It did. Her name was Sibel Edmonds.
This is her story, as she told it to me. Edmonds discusses what
she knows, whom it implicates, and what she's been through and
what hope there is in the new Congress to start an investigation.
(Click
here to hear audio of the this interview). Swanson: This is David Swanson with Sibel Edmonds.
It's great to talk with you, thanks for being here.
Edmonds: Thanks for asking me for this interview,
David.
Swanson: So I should ask, I guess, before I
start, are you under any gag order? Are there things that you
can and cannot talk about?
Edmonds: Well - that's a very interesting question,
David, because when the government invoked the State Secrets
Privilege, it was specifically for the court procedures, so there
won't be any court hearings, and as far as the courts are concerned,
my case is gagged and classified.
Separately, they invoked the retroactive classification order
on Congress and this was for the Senate Judiciary committee in
May 2004 - and the way they imposed this gag order - and I have
to emphasize that this gag order was illegal, because in order
for them to retroactively classify congressional investigations,
the Attorney General for the Justice Department had to meet three
criteria and he did not. But even though the gag order was illegal,
at that time in May 2004, the Senate Judiciary committee complied
with it, they complied with an illegal gag order.
But I've never had a gag order placed on me as far as the public
statements, or any other investigative procedures are concerned,
but as you know they have declared everything in my case, including
my languages, and what I did for the FBI, classified. Now the
question is whether this classification that they're using is
even legal, or justified. As you know the executive branch has
complete control over the classification.
Swanson: So you are not allowed to discuss
what languages you speak? You're forbidden to say that?
Edmonds: Well - that's what they have ordered,
and that's what the court has actually ruled in their favor -
but the interesting this is if you were to go and just google
my name, you will see everywhere that my language skills are
all listed there - because it's public information. I mean, take
a look at the implications of this, based on this classification,
I can't even have my resume out there because when you put your
resume, and you put your language skills, that would be violating
classification. But my resume has been out there, and the government
has not come to me and told me to pull my resume.
They have been playing this game because they can get away with
it in court, and Congress - but as you can see, this information
is readily available - it's public. The same thing is true with
my university degrees - the government specifically declared
my Masters degrees, my undergraduate degrees, and the topics
of those studies as classified! This is the Kafkaesque thing
that I have been trying to point out to people, and we haven't
had much media attention on this - when they can go, in this
ridiculous way, in this ludicrous way, to invoke 'privilege'
and classification - even on information that is readily available
in public.
Swanson: For those who
still don't know what your story is, and what you did, and
why the government would
be taking these sorts of actions, why don't we start at the beginning
and just go very briefly, but maybe if I say a couple of things,
tell me if I’m wrong...
You were hired by the FBI just after September 11 when they
decided that it would be a good idea to hire translators who
knew foreign languages - and the foreign languages that you were
hired to work on were Turkish, Farsi, and Azerbaijani. And your
background is one of having lived in Iran, Turkey and the US
- and having had struggles in those previous countries with repressive
governments and censorship and corruption and having thought,
somewhat hopefully, about the US when you came here as being
a country of freedom and transparent government. Am I on the
right track?
Edmonds: Absolutely. I was a believer and I
took my citizenship oath in 1995, I really took that oath, as
you take any oath, seriously, and I was so proud to become a
citizen of this country and have the constitution, and all the
principles, and the bill of rights applying to me. As you know,
those rights are non-existent in countries such as Turkey and
Azerbaijan and Iran - in most places in the world, people are
not even allowed to write about those rights, forget about even
demanding them.
Swanson: What made you inclined to take a job
with the FBI as a translator?
Edmonds: There needs to be a brief explanation
- three years before I took that job, I was doing my studies
in forensic science and criminal justice, and I had applied for
an internship position with the FBI, not a full time or permanent
job position, and at that point they were interested in my language
skills, but they basically messed it up. I sent them the application,
I took the polygraph test for that internship position for their
language department, and somehow in 1999 they lost all that information
- not only mine, but from 150 other applicants they had for language
specialist positions. These documents, these files were lost
within the FBI - or at least that's the explanation they gave
to these applicants.
