, you know, I talked to Joe Cirincione not too long after this, and he said that it seemed like an intent of the smear, I guess Syria obviously is half of this, but the other half of the story here is North Korea, and that John Bolton smears in the Wall Street Journal and so forth about this story were basically an attempt to, or seemed as though they could be an attempt, to thwart Condoleezza Rice's deal with the North Koreans.
Yeah, I heard the same thing.
Before it's too late and it's successfully carried out.
Actually it was a two-fer, or a three-fer even, because that's one element.
The other element was, from what other people I've talked to are speculating, for their motive, is that they're trying to clean up the whole narrative of Iraq by showing that the so-called WMDs in Iraq actually made their way to Syria, or whatever, the uranium for example made its way to Syria, and that's why nobody could find it.
And then the three-fer element of it is that it would nicely tie Iran into the narrative, because then you have the whole axis of evil sharing secrets and technologies and plotting against the United States.
Unfortunately, it is such a bizarre tale, and it was so poorly planted that it immediately raised alarms.
And once the IAEA started investigating, because if there was in fact nuclear activity going on in Syria, then they wanted to find out, and so forth.
And my article today deals with, they apparently have approached both the U.S. and the Israelis saying, okay, if you have any evidence, please give it to us so we can investigate this.
They've been rebuffed.
The only country that is cooperating is Syria.
Well, now, have the IAEA inspectors gone to the site?
I don't know if I'm allowed to discuss that.
My parameters were really limited in terms of what I could write.
All I can tell you is that they're not releasing a formal report because their investigation can't move forward without the evidence.
The evidence as such is that they don't have any evidence of anything relating to nuclear activity whatsoever.
And now, just to be clear, what you're allowed to say and not say is as per your agreements with your sources.
Correct.
That's right.
I'm sorry.
I should clarify that.
Not because somebody is censoring me, but because sometimes when you're talking with sources, they tell you things for background, and they sometimes stipulate that for whatever reason.
Sometimes it's because they can be identified on specifics that you use.
Sometimes it's just through paranoia or whatever the reason.
They sometimes say, you know, I will tell you this, but you can't write this part.
Those are the agreements that you have to – if you want any information from me, you're going to have to agree to.
So that's why I don't believe I can discuss that part of it.
I can check and let you know later, but I don't think I am.
Okay.
And now, it's interesting, though, in your article here, you say that – well, I guess, apparently, your source is complaining that they're not getting any help from the U.S. Right.
Well, remember, the U.S. is being represented in the form of anonymous leaps and John Bolton running around.
Well, what kind of cooperation would they require from the U.S. in terms of investigating this?
Because the U.S. would have – remember that we're told by press reports – remember, this is all in the press.
This is the way this is being laundered, as I call it, this intelligence.
It's through the press.
Neither Israel or the U.S. will publicly discuss this.
Foreign press reports have said – and actually, ABC News also – that the United States was provided with the intelligence as to what Israel was going to do and why it was going to do it.
So, the United States could share that with the IAEA and say, this is what we were given, and when we gave our green light, this is what we were looking at.
Well, I just got the greatest sense of déjà vu.
It's just like the run-up to war with Iraq when all the weapons inspectors said, well, we've been everywhere you've told us you had intelligence, that they had some weapons, and we haven't found anything.
You must be holding back on the good intelligence.
Why don't you come on with it?
And, of course, the administration's response was, no, you get out of the country, we're going to invade because we do know where it is, but we're not going to tell you.
We're just going to have our war, and then we'll get those weapons and mass destruction.
And it turned out they had nothing.
That's why the inspectors weren't being directed to it.
Well, no, that's the thing that they said it was.
Alajudath Miller at the New York Times was, the reason there was nothing is because it was all moved to Syria.
Right.
This is what they say at the weekly standard.
Right.
It's all in Syria, and that's why the so-called nuclear program in Syria is proof that they were able to so quickly go from nothing to something.
It's proof that the uranium and everything else made its way to Syria.
And if it's Syria has it, then absolutely the Iranians have it.
All right.
Now, help me out, because I think this was a story that you reported, or at least a fact that came up in a story that you reported a year or two back, was that the Iraqis had a ton of uranium.
It was sitting right there in Iraq under UN lock and key.
It was right there readily available, wasn't it?
Correct.
It was under IAEA seal.
Right.
But it was in the country.
If Saddam Hussein wanted to get some uranium to enrich, there was a giant pile of it.
