All right, folks, this is Antiwar Radio on Chaos 92.7 FM in Austin, Texas, streaming live also from Antiwar.com slash radio.
And I'd like to welcome back to the show Sibel Edmonds, gagged by the state secrets privilege, former translator, contract translator for the FBI, and the best investigator and storyteller on her case, Luke Ryland, from letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com.
Welcome back to the show, both of you.
Thank you, Scott, hi.
So we have some recent developments here, but I guess, first of all, I'd like to ask you, Sibel, what's been going on?
We heard from you in, I guess, last fall, you gave your golden offer, you'd tell your whole story, everything you know, in defiance of your gag order, you would risk prison in order to tell your story on American TV, if only they would let you, and apparently had no takers.
Instead, a couple, few months later, there was a three-article series in the London Times detailing various aspects of your case, and I guess, Luke, if you could maybe start us off and sort of summarize briefly, what was in that series in the London Times, and what sort of developments have taken place in the story since then?
That London Times series was in January, I believe, and they focused mostly on the nuclear black market side of Sibel's case, talking about how various Turkish and Israeli embassy officials were dealing in the nuclear black market in the U.S. with the help of certain plays in the U.S. government, specifically, former number three at the State Department, Mark Grossman.
That was a three-part series, I should say, and there hasn't been a whole lot that's happened in the case since.
Okay, well, there's some new developments here.
I know that you've put up a few new blog entries just in the last week, one about Dennis Hastert, and another about a spy scandal of some kind brewing over there in Germany and Switzerland, I believe, which may, in some part, be tied to Sibel Edmunds' case.
What's going on there?
I guess, first of all, we'll save Dennis Hastert for later, and first of all, tell us about this family in Germany here.
Yeah, there's a family called the Kinner family, a Swiss family, actually, father and two sons.
The father has been an associate of A. Q. Khan going back, I think, back to the 1970s.
He and his sons were one of the key suppliers to the A. Q. Khan network.
Now, the A. Q. Khan network, as you probably know, is the network ...
Oh, A. Q. Khan was the father of the Islamic bomb.
He was the one who was running the nuclear program in Pakistan, and he was getting all of the hardware and technology on the nuclear black market to build the Pakistan bomb, and then he began exporting it, or that network then began exporting that technology to Iran, Libya, and various other places, North Korea.
Now, the Kinners were key suppliers of that network, and they were arrested when the A.Q.
Khan network was officially exposed in 2004.
Now, the Kinners have been sort of a waiting trial since 2004, particularly one of the sons, Erz Kinner, and they've been waiting trial since 2004, and the Swiss government have been trying to build a prosecution so that they could take the case to court.
The US government was very reluctant to assist.
They had a lot of information about the Kinners' involvement in the Khan network, but they simply refused to even respond to requests for help from the Swiss Attorney General.
That was, I think, through 2006, 2007, and they eventually gave some limited assistance, but there's this big scandal in Switzerland that was announced just two or three weeks ago that the Swiss government has destroyed all of the evidence in that case so that it looks like that prosecution won't go ahead, but the Swiss government did that.
The executive branch of the Swiss government just destroyed all 30,000 pages of evidence in that case, and they did that in secret.
They didn't tell the Parliament or the court system or anything.
Now, there's a very strong suspicion that they did that at the request of the United States, and the suggestion is that the CIA have been actively involved working with the Kinners going back a number of years, and the CIA was desperate that that information not become public.
I'm sorry, the CIA was helping these guys do their dirty work, and these guys were stabbing the CIA in the back, Luke.
Well, it's not entirely obvious.
It might be the case that the Kinners were helping the Khan network and then realized that the CIA were onto them and then started working for the CIA to help expose some of the network.
That's one hypothesis.
Another hypothesis is that the CIA was just running these guys and were aware of their involvement.
In fact, according to some reasonable reports, the CIA paid them lots of money to be involved in this network.
Now, we don't really know why that's the case, but I should say this is similar to Sabelle's case because in her case, we had the same sort of thing where there's extraordinary efforts gone to make sure that none of this information becomes public.
Sabelle's case also deals in part with the AQ Khan network and other nuclear black market proliferation.
