I am going to break with the usual diary protocol and copy
this page in its entirety below the fold. I have no idea what "The International Post" is supposed to be, and this Sibel Edmonds story -- and supporting stories and media linked from it -- are apparently the only things of any substance that www.theinternationalpost.com has ever hosted so far. Furthermore, I can not figure out who the author, "Lynn Grant," is associated with; that might be a pseudonym. The HTML markup is messed up in that it looks like a hasty MS word doc conversion. Some of the link names pointing back to news items on the site seem to be named in Turkish. I have no idea what that might imply. So, on the chance that the site might be taken down on enforcement of Edmonds' gag order, I'm copying it in its entirety, and only cleaning some HTML and punctuation.
Please read, and then take the poll.
The International Post
Hastert's Turkish Allies Tied to Bin Laden
15 Aug 2005 07:48:00 GMT
By Lynn Grant
"If they were to
allow the whole picture to emerge... certain elected officials will stand
trial and go to prison." -- Sibel Edmonds
CHICAGO, Illinois,
Aug 15 (IP) - During the current flurry of September 11th
related news, one item has gone largely unnoticed.
Reports of former
FBI translator Sibel Edmonds' allegations concerning improper financial
ties between House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Turkish officials and
businessman have been a source of discontent for beltway insiders on
both sides of the aisle.
However, the
recent coverage has not addressed why Sibel Edmonds' information
regarding Speaker Hastert's dealings with the Turks necessitated an
in-depth investigation by the September 11th Commission.
In an August 10, 2005
interview about her
reported allegations, Edmonds was asked, "What are you alleging about
the Speaker of the House?" Though under a strict gag order, she replied:
"I have been
giving all the details to the appropriate channels. And they have
been confirmed. And what I have said all along is the fact that as
far as the 9/11 is concerned, September 11 is concerned, these
departments -- and when I say "these departments," the Department of
Justice, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense -- have
intentionally blocked the investigations of real -- the real criminals
in this country. ...
Most of al Qaeda's
funding is... through narcotics. And have you heard anything to this date,
anything about these issues which we have had information since 1997?
And as I would again emphasize, we are talking about countries. And they
are blocking this information, and also the fact that certain officials
in this country are engaged in treason against the United States and its
interests and its national security, be it the Department of State or
certain elected officials.
While alluding to
treason, Edmonds' reply indicates that her allegations about Speaker
Hastert are linked to al-Qaeda and the September 11
th
attacks.
To understand this
link, it is necessary to examine the substance of Mrs. Edmonds'
allegations, as reported in the recent issue of Vanity Fair:
A large part of
her work at the F.B.I. involved listening to the wiretapped
conversations of people who were the targets of counter-intelligence
investigations.
Many involved an
F.B.I. target at the city's large Turkish Consulate, as well as members
of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American
Associates. Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like
references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes.
One name, however,
apparently stood out - a man the Turkish callers often referred to by
the nickname "Denny boy." It was the Republican congressman from
Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert.
According to some
of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.'s targets had arranged for tens of thousands
of dollars to be paid to Hastert's campaign funds in small checks. Under
Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not
required to be itemized in public filings.
The Vanity Fair article adds:
The targets
reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in
surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information.
"She told us she'd
heard mention of exchanges of information, dead drops--that kind of
thing," a congressional source says. "It was mostly money in exchange
for secrets...."
There was talk,
she told investigators, of laundering the profits of large-scale drug
deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest
bidder.
"There was
pressure within the bureau for a special prosecutor to be appointed and
take the case on, "the [FBI] official says. Instead, his colleagues were
told to alter the thrust of their investigation - away from elected
politicians and toward appointed officials. "This is the reason why
Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme fashion [invoking the
rarely used State Secrets Privilege]," he says "It was to keep this from
coming out."
Though a Hastert
spokesperson has dismissed Edmonds' allegations and no evidence is
presented confirming Hastert received illegal payments, the article
reports on another wiretap in which "a senior official at the Turkish
Consulate is said to have claimed in one recording that the price for
Hastert to withdraw the resolution [recognizing the Turkish slaughter of
Armenians in the early 1900s as Genocide] would have been at least
$500,000."
