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Two weeks ago, I wrote an article detailing why I believed Chicago Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D., I11) was the unnamed female legislator referred to in FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds' recent deposition in the Schmidt V. Krikorian case: The former FBI translator claimed in her testimony that a Congresswoman was a target of sexual blackmail by Turkish agents when it was discovered said Representative was bisexual. In an interview with the American Conservative that was released last Tuesday, Edmonds confirmed that Schakohwsky is indeed the anonymous congresswoman to whom she referred in her deposition. In addition, the former FBI translator put out another explosive item that she had previously not disclosed. Edmond claims there was a covert American operation in Central Asia from 1997 to 2001 that involved several members of the bin Laden family.
There were bin Ladens with the help of Paskitanis or Saudis, under our management. (State Department official) Marc Grossman was leading it, 100 percent, bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back.
Although revelation that the U.S. government law may have had associations with al-Qaeda operatives, via Turkey, right up until 9/11, should have caused the most shock waves in the alternative media, the naming of Schakowsky as a possible lesbian was the item that was set off a furor on left wing web sites Daily KOS and Democratic Underground. Schakowsky herself appeared to use the 9/11 angle to discredit Edmonds and shield herself from scrutiny:
The American Conservative's most recent hit piece against Congresswoman Schakowsky is complete fantasy; cut from the same cloth as the stories by "birthers" that President Obama is not an American citizen. The source of this story subscribes to the bizarre conspiracy theory that elements of the United States government were involved in the 9/11 attacks["].
Yet, Edmonds was not speaking in the American Conservative of an "inside job theory' about 9/11. The former FBI translator has always been clear she does not have all the answers to the tragic events that brought down the WorldTradeCenter. What Edmonds is doing with this statement is simply pushing the timeline out for when U.S. support for Islamic fundamentalists in Central Asia ceased: she is claiming this support did not actually end until September 11, 2001. Furthermore, Edmonds claims U.S. support for Islamic radicals was carried out with the help of Turkish paramilitary groups and that Turkish officials were aided the importation of al-Qaeda heroin into Europe and the United States.
A lot of drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin.
As the proprietor of Daily KOS like to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The claims that the U.S. was using bin Laden for its geostrategic game in Central Asia, via Turkey, even after the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and that this support involved allowing heroin to be distributed in the West are certainly extraordinary. It is also certain that we should not take them at face value, since they are coming from a single source. However, those who try to dismiss Edmonds as a "fantasist' do so at their own peril.
Consider this: Few in the mainstream media believed Edmonds when the Vanity Fair article detailing a covert relationship between Turkish nationals and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was revealed. However, three years later, Hastert officially became a lobbyist for the Turkish government. When Edmonds claimed Turkey was smuggling U.S. nuclear secrets out of the country, she was again ignored by the mainstream of American thought. Later, the Bush Administration admitted it and retroactively pardoned Turkish "private entities' for involvement in nuclear proliferation. Then there is the fact that Edmonds is one of the most gagged persons in U.S. history: The state secrets privilege was twice invoked by the U.S. Justice Department against her, and former Attorney General John Ashcroft silenced the Senate in 2004 by retroactively classifying previously unclassified materials about her case. Finally, we must always remember that the U.S. has a long history of involvement with terrorists, organized crime and drug dealers. The best book on that subject is Whiteout by Andrew Cockbum and Jeffrey St. Clair.
So, even in the face of it, Edmonds' story is plausible. It becomes especially so when one reads the actual history of the U.S. government ignoring crimes of valued allies when they involved pushing forward cherished foreign policy goals of the state. If we assume then that Edmonds' shocking allegations of bin Laden-heroin-Turkey connection in the Balkans and Central Asia are true, or at least partially so, what are we to make of it? Why would the U.S. have allowed such an unholy alliance to occur?
The answer perhaps, lies in the book by former Jimmy Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard. In relation to U.S. goals in Central Asia, Brzezinski wrote:
Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them; ["] second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above ["].
For those not steeped in speaking the language of diplomats and academics,
the plain English translation is: "It is the right of the United States to do whatever it wants in Central Asia, regardless of the will of the people in those countries, in order to extend its own power." Edmonds' story appears to indicate that the U.S. may have included supporting mujahedeen as one policy to "co-opt and/or control" both Central Asia and the Balkans. Previous accounts, including form counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke's book, Against All Enemies, have claimed to U.S. officials quickly moved to stop al Qaeda operatives from taking over Bosnian conflict. This whistleblower seems to indicate that the U.S. was actually the facilitator of bringing jihadists into the former Yugoslav state. As far as Chechnya goes, it appears that the U.S. was dangerously close to committing an act of war with Russia.
This brings us to the present. Although Edmonds speaks of events that took place years ago, they are relevant to what is going on in the world today. As we speak, America's desire for control of Central Asia is what many believe is really being the "surge' of troops in the ongoing war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the U.S. has successfully pushed Armenia, a strategic state in the nearby Caucasus, to sign protocols with Turkey. This has important implications for oil pipelines, according to Armenian-American writer David Boyajian:
The West has already built two major gas and oil pipelines -- BTE and BTC -- from Azerbaijan's Caspian coast, through Georgia and Turkey. The U.S. insists that all pipelines bypass Russia and Iran ["]. That left Armenia, perhaps Russia's only real ally in the world, as the sole obstacle to total American domination of the western land route into the Caspian.
While the major reason for gagging Sibel Edmonds appears to be the cover-up of a major bribery scandal, there does appear to be a foreign policy rationale as well. If the Turkish espionage scandal had been fully vetted publicly in 2002, the American people have demanded accountability from Turkey and its domestic agents in the United States. This might have caused a rift in U.S. -- Turkish relations and ultimately torpedoed (at least partially) the current policy "triumphs', the aforementioned Turkey-Armenia protocols, as well as the continuing presence of a U.S. military base in Kyrgyzstan.
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