And then the 911 terrorist event took place
and I'd turn on the TV and kept hearing the Director of the
FBI pleading for
language specialists - especially for the languages that I speak
- because they were desperate for language specialists. And at
that point it was a duty to go and say "Look - I have these
skills, you need these skills for the nation, and I'm offering
it to you." So I took this position as a contract language
specialist for those languages and my top secret clearance was
issued and I started working five days after 911.
Swanson: And they were in pretty bad shape,
right? How many skilled translators of Turkish materials did
they have at that point?
Edmonds: At that point they had no Turkish
language specialists... In fact, they had an unofficial division
for years, and they had people coming, on and off, from DOD,
or the State Department on loan, and working on certain projects,
but they did not even have a formal division for Turkish. They
had a small division for Arabic language, and they also had a
large division for Farsi - the language spoken in Iran.
As you know, because of the Cold War, most of the emphasis was
placed on Russian languages - so they had a very large division
for the Russian language. Since 1991, the need was not as great
for those languages, and they never fortified the other divisions
- so they had a lot of Russian translators, and a lot of Chinese
translators, very few Arabic language specialists, and a mid-size
Farsi department.
And more than the size, and this is quantity-vs.-quality, the
department was not even managed, because the solid good working
people (at the FBI) are mainly agents, but the language division
is not managed by the agents - that division, for all these languages,
is managed by administrative people. These people are former
language specialists who have been promoted to supervisory positions
who oversee the language division, and you have no direct involvement
from the agents - so you have this layer of administrative people
blocking the interaction between the agents and the language
specialists. The second reason is that the language division
is considered the most classified and sensitive unit in the entire
FBI - so the clearance we had, and the access we had, was far
more sensitive than the agents'. So even when an agent wanted
to come to the division and work for a few minutes with a particular
language specialist, that agent had to be escorted to the division,
and watched, because everything is managed on a 'need-to-know'
basis, and let's say an agent is coming to that division to talk
with a Turkish language specialist, he may be exposed to some
other information from, let's say, the Chinese counter-intelligence,
or Arabic, for let's say Saudi Arabia. And they didn't want that
to take place, so there was this great separation between the
agents and the language specialists - and that itself brought
a lot of problems with it - because you had these bureaucratic
layers in the middle and the agents were very frustrated because
they wanted to work directly with the language specialists.
You know, a lot of people consider the language
specialists as like a clerical job, but you need to realize,
when the information
comes and you’re looking at all sorts of intelligence,
whether it's counter-intelligence or criminal, related to all
these different languages and countries, the first people exposed
to it are the language specialists. Before that information gets
transferred to agents or analysts, the first person who sees
it is the language specialist in charge of that particular language
- and that language specialist is in a position to decide whether
or not, this particular piece of information, whether it's a
wiretap or document, is important enough to be translated, whether
or not it should be translated verbatim - in detail, or just
a summary translation. So by the time that information goes to
an analyst or an agent, it has already gone through this filter
of the language specialist. So not only do they need to have
language skills, linguistic skills, the translators also need
to have training and enough information and knowledge to be able
to make that decision in terms of what is important, and not,
what is urgent, and not urgent.
Swanson: There's a saying
in Italian "Traduttore
traditore" which means "The translator is a traitor" -
which is something that poets and authors think - and this gives
new meaning to that phrase. If you have someone in that position
who is not doing their job, who has other interests and loyalties,
they're in a position of enormous power because no-one else has
seen, or can understand the information that has come in.
So you took this job 5 days after 911 and you were not translating
newspapers and public materials, so we can hope that someone
at the State Department was doing that - you were translating
wiretapped calls, transcripts and so forth, and by March of 2002
you were fired. Why were you fired? What happened in between?
Edmonds: Well - I'll try to answer that briefly,
because so much information is already available on the net,
in various publications that have come out that basically summarize
the issues that I reported.
Swanson: Ok - what's the best place for people
to go?
Edmonds: They can go to my website - justacitizen.com -
and there are plenty of documents there, both official documents
and various interviews etc., summarizing the case and there are
court documents there.
But if I were to summarize the 3 or 4 general areas that I reported
in terms of the serious problems... One had to do with, and this
took place almost within the first two months I was there, that
had to do with information related to counter-terrorism division
dealing mainly with the 911 terror attacks - and in order to
deal with it, not only did it deal with information available
after 911, but the agents and the divisions went and actually
retrieved a lot of documents and wiretap conversations - some
of them dating back to 1999/2000 - on various suspects, or people
they believed maybe were suspects.
