For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton, and this is Antiwar Radio.
I'm happy to welcome to this show, Cybele Edmonds and John M. Cole.
Of course, we've talked with Cybele, the former FBI translator turned whistleblower numerous times on this show and various other shows of mine over the years.
And this will be the first time we have John Cole joining her.
Cybele Edmonds, you can look her up.
Of course, her old Antiwar.com archives are there at Antiwar.com slash Edmonds.
Her own websites are JusticeCitizen.com and 123change.blogspot.com.
And she's also got, of course, very importantly, at Bradblog.com, you can find her deposition, her sworn deposition in a recent civil case from August of 2009.
And at the American Conservative Magazine, which is amconmag.com, you can find the interview by a former CIA officer and Antiwar.com regular Philip Giraldi called Who's Afraid of Cybele Edmonds.
And John M. Cole is a former FBI agent and a whistleblower.
He's the author of the article, While America Sleeps, an FBI whistleblower story.
And so I'd like to welcome you both to the show.
Thank you.
Very happy to have you here.
And John, I'm sorry, I actually have your bio here from the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, but I actually thought I would ask you to introduce yourself so that you can tell us, explain exactly what your job at the FBI was, because I think the last I heard, I didn't quite understand.
Some sort of executive or something.
I didn't know exactly what that meant.
No, I was not an executive.
Basically what I was doing at the Bureau, I had numerous positions.
But I started out in the Bureau.
My first assignment was working with Bob Hanson.
He was actually my supervisor in the Soviet unit.
And then I was transferred to the front office for the Counterintelligence Division and worked with Assistant Director Jim Gear and Tom DeHedway was a deputy.
I did that for a few years and then moved on to working the 203 program, which was basically all the counterintelligence investigations that we had in the Bureau on mostly Western Europe and Israel.
I did that from 93 to 95.
And then from 95 to 98, I was down at Quantico and I ran the FBI's Counterintelligence Operational Training Center.
And from 98 to 2000, I worked undercover.
And then from 2000, I went back to headquarters and I worked the Southeast Asia desk.
And I also worked the pent bomb investigation.
After 9-11, I was up in the command center of the Bureau's SIOG command center working the pent bomb investigation for several months until I finally resigned in March of 2004.
OK, now, I'm sorry, can you repeat that last one, the which one for the last several months there?
Oh, pent bomb.
It was the 9-11 investigation right after the attacks on 9-11, the day after I was up in the FBI's command center working that case.
We call it the pent bomb investigation.
Oh, I see.
Well, and what a good place to to dive into the most controversial part of Sabel Edmonds' recent revelations to Philip Giraldi in the American Conservative magazine and the testimony in the civil deposition and this court case in August that the United States under the CIA, I'm not exactly sure, Sabel had covert operations in cooperation with, quote unquote, the Mujahideen and including, quote, you say to Philip Giraldi here, Bin Laden's all the way up until 9-11.
Can you repeat that part of the story and tell us as much as you can there?
Correct.
You basically summed it up pretty well.
And it was not the CIA based on what we gathered.
It was always referred to as the State Department.
Well, that's I guess Giraldi says in here he thinks that's a euphemism for the CIA, but you don't seem to think so.
Well, it was very interesting because some of the actors who were involved in this in these operations, at least at the higher level, and they were in touch with the target diplomatic community that we had counterintelligence investigations on.
They they were actually outside the government or they appear to be outside the government and they were involved in private businesses.
Well, and I guess this is kind of a confusing point, right, between what is an officially sanctioned illegal act, a covert activity with a presidential finding behind it, and what is just government employees participating in criminal black markets for their own ends?
John, can you explain at all what she's talking about here?
Well, there's been a lot of different theories on that.
I know when I was in the bureau, there was a lot of espionage investigations that we had on State Department officials and also DOD employees.
The thing is, though, we know for a fact also that there was other people involved in helping the Bin Laden family get out of the country right after 9-11.
And there were some other things going on, illegal activity, like like Sabel stated, to assist the family also.
So she's she's accurate in stating that I can't get into the specifics on who we investigated in the State Department, but I will say that we did have some espionage investigations and criminal investigations on individuals in the State Department at that time.
Well, and now that's another thing that's not clear in the interview, Sabel, is that you I believe you say Mark Grossman made some phone calls.
I think you've told me this before, at least in bits and pieces, that Mark Grossman made some phone calls to have some Turks released.
And there was a worry that they would let the cat out of the bag, although it's not clear whether you're talking about something about September 11th or just the Turkish spy slash crime ring in general.
I did not mention or use Mark Grossman's name or his involvement to start with.
First of all, that information was made public by several other reporters before.
And it was after that that I went on the record and talked about his role and his importance in counterintelligence investigations that FBI was conducting.
Well, is that right?
They made a phone call.
That's number one.
And I never talk about the methods of intelligence gathering.
I said it was based on his order from the State Department.
And I did not say Turks.
So that's why it's good to correct you.
So there's a lot of misinformation out there.
There were two people from Uzbekistan, two people from Turkey, and they were arrested right after September 11th in New Jersey and they were detained.
And this was both operations jointly by FBI and also the Immigration Department.
And it was then the target Turkish diplomatic community individuals who were targeted by the FBI's surveillance.
They were arranging with Mr.
Grossman, and he was in the State Department at the time, to get these individuals out without being interrogated and sent back, deported to Turkey without being interrogated.
And that's exactly what took place.
And again, these files came from not counterintelligence, from counterterrorism.
It was not Washington Field Office.
It was from New Jersey.
It was from Patterson area.
So these are all these little things that sometimes people hear and they go and repeat.
And there's just a lot of false information.
And it's good.
I'm glad that I'm getting a chance here.
To give you the facts of here is, you know, is the story on that.
Well, me too.
And listen, you know, I've been covering this story for a long time and it's come out in a lot of bits and pieces, Sabel, and it's it's kind of hard to keep straight.
Exactly.
I mean, I'm afraid I still don't understand really whether you're saying that the information you came across here was people in the American government doing something illegal and underhanded or something that was official and very chain of command.
It's just scandalous.
Kind of a thing.
It was a State Department order, you say, that he did this.
It was a specific State Department order to get these guys released and deported to Turkey because of sensitive diplomatic relations.
Now, some people may have had diplomatic immunity because they were connected to intelligence service of other countries.
So without getting into the specifics and details, and I don't think any loyal FBI employee, I'm not talking about loyal to the to the management, but what truly is classified would not talk about the specifics because I don't know if some other right now, even foreign governments are surveilling those people who were deported back to Turkey, those four individuals.
But in this particular case, it was an official decision.
It was an official decision between the diplomatic community here for Turkey and the State Department person, Mark Grossman, to get these individuals out of detention and deport them back to Turkey.
And there's a period after that.
That is one story.
Now, what was the justification for it?
Did these people possess extremely important information?
I don't know.
We don't know.
The agents never got to find out.
And these are some of the questions that haven't been answered in many, many, many cases.
Not this.
And John Cole just referred to one, why the Bin Laden families, they were allowed without being interrogated to leave the country.
That's an official decision.
Story ends there, period.
What did they know?
We don't know.