And then after the war, it was still there.
Right.
Correct.
Yes.
I mean, that's one of the things people were pointing to.
But the argument from the other side was, well, he was trying to do it covertly.
And so if inspectors had noticed any broken seals or anything, they would have been made aware of his efforts.
And the same argument was also used to explain the whole notion of why Iran didn't buy uranium from the Republic of Congo.
Remember that whole thing I wrote about?
Right.
Now, that was some sort of ploy by the Office of Special Plans types to implicate Iran and Iraq in a deal to buy uranium from a different African country, right?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Oh, that was an entirely different one again.
Yep.
That was different.
Okay.
Well, go ahead and fill us in on both of those two stories then.
Well, I'm sorry.
I didn't know I'd be talking about this.
And these are things I've written so long ago, I mean, years, that I have to quickly work from memory.
But the Congolese mine story was laughable at best.
The Iranians attempted to purchase yellow cake uranium from Congo.
When they had their own domestic uranium in Persia.
Correct.
So that kind of was quickly, I quickly debunked that.
That fell off the radar.
Never brought up again.
The story you're talking about, about the cross border, you know, uranium smuggling, was a story that was told by Gurbani far Michael Adeen and others to US officials, basically that Iranian paramilitary or spies or something of the sort, I can't remember off the top of my head what genre they fell in and snuck, you know, prior to the invasion of Iraq, knocked over and stole all of the, you know, uranium and took it back to Iran with them.
But they all died of poisoning, radiation poisoning.
That sounds like a Gurbani far story, right?
Right.
I mean, did that actually detail it so hilarious because it's, it's, it's, it's absurd.
Anyone who's going to go, it's capable enough of infiltrating another country and stealing nuclear materials is going to know to dress for the occasion.
They're not going to put it in their back pocket.
Well, it's, you know, it's almost like the Niger uranium story over and over again.
Like they have four or five or six of these where they're just trying to implicate anybody and some nuclear black market, anything.
So they can start another war.
Yeah.
I mean, they have, but honestly, I think with regard to Iran, they were trying to beer off the whole nuclear, you know, element of it.
And they were refocusing their argument and the whole improvised explosive devices scenario where the reason we're losing the war in Iraq is because Iran's responsible, right?
So they shifted their tactics.
But the Syria situation, again, opened up that open that entire argument up basically, well, they had nuclear weapons and a nuclear reactor and they were working with the North Koreans and the Iranians and it's one big axis of evil plot against the United States.
Well now, so Larissa, according to your sources or your best insight into this story, did they bomb the place just so they can spread these lies through the media?
Or was there another reason for this testing anti-aircraft radar or any other purpose that went along other than to just set up the basis for some false propaganda?
Well, I mean, there's any number of reasons.
I honestly don't know.
And I don't think anybody does with the exception of a very small group of people inside both governments as to what the reason was.
One source of mine told me that, you know, the accident in Syria on July 20th, I believe it was involving the Syrians trying to weaponize chemical warhead using North Korean missiles and all of this.
There was an accident, there was a big explosion in that same kind of area.
And that kind of inspired the Israelis to take out the chemical lab facility or a missile catch, North Korean missiles.
But it's not like Syria's chemical weapons program isn't unknown.
Everyone knows about it.
I don't know why that would be such a secret.
So any way you try to rationalize it, it makes no sense.
Whatever the motive, it still makes no sense how they went about it.
Because in the end, if you look at it, it was really badly pulled off, whatever the reason.
For all we know, it could have been another test run the way Lebanon was for a war with Iran.
Well, and you know, the media mostly, at least on television, whenever this subject does come up at all, they all just sort of shrug and say, well, we don't understand this, so forget it.
Let's talk about something else.
No, well, what they do is, no, no, no, no, if only they did that.
What they do is, they usually have the same group of players at the main newspapers.
It's not that the entire journalists, the journalistic staff at any of the newspapers is responsible, but the main bylines behind some of these stories are always the same.
And once the stories are written, then they're picked up by the TV people, who just spin it over and over and over, get on experts from both sides of the aisle, because facts, you know, have to be balanced like that.
And then the experts, you know, duke it out based on no information, because they're going by what's been reported.
So it's really farcical.
Right, well, and they all start the discussion based on the false premise and then go from there.
