Philip Giraldi: Found in Translation - FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds spills her secrets.

http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_01_28/article1.html

January 28, 2008 Issue
Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative

Found in Translation
FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds spills her secrets.

by Philip Giraldi

Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they never will. The former FBI translator turned whistleblower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington’s highest levels—sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage. She may be a first-rate fabulist, but Edmonds’s account is full of dates, places, and names. And if she is to be believed, a treasonous plot to embed moles in American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli, Pakistani, and Turkish sources was facilitated by figures in the upper echelons of the State and Defense Departments. Her charges could be easily confirmed or dismissed if classified government documents were made available to investigators.

But Congress has refused to act, and the Justice Department has shrouded Edmonds’s case in the state-secrets privilege, a rarely used measure so sweeping that it precludes even a closed hearing attended only by officials with top-secret security clearances. According to the Department of Justice, such an investigation “could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the foreign policy and national security of the United States.”

After five years of thwarted legal challenges and fruitless attempts to launch a congressional investigation, Sibel Edmonds is telling her story, though her defiance could land her in jail. After reading its November piece about Louai al-Sakka, an al-Qaeda terrorist who trained 9/11 hijackers in Turkey, Edmonds approached the Sunday Times of London. On Jan. 6, the Times, a Murdoch-owned paper that does not normally encourage exposés damaging to the Bush administration, featured a long article. The news quickly spread around the world, with follow-ups appearing in Israel, Europe, India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Japan—but not in the United States.

Edmonds is an ethnic Azerbaijani, born in Iran. She lived there and in Turkey until 1988, when she emigrated to the United States, where she received degrees in criminal justice and psychology from George Washington University. Nine days after 9/11, Edmonds took a job at the FBI as a Turkish and Farsi translator. She worked in the 400-person translations section of the Washington office, reviewing a backlog of material dating back to 1997 and participating in operations directed against several Turkish front groups, most notably the American Turkish Council...

Continued...
http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_01_28/article1.html

Grossman met with Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad

Posted by Robert Paulsen at DU;

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&fo...

One man described as a pillar of the ATC that Edmonds has been able to talk about is Marc Grossman. The same Marc Grossman who told Scooter Libby on June 11 or 12, 2003, more than a month before Novak’s column, about Wilson’s wife working at the CIA. http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001046.php The same Marc Grossman mentioned in the 1st edition of American Judas who had a meeting that was reported on September 10, 2001, as “most important” with General Mahmoud Ahmad, who resigned from being Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Chief the following month in the wake of an investigation by Times of India, confirmed by the FBI, that he authorized ISI agent Omar Saeed Sheikh to wire transfer $100,000 in August 2001 to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker of the 9/11 attacks. When questioned in April 2006 by director Mathieu Verboud for an interview that was later cut out of a documentary about Sibel Edmonds titled Kill the Messenger, Grossman claimed he didn’t know anything about Sibel Edmonds or Valerie Plame. This cannot be true, according to Edmonds, because Grossman was one of three officials – the other two, she says, are Richard Perle and Douglas Feith – who had been watched by both Valerie Plame's Brewster Jennings & Associates CIA team, and by the major FBI investigation of organized crime and governmental corruption on which she herself was working until being terminated in April 2002.

Now that yet another motivation for Cheney to blow Plame’s cover has been revealed, the role that Turkey plays in this game of “many dark actors” appears much larger. Edmonds has researched this extensively and wrote about it in a two part article in November 2006 titled The Hijacking of a Nation. To quote: “Turkey played a major role in Pakistan and Libya's illicit activities in obtaining nuclear technologies. In June 2004, Stephen Fidler, a reporter for Financial Times reported that in 2003, Turkish centrifuge motors and converters destined for Libya's nuclear weapons program turned up in Tripoli aboard a ship that had sailed from Dubai. One of those detained individuals in this incident, a 'respected and successful' Turkish Businessman, Selim Alguadis, was cited in a public report from the Malaysian inspector-general of police into the Malaysian end of a Pakistani-led clandestine network that supplied Libya, Iran and North Korea with nuclear weapons technologies, designs and expertise. According to the report, "he supplied these materials to Libya." Mr. Alguadis also confessed that he had on several occasions met A Q Khan, the disgraced Pakistani scientist who has admitted transmitting nuclear expertise to the three countries”. http://www.counterpunch.org/edmonds11292006.html