So they wanted to review a lot of things that took place even
before 911. So you were not only dealing, after 911, with information
that started coming in, or being obtained after the terrorist
attack, but a lot of information that either was translated -
verbatim or in many cases summary translations - or things that
were maybe overlooked that were retrieved, again from the archives,
and this was a decision made by the higher-ups, and for some
of those materials to be reviewed again to see what was missed,
or what was not translated correctly etc.
Swanson: But you clearly came upon things that
the FBI did not want to see made public - would have found embarrassing.
Things that you made public to the extent that you were able,
that things were poorly translated, things were missed, things
were done wrong, and you reported to higher-ups that you had
colleagues who were not doing their work properly.
Edmonds: Correct - and, again, there were two
categories involved. In some cases it was either intentional
or unintentional, unintentional due to incompetence - certain
information that was not translated before 911 or they were translated
inaccurately. And I also emphasize intentional cases that I reported.
The second category (of things that I reported) was other information
that was available and there were significant issues, significant
cases, that were not pursued because of 'certain diplomatic relations'
and this is something that a lot of people have a hard time understanding,
and that is, selective selection of information. That is, let's
say certain information came from, let me give you a hypothetical
example, let's say it came from Iraq, or certain Iraqi individuals,
you can bet that would be processed because of the Axis of Evil
Doctrine by our President.
Swanson: Whereas Saudi Arabia is 'less evil',
for example?
Edmonds: Absolutely! Or you would have in certain
cases, there were certain cases that you had several individuals
or entities from different nations, let's say, Pakistan, or Turkey,
or Israel - and that information, due to pressure by the State
Department, they were not transferring that information from
counter-intelligence (they were obtained under counter-intelligence,
ok) - to the counter-terrorism division - even though they were
relevant, extremely relevant, directly relevant.
So the agents were very frustrated because, another thing your
listeners hopefully will grasp here, when we say 'the FBI' it's
not the entire FBI. All the agents that I worked with, they were
great individuals, they were patriotic, they were as frustrated
as I was - and they were outraged that these layers from the
Pentagon, and the State Department, that they were interfering
with their investigations - because automatically they had the
right, the obligation, to transfer that information that they
obtained from counter-intelligence, let's say, involving money
laundering tied to some terrorist activities, by let's say, Turkish
individuals, or some Pakistani individuals, or entities here
in the US (whether official governmental related entities, or
others) - to counter-terrorism to be pursued because they considered
the relationship with Pakistan and Turkey too sensitive and they
didn't want to mess it up.
Swanson: And so when you ran up against these
issues - facts that you thought important that were being covered
over, you went higher and higher up, correct? And so you spoke
with people like Deputy Assistant Attorney General, or the Director
of the FBI - did you ever get anywhere? And how high did the
problem go?
Edmonds: You are right on target, because again,
there's this misconception out there. People think 'OK, a whistleblower
sees some wrongdoing and they just jump out there and go to the
media and leak the information.' I spent 3.5-4 months - first
I went to my supervisors, but they were a part of the problem.
Then I went above them, I went to the division chief, then I
went to the FBI headquarters, I went all the way up to the Director
- Director Mueller. And I filed these issues, and when I filed
them, I filed them with the supporting documents. - it was not
me saying 'This is what I think is happening.' Because it was
within the FBI, I was presenting them - let's say there were
certain forms, certain documents - to the FBI Office of Professional
Responsibility - OPR - and the amazing thing that took place
was, immediately I started seeing this reaction to it towards
me.
First, the FBI management accused me of
having gone to congress, and disclosing this information to
congress, and I had not done
so at that point. I didn't believe that I needed to go to Congress
at that point. They did not believe me - they said 'we are suspicious
that you have been communicating with congress on these classified
issues and doing this via email communication' - so I had agents
coming to my house and removing my home computer - my husbands
computer - without a warrant! They took it, and then took it
to pieces, and they didn’t find anything - and so I said
'OK - maybe it was a misunderstanding.' Two weeks later they
issued an order for me to take a polygraph test, and the polygraph
test was to determine whether I had gone to Congress. Their fear
was not the classification, the fear was whether this was going
outside the FBI - and I passed the polygraph because I had not
gone to congress at that point. Then they started removing my
jobs, and as you know, finally I was terminated, and during these
3-4 months, I presented them with these 3 or 4 different categories
of very important issues.
