For Antiwar.com, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
I'm so excited to bring Sabelle Edmonds back to the show.
The precedent has been set.
Sabelle, you can tell me everything, as long as you tell the Israeli Embassy, too.
Go ahead.
How are you, Scott?
I'm doing great.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
For people who don't know, Sabelle Edmonds, she was a translator for the FBI, a contractor, after September 11th.
Fluent in a few different languages there from the old world.
And uncovered a bunch of scandals and corruption and got booted out and is founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
Her website is JusticeCitizen.com.
And she is, according to the ACLU, the most gagged person in American history.
The government has put a state secret, invoked the state secret's privilege to prevent her from telling us about all the criminality that she learned about working for the FBI on penalty of prison.
So I kind of mean that, though.
Steve Rosen gave classified information that he got from a Pentagon employee to the Israeli Embassy and also to some journalists.
And everybody hailed the charges being dropped against this spy because he gave it to some journalists, too, so it became a First Amendment case.
So I don't think I have an official press pass, but it seems like as long as you write a letter to the Israeli Embassy explaining what all it is you know, Sabelle, you ought to be in the free and clear now.
Am I confused?
No, I think you're right.
And it did set a precedent here.
Well, so let's do it.
Tell us all the things you've been banned from saying all this time.
It'll be the biggest anti-war radio scoop ever.
Well, Scott, as you know, I just wrote a piece about this.
And this was after really sitting and simmering for a while after the case with Harmon in Congress broke.
And it was not only for the reasons such as my own personal case with the state secret's privilege, et cetera, but what really got me extremely upset was the fact that in 2005 and in 2006, my organization took several whistleblowers from the NSA and from the Justice Department to certain offices in Congress, including her office and Pelosi's office.
And here we are sitting and feeling like fools.
Well, and you've argued kind of all along from what you have been allowed to tell us that you see kind of all these different scandals all tying together as, you know, different layers of the same onion.
Seemingly, from my perspective, all kind of going back to the vice president's office in the last administration and the network of neocons that Larry Wilkerson calls the Cheney Cabal, do you think that's about a right estimation?
Well, one of the things that we hear a lot or we heard a lot was getting this network, taking them, and boiling them down into the five, six, seven spaces of neocons.
And I think that was one of the biggest mistakes we did commit and we are still committing.
A lot of people are still doing that.
And, again, I'm going to go back to this case with Harmon.
As soon as this piece came out on Harmon, you heard so many people and even the so-called progressive Democrats starting really screaming and saying this is a blackmail, and actually they ended up turning Harmon into a victim.
Well, it really was incredible to see, too, especially when, I mean, and I don't know, I understand how people's political biases are and they have a congresswoman that they like and they see an evil, lurking, menacing, Gestapo figure like Porter Goss involved and they want to figure out a way to use that fact to acquit their hero.
But Joe Stein debunked all that immediately on his blog.
He said no.
Goss' only role in this was he had to do his job under the protocol and inform Congress and then Gonzales stopped him.
That's it.
He's not the origin of this investigation.
He didn't sic the FBI and the CIA on Jane Harmon.
It's ridiculous.
Correct.
And I want to emphasize one thing that you said.
You said the congresswoman that they liked.
Well, let's take a look at this congresswoman's record.
And do they even like her?
I guess I shouldn't put those words in their mouth either because what's to like about Jane Harmon, really?
But there was also a lot of confusion or pretensive confusion about was this NSA tab?
Was she being tapped?
And that is another issue that if we have time today, if we do have it, I would like to explain because while I was working with the FBI, I did exactly that.
Most of my translation, my work involved FISA on foreign entities here in the United States.
And, yes, in several cases we did come across cases where we ended up with U.S. persons getting involved in either espionage or criminal conduct.
And, therefore, the procedure that was followed in some cases to go after those U.S. persons, not under FISA, but under a separate procedure.
And it was mind-boggling to see that even a lot of journalists out there, they don't seem to understand the process.
Yet going and writing about this case and concluding it and making it a case that was not presented by Jeff Spahn.
Well, you know, you talked before about the FBI agents who are serious about doing their job and how the bosses just won't ever let them do it and that kind of thing.
And I actually read something by Steve Rosen who recently had the charges of espionage against him dropped.
And he identified what, of course, he called an anti-Semitic group of, you know, terrible conspiracy theorists inside the Justice Department who are persecuting him.
But I kind of agree with him that, or I think that there really is a group of counterintelligence agents in the FBI who are serious about looking into this kind of criminality, no matter who it is, even if it is people connected to the Israel lobby.
Absolutely.
Is that basically right?
Absolutely.
As for the agents who are doing the job, 100%, I did not come across, and since I have had NSWDC in place, I have not had a single case where the agents went about covering up a case or going after a certain target for certain either political reasons or personal beliefs.