One more dot to connect: is Dick Cheney directly affiliated with any of the “semi-legitimate organizations” in this international criminal conspiracy? While only a thorough binding investigation with subpoena power can determine this, the gagged former FBI translator has left a trail of breadcrumbs pointing investigators in the appropriate direction. Again from The Hijacking of a Nation, 'ATC is joined in the creation of the New EuroAsia by the American Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (AACC). AACC's Honorary Council of Advisors just happens to have General Scowcroft and the following persons of significance: Henry Kissinger and James Baker III. Former Council members include Dick Cheney and Richard Armitage, and Board of Trustee members include media-overkill subject Richard Perle of AEI, and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas.' http://www.counterpunch.org/edmonds11292006.html

Interesting that Cheney is listed as having resigned from the AACC in November 2000. As though leaving the organization a month before the Supreme Court selected him to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency could cover up the fact that this American Judas has made more money selling the security of his country out for the greater profits of drugs, money laundering, arms sales and international terrorism than the 30 pieces of silver the Biblical Judas sold his friend Jesus Christ out for. This is a story that cannot be swept under the rug. It is a huge story, sometimes daunting, but it must be told, and those who are in the best position to tell it must no longer be silenced by a government that claims to be of the people, for the people and by the people. We, the people, hunger for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The outline of the truth has been mapped in this paper, but there are many more pieces of the puzzle to discover. It’s important to remember that no matter how many stories are listed here, it is still just one story. But to get the whole story, we must have a whole investigation. Nothing in our lifetime could be more important, because there is no greater endeavor than establishing justice. It’s what our Founding Fathers listed first in the Constitution for their priorities of forming “a more perfect union”. We owe it to them, and ourselves, to see the truth through to the end.

http://americanjudas.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

Good post, great comment, Reprehensor!

Good post, great comment, Reprehensor!

"Interesting that Cheney is listed as having resigned from the AACC in November 2000. As though leaving the organization a month before the Supreme Court selected him to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency could cover up the fact that this American Judas has made more money selling the security of his country out for the greater profits of drugs, money laundering, arms sales and international terrorism than the 30 pieces of silver the Biblical Judas sold his friend Jesus Christ out for. This is a story that cannot be swept under the rug."

MP3 Audio Clip - Philip Giraldi on Randi Rhodes Show

Friday November 30, 2007
Former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi Talks to Randi Rhodes on Air America About HR1955

* source = http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/live/
-----------------------------------

More MP3 Audio Clips >

translation go-slow order not confirmed

"The Justice Department IG report confirmed Edmonds’s charge that translators’ section managers
issued a go-slow order shortly after the terrorist attacks to create an artificial backlog that would justify an increase in budget and manpower. "

This is not true. The report did not confirm a go-slow order.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0501/index.htm

See Section VI.A.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0533/app7.htm

" With regard to various other allegations made by Edmonds concerning the FBI’s foreign language program, our review substantiated some but did not substantiate others. For example, we found that certain travel by linguists was wasteful, and that a contract monitor was hired even though he had not scored high enough on the language test to qualify for the position. However, we did not find sufficient evidence to substantiate Edmonds’s allegations that the FBI condoned time and attendance abuse, an intentional slow down of work to support hiring additional analysts, or travel fraud."

Any idea...

...what the circulation of the American Conservative is?
Edmonds story is slooowly spreading. Should be fun to watch though.

Dwightvw, I'm afraid you'll have to come up with a more reputable source ;-)

WTC Eye

RE: " I'm afraid you'll have to come up with a more reputable source ;-)"

Oh ... that was a good one ... lol.

Not my source

I'm not the one citing the IG's report as supporting Edmonds' story.

It's not clear whether you are snarking, so I will take your comment to mean that I used a faulty source to show that this same faulty source does not support Edmonds' allegation of a translation go-slow order, as claimed. If that's your point, it is silly.