Why did they do it?
We don't know.
We don't know.
We can't speculate, but we don't know.
But you can see why, though, from here, it would be this is a much more scandalous story, as scandalous as that is, which it's obviously horrible.
It was somebody's discretion there in the official chain of command, which is it would be a much different story if we were talking about State Department employees intervening for their friends in this illegal spy ring that they're part of outside of the chain of command, just committing felonies on their own.
I'd like to interrupt for one second, if you don't mind, please.
A couple of things, a couple of points.
One that Cybill hit on, she's absolutely right in regards to a lot of the FBI agents that are out there working in the field are given orders to stand back or to do certain things, and they have no idea why.
That comes from headquarters level, that comes from executive level at headquarters.
And the thing is, in order for those individuals to leave, when she's talking about the State Department intervened and making sure these people were released and sent back to Turkey, that would have had to come from higher up than just one person at the State Department.
That would have had to come from the White House in order for them to leave.
All right, well, now, and John, tell me, I mean, you say you worked on the 9-11 investigation after this.
When you hear Cybill Edmonds saying that these guys were working with Mujahideen and Bin Laden, Cybill, can you say whether you're talking about Osama as one of those plural Bin Ladens that you mentioned there?
OK, let me, let me, for certain operations that we had since, and this is we being the United States, that operation, specific operation that involved Turkey as proxies started around 1995, 1996, late 1995, early 1996, and Central Asian countries, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, in those regions, together with a certain region that is part of China, it's called Dinsheng, but in Turkey, they refer to it as East Turkestan.
Some people, they refer to that region as Uyghuristan.
These are, you know, in English, they say Uyghurs, but they are the Turkish, ethnic Turkic people in this section of Russia that are called in Turkey and in Turkish Uyghurs.
OK, so both Bin Ladens and Mujahideen were supporting a lot of these operations that we had, the United States, implementing most of it via Turkish proxies.
And these are Turkish military people.
They were Turkish paramilitary people under MIT in Central Asia.
And for these operations, whether it was channeling some of these Mujahideen from Pakistan, from Saudi Arabia, from Afghanistan to Chechnya, and send them as armed people with given passports by the foreign governments, like with Azerbaijani passports or with Turkish passports to go and do involved in certain operations against Russia in Chechnya.
Then they were also funneling some of these people to Turkey, first into Turkey, but then their passports would change and they would send these people to the Balkan regions during the conflict in 1998, in 1999.
So for these operations, the US operations, we worked very closely with Bin Ladens, plural, not only Osama Bin Ladens, with certain pretty well known Saudi individuals with ISI, but mainly with the Turkish, both military and paramilitary actors in that region.
See, most Americans, they don't know about Central Asia.
Central Asia is not being covered by really, it's not really being covered by the mainstream media or the alternative media.
So they really don't think of anything when it comes to Central Asia.
Central Asia is going to be the Middle East in less than 10, 15 years.
That's my prediction, because a lot of things have been going on in Central Asia, like it did in other regions in the Middle East that we are not hearing about.
And we are going to be surprised when a lot of this stuff ends up, you know, blowing up.
And, for example, the assassination of the president in 1997, 1996 attempt of Aliyev, well, that particular operation, they were done by individual states, OK?
And in this particular operation, they were two states involved, the United States and if they were these two, and they were official Turkish paramilitary.
And these people have been part of Turkish paramilitary since 1982.
So these individuals went there and they didn't go from Turkey.
They went from Chicago.
And this is completely documented.
So if you were to go and look at the investigations that occurred in Turkey, because there were a lot of uproars and outrage once if the scandal was leaked, that these Turkish paramilitary individuals were doing these assassination attempts on behalf of the U.S. in the Central Asian countries.
They were running these casinos in Azerbaijan, in Kazakhstan, in Turkmenistan, and also the narcotics deal.
Formal investigations were launched in 1997, 1998 in Turkey.
This is by parliament.
So this information is on the record.
People, Americans don't know about it because it was widely reported in European media.
It was the headlines for months and months in France, in the United Kingdom, in Germany, but not here.
It was never mentioned.
So these individuals, like the culprit in this case, who actually attempted to assassinate Aliyev, he was given, even though he was most wanted by Interpol at the time, this is between 1989 and 1995, he lived in Chicago.
From Chicago, he went to Turkey.
He went to Azerbaijan.
He went to several times to Beijing and from Beijing.
And these stuff, his entries and exits, these are documented stuff.
But nobody in the United States would know about it because the entire scandal and the implication of U.S. operations within these scandals have been covered up.
So it's very hard to talk about this issue without having a lot of historical background provided to the audience.
There's a little bit of historical background that I think ought to be right at people's fingertips, which is all the stories about Paul Wolfowitz's proposal of a coup d'etat in the lead up to the Iraq war, because the Turkish government wasn't going along with letting us invade from Turkey.
And that's another part of your story, Sibel.
Now, this part of it, this part of it, I don't know if it was criminal, but this part of it at the time, it was not of importance to the agents I work with.
OK, this is when individuals from Pentagon, OK, they contact, I can't tell you phone, I can't tell you email, but when they contact directly the high level diplomatic people, whether it's the highest level person in Turkish military attache or the highest level person in the embassy.
OK, so these were official discussions and this was before 9-11 about plans to attack Iraq and how that plan was and what they wanted and what Turkey wanted.
So this in no way was considered illegal in the FBI because the counterintelligence agents, the FBI counterintelligence agents, they were not interested rightfully because they were looking for spies on this particular operation.
So just the fact that official people from Pentagon and the State Department were talking with high level diplomatic Turkish people on planning to attack Iraq before September 11 was of no interest to them, rightfully so, because it was the wrong division.
This is not something that FBI finds interesting.
But of course, after September 11, after the whole, you know, debacle with Iraq, now when you look back, it's like, oh, my God, these guys were planning this.
Well, later they used September 11.
They used the weapons of mass destruction and all those lies that we found out.
But at the time when these communications were being recorded, being from one official to another official, it was OK.
They're chatting about Iraq, going and invading Iraq.
It was going to be the basically UK and United States.
Well, I believe you say out loud in the Philip Giraldi interview at the American Conservative magazine, you name not just the neocons at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, but you also say that James Baker and Brent Scowcroft were in on these negotiations as well.
Is that right?
Correct.
They have been working for Turkish lobby for for a long time, but they were not negotiating on behalf of the United States government.
They were negotiating with the United States officials on behalf of Turkey.
They were the ones who were preparing the report, submitting it to Pentagon and saying why it was important to let Turkey take care of northern Iraq.
And militaristically, logistically, they were trying to justify Turkey's demand that these were the reasons for the United States to agree with Turkey to take care of northern Iraq in this plan.
But Pentagon, they didn't want to have Turkey play any role.
They already were working with the Kurds in northern Iraq and that pissed off Turkey.
Later, Turkey said the reason they didn't allow U.S. troops to go through the base there was because the public people in Turkey, you know, 92 percent, they didn't want this to happen.
Well, it's true that 92 percent in Turkey didn't want this to happen, but the Turkish military, Turkish government has never listened to the Turkish public.
So that was just an excuse which made them more popular in Turkey than the public, because that was true.
