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October 12, 2005

Somehow I doubt that Maloof was there

From U.S. News and World Report:

CHINCOTEAGUE, Va. – The first annual National Security Whistleblowers Conference, held on this tiny resort island, has to be one of the more unusual gatherings of intelligence veterans in recent years. The nearly 20 current or former officials from the FBI, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and even the supersecret National Security Agency who make up the core of the conference share an unusual distinction: They are all deeply out of favor with their longtime employers....

One of the biggest names of the conference never even uttered a word. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer is the military intelligence operative who recently went public with a controversial claim that a year before September 11, his top-secret task force "Able Danger" was able to identify the man who later turned out to be the lead hijacker as being connected to al Qaeda. Shaffer is a veteran of top-secret operations against terrorists, including some in Afghanistan, and several of his DIA colleagues have come out publicly to confirm that they remember Mohamed Atta being identified in 2000 as part of a project that combed through public databases looking for hidden links. But these allegations have been vigorously denied by the Pentagon and the White House, while several members of Congress are investigating. Shaffer was slated to speak but instead sat quietly by as his lawyer, Mark Zaid, spoke for him....

"We're trying to figure out what we can do," Zaid said, "which is not much." But he added that he will most likely appeal the clearance revocation. Zaid is also looking into filing a class action suit related to the revocations of security clearances in whistle-blower cases. "It's the mentality of how the executive branch works," he said. "You can show a pattern."

It's something that several other panelists had in common. Russ Tice worked as an analyst at the NSA, which houses the nation's international eavesdropping capabilities. He worked on some of the nation's most secret intelligence-collection projects. But while he was on temporary assignment at the DIA, he said, he became concerned that an analyst there might be spying for the Chinese government....

The conference was organized by Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who was pushed out of the bureau after raising accusations of wrongdoing by other FBI translators. She has been barred from discussing the details of her case by the FBI, which denies her allegations and says the entire issue is classified. She created the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition www.nswbc.org to bring whistle-blowers like her together to push for legal reforms and bring together other advocacy groups.

NSWBC.ORG is no longer available online from my ISP for some reason, but speaking of Edmonds, here's an interesting interview:

SH: It's interesting that the state-secrets privilege actually doesn't exist. There's no law that has ever been passed by Congress that even says such a thing. Wasn't it the Supreme Court that made up the state-secrets privilege in the first place?

SE: Yes, it's based on common law, and in fact, most judges don't even know how it is applied, and therefore that is another challenge we are bringing about: for the Supreme Court to look into this and say this is time for us to clarify just what the hell is this state-secrets privilege. If you were to go ask many attorneys in this country, they would tell you that, "Hey, I didn't know that the United States had any official secrets act," and they act surprised because even most attorneys don't know that we have this arcane draconian common law that is being exercised to gag people and rid them of their First Amendment rights.

SH: Sibel, let's see if we can figure out why they [the government] are going to such lengths to keep you quiet. Can you tell me, what is the American Turkish Council – let me rephrase that, can you tell me what the American Turkish Council is?

SE: Well sure, it's on the Web site. They are this lobbying organization for Turkish business and relationship between U.S. and Turkey. It's exactly like AIPAC

SH: Oh good, exactly like AIPAC!

SE: Exactly. In fact, they have so many crossovers, if you look at their members you will see many that are members of both organizations. And if you look at the people who are in the management and are in charge of these lobbying groups, you come across the same names, which is very interesting.

SH: That is very interesting. In fact, my next guest after you will be Bob Dreyfuss about the AIPAC spy scandal and something that occurred to me last night as I read the Vanity Fair piece An Inconvenient Patriot about you, was that some of the things I read about in there, and we'll try to get to some of this a little bit later, were about "unnamed Department of State and Department of Defense employees," which made me wonder whether perhaps your case is tied in with the AIPAC spy scandal case in any way.

SE: Absolutely. And I cannot go into any details – and maybe some other investigative journalist from across the ocean will come here and do the rest of this article – as article part two. But even the AIPAC spy scandal, as far as I'm reading today, is just touching the surface of it. It's going only to a certain degree. It doesn't go high enough, in what it involves and how far it goes, and that's as far, and the best – as far as I can explain.