If she had said that the IG's investigation was a sham, that would not have surprised me and I would not have rejected her allegation solely on the basis of the IG's investigation. Sham investigations are no surprise. But no, she has said, and allowed to be said on her behalf, that the IG's report supported her allegations. So she is saying that the investigation is sound and should be trusted. I'm just reading the IG's report to see if it supports her as she says. It does not.

And now, Lukery is saying that these allegations about translation were the "most trivial of Sibel's claims."

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/22/104221/060

They were very serious allegations because they were offered in relation to a very serious crime, only a year after that crime. They are also important to determine the credibility I am being asked to recognize. Not trivial at all.

This is not the only time Edmonds has claimed that the FBI supported her allegations, as I commented here:

http://911blogger.com/node/13444#comment-175040

I really don't understand why we are even talking about Sibel Edmonds. In the article linked from Jon Gold's recent blog entry, Lukery said that she has nothing specific on 9/11.

http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2006/07/sibel-911.html

"I spoke to her recently and she again said that she doesn't hold any specific insight into 911 - but noted, again, that she wonders why the USG appears so determined to hide everything."

Actually, she did make a specific allegation suggesting that 9/11 resulted from bureaucrats ordering translators to not translate so that they could hire more translators. This claim was widely publicized on 60 Minutes. The Sunday Times on January 6 says that "[h]er previous claims about incompetence inside the FBI have been well documented in America." This is wrong on two levels: the allegation of a "go-slow" order goes beyond "incompetence"; and it has not been well-documented, it has been refuted by the very source Edmonds asks us to trust. And I think the allegation is not plausible to begin with.

This is serious business, and I am tired of having my time wasted by a questionable story with no shown link to 9/11, that largely takes for granted the completely unsupported narrative of "Al Qaeda." I'm also tired of hearing how terrible it is that no press is being gotten, when in fact her story has gotten lots of press.
This is a blog about 9/11, not corruption and nuclear proliferation, and not about Sibel Edmonds' whistleblower claim.

Here's a proposed solution for nuclear proliferation - preemptive nuclear strikes by a new NATO directorate:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/nato/story/0,,2244782,00.html

One of the justifications for this disturbing proposal is "the dark side of globalization" that everyone here is speculating about, without any real evidence and without any link shown to 9/11, based on allegations by someone that I have just shown is wrongly citing an FBI source to support her claims.

Ms. Edmonds can't have it both ways: "good FBI" and "bad FBI." Based on the system's failure to investigate the murder of almost 3,000 people on U.S. soil, I say the system is all corrupt. But that's not what Edmonds and her supporters are saying. She's saying the system is partially corrupt, and we should trust her good FBI agents and the IG's report that she says supports all her claims. We should also trust the completely unsupported claims about "Al Qaeda" being behind 9/11, even after the 9/11 Commission chairs, FOR GODS SAKE, have said that crucial information was withheld and they could not judge the credibility of the supposed interrogations of alleged "Al Qaeda" members that were the central source of their narrative.

For Sibel Edmonds and her supporters to be promoting a story that we now know has no credible basis is, in my opinion, unconscionable. This movement needs to return to first principles, sweep all the Al Qaeda bullshit away, and state the only moral and reasonable position: we know nothing about what happened on 9/11 or who was involved, and we have a right to know what happened.

Ignore this, we are told, and instead hound the press about not covering Sibel Edmonds' story about Turkish and Pakistani spies and nuclear proliferation, nicely tied to 9/11 with a questionable report, not based on Edmonds' personal knowledge, about "Mohammed Atta" receiving money from a Pakistani general. And what do you expect the result of this will be? Fear, and maybe support for premptive nuclear strikes.

If the system is not all corrupt, it has to be allowed to work, balancing openness with legitimate concerns for secrecy. I hope that the state secrets ban is lifted to allow Edmonds to pursue her civil claim for retaliation. Since the Inspector General agrees that she was retaliated against, I would hope that a judge could figure out a way to allow that claim to go forward while protecting classified information. She should be compensated for what happened to her. Who is going to compensate me for the time wasted reading about this and pointing out the obvious flaws?