They didn't want the people in Turkey didn't want this.
But that was not the reason for the decision.
The reason for the decision was Turkey was pissed because already, already Pentagon and and British government, they were they had plans in place.
They were working in northern Iraq with the Kurds and they didn't want to get get this thing murky with Turkish, you know, interference with northern Iraq.
So that's as simple as that.
Now, is there a conspiracy there?
I don't know.
Is this illegal?
I don't think so.
This is how diplomatic community talk to each other.
OK, so if you're listening to I'm just going to give an example, an ambassador of Pakistan or today, let's say the ambassador of Afghanistan here is talking with Hillary Clinton.
These are the kind of garbage you're going to be listening to that are going to be highly explosive.
But are these illegal?
No.
Are these terrible stuff, foreign policy decisions, not for the public interest here in the United States, terrible foreign policy issues?
Surely.
And the people that have the need to know, they should know.
All right.
Now, before we get into all this pilfering nuclear secrets, John, I want you to address the question of Sabel Edmonds credibility, because, of course, many of the things that she talks about, although there is cooperation of certain parts of it in the media, in bits and pieces, basically, she's sort of a single source saying a lot of these things.
And it at least so far has been pretty easy for people to just dismiss her as not credible for whatever reason.
And so being that you're a former counterintelligence agent from Washington, D.C., and you have come out and vouch for her before, I was hoping that you could maybe just explain to people why it is that you find her credible.
And if and as part of that, you know, maybe if you could tell us about her job description, just how much she would know and and also, you know, whether or not what she says comports or to what degree what she says comports with the facts as you already know them here.
She was the translator and you were the guy way up the ladder.
Well, I can tell you right now.
When there was an article that came out in I think it was it was in The Washington Post in 2002 and they named Sybil Edmonds and they had my name in that also.
And at that time, I was still at FBI headquarters and I went into work that day and somebody, one of the executives on the seventh floor, came to me and said, hey, did you know that your name's in the paper?
And I said, no, I didn't realize that.
And they said, well, it's on the director's desk.
Oh, crap.
You know, but I read the article and I I didn't know who Sybil Edmonds was at the time.
So I asked somebody, I said, who's Sybil Edmonds?
And they told me, well, she's a translator.
And they explained to me exactly what transpired with Sybil.
And I wanted to talk to Sybil.
I said, well, I'd like to talk to this person because I, too, came and wrote or came out and wrote letters to the director of the FBI and told them my concerns about espionage with some language specialists in the FBI.
And what Sybil was saying made a lot of sense to me because from personal experience, I saw it, too.
But they didn't want me to talk to Sybil, so I was unable to get in touch with Sybil.
But somebody on the in the FBI and the executive level on the seventh floor told me one morning they said, you know, the director better be careful because everything that Sybil stated is absolutely true.
They've investigated it and they looked into it and it's absolutely true.
But, you know, she goes, the woman I talked to said, however, it'll be interesting to see how the bureau handles this.
Well, anyway, after a few years, I finally got in touch with Sybil, I met Sybil and talked to her and we talked about specifics of what happened to her and what information she knew.
And I told her a little bit about what I knew from the investigations I worked.
And they all matched up.
I mean, they all just right along the line.
I said, yes, I'm aware of that.
I know we had an investigation on that and I won't go into specifics about who we investigated because I can't.
But I can tell you that everything that she stated to me at the time was 100 percent accurate.
And I said, you know, this woman is incredible.
She knows an awful lot of information.
And what she's telling me, what she's what she told people in her office of the chain of command is absolutely correct.
There's no reason why she should have been let go.
Matter of fact, she should she should have gotten the medal for the information that she was providing headquarters management.
You know, they should have acted on it.
They should have taken care of it.
And they should have rewarded her for coming forward and bringing these issues to the attention of management.
But they didn't do that.
And I know for a fact that some of the things that they'll discuss is as far as espionage cases that she brought up in regards to State Department officials and in regards to Department of Defense officials is absolutely correct.
In fact, one of the people that she named as far as committing espionage in the FBI, I'm very familiar with that case involving her husband, the translator's husband.
We're talking about Mellick Can Dickerson, Douglas Dickerson.
Yes, I am.
Right.
And so I'm very familiar with that.
So, I mean, she was 100 percent on that.
I haven't found anything that she hasn't been 100 percent on as far as the language specialists in the bureau and her job.
They gather a ton of information and this information that they get is very, very, very sensitive information.
Information comes in from whatever, you know, tech or whatever translation is a document that needs to be translated.
They translate that and they send it to the case agent who uses it for his individual case against that subject.
So they're getting firsthand knowledge, firsthand information.
Well, now critics would say, yeah, but another word for that is raw intelligence.
And after all, she's just a translator and whatever she says she thinks happened because she overheard something.
She's not really in a position to know and she's probably taking a lot of this stuff out of context.
Well, I disagree with that.
Some of it is raw intelligence, as you put it, but a lot of that intelligence that you're getting is direct conversations.
For example, it could be direct conversations between two individuals and that could be over different methods that they use at the FBI.
So in that respect, she would have firsthand knowledge of, let's say, someone speaking to somebody else about a specific operation that they were planning or a specific threat that they felt was, you know, that they were threatened with or whatever.
It could be that she would have got that information firsthand.
She would have passed it to the case agent.
The case agent then would have used that in this investigation, you know, to try to counter that threat, whatever the threat would be.
And I want to add something here.
And that's another important point that most people who are not familiar with the intelligence world and how this works, they just don't understand.
So they just simplified that, OK, you basically put a headset, you translate and you just have raw data.
And again, that's why I gave the interview to Phil Giraldi, because Phil Giraldi won't be ignorant enough to make that kind of statement because he knows the intelligence world and he has worked with language specialists.
One of the other things that John would expand upon is while the case agent may be looking at a particular case agent at a particular operation, one or two or three targets, the language specialist will be translating and briefing six, seven, eight, nine different agents with different cases.
So while agent A may not know anything that is going to agent B from the language specialist and his case, even though they may be related, the language specialist sits in the center, retrieves all this information and then disseminates.
Therefore, the language specialist would know about nine different cases, nine different field offices, maybe two different operations, while each agent would have their own little window, need to know basis, task of particular target.
Well, that's exactly correct.
I mean, when I was at headquarters, let's say, especially in like 93 to 95 when I was working in Western Europe and in Israel, I had about 300 ongoing investigations at one time.
I knew what cases were involved when a particular country was involved in, let's say, in L.A. or San Francisco, New York.
My job was to assist the field agents into, you know, approving whatever they needed to run their operation.
The information that would come from the language specialist would come up, and Cybil is exactly right.
You might intercept some information and get the information and it would talk about several different items that might be used for, let's say, the agent out in San Francisco that was doing his operation, the case agent in New York that had an operation going on.
At headquarters, we'd try to put that together and say, OK, this is what's going on and this is what they're, you know, what they're looking at and this is what they're planning.
And we put them all together and we'd give the case agents, the ones that are on the street, we'd give them information about what's going on throughout the U.S., how they're operating.
If it's an espionage case, how they're assessing and recruiting, so on and so forth.