SH: Thank you very much for that, and we'll see what we can make of it. Can I ask you how you first learned of the American Turkish Council?

SE: Oh, no, you can't.

SH: That's classified. Well, according to this article, which is written everybody by David Rose, it's in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine. It's called "An Inconvenient Patriot." And I'm going to go ahead, because the states-secrets privilege has not been invoked against me so far – I don't think. David Rose says in this article – he basically talked to the congressional staffers who have debriefed you. And what they say, is while you were translating intercepts for the FBI you overheard American Turkish Council employees discussing criminal activity among both Republicans and Democrats, and even including the Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert. Can you cough or sneeze or blink twice or anything for me?

SE: All I can tell you is that the sources that David Rose interviewed – they were the people that were present during the investigation of the Congress and their meetings with the FBI, so I am sure that it was not based on hearsay that they made these comments. I am sure that they based it on the wiretap recordings they heard and the documents. So they didn't just come and say this is what it was without having all those documents and files from the FBI to go over, and I guess their statements were based on the evidence that was presented to them both by the inspector general's office – Glenn Fine briefed the Congress – because as you know the IG report was classified, but they briefed the Congress. So I guess they relied on the documents from the inspector general's office and the FBI to make those statements. I guess that was the case.

SH: So this just doesn't come from you but from the official investigations of your accusations as well?

SE: That's what I would assume because if these are Congressional sources who were in these investigations, and also David Rose spoke with certain FBI officials who were part of these files and case investigations within the FBI – they would not make comments on what they think it is but they would provide facts, that is my assumption. Otherwise, Vanity Fair would not print it.

SH: The article quotes one unnamed official as saying, "This is the reason why Ashcroft reacted to Sibel in such an extreme fashion. It was to keep this from coming out."

SE: Uh, when you say "this," I don't know. If you go to my CBS 60 Minutes transcript of October 2002 – even though they chose to broadcast mostly the administrative problems and issues – I had one statement there that said that this involved people, officials, well-recognized names in the Department of State, Department of Defense, and certain elected officials. So I believe the source is also quoted somewhere else talking about the fact that in the late '90s they were going to have a special prosecutor to uncover these criminal activities and corruption, including the politicians – this is in the article. But later, after the administration changed, they decided to cool it and not do anything with it, so they stopped the investigation and they went against the initial decision of having a special prosecutor trying and indicting these criminals in the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Congress.

Here is the article from Vanity Fair:

The Edmondses' thoughts were turning to brunch when Matthew answered the telephone. The caller was a woman he barely knew—Melek Can Dickerson, who worked with Sibel at the F.B.I. "I'm in the area with my husband and I'd love you to meet him," Dickerson said. "Is it O.K. if we come by?" Taken by surprise, Sibel and Matthew hurried to shower and dress. Their guests arrived 30 minutes later. Matthew, a big man with a fuzz of gray beard, who at 60 was nearly twice the age of his petite, vivacious wife, showed them into the kitchen. They sat at a round, faux-marble table while Sibel brewed tea.

Melek's husband, Douglas, a U.S. Air Force major who had spent several years as a military attaché in the Turkish capital of Ankara, did most of the talking, Matthew recalls. "He was pretty outspoken, pretty outgoing—about meeting his wife in Turkey, and about his job. He was in weapons procurement." Like Matthew, he was older than his wife, who had been born about a year before Sibel.

According to Sibel, Douglas asked if she and Matthew were involved with the local Turkish community, and whether they were members of two of its organized groups—the American-Turkish Council (A.T.C.) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (A.T.A.A.). "He said the A.T.C. was a good organization to belong to," Matthew says. "It could help to ensure that we could retire early and live well, which was just what he and his wife planned to do. I said I was aware of the organization, but I thought you had to be in a relevant business in order to join.

"Then he pointed at Sibel and said, 'All you have to do is tell them who you work for and what you do and you will get in very quickly.'" Matthew could see that his wife was far from comfortable: "She tried to change the conversation to the weather and suchlike." But the Dickersons, says Matthew, steered it back to what they called their "network of high-level friends." Some, they said, worked at the Turkish Embassy in Washington. "They said they even went shopping weekly for [one of them] at a Mediterranean market," Matthew says. "They used to take him special Turkish bread."

Posted by Mike at October 12, 2005 12:22 PM

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