The other important case (that I reported
on), had to do with certain public officials, corruption cases,
that the FBI had
obtained - and again, this was the operation that was taking
place between 1997 and 2002 - and I’m talking about solid
evidence. And these officials are high-profile public officials.
Swanson: People as high as say Congressman
Denny Hastert?
Edmonds: Well, that information has been public,
with the Vanity
Fair article, and he was only one of the people, at least
from the elected officials side - one of several. And they had
at least 2 or 3 people in the Pentagon, and they had at least
one person in the State Department - and they had this documented
information, evidence, on these people actually not serving the
interests of the United States - and giving out extremely sensitive
information to other...
Swanson: To Turkey.
Edmonds: Well, when you
say "Turkey" -
not necessarily the government of Turkey that we consider an
ally, but to entities that who are driven by certain interests
- many of them financial interests that have to do with the military
industrial complex - and they had this information, and those
same individuals - not the ones from Congress necessarily, but
the ones from the State Dept and Pentagon.
They were not only doing it with one country
- because that operation was the sister operation of another
investigation that
dealt with Israel, but the FBI was not translating these from
counter-intelligence to investigation units, and they were supposed
to do that. They were supposed to transfer and let the counter-espionage
unit in the FBI, and the criminal division handle it. But they
were not (transferring these cases). So this was another case
that I reported internally - and I never got anywhere with it
as far as the FBI was concerned - and later, of course, when
Ashcroft came out and invoked the State Secrets Privilege, Ashcroft
himself inadvertently explained it! There is a sentence there
saying "The State Secrets Privilege is being invoked in
order to protect certain sensitive diplomatic relations and business
relations of the US" - this is an exact quote from Ashcroft,
explaining why the State Secrets Privilege was invoked.
Swanson: Right! 'Business relations' as though
the US is a business... It's amazing to me that you put one honest
person in the FBI for a few months and they end up reporting
a number of different scandals and failures, and it makes you
wonder what goes on the rest of the time.
And the story of what happened, you sued, and they got it thrown
out on grounds of 'State Secrets' - from what I've read there
have been threats to your family, a suspect colleague of yours
has left the country effectively with the result that they can't
be called to testify, and I guess at least some of the allegations
that you've made have been confirmed, if not made public, by
the Inspector General at the Justice Dept who said that you were
basically fired in retaliation - is that right?
Edmonds: Absolutely, and the most amazing aspect
of it is, let's say you have a Justice Dept and the FBI who is
willy-nilly invoking this privilege to cover-up criminal wrongdoings,
but then you have these judges in the Federal Court, due to this
fear of 'Oh, I'm going to be violating some classification and
helping the terrorists' or for whatever reasons, going along
with it, and this happened in the lower court, it happened in
the appellate court.
I don't know if you remember this, but during
the appellate court hearings, these three judges closed the
court to the public
and the media, and after we argued our case, when the ACLU was
representing my case before the appellate court, and then it
was the government's attorneys turn to argue their case, they
asked us, the plaintiffs - my attorneys and I - to step out of
the courtroom because we couldn’t even hear what argument
the government had! I mean, how can you argue in court against
something that you don't even know what it is? So this is the
Kafkaesque aspect of it, and what our country has come down to.
Swanson: And you're not
a prisoner in Guantanamo - you're an employee of the FBI! Not
that they shouldn’t
have these rights either. This is the throwing out of the right
to stand and hear the evidence against you that's been part of
American and British justice for hundreds of years.
Edmonds: It's more than that, David. They are
doing it to an American citizen. What made me really outraged
was the fact that nobody in the media really reported on this.
Here is an American citizen, not a terrorism suspect - and yes,
they are misusing that big time, and it's against all sorts of
human-rights principles that we are supposed to have here - but
the fact that they are doing it to an American citizen, not someone
who is a suspect in a criminal case, or terrorism case, this
is an American citizen who is being deprived of her due process
and her Fourth Amendment, and nobody in the media picked it up.