The targets of the
wiretaps translated by Edmonds were heavily concentrated near Hastert's
Chicago-area congressional district. Vanity Fair
reveals that the FBI's investigation centered on Speaker Hastert's
Chicago-area district.
One counter-intelligence official familiar with Edmonds's case has told
Vanity Fair that the F.B.I. opened an investigation into covert
activities by Turkish nationals in the late 1990's. That inquiry found
evidence, mainly via wiretaps, of attempts to corrupt senior American
politicians in at least two major cities - Washington and Chicago.
In December 2001,
Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, contacted Sibel and
asked her to review some wiretaps. Some were several years old, others
more recent; all had been generated by a counter-intelligence that had
its start in 1997. "It began in D.C.," says an F.B.I.
counter-intelligence official who is familiar with the case file. But
"it became apparent that Chicago was actually the center of what was
going on."
These disclosures
about Edmonds' targets help to clarify her past statements to the press. For example, when
asked in a January 2005 interview if she had any information that would
tie the targets of her FBI wiretaps to the September 11
th
attacks or Osama bin Laden's organization, Edmonds replied, "Through
certain activities with money laundering, and narcotics and illegal
weapons procurement. Yes."
(audio)
More specifically,
Edmonds wrote in a July 2004
article that she has
"firsthand knowledge of ongoing intelligence received and processed by
the FBI since 1997, which contained specific information implicating
certain high level government and elected officials in criminal
activities directly and indirectly related to terrorist money
laundering, narcotics, and illegal arms sales."
Yet Edmonds may
not be the only well-known FBI Whistleblower with connections to this
9/11-related investigation in Chicago.
Beginning in the
mid-1990s, FBI Special Agent Robert Wright was given orders to
investigate several Chicago-based businessmen with ties to Turkey - and
Osama bin Laden.
Special Agent
Wright shared details of his investigation with Brian Ross of ABC's
Primetime Live in 2002:
ROSS: Their story
begins in the mid-1990s. With growing terrorism in the Middle East, the
two agents were assigned to track a connection to Chicago, a suspected
terrorist cell that would later lead them to an Osama Bin Laden
connection.
WRIGHT: We had a
cell in Chicago, right. And that was, that was the premise of how we got
the investigation going.
ROSS: But Wright
says he soon discovered that all the FBI Intelligence Division wanted
him to do was to follow suspected terrorists around town and file
reports, but make no arrests.
WRIGHT: The
supervisor who was there from headquarters was right straight across
from me and started yelling at me, "You will not open criminal
investigations. I forbid any of you. You will not open criminal
investigations against any of these intelligence subjects."
ROSS: You're on
the Terrorism Task Force and you were told you will not open criminal
cases?
WRIGHT: Yes.
ROSS: In 1998,
Al-Qaeda terrorists bombed two American Embassies in Africa, killing
more than 200 people. The agents say some of the money for the attack
led back to the people they had been tracking in Chicago, and to a
powerful Saudi Arabian businessman, this man, Yassin Kadi, who had
extensive business and financial ties in Chicago. Yet, even after the
bombings, the agents say headquarters ordered no arrests.
WRIGHT: Two months
after the embassies are hit in Africa, they want to shut down the
criminal investigation. They wanted to kill it.
ROSS: The move
outraged the Federal Prosecutor in Chicago, who says Agents Wright and
Vincent were helping him build a strong criminal case against Kadi and
others.
MARK FLESSNER,
FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: There were powers bigger than I was in the
Justice Department and within the FBI that simply were not going to let
it happen. And it didn't happen.
Wright's
investigation appeared to have had little effect on Chicago businessman
Yassin Kadi. The
Boston Globe reported in
2002, "Qadi was so well respected that he escorted former president
Jimmy Carter around a Saudi women's college in 2000."
Though a
presidential escort, Kadi's al-Qaeda ties are so widespread, agents
working on his investigation once pondered whether he may have been
Osama bin Laden. During a June 2003 conference
at the National Press Club, Special Agent Wright declared:
On June 9, 1998 ... I
became the only FBI agent before 9/11 to utilize the civil forfeiture
laws of the United States to seize $1.4 million in international
terrorism assets from a Middle Eastern terrorist group. The original
source of these seized funds was Yassin Kadi, a Saudi businessman.