Absolutely.
But it's a different story when you're talking about the Department of Justice.
And again, if you have time, I want to give an example of how the process takes place from FISA to the U.S. person to the criminal investigation slash counterespionage investigation.
Well, please, go ahead.
Okay.
So what you have here, basically, you have under FISA, okay, for each country, for each language, for each target, you have a separate FISA obtained, and you have a separate division in the FBI, most of them, almost all of them, the FBI's Washington field office, okay?
So let's say I'm going to give you an example.
With my case, you are targeting under this FISA, which is legal, okay, certain diplomatic entities, whether they are the embassy people or consulates or related, relevant, okay?
So you have this pipeline that brings in all the information, all the communication that is coming to or going from this target, this organization, this entity.
Okay.
Well, let me stop you there and clarify my understanding here.
You're talking about a warrant under FISA, but it's still a foreign intelligence surveillance warrant, which means it's not the same standard of evidence, probable cause, that is necessary for the government to legally tap an American.
It's a lower standard of evidence, I guess a reasonable suspicion or some such, that the person being tapped is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist group.
But then that brings up the conflict between whether then any evidence obtained accidentally that way, like you're tapping an Israeli spy and you accidentally find an American congresswoman being bribed, and then there's the whole difficulty of turning that over into a criminal investigation separate from an intelligence investigation.
Absolutely.
So let's say the diplomatic community, whether they don't even have to have, this is the Justice Department, any reason to get that warrant, I can tell you that except for one country, every single country, that includes all the European countries, diplomatic entities are being monitored, okay?
That's a known fact.
Nobody wants to admit to it, but it's a known fact.
You have English translators there.
You have German translators there for German language.
So those are given, okay?
Every single diplomatic establishment is going through the FISA, and you start from this type, and the first person who gets all the information daily is the language specialist.
A lot of people, they think the agent, the FBI agent, gets information, and then it needs translation.
It gives it, he gives it to a translator.
It's not the case.
It's the opposite.
Before it goes to the agent, a language specialist goes through it because this is foreign target and it's under FISA, and it's assumed that the communication is going to be mainly on that foreign language.
So you as a language specialist, you're getting all the stuff, but of course 30, 40, or even up to 50% of this communication ends up being in English because the target, the diplomatic target, okay, let's say someone is in Israeli Embassy, and that Israeli Embassy has, let's say, 40 phone lines, for example.
All of them, let's say, are being monitored.
So you're going through that, and as you're going through that, a lot of these phone calls go to a U.S. person, and they're in English, and the phone calls received, they're in English.
So the language specialist at this point has to stamp them as English only, and if it's pertinent, meaning if it has to do with espionage or receiving money, then has to mark it as extremely pertinent and immediately forward it to the agent.
So what happens in this case?
As you're doing that, let's say you have a congressional member who is making a phone call or is receiving a phone call from this diplomatic foreign entity that is being monitored, and this language specialist is listening and it's English and is marking it, but it's important because they are discussing either giving certain money to this person or this person, the U.S. person, is going to give certain documents or information to this foreign entity which is considered pertinent.
At this point, the language specialist says this is English, it's pertinent, and because a certain operation is going to take place, let's say receiving the money or receiving the information, and therefore it may call for surveillance, meaning physical surveillance.
Let's say this receiving money is going to take place the next day, so the agents have to get into their vans, go and make sure that this transaction actually took place, so the transitor has to go and right away inform the agents, by the way, we received this.
Now, once you start collecting evidence or operating stuff like this from a congressional person or other kind of a U.S. person in the State Department or in the Pentagon, et cetera, now the agents start putting these evidence together.
Still the target is foreign.
It is still under FISA.
There is still no wiretap on that Congress person, on that U.S. person.
Once the agent believes he or she has enough, it's explosive.
There are so many cases, including the surveillance producing that the transaction took place, the agent writes the report, and this is the agent from counterintelligence under FISA, submits it to the headquarter, the FBI, and says, we need to get U.S. wiretap on this U.S. person because here is the evidence and they have been involved in this and this and this and this, and here are all the transactions, all the communication, whether, you know, it's done on espionage funds or corruption funds.
The FBI headquarter takes this information, gives it to the Justice Department.
The Justice Department attorney and the head of Justice Department, at that point they sit and they look at this information, and they have this choice, either go to court, show the evidence to a specific judge, and get warrant, and this is not under FISA, this is either under criminal or counterespionage, to directly wiretap the U.S. person or not to.
Now, it is at this stage that certain things become political.
Let's say you're looking at 1999 and you're looking at several people in Congress, let's say people such as Hastert and some people in the State Department.
Okay, well, pardon me, let me just interject here real quick.
Sure.
Such as Hastert, who you can read all about in David Rose's article for Vanity Fair concerning your case called An Inconvenient Patriot.
Correct.