The language specialists, they get that information.
It'd be no different than if it was a criminal case, for example, and you intercepted a telephone conversation and it said that we're going to have the bus go down at, you know, 0900 on this date and this is who's involved and this is what we want you guys to do and so on and so forth.
She's getting that information.
She's feeding it to the case agent who then sets up the operation.
So she's getting a lot of information.
She understands what's going on.
I don't see how she couldn't understand what's going on.
Well, and I think you say, Cybele, was it in the grand jury testimony where you explain that you might even have to kind of translate dialects and explain why if somebody's from a certain town, this idiom will kind of have that emphasis instead of that very subtle kinds of things that you would have to kind of be from Turkey to know.
I'm glad you brought up this point because in that case, I mean, I really loved working with these agents because they didn't have ego issues, the field agents.
I'm not talking about the executive level of bureaucrats in the headquarters, but all of those agents I worked with, actually, they were great.
And they understood that, you know, like with counterintelligence training they have in Quantico and the preparation, let's say they're assigned to Turkey.
Okay.
Like, for example, one of the agents I was working with, he did not even know that the capital city of Turkey was Ankara, not Istanbul.
Okay.
Just didn't know.
And not because the bureau didn't put emphasis in training the agents about the country, the history, the current political individuals in the country, the various differences between, let's say, which section of Turkey would be more, would have more tendency toward Islamic extremism versus which section, let's say, whether it's Black Sea area would be more into the Gray Wolf area, ultra nationalism with criminal elements.
You know, the border region with Iran will have different types of, oh, modus operandi and dialect and culture.
So the agents at least were good enough to say, to come and say, okay, Sabel, and I'm sure they did it with the other language specialist agents, I don't know.
Tell us, tell us, give us background.
Okay.
In fact, the special agent I worked with, okay, at the end of the day, he would give me 10 keywords.
Okay.
And this is actually shows how pathetic FBI is, was with the computer system.
Okay.
He would give me 10 keywords.
Okay.
And he would ask me to Google it from home.
Okay.
These are Turkish related stuff in Turkish and find the stuff translated for him and give it to him the next day, brief him.
Because let's say one of the suspects we had here was involved with particular political, whatever investigation in Turkey.
Okay.
I'm just giving an example.
So I would bring these keywords at home.
I would Google it on the Turkish.
Okay.
And I would read like newspaper articles on that person.
I would get your profile for him.
I would say, okay, this guy is purely narc.
Okay.
He's not involved with this particular thing, but he's purely heroin.
Okay.
He's a narc guy, but the agent was good enough to know that he didn't have the resources.
They didn't give them the training.
And both in terms of education, historical perspective, cultural perspective, they needed, uh, that's why they liked having a foreign born language, especially who lived in the country, who understood, and also who were up to date with the, uh, with the political stuff, the crime related news in Turkey, because while something wouldn't make sense in, in something you intercept without contact, it would make a lot of sense if you know, ah, this and this related to this particular thing I read three days ago that has to do with this corrupt police, uh, chief of police in Istanbul, I'm giving you an example, and this guy used to work for this corrupt chief of police.
And now he's in Chicago dealing heroin.
Therefore he's actually part of the police network in Turkey.
Okay.
Well, there's no way for an agent to find out about it unless they have the language specialist who has the skills that are, you know, combined, uh, combination of analysts and linguistic abilities, because you have to do both.
Unfortunately, they don't get that with many linguists.
I mean, we had language specialists who didn't even have high school diplomas.
So basically they, they, they acted as stenographers, you know, listen to this and just put it in there.
But, you know, I, I lived in various countries.
I have master's degree.
I have several bachelor's degree and I kept up to date with all the current of stuff, whether it's in central Asia or Turkey or Iran, and these agents were great because they wanted to utilize it instead of like turning their nose, saying, my God, this makes me look terrible.
They were like, we need this.
Great.
Help us.
And they kept writing commendation letters.
I mean, the field agents were great.
All the ones that I worked with, they were patriotic, great people.
Well, it's because they were appreciated.
They appreciated the help.
The problem with the Bureau, and you know, maybe it's changed, but I know, I don't think it has.
When I was in the Bureau, that's one thing that I could never understand why they would take agents that were familiar with a specific background of a country.
Let's say, let's say somebody was, knew France, lived there, knew the language, the culture, everything else, became an FBI agent.
The thing is the Bureau would not use that person for any investigations involving the French.
They would have them do something else completely different.
And for whatever reason, I have no idea.
We've had the same problem with our Arab speakers, agents, the Arab speaking agents in the Bureau.
The Bureau didn't want to use them on terrorism investigations for whatever reason, but as far as the information, the language specialists know, they have, they have access to some of the most sensitive stuff that the Bureau receives.
For example, I, I, I wrote a letter.
I had to risk assessment on a, an individual that wanted to become a language specialist in the FBI.
This is right after 9-11, the attacks on 9-11.
And I read the file and I found there was a lot of problems with this individual.
So I wrote it all up and gave it to the security personnel and the FBI.
And as a matter of fact, the security specialist told me the same thing.
She goes, Mr.
Cole, I'm so glad you saw this because I knew something was wrong.
And I told her to go ahead and do a, send it up to the terrorism division so they can do a risk assessment also on this individual.
She called me back a week later and said, she asked me who the person, you know, was in terrorism that she wanted me to send a file up to.
I told her who it was.
And then she said, not that it matters.
I said, what do you mean?
She goes, well, the FBI hired this language specialist and gave her a top secret SCI clearance.
And I thought, well, this is unbelievable.
This person's father was a known intelligence officer.
I mean, they should not hire this person.
Well, anyway, a few weeks later, we had a, an unsub investigation, which is an unknown subject investigation.
We didn't know who provided the information, but somebody had provided the government, the foreign government, the same government this woman was originally from, provided them the information on what techniques the FBI was using against that establishment in DC.
And I knew there's only a handful of people that would have known that information.
One was the language specialist.
One was the tech agent and the headquarters approving official and the engineers that would have had to put that technique in place.
Those are the only people that would have known about that, that that specific item.
Um, they, we opened an unsub investigation on that, uh, particular matter and, uh, it just disappeared after 90 days.
And I would like to chip in here.
He's absolutely correct in this because that particular language specialist worked three desks for me.
Yeah, I was familiar.
In fact, I reported it to the nine 11 commission.
I reported it to Congress.
It was part of my report.
It was not, Oh my God, I know who did nine 11.
It was here.
Some incidents that were very, very important that the FBI for various reasons, not only they didn't investigate, but they also covered up this woman.
Her name is Hedaya Roberts.
Okay.
And this is not John making it public.
Another reporter made it public for five years ago and nobody picked up in the mainstream media because they didn't want to, she was from Pakistan.
Her father worked for the ISI Pakistan.
Okay.
In military attache here in Washington, DC under Pakistani embassy.
Okay.
And Hedaya Roberts spoke two languages, Pashtun and Urdu.
And she was translating, uh, basically information gathered from her father's colleagues or bosses, uh, who were targets.
Okay.
And her father happened to work and associate very closely with general Mahmood, whose name later on became public after September 11, the ISI general who was forced to resign because of the certain possible involvement with nine 11 or some of the hijackers.