It looks like Erin S. Myers generally agrees with me on this. Anyway, I agree with him:

http://911blogger.com/node/13444#comment-174931

Even Giraldi is hedging, saying "She may be a first-rate fabulist, but Edmonds’account is full of dates, places, and names." Despite his doubt, It looks like Giraldi didn't even bother to read the IG's report. Should I trust him as a source? Why, because he used to work for the CIA? Shouldn't I just read to see whether he supports his argument?

Fantastic comment! I really

Fantastic comment! I really wonder why all the hard sell for Edmonds as a 9-11 gold mine. If she won't say what she knows then don't. Stringing us along with partial releases has eroded her credibility, even with the gag order.

-------------------------------------------
WTC 9-11-2001 was a Neocon-Zionist conspiracy,
but Jews DID NOT do 9-11 -
http://www.911blogger.com/node/8914#comment-174921
The WTC was destroyed by controlled demo-
http://www.ae911truth.org

Excellent post !

Thanks, DWightvw. Very good points.

Sibel BuzzFlash Wings of Justice Award this week

While I can't stand BuzzFlash Gatekeeper, they named her their "Wings of Justice Award Winner" this week.

http://www.wingsofjustice.com/08/01/woj08004.html

Sibel Edmonds Story

I was able to get onto NPR's "Where We Live" show today that was about Turkey and was able to bring up the Sibel Edmonds case (they actually let me talk!). The show can be heard at

http://www.cpbn.org/program/where-we-live/episode/looking-turkey#comment-21

I come in around 33 minutes into the show.

I also sent an email to them and posted a comment about adding links to the relevant articles and blogs. They did post a link to the original 60 minutes interview of Sibel from 2004.

great job

good overview of the relevant issues.

well done.

9/11 Congressional inquiry

From the first Times article:
"Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or somehow aided the attacks. Edmonds said the State Department official once again proved useful. “A primary target would call the official and point to names on the list and say, ‘We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans’,” she said. “The official said that he would ‘take care of it’." The four suspects on the list were released from interrogation and extradited."

From the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry report (p. 181):
"According to information obtained by the FBI after September 11, hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi was in contact with an individual (referred to as “the first individual” below) on the East Coast. [redacted]. [redacted]. Intelligence reporting has confirmed that a second individual, reportedly connected to the first individual, was an associate of Atta’s in college and that information in the first individual’s possession connected the first individual to Mohammed Atta’s sister]. [The first individual has been the subject of an FBI investigation since July 1999 and has ties to important al-Qa’ida figures and several organizations linked to al-Qa’ida. The FBI is concerned that this individual is in contact with several persons with expertise in nuclear sciences. (redacted)"

It is possible that the first individual and/or the second individual is who Edmonds is talking about in the Sunday Times excerpt above. That would certainly be interesting.

Also, what do you think Brewster Jennings was actually doing?

Good job Les

I listened to your call. Very good!

Cliff Notes

Roving bands of sociopaths occupying high offices are selling our state secrets to the highest bidders and our domestic media is largely silent. These "vampires" use the states secrets apparatus to shield their criminal activities.

Great Cliff Notes, wrong class

Try down the hall in Mr. Kos' class.

This class is about the state secret of 9/11.

The reading load just went way down since we learned that we no longer need to read the 9/11 Commission Report. Remember - the authors just admitted that they had no real basis for the report.
The Sibel-ologists don't get that - they're stuck in the old false paradigm.

Why make this class harder than it needs to be?

I really wish Edmonds would

I really wish Edmonds would just spill all her beans at Daily Kos already so we won't have to endure this constant hard sell that she has this explosive knowledge. It is almost as if they want the truth movement to endorse her, telling truthers to clamor for media coverage - before the truth movement can even hear what she has to say. Her stunt to tell all only to major network media was totally lame. If what she knew would bring justice then what does it matter if she tells through Daily Kos, or YouTube. Even a torrent video file should do.

If what she has to tell is really valuable and credible, then truthers would naturally back her up. Now we don't really know what she knows so why should anyone endorse her for anything.