You know, you're talking about experts from various think tanks who aren't privy to the intelligence, haven't examined it, haven't necessarily, they may have talked to people who have, I don't know, but usually when they, you know, go on the air, it's not like they've seen the intelligence firsthand to be able to really talk about the situation.
And that's kind of what happened to David Albright.
You know, he's someone I respect, but somehow he got roped into, in the Washington Post, to declaring or near declaring the possibility of this facility being, in fact, in Syria, being possibly a nuclear weapons facility.
You know, he was going based on reports that had been in the press and photos that we don't entirely know what the photos are.
But, you know, he said it was a possibility, but the way it was written in the Post, in that article, you know, he pretty much, it was like he declared absolutely no question, you know.
It's a very dangerous game everyone in this group is playing.
Well, it seems like the default position by now would be, eh, wait and see what Raw Story says in a couple of weeks or something, because right after this came out on the Foreign Policy Journal blog, they quoted Joe Cirincione saying, ah, yeah, right, Syria is a member of good standing of the NPT, and there's IAEA inspectors everywhere, and all their facilities are safeguarded.
On this show, he said, you know, the nuclear program, such as it is, is the kind of thing you'd find at the local university.
This is not anything that even could be converted to any sort of dual use to someday make weapons out of it or anything like that in a hundred years.
Right, and ironically enough, the IAEA report is due out.
I was actually told it would be today, but now I'm being told it will be tonight or tomorrow, probably tomorrow afternoon.
Okay, and now, back up a little bit, what IAEA report is that?
On basically, you know, kind of the whole transparency thing that Iran is trying to do by letting them have everything that they have on uranium enrichment, letting the inspectors examine things as a result of the sanctions that were passed in December of 06 and March 07, and then an agreement that was made between Syria and the United Nations in August.
Iran, you mean?
Oh, I'm sorry, Iran, sorry.
Yes, Iran.
So the report is, you know, everyone's really waiting for it, but my understanding is it doesn't matter what the report's going to say because the Bush administration isn't interested in what Iran has or does not have.
They've changed their talking point to where even the knowledge of is enough.
Right, even though anyone in the whole world can go to the Federation of Atomic Scientists website and learn how to make a bomb, assuming you can understand what the hell they're talking about.
Right, but they've changed it now to the knowledge of, which is not, just because you know how to make something doesn't mean you're making it, and just because you know how to make something doesn't mean you can make it and then make it operable or effective or that you can even acquire the necessary technology.
Just the knowledge alone is what they're saying is enough to damn the Iranians and, you know, can lead us to another war.
So whatever the report's going to say with regard to what Iran's actually doing is irrelevant because so long as Iran knows how to enrich uranium and understands that, you know, uranium can have a dual purpose, that's enough.
So that's why the, you know, ahead of this, there was an Israeli PM or NMP, pardon me, who basically was calling for the removal of Alberti in advance of whatever this report was going to say.
Right, John Bolton joined in the chorus on CNN too.
Right, well, and then there's this interesting thing today about the blueprints.
Did you see the blueprints?
I saw the headline, why don't you describe what's going on there?
Well, I haven't been able to read through all of it today because I've been busy with the other two articles and answering questions.
But basically, Iran handed over to the IAEA blueprints that they had showing how to mold uranium into a warhead.
These are documents that they got from AQ Khan?
Right, and here's the funny thing.
I mean, the IAEA has known this for two years.
This is not new news.
I'm not sure I understand what the news is.
But maybe, you know, like I said, I haven't read the whole thing.
Maybe there's some extra element to it that I wasn't privy to before.
I don't know.
No, I have to tell you, that was my impression too, was I guess the news was that they had actually handed over pieces of paper that they had already said, see, but don't touch.
And so now they actually hand them over.
That was the news.
Well, the U.N. inspectors already knew that they had these two years ago.
They already seen them.
It's maybe the news is now in the watchdog's possession.
But if that's the case, that indicates a level of cooperation.
But in the Bush administration's viewpoint, that, you know, once again gives the talking point momentum in that, you see, they just figured it out now.
They know how to do it.
That's what they're doing.
Right.
And see, it really doesn't matter, I guess.
No, it doesn't.
There's no evidence at all that they've actually pursued the making of warheads.
They certainly don't have the above 90 percent pure uranium-235 in kilogram quantities that they would need in order to form it into a warhead.
We're talking about a brochure laying on a table.
Right.
And you know what?
The brochure was provided by our allies.
So why don't we look over there first?
Frankly, what?
Good point.