The implications of this, now they are doing it successfully,
unfortunately, to American citizens. What does it say about where
we are today as a nation? And the disregard they have to the
Bill of Rights, and our constitution?
Swanson: And information that the FBI made
public, or gave to Congress, they classified that retroactively
right? They went back and decided we should make this stuff classified
after it was out there! Is there any possible respectable explanation
for that kind of secrecy?
Edmonds: Absolutely not.
In fact, later on in court, and this is the Project on Government
Oversight - POGO
- they sued the Justice Dept and they said "No. This information
was available for two years. More than 30,000 websites have already
downloaded it. How could you classify something that has been
out there for two years?" Later, the FBI conceded and they
didn't go through the lawsuit, they said 'Fine - you can publicize
it.'
Despite that fact, the Senate Judiciary Committee, the congress,
still didn't put those documents back online, they are still
afraid to put it out there. That is the part that is so mind-boggling
- which brings us to another important point. I went to Congress,
I went to the appropriate committees, the Senate Judiciary committee
and later I went to Congressman Waxman's committee - that's the
Government Reform Committee - and I observed the classification
rules, I went inside the SCIFs - these are the secured facilities
they have where they can receive classified information where
you can present them with documents, and details, and file numbers
etc. Initially, we had Senator Grassley and Senator Leahy, a
Democrat and a Republican - this was in the summer of 2002. These
two senators, together, came out publicly and they said 'We started
investigating this case, we have already interviewed the FBI
officials, they confirmed all her allegations to us, and she's
100% credible. We need to turn the FBI upside down' - and this
comment that 'We need to turn the FBI upside down' was made by
Senator Grassley on CBS 60 Minutes, with 5+ million people watching.
Swanson: And what was the follow through?
Edmonds: Nothing. Initially, they promised
that there would be this major public hearing, they were going
to bring these witnesses - because I'm not the only witness.
Some of these people's names are not public because they haven't
come out to blow the whistle publicly, but they have to congress
and the Justice Dept Inspector General's office filing exactly
the same reports that I filed. They started doing this in 2002
in April, May.
Swanson: Are some of them still employed?
Edmonds: Some of them are retired - and you're
looking at veteran FBI agents who were in charge of these operations.
They want to testify under oath, they want to testify publicly,
and they have filed these reports. So we got the promise from
Congress that there will be a hearing, these agents will testify,
they will bring in the bad guys from the FBI and have them testify
under oath - and then, nothing. A deafening silence.
Swanson: A lot of Americans expected that of
the Republican Congress. We've now had 2.5 months of a Democratic
Congress, with Senator Leahy now the Chairman. Now Senator Leahy
can do more than just write letters and complain about Senator
Grassley - what has the difference been? What change have you
seen?
Edmonds: Well, we are hoping to see the change.
Let me first do the distinction between the Senate and the House.
With the Senate, even though we have had Democrats gaining the
Majority, we haven't had almost any support from almost any Senate
offices. Unfortunately, somebody like Senator Feingold, who I
respect tremendously, he's not on the appropriate committee -
but you're looking at Senator Leahy, you're looking at Senator
Akaka, they are still acting as though they are being repressed
there - and they don't want to touch these issues. And of course,
you know, people like Senator Clinton - and there are so many
of them, and again, it's mind-boggling how these people, after
getting the voters who said 'We need change,' they're not doing
what they were asked to do - the reason they got re-elected,
or some of them who got elected.
In the House we have a little bit more positive
situation because we have some great individuals, people who
I respect tremendously,
Chairman Conyers, and Chairman Waxman, who have already started
fairly well, and again it remains to be seen with some of the
issues. I'm still hoping that they will do more, but at least
we have had some positive response. We’ve got a hearing
for whistleblowers through congressman Waxman's office and congressman
Waxman's committee - the Government Reform Committee - introduced
one of the best, I would say the only good legislation to protect
whistleblowers which will include national security whistleblowers
- from the agencies like the FBI, NSA, CIA etc. We are so thankful
for that - but when it comes to my case, because it is so controversial,
because it is so packed with damning information, they have not
been willing - and this is specifically congressman Waxman's
office - the Government Reform Committee - to come out publicly
and commit to this hearing.