--------------------------------------------
WTC 9-11-2001 was a Neocon-Zionist conspiracy,
but Jews DID NOT do 9-11 -
http://www.911blogger.com/node/8914#comment-174921
The WTC was destroyed by controlled demo-
http://www.ae911truth.org

Yes, the Shell Game indeed

Here we are talking about Sibel Edmonds and a novel, which we were also asked to promote sight unseen.

Have people forgotten that the chairs of the 9/11 Commission just admitted that they have no way of knowing whether their report is fiction? This was three weeks ago -- is it down the memory hole already?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&o...

The C.I.A. gave us many reports summarizing information gained in the interrogations. But the reports raised almost as many questions as they answered. Agency officials assured us that, if we posed specific questions, they would do all they could to answer them.

So, in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.’s general counsel. One set posed dozens of specific questions about the reports, including those about Abu Zubaydah. A second set, even more important in our view, asked for details about the translation process in the interrogations; the background of the interrogators; the way the interrogators handled inconsistencies in the detainees’ stories; the particular questions that had been asked to elicit reported information; the way interrogators had followed up on certain lines of questioning; the context of the interrogations so we could assess the credibility and demeanor of the detainees when they made the reported statements; and the views or assessments of the interrogators themselves.

The CIA's response is:

"If the commission had wanted to make an issue of how the information was obtained from the detainees, as opposed to what was learned from them, they had an opportunity to do so at the time. They didn't do that."

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5it6QM6JqrQP63KGOkwMB6MFskHRw

Of course it is much deeper in that, as Kean and Hamilton rather weakly acknowledged. "What we learned from them" (if anything) is of course the question.

The only reasonable assumption is that we have learned absolutely nothing.

Here we go again

Here is Lukery's latest article at Daily Kos.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/23/15114/3272/528/441861

It links to Sibel Edmonds' National Security Whistleblowers Coalition website:

http://nswbc.org/Press%20Releases/PressRelease-March5-07.htm

which links to former FBI agent Gilbert Graham's complaint to the FBI's Inspector General.

http://www.nswbc.org/Reports%20-%20Documents/RequestforInvestigation-SA_...

Lukery says in the portion linking to these websites:

One of the agents, Gilbert Graham, has confirmed some of Sibel's case. Graham worked on "counterintelligence investigations involv(ing) espionage activities by Turkish officials and agents in the United States." In 2002, he filed reports with the DoJ's Inspector General and Senate Judiciary Committee regarding violations

"in conducting electronic surveillance of high-profile U.S. public officials"

He too was obviously appalled at what was going on, to the extent that essentially ended his career when he reported this criminal wrongdoing.

How does an agent complaining of FISA abuse confirm Sibel's case?

Read Agent Graham's complaint carefully. It is he that was accused of violating surveillance rules, and is alleging he was unfairly disciplined for those violations.

Was he retaliated against for his work against public corruption? Was he disciplined for unlawful surveillance that was normally condoned, because this time it revealed crimes by powerful U.S. officials?

That's the only implication I can draw consistent with Lukery's article, but this is all speculation. We don't know -- Graham's complaint doesn't say that. What it says is that the FBI violated procedural due process in disciplining him for the surveillance violations, and that FBI mismanagement in the form of overburdening him led to the surveillance violations.

His lawsuit in federal court did not allege retaliation. Reading the appeal decision in his case, we learn that Agent Graham was suspended for three days without pay, reduced to a letter of censure after an internal appeal , with no loss of pay or benefits. The internal appeal recognized that he had a good record and promptly notified his superiors of the violation of the Intelligence Oversight Board regulations.

http://www.ll.georgetown.edu/federal/judicial/dc/opinions/03opinions/03-...

Nowhere does he talk about "espionage activities by Turkish officials and agents in the United States" or about "conducting electronic surveillance of high-profile U.S. public officials." If this is in the classified part of his complaint, how is Sibel Edmonds privy to this information? Yes, I know she says she worked on a Turkish case with Graham, but we are being told his complaint is corroboration. So where is it?

Most importantly, where does Graham talk about "high-profile U.S. public officials"?