Yeah.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
But as one of my sources pointed out to me a couple of months back when I was near panic state because I was convinced we were going to go to war any minute.
I didn't write it, but there were some things going on that were alarming me.
And my source said, you know, I wouldn't worry about it just now, but on the other hand, it can't be stopped.
It's in play, whatever that means.
I'm not sure, but it can't be stopped.
It means that the fake premise has been accepted, as you said.
No, no, no, no, no.
The talking point, the bar has now been lowered to they can't even have the knowledge.
And what that means is we're going to war.
No, this was the context of actual...
We had already discussed that.
This is the context of actual war, war, you know, not, you know, kind of the covert things that have been going on.
So not the diplomatic course, but the military course, the assets are in place and it's a done deal in that sense.
Not even the covert context.
In other words, with regard to what we've been doing with the MEK and stuff like that.
Not even that context.
The context was very specifically full-out war.
And this person said, you know, it can't be stopped now.
Nobody can do it.
I mean, there's no way.
It's done.
Whatever it is, I don't know.
But...
Well, now, you saw the Financial Times the other day, I'm sure, where Admiral Fallon, the head of CENTCOM, in pretty strong language, seemed to be publicly laying down the gauntlet against war and making it clear he wanted nothing to do with it.
Yeah, well, I mean, the problem is that any number of people can resign over this.
Any number of people inside the military brass can protest over this, but they can all be replaced.
There are plenty of people who are more than happy to get promoted and get that additional star or that additional rank that they've wanted and carry out the business of this administration.
That's the problem.
Until there's enough current military brass who don't wait to retire until they start talking, this thing will not be stopped.
They're replaceable.
They're expendable.
Dick Cheney told Larry King, Larry, it's not over until January 20, 2009.
Understand?
Yeah, well, I have a bad feeling that if they sense that the Democrats are going to win, what they're going to do is start the war right before the Democrats have sworn in, and that way they leave the mess up to the Democrats that they have to deal with.
Which, you know, the Democrats, it's not that they deserve any better than that, but I understand your point.
Let me ask you this.
Do you mind if I bring up some more old stuff?
Valerie Plame, you first reported that she was working on Iran.
That was her job at the CIA.
Can you elaborate on that story for me, please?
Well, I mean, I can't speak outside of what I wrote because there was an agreement with the sources in terms of what I could and could not say down to certain wars I was not allowed to use even.
It was incredibly complicated because people who are in fact worried about national security were also trying to indicate the level of damage, you know?
We do know that MSNBC and CBS and I guess Plame in her book have confirmed what you wrote last year.
Yeah, they've confirmed it.
CBS went off and confirmed a whole lot more that you could probably talk about, but I can't.
But the others, they did confirm it, but then they moved on because she's prohibited from discussing her work.
It seems to me that what's been allowed to be discussed is her work regarding Iraq.
Anything outside of that is not allowed.
And so, therefore, the whole Iran issue isn't being brought up by the mainstream more aggressively, or by Congress, I might add.
Pardon me for interrupting here, but let me try to kind of draw a picture of this a little bit better for the audience, people who aren't familiar.
Everybody knows Valerie Plame, the lady who was outed by the Vice President's office, basically.
Of course, what everybody knows in the conventional wisdom is that this was a move to embarrass her husband.
They can look like a mama's boy by some nepotism, getting a junket to Niger, and that was to discredit him for discrediting Cheney and making it clear that the government knew that the Niger forgeries were forgeries and that the Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger story was a lie.
And yet, when we look closer and we see Valerie Plame's employment at the CIA with a company called Brewster Jennings and Associates, and we look at Larissa's reporting and that of MSNBC, David Shuster, and the guys over at CBS as well, it begins to look like perhaps, and Larissa, maybe you can confirm this or speculate along these lines for us as well, but it looks to me perhaps as though they were trying to kill at least two birds with one stone by leaking the name of Valerie Plame.
For some reason, the War Party and the Vice President's office saw the CIA's monitoring of Iran and Iraq's participation, or lack thereof, in the world's nuclear black market as a threat to their policy.
Is that right, Larissa?
Can you tell me if I'm hot or cold?
You know, I honestly can't even begin to speculate what their intentions were.
I mean, I would have to say that for me, the question of a two-fer is certainly there because of many things.
For example, one is that they used her maiden name as opposed to her married name.
They released that, which would have revealed more about her work than necessarily her married name.