And there is nothing, David, nothing that
stops them - they have subpoena power, they don't even need
to use it a lot because
there are so many agents, and I have their names, and they are
willing to go and testify under oath. We have been asking congressman
Waxman to come out publicly and say 'We are going to hold this
public hearing' - and I’m going to emphasize the word 'public'
- I have had closed hearings which act like these black holes
- you go there and you give the information and nothing happens.
This information belongs to the American public and until that
happens we won't find out about some unbelievable criminal activities
that are taking place within our government agencies.
So last week we started this public
action campaign that you're aware of, and I'm very thankful
to your website because you published that and you have been
one of the supporters and you have signed on to this petition.
We have 30 organizations - and this is transpartisan, David.
We have the ACLU, OMB Watch, Project on Government Oversight,
GAP (Government Accountability Project), National Coalition
against Censorship, OpenTheGovernment.org - we have people
from the right, we have libertarian organizations like Liberty
Coalition, we have People For the American Way, your organization.
Thirty major organizations have come together and put together
this petition, serving congressman Waxman and his committee
- and this happened last week - saying 'We want you to have
open, public hearings on this case' - not about the whistleblower
being fired - about what were the issues that were being covered
up, and are still covered up, and (calling) other agents and
other witnesses to testify so we can take this information
to the American public and we'll see some accountability.
And so far we have received no response, David. We have 15,000
citizens who have signed this petition,
we have 30 major organizations, we have had hundreds if not thousands
of people calling in the past few days, and we are still waiting
to hear from Chairman Waxman's office to publicly say that 'Yes,
we are going to hold these public hearings,' and have these witnesses,
these veteran agents, these high level FBI people who are willing
to testify, to testify. We want to introduce these documents
that have no information that is 'state secrets' or that will
hurt our national security - but information that will let the
public know that here we have appointed officials and elected
officials who are out there engaged in treason!
Now, some people may consider the way I'm characterizing this
as maybe outrageous, or an exaggeration, but I don't know what
else to call it, David. When you have people, for greed, for
money, selling out information, covering up cases, giving out
our true State Secrets information to entities - whether or not
they're allies, Israel or Turkey or Pakistan - these people are
engaged in treason.
And these cases are documented, the files, the wiretaps, go
back to 1997, 1998. They are documented, there are documents,
there are witnesses and we need to expose these people and we
need to see criminal indictments against these people - and it
will (happen). All we need is for this hearing to take place,
for people to testify, and for the documents to be introduced,
then you're going to see criminal indictments against these people.
Swanson: That's extremely well said, and I
think it's exactly right. This is the purpose that Congress serves
- to hold public hearings, not to issue reports quietly from
friendly witnesses, but to use the power of the subpoena, and
putting people under oath, and in front of cameras - and this
congress has not done this on the fraud that took us into this
war, and has not done it on the mis-steps that allowed 911 to
occur, and this is what we put a Democratic majority in the there
for in hope of, and we have yet to see it.
If people want to get involved and help push for this to happen
with your case, how can they do that?
Edmonds: The best thing they can do, and the
time to do it is right now because we just released this petition,
they were just served last week with this petition signed by
15,000 people and signed by 30 organizations, is for all your
listeners to call Congressman Waxman's office, both the committee's
office and his personal
office, and demand - send letters, call, because calling
is effective, send letters and emails, and say 'We want you to
come out publicly and commit to his hearing, and have this public
hearing take place' because they listen.
Unfortunately we don't have a good, independent
mainstream media - otherwise we wouldn't be in this position
in the first place,
David. You mentioned Iraq, and the illegal war - with all these
cases, unfortunately, our mainstream media acted as enablers.
They sit in the middle there and they didn’t do what they
were supposed to do, they're still not doing it, and they're
leaving the public in the dark. So because we don't have the
mainstream media we have people like you. We have websites like
yours, we have some of these great organizations who are doing
it on behalf of the public.
Swanson: And we have some
very talented film-makers, I haven’t seen it yet, but
who have made a documentary of
your story, right?