We don't know the answers.
I don't pretend to know the answers, but what I'm saying, the importance of it for the nine 11 commission, this is one of the reasons I went forward and reported it was because this woman was his daughter and she actually was.
Listening into translating information coming from, uh, you know, her father's, uh, current and, uh, at the time and, and ex colleagues and, uh, and Am I right?
That, that story is told in Joe Laurie is, uh, and the others, a series in the Sunday times.
Uh, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure.
It's been a while.
Yeah.
I'm trying to remember because that story has been written about before too.
With you as the source, I believe.
Right.
Well, that woman has been promoted since right now she's in the FBI headquarter and she's in charge of the entire Pakistani division while her father still goes in and out of Pakistan and is closely associated with ISI.
Well, I understand they also hired her son also.
Correct.
She actually brought in her son who had just graduated from MIT.
Well, pardon me, John, uh, John M Cole, uh, former FBI counter intelligence guy.
How could that possibly be that there's a bunch of foreign agents inside the FBI?
I mean, if your counterintelligence division doesn't, you know, can't keep the FBI clean, how are you guys supposed to be keeping anybody else out from under the influence of foreign powers in this country?
Well, exactly.
And that's, that's, uh, that was just a rhetorical question, I guess.
Huh?
No, I'm serious.
I mean, there was another issue too.
I mean, I had a, uh, um, I had a case that was involved, uh, involving a former FBI translator that came to my attention.
Um, I was working up in the command center on the 9 11 thing.
And I also can't, you know, after I worked 12 hours up there, there's 12 hour shift up there, I go back to my desk and somebody dropped this folder off of my desk and said, Mr.
Cole, I believe this belongs to you.
And it was an espionage case.
So I opened the, uh, the, uh, case up and I started reviewing it and I'm thinking, well, hell, this guy should be arrested because there was sufficient evidence in there, uh, to make an arrest.
However, the FBI management had it as a preliminary inquiry, not a full investigation, and I'm thinking, what the hell's up with this?
So the first thing I did is I authorized a full investigation on the subject.
And I said, you want, I want you guys to work this thing.
Well, I started getting a lot of resistance from FBI headquarters, uh, from, uh, management.
I took it to my supervisor and I said, uh, I asked him, I said, Hey, you know, this is a, why is this a PI?
This should be a full investigation.
I mean, we have, we have, uh, uh, uh, all kinds of information.
We have a source that's telling us this guy works with, you know, that this guy is giving them information to this translator is giving this foreign, um, uh, official, uh, uh, sensitive information on cases that we have and so on and so forth.
We also have a guy that worked on a cover that was giving us the information too.
And we also got it through other techniques that we were using.
I wanted to take it to the U S attorney and see if we had enough to, um, make the arrest.
And I was told to, uh, stand down.
And I said, well, what do you mean?
And the guy says, well, let me look at, my boss said, let me look at the case and let me see what's going on.
Well, I kept going back to him saying, have you had a chance to review the file?
He says, well, you know, I haven't gotten to it yet.
Well, two or three weeks went by about the third week I went in and I said, listen, um, I sent this out as a full investigation.
I'm not getting any, uh, assistance here from the, the, the SAC in the field office.
I mean, he's not working this thing.
Uh, what's, what's going on with this, uh, this case.
And, uh, all I was told is not to worry about it.
They, they, they went ahead and sent the, uh, the case to the espionage section.
Um, in the counterintelligence division, they said, well, you know, you shouldn't be doing this anyway.
We have a, an SPI, an espionage section.
Now it's going to be handling this and that's the last I, I heard of it.
Uh, so the individual basically committed espionage and got away with it.
The thing that I didn't understand, and I think a lot of it has to do with politics, when Bob Hanson was arrested for espionage, February 18th, um, the FBI director came out and stated that, you know, oh, this is terrible.
We were making, uh, changes now to make sure that this never happens again.
Well, after that, you know, the bureau one didn't want to make, you know, make it look like they didn't, they weren't doing it right.
Uh, the bureau one didn't want to make, you know, make it look like they didn't, they weren't doing their job basically.
So anything that came up involving an FBI employee, they wanted just to go away.
It seemed like, uh, the thing that Sibel brought up on the, on the individual that was committing espionage, uh, in the language, uh, the language area, uh, they didn't do anything with that individual, the individual I brought to their attention, they did nothing with.
The other individual that I had a case on, they did nothing with.
And I think it had to do with, they wanted to make sure the bureau was getting a lot of bad press and it has to do with politics.
They did not want to come out and say, oh, we still have problems within, within the FBI.
I think that's the whole thing.
That's a good point.
And, and in some cases it has to do with, uh, certain diplomatic sensitivities.
For example, anything that dealt with Israel or Turkey was completely hushed up and covered up.
And this was extremely frustrating for the field agents who worked with the Turkish counterintelligence or Turkish related criminal cases, because they would try to get certain warrants wouldn't be issued.
Uh, in fact, the headquarters would shut down some of, they wouldn't renew some of the FISA, uh, uh, you know, um, permits.
So they were very frustrated because they knew, and this was, this was a common knowledge there that because of the interference by, you know, white house and the state department, especially that, that there was pressure not to pursue cases that involved Israel and Turkey, it was as simple as that.
Well, and John, you actually are quoted by Jeff Stein in congressional quarterly is saying that, you know, of 125 open cases of Israeli espionage.
I guess cases, I guess that means cases that were opened, but then never went anywhere.
125 different ones.
Is that right?
When I was working at, this is, that was going back some years ago too.
I don't know what it is now, but I worked at program in 93 to 95 and a hundred 25 is, uh, is a very conservative estimate.
I mean, there was more than that.
And as far as the cases go, when I'm talking about cases, they could have been on, um, it could have been on, uh, um, a, uh, uh, Israel, Israeli official that was, was here in the country.
It could have been on a, uh, a business, uh, Israeli owned business that was here in the country.
It could have been on.
I mean, there's a lot of different aspects to the, uh, involving counterintelligence.
I had a lot of investigations on.
Uh, Israeli cases, but that way, when I was working in that program back in 93 to 95, well, I'm sorry.
It sounded like you were kind of diminishing the one 25, even though you say that's a conservative estimate.
You say that could mean a businessman came to town.
It could mean nothing.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm sorry.
If I, if that came across that way, no, that's not true.
Uh, what I mean is that we had more than that, uh, you know, I know of 125, there's probably more than that.
Um, uh, cause I had over 300, 300 ongoing investigations at one time involving several different countries.
But, uh, when I'm talking about the 125, that was full investigations.
Not preliminary inquiries or right.
So these are, they, they are not some kind of innocent businessman.
It's the same thing with the Turkish, uh, counterintelligence and the espionage cases.
And that is, you may have seven, you know, heroin dealers in Chicago.
Each one of them would have, you know, maybe under one operation, but seven individuals will be targeted.
You may have a group of business people who get, you know, weapons technology related information here.
And, and they deal with certain companies and those companies issues, false end user certificates, and they shipped, let's say, uh, these equipments, the countries that are not supposed to be getting those equipments, uh, because the certificate would show that it's going to Turkey and we don't have the ban on Turkey.