During 1998, an assistant United States attorney and I discussed the
possibility that Mr. Kadi might actually be Osama bin Laden, or at least
a close associate of bin Laden's....
However, my
repeated attempts requesting FBI's international terrorism unit to
investigate Kadi's financing of international terrorism was ignored....
Four years later,
only three weeks after the September 11 attacks, Mr. Kadi was designated
by the United States government as the financier of Osama bin Laden.
Kadi, now 48,
acted as `the financier of Osama bin Laden' not only in the
Chicago-area, but in Turkey as well. Two months after 9/11, The Turkish
Daily News published an article detailing Kadi's investments entitled
"Osama bin Laden's `Cashier' in Turkey". The
Turkish Daily added:
Kadi, who was
living in Istanbul, fled from Turkey following the Sept.11 attack. Kadi
is a partner in two Turkey-based companies, the Karavan DisTicaret, a
foreign trade company, and Ella Film-Produksiyon, a movie company. He
once owned a 90 percent stake in Karavan and 30 percent in Ella but more
recently these stakes have changed due to capital expansion.
In March 2005,
Turkish authorities concluded an investigation into Yassin Kadi's
suspected links with al-Qaeda. The
Arab News described the probe's findings:
Turkey's chief
public prosecutor has formally ruled that there is no evidence
whatsoever to suggest that Saudi businessman and philanthropist Yassin
Abdullah Al-Qadi has had contact with or has assisted the Al-Qaeda
terrorist organization....
The probe
concluded that, far from being a member or supporter of Al-Qaeda,
Al-Qadi was above board and his actions were at all times wholly
legitimate.
Turkey's Prime
Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, took no issue with his chief
prosecutor's questionable ruling. Though few familiar with Turkish
politics would be surprised at Prime Minister Erdogan's position.
In November of
2001, The Turkish Daily News
published an article with the headline `Tayyip - bin Laden Relationship'
referring to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The article provided
translation of a Turkish language report one of the country's largest
newspapers which stated, "A Cumhuriyet headline said, referring to
Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan: "... Al
Kadi's business partner Faruk Sarac is a close friend of the Erdogan
family."
Though the Turkish
Prime Minister is a close family friend of a business partner of bin
Laden's financier, this may be nothing more than a coincidence.
However, another
report seems to cast doubt on the coincidence theory. The
Turkish
Daily News reported in October 2001:
Hurriyet said:
"Cuneyd Zapsu is the partner in Turkey of Saudi businessman Yasin
al-Qadi whose assets in the United States have been frozen because he
has links with terrorism. Zapsu, one of the founders of the AKP, is
Recep Tayyip Erdogan's closest friend."
Some Turks
consider Zapsu to be their own version of Karl Rove. Earlier this year
Prime Minister Erdogan
sued a news contributor
because of a political cartoon depicting Zapsu perched on Erdogan's
back. And in late 2004
The Economist reported:
Secular Turks...
fear that Mr Erdogan might use his muscle to expand the role of religion
in public life. The real worry should be that more power could encourage
his authoritarian streak. Even today only a handful of his advisers,
among them Cuneyd Zapsu, a wealthy businessman, and Omer Celik, his
youthful speech-writer, dare to disagree openly with Mr Erdogan.
The terrorist
tendencies are not confined solely to Erdogan's closest friends and
advisors. The Prime Minister himself has been involved in extremist
behavior.
According to The Turkish Daily News, "A Cumhuriyet headline said, referring to
the Istanbul Municipality during Erdogan's time as mayor, "The
headquarters of religious reactionaryism [sic]."
While Mayor of
Istanbul in the 1990s, Erdogan was
jailed for four months by
Turkey's secular military after reading an Islamic poem containing the
phrase, "Mosques are our bayonets, the domes our helmets and the
believers our soldiers."
Erdogan
imprisonment began in 1998, after a military coup forced his political
party from power. Less than four years later, Erdogan's party resumed
power and the national hero soon became Turkey's Prime Minister.
The Prime
Minister's life story reads like a movie script: a man of destiny and
vision, who can overcome any obstacle his path. Erdogan is surrounded by
leaders who have been by his side from early on in his political career,
including his Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and Parliamentary Speaker
Bulent Arinc. An April 1998 report in The Turkish Daily News stated:
Cumhuriyet
reported that the prison sentence Istanbul Mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan
has been given has come as a relief to the older generation....
