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After seven years of forced silence, a government whistleblower is opening up on what she learned while working as a Turkish translator for the FBI in the wake of 9/11.
In sworn testimony to attorneys on Aug. 8, Sibel Edmonds described a Pentagon where key personnel helped pass defense secrets to foreign agents or provided them names of knowledgeable officials who were vulnerable to blackmail or co-option.
And firmly rooted in this espionage program in the 1990s, according to Edmonds' deposition, were two men who, with the election of George W. Bush as president in 2000, found themselves in the Pentagon: Douglas Feith, who would head the Office of Special Plans, and Richard Perle, who would become chairman of the Defense Advisory Board.
"They were 100 percent directly involved," Edmonds told Military.com. "They were not in the Pentagon [in the late 1990s] but they had their people inside the Pentagon." One of those people, she said, was Larry Franklin, an Air Force officer assigned to the Office of Special Plans who, in 2003, passed classified information to representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Office, or AIPAC. By then Feith was leading the OSP.
Sibel Edmonds Assailed
With that in place, Jordan offers various forms of "emphatic" denials from both Perle and Feith --- something which, apparently, other U.S. news organizations have been unable or unwilling to do at all up until now. (Note: The BRAD BLOG has requested comment from a number of those accused by Edmonds, including former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Marc Grossman, former Ambassador to Turkey and Under Secretary of State in the Bush Administration who is said to have been the U.S. ring-leader in the operation. Both have refused multiple requests for comment.):
Perle, today a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and board member for or adviser to other think tanks, including the National Institute for Neareast Affairs and the Center for Security Policy, emphatically denied Edmonds' claims in an interview with Military.com.
Richard Perle Talking
"This woman is a nutcase. Certifiable," Perle said. "She makes wild accusations. She was fired from her job, and has been on a vendetta against " imagined demons ever since."
Feith, in an email to Military.com, said: "What I've read on the Internet about Ms. Edmonds's claims about me is wildly false and bizarre."
Defense Department spokesman Lt. Col. Eric Butterbaugh declined comment, saying any investigation into such allegations would be carried out by the FBI. An FBI spokesman said the bureau's policy is not to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation.
Excerpts from Brad's Blog of 21/10/2009 and Military.com