Although the recipients would be, let's say in Libya or it may be in Pakistan or so, uh, they, they would be hundreds of individuals involved, but again, the operation, the target initially would be the foreign individuals, but the individuals who actually committed the real espionage were not those people that, that those would be the Americans.
Okay.
That's when you're looking, looking at all the nuclear facilities, you're looking at ramp corporation and Pentagon and state department.
Well, and speaking of which, uh, there's obviously, uh, as you well know, a new story about you there at military.com this week.
And I think this is breaking news that it's the first time that anybody's got, uh, Douglas Fyfe or Richard Pearl to respond to your allegations against them.
Both of them, of course, uh, denied it.
And it seems like that would be a headline itself.
They're not denying.
They're not saying, oh, we did not engage in this, but they're just saying, oh, this is absolutely crazy and everything.
That's not exactly denying things.
That's true.
But, uh, it is sort of a non-denial denial.
Surely.
And it's very typical of these individuals.
Okay.
Please tell me everything you know about these individuals.
Everything that you learned while at the FBI, not what you've read about them since people have to go and read the, the, the magazine article and also military.com, but Pearl since 1970 had come under FBI, direct FBI investigation that I know of, I have had it confirmed by FBI agents since I left the FBI.
Not while I was working at the FBI at least four times for serious espionage cases, just since 1970.
Okay.
And this was not even under Turkish.
This was outside the Turkish investigation, Turkish counterintelligence investigation.
These were all Israel.
Uh, if you go, you would see the documents of cases on Douglas Bight.
Do you know how many times they have tried to suspend his top security clearance while he was in Pentagon?
Go find it in records because these are public record information.
Again, that was on Israel related, uh, counter espionage cases.
So these, uh, individuals, you're looking at Douglas Bight and Richard Pearl, they have a pretty long track record of, of, of these activities that they've been getting away with it.
And they are going to get away with it.
They are not the only ones we have so many others.
And well, now what exactly are you saying that they did?
It's about.
They sell.
Okay.
They give, they pass to foreign agents.
Okay.
From Turkey and Israel, the most, the most sensitive nuclear conventional weapons technology, and also policy related information.
And those individuals, not only the foreign individuals and the operatives, not only use this information for those States, Israel and Turkey, they also sell it in the open market.
Whoever is the highest bidder.
It's been going on for decades.
It's been going on at least since 1989, just for the Turkish counterintelligence.
Pardon me.
But in the, um, in the American conservative article, uh, as far as I can tell, you only accuse Pearl and five of collecting information on people to compromise them.
I think you're going much further than that now, aren't you?
This is when they were outside the Pentagon.
This is during the years until 2000, when they were getting the name of people and their information, marital status, financial, and they would pass it to operative to go and recruit them when they, they were not providing their own firsthand, but these people, they provided basically anything that were asked of them by, by these two countries, anything.
So they were committing espionage, what you're saying?
Yeah.
Well, John, have you ever investigated Richard Pearl?
I can't tell you.
I really can't say.
I can't get into anything that, uh, any specific investigations that I was involved in, um, that, that would get me in trouble.
Okay.
What can you say, whether you learned anything at the FBI, such as you said before you, people told you that's what Sabella Edmonds said was right.
That kind of thing.
Anybody ever tell you that Richard Pearl was a spy?
No one came out and stated that exactly like that, but I'll put it this way.
Uh, that name came up a few times.
I'll put, I'll state that.
Okay.
In, in the context of counterintelligence investigations?
Yes.
And okay.
And now, uh, Sabella, you're saying, uh, that these two men were involved in, in this, um, this broader ring of pilfering nuclear secrets from, uh, I think you said, uh, the Sandy and Lawrence Livermore labs, both, is that right?
Individuals within those facilities were targeted.
So they were the ones who actually sold the information, whether they were scientists, whether they were air force officers, uh, in certain, uh, air force, uh, base in the, that it was involved with nuclear, uh, weapons, uh, technology.
And they did it for peanuts.
They, they were, there were some people who were passing information, extremely important, valuable information for as little as a few thousand dollars, but the going rates for this information was in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So, and you're saying it was Pearl who was fencing this stuff.
He was one of the individuals, uh, and the person who was most active with this was the state department person who has been named, who was named even before this article came out, Mark Grossman.
Uh, well, and, uh, yeah, he has indeed been named in, in a few different parts of this.
In fact, another part of this story is, uh, the, to some degree or another, at least, Sybil, and I hope you can help me understand, uh, the outing of Brewster Jennings.
Now, I believe some people have written, although I don't think this is correct, that this actually involved the outing of Valerie Plain before, uh, you know, everybody thinks it had nothing to do.
I, I, I, I had not heard that name until long after I left the FBI.
I thought that that was the case.
So I wanted to make sure about that, but then I believe you say though, that, that Grossman, uh, to some degree or another outed Brewster Jennings before, uh, Robert Novak outed Brewster Jennings.
That would be the CIA front company that Valerie Plain worked for.
Correct.
And can you tell us, I know you can't say the, you know, the name of the phone company that the wiretap was through or anything like that, but can you give us some context of how it is exactly?
Okay.
American Turkish council and people can go and look it up.
Uh, so I won't eat up your time explaining American Turkish council is a big, just like AIPAC, even though they're not listed as lobbyists, there's a big lobby for business and a lot of, uh, Turkish businessmen and Turkish military industrial complex related people.
They are all part of this and the Americans, Northrop Grumman, Boeing.
So you can go and check, check that site.
And, uh, so Brewster Jennings, uh, related titles, people, people who introduced themselves as analysts for, uh, Brewster Jennings as a company, Brewster Jennings here in Virginia, they were frequenting the, uh, American Turkish council and, uh, and certain people, uh, from the Turkish, uh, business and combination military interest people, they were planning, uh, they have, they were in touch with Brewster Jennings and American Turkish council.
They have gotten their business cards and they were planning to hire Brewster Jennings to be the intermediary for some of the, uh, some of the operations they were involved in, some of them legal purchases, but some of them or the legal purchases or the legal operations were front to do their illegal nuclear related, uh, operations.
And they were trying to basically hire Brewster Jennings.
And this had gone to the space department person who was somebody else named him Mark Rosman and Mark Rosman specifically contacted, and I can't tell you whether it was fax, email, phone, or any of that.
Uh, a very high level person in the diplomatic Turkish diplomatic community.
And I've told that person said, don't do not do not do this.
Do not hire them.
They are the government front.
They are, they are based, they are front for government.
So you're saying that, for example, um, if I could try to put words in your mouth here, Sybil, you can clarify them.
You're it sounds like you're being pretty clear that he did not sort of, you know, mention, oh yeah, you know, Brewster Jennings is a CIA front to somebody over lunch at the country club.
And that's how the secret got out.
He went and deliberately gave warning.
Yes, it was deliberate warning because prior to that discussion, he must have received that, that information that they were about to hire, because he specifically said this company Brewster Jennings is a front for the government and you just stay away from them.
And the recipient of that information may, you know, follow up communication arrangements with other nations, intelligence operatives here in the United States, and pass that information to them.