Okay, now, I'm sorry to just keep you on hold so long, Sabelle, but this next one's for Luke too.
What's the big deal with the AQ Khan network?
Because I know that our government's accusations against Libya, which they've now become our friends again, and the accusations against Iran are based on the fact that they received nuclear technology from the Pakistanis.
But the best I understand what they got was a bunch of first generation centrifuge equipment that in no way equals any sort of clear and present danger to anyone.
Is there a whole other side to this AQ Khan network that actually is dangerous that I'm missing, Luke, or is it just that this is all criminal behavior participating in these black markets?
Well, there's certainly a lot of criminal behavior involved in the market.
And it's true that some of those early designs went to Iran and North Korea.
But it's also true that the AQ Khan network has continued operating in the black market to keep the Pakistan program up and running, for example.
And so they are constantly feeding that network with new technology.
And in Sabelle's case, going back to, I think, 1999 and 2000, there were companies in the US, for example, that were exporting hardware to Pakistan via South Africa.
So we know that even though those early reports were of those old P-1 and P-2 designs, there was still a constant influx of new technology.
Okay, so here we are in 2008.
We have destruction of evidence by the Swiss government on the conduct of these Germans who apparently everybody was operating to some capacity at the behest of the CIA, both in the case of the family and the people who destroyed the evidence about it.
Now, I think so far we've sort of talked about Sabelle as sort of an example of a similar sort of circumstance in the United States without benefit of really explaining to our audience who Sabelle is and, you know, why they should see a parallel to another famous case here going on in the United States.
So Sabelle, I'd like to ask you, basically, if you can just sort of rehearse the short version of your brief employment as a contractor translator for the FBI and the status of the state secrets privilege, the gag orders against you and the limits on what you're allowed to say and, for that matter, why it is that people should believe that you were able to learn as much things as you've apparently been able to learn or say that you were able to learn in your short time working there as a translator for the FBI.
Sure.
I think I can summarize it by telling you that I have been declared to be the most gagged person in the United States' history, and that is by an invocation of state secrets privilege twice in my case, classification of my case, the entire case, including even the languages I speak, and also the fact that for the first time illegally the Justice Department issued a gag order on refractive classification on Congress.
And that basically tells you that there is this body of knowledge information that the government, the Justice Department, and the White House is going out of its way to cover up, to hush, to shut down.
And that, I believe, summarizes the case very well.
So just the fact that, okay, what is this information?
Why are they going out of their way to gag this information?
And then I'm going to talk about a little bit on what Luke just very nicely summarized.
And you were talking about, well, you know, how benign maybe was this information or the technology.
You have to focus on one aspect, and that is right now you're talking about black market, okay, nuclear black market.
And you're looking at international players within this nuclear black market activity, okay?
And this involves to a certain degree the Russians, Israelis, South Africa, Turkey, Iran, North Korea.
So you're looking at many, many players.
And when you have these players and then you're looking at nuclear black market, the focus should not be, well, okay, so Pakistanis, we know that they have their nuclear weapons program, et cetera, so what's the big deal?
The big deal is our hypocrisy-ridden foreign policy and the fact that, on one hand, we are talking about the danger of these weapons of mass destruction in the hands of whoever at the time we declared to be the axis of evil.
And using this as a technique, as a tactic also, to involve fear here in our country and globally, saying that, you know, we are talking about the weapons of mass destruction and we are in danger and there are these bad guys out there who want to get us.
And on the other hand, when it comes to these really serious, serious issues and cases, a lot of them involving the weapons of mass destruction, we cherry-pick intelligence and we cherry-pick on what we are going to take action.
As you know, right now we are talking about possibly attacking Iran because they may have these nuclear, you know, capabilities and technology.
On the other hand, we are looking the other way when it comes to this global-scale nuclear black market activities, in some of which we have U.S. players, participation and their roles.
But yet, we go out of our way, and this is our government, to quash this information, to gag this information, to let these people off the hook, and we can't do that.
And that is the importance of it.
It's not that, okay, fine, you know, Pakistan got it and who played what role.
It is the fact that there is this nuclear black market, okay?
And we have many, many players, and some of these players happen to be our allies.
Some of these players happen to be U.S. persons.
And yet, we only get partial stories.