I don't want that to just be out in the air as though there's nothing really behind it or anything.
Okay, I hope you can provide a link to the last piece I wrote.
But in this case, the head of the Justice Department, the attorney general, at this point when he gets this evidence from the agent, looks at this information and says, Ooh la la, I need to inform my boss, my boss meaning the president in the White House or the president's advisors, because this is getting dicey because it's not Iran or Syria you're talking about.
Let's say you're talking about Turkey, an important ally, or Pakistan or Israel, and some of these U.S. persons or the U.S. persons are the ones that they collected this evidence, happens to be one of us.
So he's not going to put himself in this really horrible position by doing his job and going to court and get it, allowing that at this point the briefing occurs.
Either they brief certain people in the State Department, this is the Justice Department, or the White House saying, Oh man, look, we got this, okay?
Our agents got this, and we are now in this position.
So in some cases they never go to the court to obtain the warrant to go and wiretap the person.
And this has been the case many, many, many, many times, not only recently.
It has been the case a lot for political reasons, for the partisan reasons, for what they consider sensitive diplomatic relations reasons.
And in some cases, and in some cases, if the evidence is really, really, really, really bad, it's like for the person, for the U.S. person, and if some of the agents in the FBI headquarters are feeling very, very strong about it, if you're looking at this AIPAC case, they finally say, Okay, we are going to get the warrant and go after the U.S. person.
The original target now was, let's say, the Israeli Embassy, not AIPAC initially, but Israeli Embassy.
And you're looking at even mid to late 1990s, moving into AIPAC, and then from AIPAC with this evidence in 2000, early 2000, having the warrant to actually go and pursue the U.S. person as well.
And that's how they came across Larry Franklin.
And in fact, the New York Times is reporting, I guess, last week, late last week, they said that the FBI agents, the career gumshoe cops up there, they're still very angry and thought they had a real case against Rosanna Weissman and can't understand why it was taken out from under them like that.
Of course they did.
And this is exactly the point I tried to make in this piece, because you have certain wannabe journalists in the blogosphere taking this and giving it a conspiracy flavor, saying that, oh, the timing of this has to do with Ross and getting back at Harmon, and these agents have some other motives and agenda.
I tell you what their agenda was.
They did their job.
And they knew this case was going to be dropped.
It was dropped two weeks after the accused article, but they knew it was going to be dropped months before this, at least one and a half months before this.
So this was in desperation to say this is wrong.
We are letting the criminals go, the U.S. persons who have been committing crimes against the United States national interest.
So they did spit with the journalists and they did talk.
It doesn't go to some conspiracy motive that some of these wannabe journalists in the blogosphere are trying to make.
Well, so this is a case people have heard of, maybe at least.
They'll read Justin Raimondo all about it or whatever if they want.
But, you know, the Dennis Hastert thing, this is something that's very opaque.
It was reported in that one article in Vanity Fair and picked up by basically no one in the mainstream press.
No one, absolutely no one.
And, you know, the Times of London did a three-piece special on some of the things.
But I think for the most part people, well, you're referring to investigations that fall apart before they ever start, but that go on all the time.
And they include the most powerful people.
You've often referred to high-level people in the State Department and the Defense Department.
You're talking about all these Congress people being on the make.
I mean, tell the American people what it is, what did you overhear, Sibel?
What is it that you know?
Let's take one name that has been public, because just my case alone involves several people in Congress.
We are looking at about six, seven people just in Congress.
These are the elected officials.
We have several people in the State Department and several people in the Pentagon.
Now, as for the Congress, Dennis Hastert's name happened to come out because it was one of the main cases.
That's the former Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Correct.
And just as you mentioned, no one covered the story.
No real denial came from Hastert's office or Hastert's attorney.
If it were me, if I was innocent, I would be going after Vanity Fair clerks.
I would do everything to clear my name.
And they did it, so they were vindicated.
Not only that, only about a month ago we get this press release that Hastert is now officially working for the lobby that represents Turkey and has officially announced that he's getting $35,000 a month registered under Foreign Agents Registration Act, receiving $35,000 a month from Turkey.
If this is not a vindication, if no denial was not vindication, if the fact that there was an IG report that came in 2006, if that was not vindication, and if some testimonies from Congressional members such as Grassley and Leahy is not, I don't know what is.
They reported, this is the mainstream media, Hastert's newly acquired job, the former Speaker of the House now works for the government of Turkey.
There is no tie in saying three years before this, this and this and this and this was made known to the American people.
Right, I mean, anybody could listen to Daniel Ellsberg on this show or on Democracy Now!explaining briefcases full of cash money being delivered to the Speaker of the House of Representatives to thwart a resolution of no matter what description.
There were a lot of different types of things that Hastert fulfilled for foreign entities.
That was one of them.