Do not touch Brewster Jennings.
They are front for the government.
And, uh, and, uh, this happened in August of 2001.
It was towards the end of August, 2001.
And the agents, they pass this information to the, uh, appropriate division.
I guess it would be CIA and it was dismantled.
That company was dismantled.
So there was no such a thing that she was working for that company.
She was at that company didn't exist.
And she was, that has not existed for years, for at least a year or so.
And you learned that while you were still at the FBI, that they had already taken the thing down before Bob Novak ever said anything about it.
It was, it was a third hand information.
It was from, because the agent that I worked with for that particular division, he sent this information to the FBI counter-espionage division and then the headquarters people that it was their job to notify the appropriate agency.
In this case, I, my guess is it will be the CIA because I didn't even know it was CIA.
It could have been, I don't know, it could have been department of energy.
So what he told me was that they took the appropriate action and they notified the agency and basically they, basically their covers up.
Now they have to do, this is what he referred to as a damage assessment because whoever was the agency, which in this case now, you know, it was the CIA.
They have to, they have to do damage assessment to see if there were any cover, any people who were compromised as a result of it already.
And then you also heard tell then third hand, even information that as a result of that damage assessment, that the CIA closed Brewster Jennings down.
Oh, I, I'm not sure if CIA as agency would use just the fact that that cover front operation was dismantled and after it was dismantled, they were doing damage assessment.
So it was dismantled, then they were doing damage assessment, which was according to the agent who told me it would take almost a year to do damage assessment because they're very bureaucratic with the agency.
All right.
John M. Cole, a former FBI counterintelligence agent here is, is she right that this country is crawling with a Turkish and Israeli spies and American citizens who participate in their efforts to pilfer our nuclear weapons secrets and that this is continue, I guess you're implying at least that nobody ever stopped it.
It apparently continues to this day.
Is what is going on here?
Well, I'd like to think that that wasn't the case, but it's a fact.
I mean, we have, it's not just the Israelis and the Turks, there's other foreign governments here also that are here, you know, gathering and collecting intelligence.
Well, now if the Russians were stealing hydrogen bomb things, you guys would stop them, right?
Oh, yeah, we hope.
We hope.
And there, when I was in the bureau, we had investigations on, like I said, on the Israelis and on the Turks also.
The thing with that is, and let me just clarify something.
A lot of times when we run an investigation on a foreign national, especially if that individual has diplomatic immunity, a lot of times the American public don't hear what happens, but a lot of times we'll find that, you know, that person was doing something that they weren't supposed to hear.
Then they wind up getting PNG out of the country and that's the end of it.
You know, there's no arrest mate, for example.
The arrests come if the person is a US citizen that's providing information to that foreign government and is committing espionage.
Like Larry Franklin.
Right, right.
You know, years ago, John, Sabel said to me, you know, a lot of these cases are all one big onion.
You need to start peeling the different layers.
And I don't think she was saying that, you know, she was privy to all these different investigations, but that they all clearly involved a lot of the same players.
And it was interesting to me to note that Larry Franklin, in his interview with the forward, said, of course, he was accusing the FBI of being a bunch of anti-Semites.
And I guess I'll let you speak to that if you wanted to bother defending yourself from that spurious charge.
But as proof, he was saying that they were going after all of his buddies at the Pentagon, meaning Pearl and Fyfe and the guys that ran the Office of Special Plans and so forth.
It looks like, you know, the FBI agents going after those guys, if what Larry Franklin says is true, were certainly stifled into getting the lowest man on the totem pole in that.
Well, I can say that, you know, the case agents, the guys that go out there and do their investigations and make the arrest, the field agent.
They want to get out there and they want to do what they can to make sure that no one's committing espionage.
And if they are, they want to make sure that they're arrested.
I mean, that's just, you know, that's the way it normally goes.
The problem being is that they get, a lot of times they get upset and, you know, because they're not allowed to do their job.
FBI headquarters, somebody at headquarters, normally it's on the seventh floor on the executive level.
They're the ones that are directing them to say, okay, we got to stop this or we got to, you know, let this one go or whatever.
And a lot of it has to do with the, you know, for political reasons.
I mean, it could be, you know, if we went out and arrested a bunch of people who were spying for Israel, then, you know, all of a sudden we're the bad guys, you know, we're anti-Semitic and we're this, that and the other thing, you know, just for doing your job, basically.
That's not the case.
We go out and do investigations on, on anybody who commits espionage.
It just so happens that since Israel is such a good ally, close ally with us, that a lot of times things are overlooked, just kind of, you know, just, oh, well, you know, they made a mistake, no big deal.
And, and that's, unfortunately that's the case.
And this, despite the fact that these people, these operatives, whether it's Turkish or Israeli, not only that they use it for themselves, but they also pass it to their people or, or money for just black market model to any country that pays for it, they deal it, they deal it as dealers.
So whether or not they are our allies, the individual operators also have their own leeway of what to do.
Yeah, I did it for my government, but I can also go ahead on the side and make cash with this.
And that's jeopardizing American security.
And it's not really Al Qaeda.
The American security is being jeopardized by certain Americans.
And these secrets that we have, a lot of these secrets are from the American public, not from those foreign people we're trying to protect these secrets from because they have access.
It's just the American people are in the dark.
And as far as the anti-Semitism is concerned, I mean, a lot of agents were just so disgusted with this card being played over and over.
And I'm happy to see that since they have played this card so much, the number of disgusted individuals increasing.
So I feel bad for people who are not engaged, you know, that they are from Jewish religion and they are not engaged because they are being victimized by those who use this propaganda of using constantly anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism, because it's backfiring on all of them.
And it's going to.
Well, you got to understand also is that there's a huge lobby in the U.S., the Israeli lobby in the U.S., too.
And they put a lot of pressure on politicians and other people also.
Right.
They would have to arrest half of our United States Congress.
So that would that would present a dilemma.
Well, no, no, right there, because there is a big difference, isn't there, between, you know, knowing that you need the lobby support to run for Congress and so therefore voting in a pro-Israel way and being, I don't know, Jane Harman or someone who, you know, commits a quote unquote completed crime and agreeing to obstruct justice and break the law.
Right.
But there is a middle ground, Scott, and you know it better than anyone else or better than many people.
And that is they pass a lot of legislation that affects our foreign policy and what we do and decisions we make.
So it may not be Jane Harman passing or Danitak that are only passing information, but just by legislating alone or by sanctioning certain or approving certain operations, by funding, approving funds for certain operations, they also can serve the interests of another country by compromising and sacrificing our foreign policy, our troops, our people's lives.
Well, again, this is where we get to that line.
And you're right.
That's certainly a gray thing when you talk about the law and policy and when policy is to break the law, then, you know, how is it supposed to work in any of this?
And it all kinds of it all kind of falls apart.
But there clearly is a difference, though, right, between making an agreement to commit a felony with agents of the Mossad versus being just a run-of-the-mill congressman who knows he basically has to vote pro-Israel to keep his job, right?
Well, sure.
But then again, even if they dare not engage in espionage activities directly, let's say with Tom Lances, that was not the case.