And whenever it's convenient for our government to say, oh, okay, if it's Syria or if it's Iran, yet, as I said, looking the other way when it happens to be people that we call our allies.
And now, when you talk about the American role in this, and this was sort of alluded to with the CIA's contacts with this family in Germany and so forth, I guess the question comes down to whether this is covert operations, actual, you know, policy, covert action policy of the American government, or we're talking about sort of individual players within the American power structure who sort of steal secrets and pass them on for their own kind of individual motives outside of their official duties.
Well, see, it's interesting that you mention covert actions, okay?
We had these so-called covert actions when AQ Khan was building his network and when Pakistan was developing its nuclear program.
And before that, we had it with Israel, okay?
And yes, we did have these covert operations.
And not only that our covert operations did not prevent these people from, and these countries from actually achieving what they were doing, in fact, it helped them.
And in some cases, our own government, okay, despite these covert operations, they actually supported these governments and these activities, these illegal activities behind the scenes.
In one case that Luke also has very nicely reported on, we had Richard Barlow's case with the CIA.
Here is the guy who was chasing AQ Khan's network, and here is the guy who went to the Congress and basically reported to the Congress what was happening with Pakistan.
But then you have the other hand, whether within the CIA or the Department of Defense, you know, Pentagon, or within the State Department, who went out of their way to gag him and to basically stop Congress from taking action.
So again, how much do you trust when you're told that there may be some covert CIA actions, and therefore, maybe these things are legit, and maybe there is a reason for this information being flushed?
I would say, if you were to look at the history of the CIA, you would see that in many cases, covert actions by these people have been designed to actually support those dangerous illicit activities.
Again, we have our own government covert operations supporting criminal activities like the Ron Contra.
So, whether or not CIA has some sort of a covert action cannot be any excuse, justification, or cover to say, okay, therefore, maybe there is a reason for this to be quashed, legitimate reason.
Although it could, it seems like it could serve as a legitimacy or cover from the point of view of individuals in the United States who want to go ahead and take part in it, that on some level, this is our operation anyway, that kind of thing.
I can't, I guess I could, but it doesn't seem too likely that the CIA would be, you know, hiring Mark Grossman over at the State Department to do this kind of thing.
Again, then you're looking at nuclear black markets, then you're looking at any black markets, whether it's narcotics or whether it's the nuclear or just the conventional weapons, you are looking at a huge amount of money, okay?
And as you know, money and power are the biggest drive for a lot of people.
And that comes before any patriotism or any other loyalty.
And so, to say that, you know, people like that may have other reasons, again, it may be misguided because when you're looking at these people, I'm sure you're going to get into, let's say, people like Dennis Hester's case.
And that is, okay, you have individuals like that who go and get this public office job and within a few years, they enrich themselves and they come out a few years later as billionaires or multi-multi-millionaires.
I mean, you just had this great article that Anti-War posted last weekend.
It had to do with Armitage and Tenet and Wolfie and saying, okay, these people, you know, they had access to information, they got out, and now they are making millions and millions and millions and millions, okay, by taking positions within these private entities.
And when you're looking at these private entities, some of them with international activities, well, what is going to come first for these people?
Their lucrative jobs and positions, or is it going to be, oh, I'm still loyal to my previous job and to my country and to my people?
And why would they worth that much to these people?
You look at Mark Rosman.
Mark Rosman gave his resignation and within a year, he was placed on the payroll of this shady Turkish company, and he's receiving about a million-dollar year from this company.
Even though for years now, your story has somehow implicated him in basically criminal interaction with these groups, now he still goes right to them for employment when he quits?
Absolutely.
They all do.
And because they have become, we have these people who have become the untouchable.
And again, your article that was published last weekend from Salon.com mentions three of them.
You are looking at all these individuals.
Look at, I just read the Senate Intelligence Report on Iraq, and they are, you know, within this report, you know, they are talking about, you know, certain individuals' roles and even people who investigated this case.
Well, they are referring to the Inspector General, you know, within the Department of Defense.
Well, the Chief Inspector General who was in charge of these investigations, Schmitz, okay, Joseph Schmitz, he resigned in 2005, and two months later, he became the COO of Blackwater, okay?