The rest of Lukery's article claims support of FBI agents merely because they have not publicly distanced themselves from any of Sibel's statements. That's not sufficient for me.

Lukery says in this article that "cynics" is a more appropriate term for people that raise questions about Edmonds' claims. What does this mean? Is critical thinking about her claims wrong? How is that "cynical"?

I don't pretend to understand all of this. I'm merely reading the documents Lukery provides in support of Sibel Edmond's allegations. What I am seeing is not that Agent Graham's career was ended for "reporting criminal wrongdoing" in the form of electronic surveillance. I'm seeing that he was disciplined for unlawful electronic surveillance.

The only similarity to Edmonds' case is that Graham alleged mismanagement or abuse of authority.

It's hard to follow, but does all this mean that the tapes Sibel Edmonds was listening to may have been obtained through illegal surveillance?

The anonymous FBI specialist quoted by NSWBC says: "“…you are looking at covering up massive public corruption and espionage cases; to top that off you have major violations of FISA by the FBI Washington Field Office and HQ targeting these cases. "

Which should I be concerned about? And what do either have to do with 9/11?

Another question

According to the Inspector General's report, Ms. Edmonds worked about 20 hours a week from September 20, 2001 through March 20, 2002.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0501/index.htm

Section I, Section V.A.

Assuming no training or holidays, that is 27 weeks x 20 hours/week = 540 hours.

The first Sunday Times article says:

"One of Edmonds’s main roles in the FBI was to translate thousands of hours of conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets that had been covertly recorded by the agency."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece

How did she listen to, let alone translate, thousands of hours of conversations in only 540 hours?

I will just note . . .

that I have been banned from Daily Kos, after being a long-time trusted user, merely for commenting, not posting a diary, about what I consider to be the central question of 9/11:

How is it that the Twin Towers "collapsed," killing over 2,500 innocent people, and injuring some 50,000 rescue workers?

The answer to this question has absolutely nothing to do with Al Qaeda, even accepting all the official story of 9/11 up to the time of plane impacts. Other than the people on the floors where planes are said to have hit, all the people in the buildings died because the buildings "collapsed" before the fires could be put out. Therefore, they did not die because of Al Qaeda, even accepting the official story. They died because of what's called an "intervening criminal act" for which no plausible explanation has been offered.

Neither Sibel Edmonds, Gilbert Graham, or any of the law enforcement and intelligence professionals listed in the below position have even attempted to address this central question, but instead talk about negligence which, I submit, has nothing to do with the vast majority of deaths and subsequent injuries from 9/11.

http://www.pogo.org/m/hsp/hsp-911commission-040913.pdf

My point is this. Since I have been banned from Daily Kos for raising this issue, and since Lukery reads this blog, I would appreciate a response to the questions I have raised in the above comments.

I assure you that I would be quite happy to be proven wrong. I'm not the one making a case, I'm just responding to the case made.

I do hope you get your

I do hope you get your answer. But I think Daily Kos is a left gatekeeper that will never be able to explain its censorship actions openly and honestly without exposing its devious intent. Daily Kos, Huffington Post, so many "progressive" blogs and media outlets are just part of the false left-right managed opposition.

Even on this very site, I cannot create new posts - I am moderated. At least I can post comments.

--------------------------------------------
WTC 9-11-2001 was a Neocon-Zionist conspiracy,
but Jews DID NOT do 9-11 -
http://www.911blogger.com/node/8914#comment-174921
The WTC was destroyed by controlled demo-
http://www.ae911truth.org

Aren't all new posts moderated?

Mine was posted yesterday.

I'm comfortable now with the parameters of discourse here, because they include the destruction of the buildings. In fact, I've just been thinking that under the theory of intervening criminal act that I just laid out, whereby the majority of deaths and injuries were not caused by the impact of planes, certain controversial theories I've discussed here in the past aren't really necessary. I haven't changed my views, and wish I could discuss them here, but the conflict is not worth it. Everyone is aware of the various theories and can decide for themselves.