Meanwhile, Abdullah Gul and Bulent Arinc are expected to come to the
foreground as the younger generation's potential candidates.
Another 1998
Turkish news article reported:
Commenting on the
prison sentence given to Istanbul Mayor Erdogan, Gul said... "This
incident will add strength to our cause -- to Erdogan's own cause and to
our party." ...
Arinc said that
they had not expected Erdogan to receive a sentence of this kind... "We
have joined our fates with our friend, Tayyip Erdogan."
Erdogan, Gul and
Arinc would soon become the three most powerful men in Turkey. Such
power combined with the Erdogan administration's various ties to Osama
bin Laden should cause alarm among American officials engaged in the War
on Terror.
Yet even
post-September 11, 2001, the result has been the opposite.
During a 2002 visit with the Prime Minister in Turkey, Dennis Hastert
stated:
It was a very good
meeting that we had with the new Prime Minister. ... We are committed as
our country, the United States, to work with Turkey, to carry on. We see
Turkey as a very stable country, as a matter of fact the model for
stability and moderation and democracy.
Despite the
Turkish government's refusal to grant coalition forces access to key
military bases during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Speaker Hastert never
wavered in his support of Turkey.
According to Turkish Speaker Arinc, Hastert declared, "We respect your parliament's decision.
Our Congress does the same thing from time to time. It is nothing to be
offended by."
In late 2004
Hastert made another trip to Turkey, as the Washington Post reports:
Folks in Europe
are still talking about that splendid, 10-day, pre-Christmas tour of
Europe led by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to attend the 60th
anniversary ceremonies of the Battle of the Bulge. The group stopped to...
visit more troops at Incirlik air base in Turkey....
Support
personnel... [were] amazed the plane got off the ground in Turkey --
what with all the fine rugs and pashminas -- not to mention some
Turkish-made shotguns Hastert and Dingell bought.
With such a
display of hospitality, it is not surprising that Speaker Hastert
invited his Turkish friends for a visit in May 2005. The
Anatolia News Agency reported on the trip:
Turkish Parliament
Speaker Bulent Arinc has indicated today that his visit to the US
Congress will be the first ever one by a Turkish parliament Speaker....
Arinc will be in
Washington DC upon an invitation from US House of Representatives
Speaker Dennis Hastert.
A Turkish government
added:
Parliament Speaker
Bülent Arınç visited Washington between May 24-27 as the guest of Dennis
Hastert, Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Arınç also attended
a reception hosted in his honor by Hastert....
Arınç, who
completed his meetings in Washington D.C. arrived in Chicago on May 27....
Arınç, who got
information from Turkish Consul General Naci Koru about the work of the
Turkish Consulate General in Chicago on Saturday... met Turkish community
in Chicago on May 29.
The previous
passage would have seemed relatively innocuous, if not for the recent
Vanity Fair article which included passages such as:
"It began in
D.C.," says an F.B.I. counter-intelligence official who is familiar with
the case file. But "it became apparent that Chicago was actually
the center of what was going on."...
The FBI's
investigations into a senior official at the Turkish Consulate is
said to have claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to
withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000....
In all, says a
source who was present, she [Edmonds] managed to listen to more than 40
of the Chicago recordings supplied by Robertz. Many involved an F.B.I.
target at the city's large Turkish Consulate... and the Assembly of
Turkish American Associations.
It should come as
little surprise that while in the U.S., Arinc visited the ATAA,
according to the
Anatolia News Agency:
Turkish Parliament
Speaker Bulent Arinc, who is currently in the United States upon formal
invitation of the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert,
met representatives of the Jewish community and of the Assembly of the
Turkish-American Associations (ATAA) on Wednesday.
Though even
without the recent allegations by Sibel Edmonds, the following
report from The
Turkish Daily News
regarding Prime Minister Erdogan's 2004 trip stateside to meet President
Bush may have raised an eyebrow:
Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan... first arrived at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago. ...
After the concert,
Chicago Municipal
Mayor Richard M. Daley held a dinner for Erdogan.
Welcome to America.