And we still have these so-called investigations on Blackwater.
I love that.
I love that way.
I'm sorry, Sybil.
I just have to tell you how much I enjoy that.
This is not just some general.
This is the Inspector General.
This is the Head of Internal Affairs at the DOD, whose job it is to prevent things like this from happening.
Right.
Hisself.
And this man was in charge of investigating my case, because my case also involved Major Douglas Dickerson, who happens to be right now Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Dickerson.
And he's the person who shut down that investigation, it was in 2003, 2004.
So now this man gets out of Pentagon, doesn't even wait for a year or two.
Two months later, he's hired by Blackwater.
So what I'm trying to say here, you have this root problem in our country, okay?
You have this pattern.
So when you say, well, nothing happened to Mark Grossman, I'm telling you, these people are untouchable.
They are the untouchable, because you see this with many, many people, and it's not raising any flags.
The mainstream media is not reporting on it.
The Congress is not doing anything about it.
So what does Mark Grossman have to worry about?
They have really thick skin.
They are really, really bold about their move, because they are saying, okay, I'm doing this, despite all this stuff out there, come and touch me, catch me if you can.
And there's no one out there for us to go and ask to catch these guys.
All right.
Now, Luke Greer, we're sitting here talking about this guy Grossman as though he's been convicted at Guantanamo or something.
And he has, for the record, told the Times that he doesn't know what in the hell this lady's talking about.
Why don't you explain what it is that you believe Mark Grossman has done in violation of the law, or even basic morality, however you want to see it?
Mark Grossman was, prior to being the number three guy in the State Department, he was also the ambassador to Turkey.
Now, Turkey is a big player in the issues that Sobel's talking about, the nuclear black market and the narcotics industry.
Grossman's been involved with this for a long time.
And in fact, when he was the ambassador in Turkey, Sobel just mentioned Major Douglas Dickerson was there working with Grossman way back then, in the late 90s.
Oh, really?
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
So, you know, these guys have been hanging around together for a long time, working on the same sorts of deals.
And the Times report used to say Grossman denied any wrongdoing.
But it outlined a number of crimes, including his participation in this nuclear black market, including at one point Brewster Jennings, the cover company that Valerie Plame used, they were investigating some of the people that Sobel's case touches on, including the American-Turkish Council.
So what makes you say that Brewster Jennings and associates was investigating the American-Turkish Council?
I think that's just fact at this time.
Valerie Plame, in fact, met Joe Wilson there at the American-Turkish Council.
The point is that the Turks have had a long-term involvement in the nuclear black market.
So Brewster Jennings should have been investigating the Turks.
And the Turkish headquarters in the U.S. is basically the American-Turkish Council.
So it would be silly if they weren't investigating the American-Turkish Council.
But when Brewster Jennings was there investigating them, Grossman told his Turkish and other friends to stay away from Brewster Jennings and warned them that they were a CIA cover company.
So that's one of the crimes that he was involved in.
Another of the crimes mentioned in the Times report relates to just after September 11, 2001, when there was a big roundup of certain suspected participants in that event.
And some of Grossman's Turkish friends said, hey, we have to get these four people out of jail because we can't afford for them to spill the beans.
So Grossman got on the phone to whoever, and those four people were subsequently released.
And this comes back to what Sabel was talking about.
When you have these, even if they are legitimate covert activities, they create so much black market for all of these things, all of this sort of nefarious behavior that enables the unholy alliances that enable people to get away with just about anything.
If we just take it for granted that the CIA are on the side of the angels and all that they would ever mean to do would be to check this sort of black market proliferation, then still it seems like they're having a lot of trouble in reining in participants, even inside the United States of America and this kind of thing.
Is it just because of the amounts of money involved?
Let me just add another of Grossman's crimes that Sabel uncovered.
The Turkish and other interests who were working with the black market were desperate to get moles inside nuclear labs in the U.S.
So they went to Grossman and made sure that he got, you know, he ensured that they got the appropriate visas and an appropriate placement.
And so this criminal network was placing spies in just about every nuclear facility and every other agency involved with nuclear technology in the United States.
But Grossman was placing these people in all these installations for the criminal network so that they could then, you know, report back on what they found.