But what does it take for a congressman or a congresswoman to guarantee that kind of money, like $35,000 a month from a foreign government when he leaves his or her job in Congress?
It doesn't happen overnight after you leave the Congress.
You need to do what you have to do, serving those people's interests, even if it involves certain illegal interests.
And that goes into your IOU column, and then you get out, and then you get officially paid.
While you're in Congress, you get unofficially reimbursed for some of the things that you're doing, and that's through the campaign contributions, etc.
But the real payback comes when you finish, you get out.
Now, this man was exposed in 2006, 2005, actually, and he felt bold enough because he sees himself as doing this so untouchable that he felt so bold to go and get this job he's not publicly announcing.
And look at him here and say, what are you going to do about it?
And that is the question, Scott.
What do you do about it?
I don't know.
I mean, I just did a little radio show.
It was the best idea I can come up with, and it doesn't do any good.
Let me ask you this, and I mean this in all seriousness.
Now that the Rosenweissman case has been dropped, that really is a blow to the kind of underhanded policy of the backdoor official secrets act that we have in this country known as the court-invented state secrets privilege.
Can you not get with your ACLU lawyers and just sit down and write a book and tell us every single incriminating thing you learned, classified or otherwise, to whatever degree and damn the consequences and bring it on?
Come on, Sybil.
Scott, believe me or not, I would do that whether the question of can you or can't you is answered or not.
But you've got to go and look and see, find one organization and find one mainstream media, and that includes the publishing houses.
Who is willing to do it?
Just find one for me, and I tell you what, I'm going on the record right down here.
I will do it.
All I've got to do is find you a publishing house?
I mean, that doesn't seem impossible.
It's not the only publishing house, because what happens is, regardless of the state secrets privilege, all these people who have worked for the FBI, and that's anyone, the agents, the attorneys, the language specialists, as part of getting that job, you find this document saying, in the future, if you ever write anything, whether there is a state secrets privilege or classification, you have to submit your work for pre-pub review, pre-publication review.
I need to do that, okay?
I have already gone through several law firms and said, here it is.
And they looked at it and they said, even the most innocent stuff there, you're facing 60, 70% of this manuscript, which is ready.
It has been ready for quite a while.
Blacked out.
Now, once you get the blacked out version, not a single person will publish.
What are you going to publish?
Look at my IG report.
90% of it is blacked out.
Nobody is going to publish a blacked out book completely, 70%.
Then you're in this position of going to court and start fighting line by line that has been blacked out, saying, this was not correct.
This is not truly classification and challenging.
That's why I'm telling you, find any organization that would be willing to represent this, because they look at me and they say, Sabal, it's impossible.
Especially with your case, impossible.
It's a fight that you won't win.
And I'm going to remind you, I have gotten so many e-mails from the people.
In fact, I started getting these before the election, saying, just wait.
If we have Obama our president, or now that Obama is our president, here, you should be able to do this and that.
And we need to remind, I don't think we have to remind your listeners, because they happen to be people who really know, but the state secret privilege, not only has it been eliminated, it has been extended under the new administration, under Obama's administration.
And you saw what they did with the NSA warrantless wiretapping case.
And now you see it was Obama's Justice Department that did the final, or made the final decision, dropping the case against AIPAC, espionage case.
Well, now, let me ask you this.
Was there not classified material, things that you weren't supposed to say, but you did anyway in the series for the Times of London?
With the UK, the London piece, you're looking at a piece that was written not only based on conversation, interview with me, but several other people.
Right.
And those people, they still want to remain anonymous because, obviously, things have not changed.
So it was not only based on, because no matter what, even with the Vanity Fair article, in fact, their legal department, their lawyers, instead of the required, they usually require three sources, they said, through David Rose, you need to have a minimum of five sources because of the kind of case it is, which is a secret privilege.
So you have to have five sources, minimum of five sources.
And instead of one double-checking, they did the triple double-checking.
And each double-checking occurred under a different department because they wanted to make sure that they were protected, both against the government, but also against libel.
So that piece came out not only based on Sabal Edmonds going and providing some information.
It was done via five sources and triple fact-checking.
And, obviously, nobody dared going after them.
How could they?
Well, as much of the story as we know, it sure seems like a hell of a lot.
And, you know, I know there are real good reporters in this country, not an overabundance of them, but there are really good journalists.
And, you know, I don't know why this whole story hadn't been broken wide open yet.
I don't know what it would take to get, you know, the modern-day Johnny Cochran to represent you to actually get this thing done.
But I sure wish you the best of luck, and you're welcome to come back on the show and keep us updated with the story anytime, Sabal.
Thank you, Scott.
It's always a pleasure to be on your show.
All right, everybody, that's Sabal Edmonds.
The website is JusticeCitizen.com.
Former FBI translator, whistleblower, founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
We'll be right back with Jacob Hornberger after this.