Well, and they even told Novak specifically, and he repeated on CNN, the name of her CIA front company, Brewster Jennings.
Correct.
Right, and Brewster Jennings was not involved in Iraq.
Oh, that was an Iran-only operation.
No, I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying it wasn't an Iraq operation.
The Iraq operations involved turning scientists in the regime into agents, things of that nature, working with families of those scientists who lived here and trying to get them to help active intermediaries by delivering intelligence and whatnot.
So the work in Iraq was confined to establishing whether or not Saddam Hussein possessed any nuclear weapons program or materials for a nuclear weapons program.
And Brewster Jennings existed well before the Iraq war, just FYI.
So I would say that if you want to understand Brewster Jennings better, you probably want to look at A. Q.
Khan as the Pakistani ring.
And that brings us full circle to our allies.
Well, now, Valerie Plame and some or another group of hers that she was a part of at the CIA were the ones who had intercepted the aluminum tubes for the rockets coming from Italy to Iraq that were used by war parties to… I don't know about that.
I believe that was reported by someone, but it wasn't me.
I didn't report that.
You don't consider that to be the case?
I have never been able to confirm that.
I'm not saying it's not true.
I'm just saying I've never been able to confirm that, and I've tried.
Okay.
So I don't know.
I'm just speaking to what I've been able to confirm and report.
I understand.
Well, report to me this.
You're wide and varied sources within the so-called intelligence community.
Did they believe that Cheney… Why do you say the so-called?
Well, because I don't like government communities naming themselves and going by whatever they call themselves.
Well, you know, if I called them a tree or a bird, I mean, then you wouldn't know what I was talking about where the information is coming from.
Okay.
I guess I really don't like the term intelligence for the secret government of the United States because it's hardly that.
But anyway, you're a wide and varied source within that intelligence community.
You can put your quotes around it or not if you like.
Did they believe that this was a two-fer, that they were actually trying to get rid of the CIA's involvement in monitoring the nuclear black market in the world?
Or are they pretty satisfied that this was really just an attempt to get Joe Wilson?
Some believe it was an attempt to get Joe Wilson.
Some believe it was an attempt to further destroy the CIA, which this administration hates and has pretty much all but destroyed.
They've moved all, you know, massive covert operations into the Defense Department.
Some of you more specifically believe that it was topic-oriented, such as what you had talked about, the, you know, destroy any monitoring of nuclear proliferation kind of thing.
Yeah.
Well, it seems like it makes Cheney, it makes it easier for Dick Cheney to lie if there's not a whole lot of contradictory information.
True.
I mean, there was a lot more damage than just to the agency, the particular monitoring operation.
I mean, we're talking about different U.S. agencies, other, you know, shared assets.
And in general, our own national security, all of that just to start another war.
I mean, you'd have to be incredibly diabolical.
I can't even, I'm not saying it's not possible.
I'm just saying I can't even fathom someone that evil.
All right.
Well, let me ask you about one more story here to wrap up, Larissa.
Sebel Edmonds, the former contractor translator for the FBI, who's been gagged by the courts with the state secrets privilege.
She offered to do a tell-all and damn the gag order interview with any major TV national media in this country who would give her the time, and apparently no one will.
Right.
What a catastrophe.
And here's why.
Well, you know what?
I've offered for years.
I said, I'll go to jail with you.
I will write it and I will not budge.
And if I'm forced to, I will go to jail.
I'll do it.
But, you know, the TV, the TV reach is much more extensive, obviously.
And so, yes, the TV exclusive would be the best place to get this out.
But if that medium isn't available, then I think she should talk anyway and maybe put it on YouTube or something.
Well, no, I think she should talk to somebody to share the burden with her so she doesn't have to deal with it alone because if she puts it on YouTube, then it can just be taken down by YouTube at the request of the administration.
And she'll go to jail anyway.
She needs to be able to do this with someone who will agree not to remove it, will agree to stand by any arrangements that she and the person make.
And that's the other problem I have with trying to do an exclusive for the network.
You don't know what it's going to look like when they're done with it.
Right.
Well, she wanted to make them sign a contract, I think, that said they would air it unedited.
Right.
And I think that's partly why they're not responding.
You know, but if they're unwilling to do this, she can reach internationally and millions of people by going with an alternative news source.
It's not as sexy.
You know, it wouldn't be seen as the absolute kind of journalism of the mainstream backing, but it would nevertheless be the truth and it would be delivered.
And that is the whole point, is it not?