So, you know, it's pretty widespread.
And this is all happening under the nose of the FBI.
And Sabel has often pointed out that there was this big counterintelligence operation that went back at least from 1996 that began.
And the Turkish, sorry, the counterintelligence officers at the FBI were pulling their hair out because they wanted to pursue these crimes.
But they kept getting pushback from the CIA, from the Pentagon and the State Department telling them that, no, they weren't allowed to act on any of this information.
Sabel has been trying to get their case heard in Congress.
And, you know, all the Turkish, all these counterintelligence people who were working at the Turkish program, you know, would be happy to come and testify under oath to all of these crimes that they are aware of.
Well, didn't Congressman Waxman promise that he would hold hearings, Luke?
He did promise, and he hasn't done a thing since.
You know, we have high hopes for him.
Go ahead, Sabel.
Yeah, let's talk about that because this is, again, this is another important issue.
And it's not only with my case, but in the cases of many, many whistleblowers who are the members of my organization, National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
And that is, we were very, very anxious to have this majority change within the Congress.
And because for years, when we went to these offices, you know, whether it was Congressman Conyers or Waxman, we were given only one excuse and one justification.
And that was, we want to have hearings, we want to have accountability, and the big bad Republicans are preventing it because they have the majority, and they are not letting us do it.
So for years, we were under this assumption, and we were celebrating in November.
And that, when I say we, our members, we have libertarians, we have Republicans, we have Democrats, and we have people like me who basically, they just say we are Americans.
And guess what?
Once that changed, that majority changed, both in the Senate and in the House, these people who had this ongoing relationship with us, they used to have meetings for our members, for whistleblowers, I went inside the secured compartmentalized facility and had two, three sessions with just Congressman Waxman's office before he became the chairman.
Now, after the election, after they took over, they just went completely silent.
In fact, they became antagonistic.
They said, we don't want to talk with these whistleblowers because we have a very, very busy schedule.
And we said, well, what happened to all those promises you made, that if we were to be the majority, we would be doing this?
And in fact, one of the promises was, one of the first hearings that we are going to have is going to be in this case, state secret privilege, and you're going to testify.
And his office, along with other Democratic offices, they just stopped even taking calls from us.
And the change was absolutely amazing.
And obviously, this is not the case only with the whistleblowers, because just take a look at the approval rate for Congress today, okay?
It's much lower than the confidence in the administration, because what you have is plunging.
It's like 17%, 18%.
This means, obviously, the American people, you know, they're not happy with the Congress.
All the promises that they gave, none of them were fulfilled.
And I am not a diplomatic person.
One of the things that I say today when I talk with the people, with people, I say, well, listen, basically, they may look like champions, but all we have gotten with people like Chairman Waxman and Chairman Conyers is all barking, okay?
And they come out whenever any case becomes sexy and grabs the headline, and they just bark.
And they say, we want to hold hearings.
We want to subpoena people.
As soon as the issue dies down in the media, which dies down very quickly, as you know, they just go away.
They don't do anything.
They haven't brought about any type of accountability, any type of meaningful hearing.
I mean, they have had some show for show only hearings, but nothing that in any way will bring any accountability with it or further action.
And they do have the power.
So many of our members are kind of really disillusioned, saying, well, before, they said, well, you know, the Republicans were the factors in this whole not having accountability and inaction by Congress.
Now we see that with the Democrats, and that includes Speaker of the House, you know, Pelosi.
So what do we do?
And on the other hand, we have the mainstream media, because if they were to do their job, that would create the necessary pressure on Congress.
So the Congress would do what it's supposed to do.
It's not doing favors.
It's basically fulfilling their obligations to the American public.
And we don't have that with the mainstream media.
So this is why we are in this state, this sorry state of our nation, of seeing these criminals going unpunished and not seeing any accountability.
And we haven't seen any change whatsoever.
And, again, this is not just Cybele Edmonds insisting that, you know, they ought to be listening to you.
You have employees of the FBI who are willing and, in fact, eager to sit right next to you at the table under oath and explain why they say that you're right and that they should be listening to what's going on here.
Absolutely.
We have actually some CIA witnesses.
We have some people from the FBI.
And the Congress, they have the Inspector General's report.