Edmonds: Yes David - and it's ironic, because
here it took these French producers, coming from France, on behalf
of this Channel2 French network to put together for a year and
a half, these directors and the producers worked on this case
to document it. And they also did a lot of investigative work
- but they had to come from France to put it in place here on
a case, on an issue that implicates US officials, and has implications
for the American public. And the Vanity Fair article that you
mentioned, that was done by this great reporter, David Rose,
who is British, he lives in England - he had to come and do a
one year investigation to [get] that piece out, and I don't know
what our mainstream media reporters are doing, but we are depending
on foreign nations, and other countries, to do what our own mainstream
media should be doing here.
And again, as I said, that's why it's up to these organizations,
activists like you and your listeners to take that two minutes,
maybe less than two minutes, and call Chairman Waxman, and remind
him that he's the Chairman, there's no obstacle.
This case is not allegation, it's not a case that needs to be
investigated, that has already been done. Even the Dept of Justice's
own Inspector General's Office has put out a report vindicating
the case. We have had bipartisan congressional statements saying
that this is credible, and absolutely confirming it. So this
is not taking something that is unknown. He's the Chairman, he
has the power, there's nothing that stands in his way, this is
a confirmed case, let's see some justice and accountability.
I don't want anything my job, about why I was fired, about why
they did these wrongdoings - yes, they did it to me, that is
me personally being affected, and it also sends a chilling message
to other whistleblowers - but that is secondary. The most important
thing is there are individuals who are engaged in acts of treason,
okay. People from the State Dept, people from the Pentagon -
some of these individuals are already under some quasi-investigations.
I mean, we hear things about Douglas Feith, we are hearing things
about Richard Perle, but trust me, they are not putting everything
that there is out there. Because when you are looking at organizations
like the American Turkish Council here, and you see the sister
organization is AIPAC. AIPAC helped form the American Turkish
Council - look at the board members, look at the people. You
will see the same people involved in both fronts, because it
is the same operation. And you come across the same individuals
over and over again. You know, I don't understand how the case
only ended up stopping with Larry Franklin - and I still can't
believe that the evidence that they had from the parallel investigation
didn't get its way into the court. You need to look at individuals
like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Marc Grossman, Dennis Hastert,
and others. And documented evidence they have collected on these
people. What are they doing with this information?
Swanson: It's an excellent question. All of
those people and more need to be subpoenaed and put under oath,
and on camera, and we need to get some information to the public,
without which we're not going to have a democracy. So I would
encourage everyone to take your suggestion, and call Congressman
Henry Waxman, and ask for open, public hearings on this issue.
And go to where? The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition website?
Edmonds: If you could publish the information
- Luke Ryland has put together an action campaign
page with all of that information with Congressman Waxman's
office phone number, fax information, email etc. It's a very
good website done by Luke Ryland, and I would appreciate it if
you would add that information so your listeners can go to that
website and also the phone numbers for Chairman Waxman so that
they can call and contact, that would be great (see contact details
below).
Swanson: We will do that, no question. Thank
you very much for taking this time to open some eyes to what
still needs to be looked into.
Edmonds: Thank you David, and thank you for
everything you have been doing, because as I said, our only basically
is you people, us, and those of us who are saying 'Let's defend
our country against all enemies - not foreign, but also domestic'
- and that's what you have been doing so we are thankful for
everything you have been doing. Thank you.
-----------------------
Contact Information
Congressman
Henry Waxman
In Washington, D.C.
2204 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-3976 (phone)
(202) 225-4099 (fax)
Ask for Michelle
Ash & David
Rapallo
In Los Angeles
8436 West Third Street, Suite 600
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(323) 651-1040 (phone)
(818) 878-7400 (phone)
(310) 652-3095 (phone)
(323) 655-0502 (fax)
House Government Reform Committee contact
page
By Mail or Phone:
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
U.S. House of Representatives
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-5051
Please also contact Congressman
John Conyers, asking him to support hearings by Chairman
Waxman. Email: [email protected].
Washington, DC
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax
Ask for Elliot Mintzberg
David Swanson is the Washington Director of Democrats.com and
of ImpeachPAC.org.
He is co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition,
creator of MeetWithCindy.org,
and a board member of Progressive
Democrats of America, and of the Backbone
Campaign. He was the organizer in 2006 of Camp
Democracy. He serves on the steering committee of the Charlottesville
Center for Peace and Justice and on a working group of United
for Peace and Justice. His website is www.davidswanson.org. |