Well, I think so.
I think, you know, her strategy, apparently, without having talked to her recently, is to try to make a big enough splash that they don't put her in prison, you know, which is reasonable.
You know, she's trying to stay out of prison.
I understand that.
No, no, I totally agree with you.
But here's the problem.
I think it would probably be even better if not only she would threaten to go to jail, but an actual publication, a journalist, it's editor, it's publisher.
Then you've got, you know, a lot of attention and you're going to get a lot of support from media organizations and journalists, protective kind of non-government groups and such.
Hey, can I ask you something on the substance of Cybele's story?
Is it the case that the FBI investigation that, according to the Washington Post, was ongoing that Larry Franklin, the Douglas Fyfe employee and the Pentagon Iran expert was snared in, is it the case that that FBI investigation into AIPAC, basically, that caught Larry Franklin, Steve Rosen and Keith Wiseman, is that the same investigation of all this crime and corruption at the American Turkish Council and so forth that Cybele and Moses talked about?
Yes, that's correct.
And it started well before this administration.
But my understanding of what happened was when Janet Reno, who was then attorney general, this was brought to her attention, she wanted to have hearings and do a formal investigation and really put the full weight of Department of Justice behind this investigation.
The whole Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.
So it kind of made it impossible for anyone to focus on this and then the rest of the history, as they say.
But yes, it started a lot earlier.
And now, tell me about this, too, because Glenn Fine, who is the inspector general of the Justice Department, or was, I'm sorry, I don't know if he's still there or not, but he released a report about a declassified summary of his inspector general report about the Cybele Edmonds case.
And it seemed basically, in a nutshell, what he said was, hey, this lady's telling the truth.
Right.
I mean, but yeah, it's never been, the question's never been whether or not she's lying.
Well, I just want to make that clear, because, well, I've always believed what she had to say as well, but I think that point ought to be made abundantly clear that there's really not a question as to this lady's credibility.
It's just a question of whether she'll be allowed to tell us what she knows or not.
Well, if it was a question of her credibility, she wouldn't have a state secret gag on her, which is a fairly rare thing to do, except for this administration.
That's a hell of a thing to impose on a whistleblower.
I mean, and it's not just, you know, that she can't blow the whistle, if you will.
I mean, she can't even appear in court and have her day in court to challenge it, because she's not allowed to even talk about it to a judge who has the appropriate clearances.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
The fact that they've gone to such lengths to silence her is enough credibility, in my opinion.
Whatever else there is, that, for me, is pretty much them signing, you know, an affidavit saying, yep, we're guilty of something, because you don't use these kinds of extreme tactics to silence someone if they're not credible, you know?
Okay.
Now, tell me this, and I'm sorry, because this might be kind of a hard one for you, but if you were to just try now to write a Sebelle Edmonds story for RawStory.com, you know, with all the best information you have, as it is right now, can you basically, for the listeners, kind of explain what it is that's such a big deal here?
Here's a lady who was working for the FBI as a translator, and as you said, she stumbled into the middle of this big FBI investigation that ended up netting some Israeli spies, but what's the larger context here that people need to understand?
It's not Israeli spies representing Israel.
It's not Turkish spies representing Turkey.
The big issue here is that you've got spies, and not just for those two countries, but for quite a few, who pay off members of Congress and others to look the other way, and they use the data that they collect, basically, to sell on the black market.
That's called treason, and anybody who looks the other way or takes the bribe or covers it up is actively committing treason.
These are treasonable offenses.
Now, is there a good reason for the names Pearl and Fife to come up in her story over and over again?
Yes.
Are you willing to go on the record and basically accuse these guys of treason, of selling American secrets on the black market?
Yes.
From what I understand, yes.
If there was a fair trial, assuming that anybody would allow this to go to trial, and we could see all the evidence, then I could be made to alter my belief, but based on what I know, yes, there's enough to call it treason, but that's just Pearl and Fife.
That's the problem.
Pearl and Fife, it's the corruption of the entire US government, because this isn't restricted to the Department of Defense.
This isn't restricted to the State Department.
This isn't restricted to the CIA or the FBI.
This isn't restricted to Israel or Turkey or the neo-cons.
This is capitalism at its most perverted, where people have literally created a market in which intelligence is sold for personal profit or group profit, but not representing a particular state.
When you use the big capital T word, treason, there, are you talking about the kind of secrets that could get Americans killed en masse or what?