This is what people refer to as a slam dunk case, you know.
They even have access to the classified version.
Because one of the things that I will do after this interview, Scott, I will send you the redacted version of my Inspector General's report.
And if you wish, you can publish it.
Nobody has seen this before in terms of the public.
Why, I'd be happy to.
Sure.
And what you will see is you will see more than 90 percent of this report completely blacked out.
So even based on that 10 percent, the unclassified summary version that they released, they have vindicated my case.
So the Congress has everything it needs to hold hearings and go about accountability.
They have the Inspector General's report.
They have the initial investigation results from this both Democrat and Republican, Grassley and Leahy's office.
They issued a report that hasn't come out.
And they have all this bits and pieces of confirmation that have surfaced in the past six, seven years.
My case is six years old, over six years old.
They have no reason, no justification, no excuse.
But, again, without the mainstream media, without having true journalism, they don't feel the pressure.
And as long as they don't feel the pressure, they are going to continue what they have been doing.
Sure.
And that is they're just going to sit here, and when we get out, we'll go just like Dennis Tastert and obtain a pretty nice position and collect our millions of dollars per year.
Right.
That's the pressure that they're feeling is to keep up with the Joneses, not to shape up and fly right and all that kind of thing.
So now let me ask you this, too, Cybele.
Luke talks about this investigation going back even to, you could even say, the later mid-'90s.
Absolutely.
And now, of course, in Philip Jirali's new article for the American Conservative Magazine about the investigations into the Israeli spying in the United States, they talk about this investigation going back to 1999 at least.
And to what degree do you think that these investigations, one springs from the other, something like that, or are they started at different angles, but they just happen to end up around the Israeli lobby one way or another?
Absolutely, they actually were part of the same investigation.
Because even if you look at the people involved, such as, you know, Frank Franklin, and before him, of course, above him, Douglas Pike, you are looking at the Office of Near East Policy, okay?
And that always, within it, has Israel and Turkey in there.
And there are so many points and there is so much evidence that they collected that actually came not from their counterintelligence under Israeli desk within the FBI, but came from the Turkish counterintelligence, okay?
And again, for this, the FBI did what it was supposed to do.
In fact, the agents who worked these cases, they were solid people.
And they wanted to go after these guys.
And so, as you see, it's very similar with this AIPAC case.
And how many postponements have we had so far?
And I don't believe, and again, this is another prediction I'm making here, I don't see that it is really going to get to any point of trial.
Because if they were to do what they're supposed to do, and if this case moves forward, it's not going to be these two guys and Franklin.
If they were to pursue this case in court and move forward fully, not just like a dog and pony show with the Scooter Liddy trial, then you are going to see many, many other high-level people involvement.
For example, Mark Grossman is one of the witnesses that the defense is calling.
Have you looked at that list?
Not recently.
Why don't you refresh my memory?
Well, now the defense wants to say that people in high positions, they were all aware of these activities.
Therefore, these activities by these people were not illegal.
In fact, people like Condoleezza Rice, they actually sanctioned this.
And in order to prove their point, they prepared a list of people that they want to testify as their witnesses.
And Mark Grossman is in there.
And if you look at that list, basically you're going to see who of all the near cons there, because they know that at some point the Justice Department, because of the pressure from the White House and other people, are going to say, no, these witnesses can't testify, or if they testify, it has to be behind a closed door.
These are the things you're going to see with the AIPAC trial, because the defense, they're playing it very, very smart.
They're saying, okay, how can we make this go away?
Because if they force the government to invoke something like state secret privilege, saying no, Condoleezza Rice and Mark Grossman, they can't testify, because these issues involve some highly classified stuff, and you can't get this or that document, the government is going to be forced to invoke the state secret privilege.
And if that happens, since this is a criminal case, then the court has to ask them to drop the case, meaning these guys are going to just walk free.
And again, the Israeli lobby is unbelievable, because they are twisting this case, and they are successfully, and I'm emphasizing this, successfully, are making this case to be a case of freedom of speech and the freedom of press, saying, well, if this case moves forward, this is going to be a big assault on the freedom of press, because it's going to bring about these consequences.