I have long argued that it isn't necessary to argue about the type of energy added to bring down the buildings, another controversial issue, because we all agree that massive amounts of energy had to be added. Thermate and explosives seem to be the consensus on the form of added energy. I'm not sure about that, but I don't see the need to argue that here because the primary fact is that massive energy was added to pulverize the buildings, and there has been no explanation for how that happened.

We should all be able to agree on this simple argument structure. I have, anyway, which is why I am comfortable with the parameters of discourse here and do not intend to bring up controversial theories.
Under the same argument structure, whether or not Atta was wired money by a Pakistani agent, or whether translations where purposely slowed down, etc., etc., doesn't matter because that's not how most of the victims were killed or injured.

Huffington Post has been publishing my comments relating to 9/11, so they seem less restrictive than Daily Kos. I don't really like talking about left gatekeepers, though I agree with you that this is probably going on. The positions of Kos and his "tinfoil hat" brigade are simply untenable, and that has become evident even to people like Naomi Wolf and Robert Scheer because of the CIA tapes story. Kos will look like a fool in the end. That's his problem.

Look what Robert Scheer said here:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20071211_scheer_dec_12_waterboarding...

On the matter of the existence of the tapes, we know the CIA lied, not only to the 9/11 Commission but to Congress as well. Given that the Bush administration has for six years refused those prisoners any sort of public legal exposure, why should we believe what we’ve been told about what may turn out to be the most important transformative event in our nation’s history? On the basis of what the CIA claimed the tortured prisoners said, President Bush launched a “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT), an endless war that threatens to bankrupt our society both financially and morally.

How important to the 9/11 Commission Report were those “key witnesses”? Check out the disclaimer on Page 146 about the commission’s sourcing of the main elements laid out in its narrative:

Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members. ... Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses ... is challenging. Our access to them has been limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogation took place. We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process.

Before the CIA tapes, Scheer was skeptical and derisive of "conspiracy theories." Not any more. He doesn't use that term, and it appears only in the comments.

(I added the bold to the word "claimed" in the above excerpt, because it is very important. Scheer is not speculating about what they said, he is properly stating that we have no idea what they said. I would add "assuming they said anything at all," because we don't know. In fact, if you really think about it, we don't even know if they were tortured, or if they even exist. They have not been produced in open court.)

Sorry for my ignorance, I

Sorry for my ignorance, I wasn't aware everybody was moderated. I guess that would mean everybody except the moderators are moderated. Was there a post laying out this policy?

I don't trust anything that comes from the 9-11 commission. They have been compromised from the start so I see little value in evaluating whether testimonies submitted to them were valid or not. If they would play blind to the controlled CD of WT7, why should I trust them on anything. As far as I am concerned the report is only useful as future evidence against the commission members for cover-up of mass murder. The book that Kean and Hamilton later released which blamed the admin for refusal to cooperate in the investigation was only an attempt to distance themselves from their crime.

--------------------------------------------
WTC 9-11-2001 was a Neocon-Zionist conspiracy,
but Jews DID NOT do 9-11 -
http://www.911blogger.com/node/8914#comment-174921
The WTC was destroyed by controlled demo-
http://www.ae911truth.org

OPINION PIECE ON SIBEL EDMONDS THIS SUNDAY - OREGONIAN

OT Sibel Edmonds article to be published Sunday in Oregonian

John Gold:

Thanks for posting my Community Writer's opinion piece from the Oregonian on-line about the US press failures on the Sibel Edmonds story.

http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18231

I was contacted by an Oregonian editor to check out the six comments I got to it. I cannot access the comments and you can't even get the entire article anymore. Someone seems to be unhappy with the exposure. I told the editor about it and asked their IT people to look into it.

I was pleasantly surprised when the editor told me that they are going to publish the article in the Sunday Oregonian Opinion section!!! The Oregonian is a Newhouse paper and not GE or Disney etc. I think they have a bit more independence. The Oregonian does have some Pulitzer Prize winners on staff. Who knows, maybe one of them will do something with it. Think positive.

Lukery: thanks for the comment to the earlier Oregonian on-line piece I did: http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonianopinion/2007/12/sandra_duffy.html

Sandy Duffy
Lake Oswego, OR