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Like what?
How to split an atom in half?
No.
Nope.
But for example, what we're working on at Los Alamos would be a good example currently.
Our continuity of government, what information might be damaging to a political leader so that that person can be blackmailed.
There's quite a few things.
Okay.
Now, tell me about what you know about the FBI's role in all this.
These guys have been able to...
I don't know what the FBI's role is.
It seems like they've been doing a pretty good job of investigating this, even if their bosses don't want to do anything about it.
Am I right?
Well, no.
I mean, they promoted the guy who appears to have been, if not involved in one of the instances of espionage, certainly either he was a handler for some of the folks or he was handled by someone, but he was somehow involved and he was promoted.
You're talking about Fagali?
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
But there's others.
I mean, there's others.
And it's not just the FBI, as I said.
It's not like there's others who aren't trying to find these moles.
There are.
It's just that there are others who are compromised who are putting up roadblocks for those trying to find the moles.
You know, here there was just news of a Lebanese spy.
Right.
You know, who...
In the CIA.
And she was also in the FBI.
Yeah.
Cleared by the FBI, at least.
Right.
For the CIA.
Well, and she worked at the FBI.
But here's somebody who basically forged her entire background, including her visa, and yet somehow she was cleared.
I mean, there's also this kind of nature to the organizations themselves that they don't want to be embarrassed and they don't want to have to look like they don't know what they're doing, and so they want to cover their push type.
So it's not just all about...
I'm not saying everyone's enabling the enemy in these various moles, but there's also this kind of organizational mindset that, you know, let's just keep this in-house.
Let's not talk about it.
We don't want anyone to know that we're this bad at keeping things straight, or we failed, or our infrastructure sucks.
Let's just pretend we, you know, let's just cover it up, or let's just deal with it ourselves.
So there's that kind of cultural mentality, and then there's also the actual mold, you know?
And the fact that, look, aside from everyone else that's involved, there are members of Congress, current members of Congress, who have been bribed.
We know one of them very well by now, right?
Well, Dennis Hastert, he's not in the house anymore, is he?
Well, Dennis Hastert's not running again.
Oh, I didn't even know he was still in the house at all.
Oh, yeah, yeah, but he was third in line to the presidency.
He was third in line in the continuity.
And we know for a fact this has been already well discussed, so it's not like I'm breaking any promises.
Yeah, people can read all about this part in Vanity Fair.
Right.
Well, no, Vanity Fair actually edited it a lot, but this guy took bucket loads, two casefuls of money, you know, in exchange for not just suppressing certain votes, for example, on Armenia, but for whether he actually engages this or his staffers did, passing on classified information.
That's treason, and he was the third most powerful political figure in the country.
You tell me why the entire media is not interested in this story.
Well, that's the answer right there.
This is why Sibel Edmonds' truth can't be told, because once you start peeling this onion, it's the whole damn government, it's the whole establishment in on this to one degree or another, and it's far too many people to go to prison to even begin.
So that's just it.
It's not going anywhere.
You know what?
It can be told, because there are plenty of publications in the alternative market that have a huge readership and a wide reach.
There are foreign outlets, too, in Japan and England.
She could probably get a good interview with the BBC.In France?
Yeah, and in France.
In Germany.
The fact is that I think the mainstream is very frightened of reporting this for legal reasons.
In fact, that's what we know happened with Vanity Fair, why they scrubbed a lot of it, right?
But what if somebody went ahead of them, somebody still with a very good reach, you know, like Alternator, Raw Story, or Buzzflash, I don't know, any number of online publications, with a very good reach, and this thing was picked up by the blog, and there was a lot of noise, as with the Downing Street memos, and suddenly the mainstream had no choice.
They had to cover it, but they were also safe from any legal proceedings, because they were simply reporting what others were reporting or discussing.
They weren't themselves taking the heat for it, which is essentially what they did with the whole Valerie Clinton thing.
I wrote the story, I took the heat, and when the heat kind of subsided, they started the trickle-out report that they were breaking the story.
Right.
All right, well, I'm sorry, we're all out of time.
We've got to leave it at that.
I really appreciate your insight.
Everybody, never miss a new story by Larissa Alexandrovna at RawStory.com.
She'll keep you up to date on who's stabbing who in the back in secret international espionage and all kinds of interesting stuff like that.
Oh, I don't know if I can do all that, but I can try.
You do a great job.
Thanks very much, Larissa.
Okay.