And again, this powerful lobby, and this is not only via AIPAC, because these people are spread all over the spectrum, from all sorts of civil liberties organizations to the secrecy, anti-secrecy organizations.
What they are putting out is they are trying to take this away from an espionage case and make it into the First Amendment freedom of press case.
And again, as always, they have the mainstream media to go along with their twisted games.
And so far, they have been successful, very successful.
Yeah, this is what they call gray mail.
You can't prosecute me, because you'll have to admit what criminals you all are and all the secrets you want to keep in order to put me behind bars.
Exactly, exactly.
All right, now, this movie, Kill the Messengers, what, a couple years old now, and I admit I watched it on Google Video.
I don't know if that's supposed to be a secret or something, but it still hasn't played even at the Alamo Draft House here in town.
What's it going to take to get this movie out?
Well, as you know, this film entered several festivals, and actually it won a few awards.
It won the Best Investigative Documentary Award in France, and it was aired 13 times in France during prime time, and also in Belgium, and also where Luke is from, in Australia.
And festivals, the Apollo Festival in Egypt, and recently in Vancouver, Doxa.
And as you just said, nothing here in the United States.
Again, that's another thing that we are looking at.
We are looking at highly polarized and controlled mainstream media here.
And also within the production companies in Hollywood, that's another thing that we see.
This incredible level of influence and power, when they want to get something and prevent it from coming out, they do it.
And I'm not talking about only the government, okay?
I'm talking about the other influences that are taking this country to a point of no return.
And unfortunately, not much is being said about that.
Anti-war is one of my most favorite fights.
I start my day with anti-war.
I like it because it is not from the perspective of partisanship.
It's good, it's nice to see the canon there, along with someone who is considered to be liberal.
But unfortunately, even within the blogosphere, you see this high level of polarization.
And people, they just tend to view everything in terms of party lines and partisanship.
And therefore, we are not addressing the root causes of the problems our nation is facing today, and the real problems, whether it is the revolving doors, or the campaign finance laws, or it's our hypocrisy-ridden foreign policy.
None of these issues that cause real causes are being attacked or addressed by many of these, even alternative media people.
But they tend to deal with the symptoms, okay?
And as you just mentioned, this case, my case, goes back to 1996-1997.
It's from 1996 to the end of 2001.
It involves both administrations.
And when you have a case like this, it's fortunate because it's not partisan.
It's all about facts.
But it's unfortunate because you are basically shunned by both sides.
And whether it is this side, the Democrats or the Republicans, nobody wants to touch it because it doesn't come across as one of those clearly divided, really clear division lines of partisanship.
And that is, again, very, very unfortunate.
And as long as we maintain this attitude, and this, I'm talking about the alternative media and the blogosphere too, we are going to see ourselves in the similar position two years, three years down the road, let's say, even if we get rid of this administration and have a new administration with a big D in front of, not the big R.
And we are going to see the same Congress, and we are going to see the same problems because we tend to go after the symptoms and not the root causes of our real disease.
All right.
Now, Luke, I want to give you a chance to finish up this interview by convincing me that somehow the glass is half full, right?
That's a pretty short answer.
I missed the bell, let me put it that way.
You can't see any positives in the future.
And we mentioned Hester earlier.
He was in the news, or in my news at least, just recently, because he's just got a new job lobbying for a company that lobbies for Turkey.
And Sabel has said over the years that that's exactly what she expects, that he'll get a job lobbying for Turkey, because that's where the real payoff comes from.
They sell out their office while they have these high-level positions, and then they make the big bucks once they get out.
And that's the perpetuation of the problem on both the Democrat and the Republican side.
In Sabel's case, Hastert was found to have been bribed by these Turkish interests going back to 1998 and 1999, to the extent that Bill Clinton and his Department of Justice went about appointing a special prosecutor to prosecute these crimes.
Not only Hastert, but there are at least four congressmen that we know of who are on the payroll who have been bribed by these guys.
Now that prosecution got derailed, just like all of these, it seems to.
And so now we're a decade later, and Hastert's getting a massive payoff with his new job.
And everybody knows what's happening.
I mean, that's the outrageous thing.
There must be, I don't know how many people within the US government who are aware of the fact that Hastert has been bribed.
