This week GRTV talks to Sibel Edmonds, famed FBI whistleblower and the Editor of http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/ about the various ways that whistleblowers in the national security establishment are retaliated against, set upon by the establishment, and undermined by the very foundation-funded organizations that are supposed to be helping them.

CLICK HERE to download the audio of the full, unedited interview.

'Justifying' Torture: Two Big Lies

By Coleen Rowley and Ray McGovern
July 19, 2008

One can assume that former Attorney General John Ashcroft didn’t mean it to be funny, but his testimony on Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee might strike one as hilarious, were it not for the issue at hand — torture.

Ashcroft is the Attorney General who approved torture before he disapproved it, but committee members spared him accusations of flip-flopping.

He explained that he initially blessed the infamous torture memoranda drafted by Justice Department lawyer John Yoo and others in mid-2002 because he (Ashcroft) believed it imperative to afford the President “the benefit of genuine doubt” regarding how to protect American lives in the “war on terror.”

But Ashcroft added that, despite this, when concerns about that earlier guidance for interrogations were brought to his attention, changing his mind “was not a hard decision for me.” A very flexible Attorney General.

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_luke_ryl_080122_uk_media_slams_us_me.htm

January 22, 2008

UK media slams US media on Sibel Edmonds case

By Luke Ryland

The UK's Guardian is running a piece, "US journalists ignore Sunday Times scoop on FBI nuclear scandal," criticizing the US media for not picking up on the latest revelations by their competitor, the UK's Times, in the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds.

The author of the piece is the Guardian's media commentator, Roy Greenslade, a Professor of Journalism and former Managing Editor of the Times. He writes:

It looks to me as though the Sunday Times has landed a genuine world exclusive that should surely have been broken ages ago by US-based reporters.

I agree entirely. Consider what any journalist in the US has known, or should have known, for years.

Sibel's case broke as an espionage story in June 2002 in the Washington Post and an October 2002 CBS' 60 Minutes segment (youtube) where we learnt that foreign operatives had spies working for them in both the Pentagon and the State Department.

At Huffington Post, FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley has written a piece titled, Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed neocons can destroy the world (if we let them). While I recommend the entire editorial, here I will extract only this part:

"On page 362 of the Epilogue of his insightful book Chain of Command, Seymour Hersh asked the question back in 2004 that I predict will become the major question all historians will have to answer: "How did they do it? How did eight or nine neoconservatives who believed that a war in Iraq was the answer to international terrorism get their way? How did they redirect the government and rearrange long-standing American priorities and policies with so much ease? How did they overcome the bureaucracy, intimidate the press, mislead the Congress, and dominate the military? Is our democracy that fragile?""

The answer, Coleen, is simple: 9/11.

For those who are unfamiliar with Coleen Rowley:

The following picture was provided to INTELWIRE by means of the Department of Defense:

http://intelfiles.egoplex.com/abledanger.html

It's a better version of the picture released in the DoD Inspector General's report on Able Danger:

http://www.milnet.com/able-danger/Able-Danger-Output-From-DoD-IG-Report.gif

Using other pictures found on the internet, and this copy of Boesen's '93 bombing chart...

http://www.abledangerblog.com/lance.jpg

I filled in a few of the blanks in the Brooklyn Cell (red text), surprisingly easily:

They're simply the core group of '93 WTC Bombers from his earlier chart, sometimes the exact same picture. Anyone have any idea who's in the green square though?