I mean, Tom Lances never considered himself to be an American, never did.
This was a known fact by all the agents, not only from Turkish Department, but from the Israeli counterintelligence desk, again, which was all operated from the same Washington field office.
But outside that, you had congressmen not only to get these funds, but to get them illegally and also let certain facilitators lobby people to be intermediary to launder money and get rid of the food print so that they can get that foreign money, even though the congressional people knew it was coming directly from, let's say, foreign governments.
So knowingly accepting that is also, I would consider it not only unethical, but criminal, because the reason they're trying to get rid of the footprint is because it is criminal.
Yeah, well, and for example, I mean, after David Rose's piece in Vanity Fair back in 2005, in fact, I guess in that article they talked about how he and his team of lawyers and whoever, they went and checked and they could see how Dennis Hastert had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, far higher than the average of any other congresspeople, in the very smallest payments, $199 and less, that don't have to have a name attached to them.
Which, you know, wasn't solid proof necessarily, but was a pretty strong clue that what you'd been saying about how he'd been paid off was right.
That's clearly, you know, when we're talking about briefcase full of cash, that's clearly criminal behavior there, I think.
That solid proof came later.
In 2007, he resigned and immediately he signed up as a lobbyist for the government of Turkey.
He is a registered foreign agent, so he is registered under FARA.
This is as soon as he got out of Congress.
And now he is receiving the known number of $35,000 a month, per month, directly from the government of Turkey.
This is the rest of the thank you that has to go from the government of Turkey to Dennis Hastert.
And he was bold enough to do it without even a blank.
He basically got out of Congress and registered himself as the agent of government of Turkey.
I think there's a point that can be made here, which is a news story in itself, really, which is that you're starting a new news site with your own in-house reporters, including two that I hold in very high esteem, Peter Lance and Joe Lauria, to start.
Tell us all about that, Sibel.
Right.
I have contract arrangements with several seasoned veterans, with proven track record investigative journalists.
And these people, as you know, Joe Lauria or Peter Lance, or in this case, also Elizabeth Gould and Paul Fitzgerald, these people have been doing the real investigative work story for many, many years.
Because what I found out that there's these reporters who are disenfranchised because they are discussed with the mainstream media.
Some of them are even being booted out with the cutback.
But they don't like this pseudo-alternative media.
I mean, you can go and list some of the popular ones.
They get nauseated even by their names.
And I understand.
So they don't feel like they have a home.
They want to do work, but they don't want to be driven with that partisanship.
You know, the 20-year-old something here.
I'm suddenly an editor or a reporter.
I have an email account and I have a cell phone.
I can call and say, give me a comment.
They don't give me a comment.
I'm a reporter.
I report.
Come on.
So I have been talking to these individuals.
I have been talking with some really good authors and their names will come out after we have the contract from the editorial people who want to have this option and say, OK, let's try it together.
And Sobel, we are willing to produce this.
Now, let's find out if the American people, especially those who have been as disgusted as I have been with the current state of the media, what we have available will support it, you know, because you don't need a really huge, gigantic budget.
We're not going to try everything for everyone.
You can't be everything for everyone.
That's when you get Michael Jackson mixed up with the Harman story.
All right.
Well, we've left poor John M. Cole out of the conversation for a little while here.
John, let me give you a chance to address anything that you think, you know, should have been addressed in this interview that I didn't get to as far as, you know, helping the people in the audience kind of understand, you know, how serious this is, what we're up against.
And I guess I'd like to give you a chance to to call for prosecution, as you were quoted as doing on a Peter Collins show a few weeks ago.
Well, you know, what I guess what I have to say is that I think Sybil is right in that I think the majority of the Americans want to know the truth, what's going on.
I think there are a lot of Americans just fed up with all the scandal in the government.
There needs to be accountability.
There needs to be better oversight.
And that just not it's not happening.
And that's the whole point I have in my book is that here's the issues that come up.
This is what has happened.
And no one's being held accountable for their actions.
I think that's a big thing here.
I think that there needs to be accountability.
I think that in the media doesn't want to discuss it or they don't want to print it in their in their papers.
Because, you know, if it goes into the paper, what I noticed, and John Drake was a central grasses investigator once told me he goes, you know, it'll go in the paper one day, it'll be a big uproar that day.
And then next day, everybody forgets about it.
And that seems to be the case.
It's got to the point in our country, though, it's become so divided now that I think everybody is fed up and they want to know the truth what's going on.
I think there needs to be some sort of outlet for the people to find out exactly what is going on, what is the truth, and hold these people accountable.
If somebody commits a crime in this country, they should be arrested, and they should be prosecuted.
There's a lot of people that's getting away with a lot of things in this country.
That is just not right.
Ah, which reminds me of what you said to to Peter Collins, as quoted at the Brad block, people getting away with murder, you said and I in fact, Brad was over here for an interview in the studio and we went back and we listened to the audio of that part of the interview just to make sure that you really earned those italics where he put them in the quote and so forth.
And yeah, it sure did sound to my ear like you were not talking about boy, they get away with blue bloody murder.
It sounded like you were talking about yeah, they get away with murdering people.
Well, I wasn't I didn't mean it in that respect.
What I mean by that is that it seems like you have officials that are high up in our government that do things that are so far fetched.
I mean, so illegal.
And then no one touches them.
No one wants to pursue it for whatever reason.
So what you did mean was they get away with blue bloody murder, but not in the literal sense.
Exactly.
I hope not literal.
Now, as far as you know, as far as I know, no.
All right.
Well, now.
So the book, John M. Cole, While America Sleeps, an FBI whistleblower story that's on the shelves available now, right?
I believe so.
Yes.
It's a great book.
It's sincere.
And this is what Americans will get.
It is sincerely written.
None of those entertaining, touched up by hundreds of people kind of a book.
They will get to hear John Cole.
Well, what I'm hoping is that it makes a change.
I think people need to know what's going on and they need to wake up.
Our country, we need to wake up and take care of these issues before another 9-11 occurs or before something else happens in our country.
If we don't, something will definitely happen again because there's so many things that need to be changed and there's people that need to be held accountable.
And if it's not, if that doesn't happen, then we're in a world of trouble.
Well, my understanding is that the publisher is on its way to me.
So I hope to read it and have you back on the show to discuss the book in detail soon, John.
And Sobel, I want to give you a chance here to say the name of the website.
When is this thing's grand opening here?
This new press project of yours?
It's going to I think the website will be completed by the early by the early part of next week.
And the site address is BoilingFrogsPost.com.
So that is BoilingFrogsPost.com because that's what we are.
And it's the home of the irate minority because I am one and I have been hearing from a lot of people who consider themselves the irate minority.
So over there, we will be the majority.
So we'll end up ruling.
So it's a great place to be.
I gather.
It sounds like a lot of fun.
Hopefully there will be barbecue and everything, too.
All right.
Well, I thank you both very much for your time.
I hope we can do it again.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Scott.
All right, everybody, that is Sabelle Edmonds, former FBI contract translator turned whistleblower.
She's the head of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
BoilingFrogsPost.com, I think she said, will be up soon.
And check out JusticeCitizen.com and 123RealChange.blogspot.com.