And they all just keep their mouths shut.
When Clinton went about appointing a special prosecutor, or I guess it was Janet Reno, there must have been, I don't know how many people must have been in the loop to know what was going on.
Plus you've got all of the people at the FBI and what have you who were aware of it.
So there are a whole lot of people who keep their mouths shut for various reasons.
And the payoffs just keep coming.
That's probably a good explanation for why the Democrats have been so supine.
As you said earlier, they're just waiting to try and keep out of the media until they can get their payoff, when they lose their feet.
Yeah, it seems almost the definition of impunity.
Tell me this, Luke.
When you say Dennis Hastert has gone and gotten work representing the Turks, is that basically simply Turkey in this sense?
Is Turkey a euphemism for Lockheed?
I mean, is this really all about the dog really is wagging the tail here, not the other way around?
And that ultimately it's America's warfare economy at stake here.
And what he's done is got himself a job in the loop of American welfare payments to Lockheed in the form of aid to countries like Turkey.
In Hastert's case, we don't specifically know.
The firm that he went to work for is called 16 Shapiro.
Now they've done a lot of work for the government of Turkey in various energy-related fields going back to 1996, 1997, 1998, the exact time that Hastert was being bribed by these interests.
There's supposed to be a process that limits this activity called the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which means that these lobbying companies are supposed to report on what lobbying activity they're doing to foreign countries.
16 Shapiro, Hastert's new firm, just refuses to do that when it comes to Turkey.
There's no mention at all of Turkey in there, even though if you go to 16 Shapiro's site, they've got a whole bunch of different Turkish clients.
So it's difficult to see exactly through, to penetrate and see what's going on exactly in this case.
But, yes, it's usually related to the defence industry.
And there's also a sort of subterranean criminal network that basically runs Turkey that finances a lot of this bribery.
And the FBI is still trying to work out where the money comes from.
Phil Giraldi wrote that a lot of it appears to come from the narcotics business and also from the defence contractors as well.
All right.
Now we need to go ahead and wrap this up.
It's Sabel Edmonds, FBI translator, whistleblower, and Luke Ryland from letsabeledmondspeak.blogspot.com.
I'd like to give you all an opportunity to go ahead and address any major points that we didn't cover or closing comments you'd like to make.
Luke, you first, I guess.
Well, I wish I had some half full news for you, Scott.
As we've discussed, the US government on both sides has been sitting on this information for a decade.
It's hard to see where that might change.
And, again, to point out Sabel's point, the mainstream media doesn't touch any of these issues as well.
Vanity Fair did a big article exposing Hassett's bribery and not a single mainstream media outlet even mentioned it, even in the context of there was only one reference now that Hassett's got his new job lobbying for Turkey.
So, you know, it's hard to see any positive news there.
But I think if we keep calling Congress, that's about as much as we can try and do.
And Sabel Edmonds?
Well, Scott, I have said it all along.
All it takes is one congressman or a senator or a congresswoman, I'm not going to be sexist here, to call me in and put me on their oath and say, OK, tell us what is this case about and give us the documents.
And I have been ready to do this.
I have been pushing to do this for six years.
Now, if I'm on their oath in Congress and I'm giving them this information, if I am giving any misinformation or if I'm lying, I'm the one who will be facing jail time.
So I have been saying and I have said it all along, all it takes is put me there on their oath and any congressman, any congresswoman can do this, Scott.
All it takes is you have the case, you have the Inspector General's report, put me on their oath and say, as a representative of this country, as a representative, I'm asking you to tell my committee or to tell us, the people, what you know and what is it that the government is covering up.
And this case will then come out with some results and that is you will see prosecution, criminal prosecution of some very high-level people.
I have been saying this for six years.
I'm still saying it.
And all it takes is one good man or one good woman who does take his oath of office seriously and is willing to do that.
That's all it takes.
As simple as that.
Well, and see, now I can serve as a great example to my congressman.
It's not that hard to let Cybele Edmonds speak at all, in fact.
I want to thank you both very much for your time today.
Cybele Edmonds and Luke Ryland.
The website is justacitizen.com, letsybeleedmondspeak.blogspot.com.
Thank you both.
Thank you, Scott.
Thank you, Scott.
