HAVE TURKISH AGENTS PENETRATED HIGHEST ECHELONS OF US
GOVERNMENT?
04-10-2006 18:50:00 | USA | Articles and Analyses
By Harut Sassounian Publisher, The California Courier
The Vanity Fair magazine published last year an
investigative article alleging that the American Turkish Council
(ATC) and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA)
had conspired, among other things, to make illegal campaign
contributions to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, in
return for blocking a congressional resolution on the Armenian
Genocide. The article also mentioned that Turkish agents had
infiltrated the highest echelons of the U.S. government.
The main source for some of the Vanity Fair revelations was
Sibel Edmonds who had worked as a Turkish translator for the
FBI. Unfortunately, she could not disclose most of what she knew
on this sensitive subject, as she is legally prohibited from
making public the confidential FBI documents that she had
translated in the course of her work. All attempts by U.S.
courts or Members of Congress to get out the full facts have
been quashed by the Bush Administration, using the cover of
protecting national security.
There have been several disclosures in recent months,
mostly from anonymous sources, which shed further light on this
matter. A few days ago, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen
posted a special report (WMR) on his website which included
alarming allegations about the extent of illegal activities by
Turkish groups in the United States. As the report is based on
confidential intelligence sources, there is no way of
independently verifying its content. Here are excerpts from that
report:
In 2001, "the FBI counter-intelligence operation was
investigating a weapons smuggling and influence-peddling ring
that was centered on the activities of the American Turkish
Council (ATC), a major Turkish lobbying organization in
Washington, DC headed up by George H. W. Bush National Security
Adviser, retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft. According to U.S.
intelligence sources, a principal player in the ring was [Marc]
Grossman, a career foreign service officer who served as U.S.
ambassador to Turkey from 1994 to 1997 and then moved back to
Washington where he served as Assistant Secretary of State for
European Affairs." In June 2001, Grossman, by
then-Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, made two
phone calls to two foreign intelligence agents in Washington,
DC. "The calls were intercepted by the FBI."
"At the end of June 2001, the FBI learned, through its
surveillance of the ring, Beyaz Enerji (White Energy), a Turkish
energy firm, told its ATC interlocutors in Washington that it
was sending a high-level team to the United States to negotiate
the procurement of nuclear materials for Turkey's nuclear power
program. In turn, the ATC contacted four individuals who had
access to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and Los
Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico and asked them to
arrange a three month visit to the labs by the Turkish nuclear
specialists (October through December 2001) to ascertain Turkish
requirements.
"The Beyaz Enerji group also made known its desire to
purchase U.S. nuclear energy consulting firms that maintained
access to facilities like Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Lawrence
Livermore in California. However, at the same time Beyaz Enerji
was making its play for access into U.S. nuclear labs, Brewster
Jennings and Associates, the CIA cover company of Valerie Plame
Wilson, was very close to penetrating the Beyaz Enerji ring,
known to the CIA as part of a major nuclear black market
operation involving key players in Turkey, Pakistan, Israel,
Iran, and the former Soviet Central Asian states. According to
CIA sources, the ring also involved a key ATC ally in Washington
-- the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a group
that provided important access to top U.S. political leaders for
Turkish military and industrial chiefs.
"When Beyaz Enerji began to encounter 'consultants' with
Brewster Jennings, they expressed an interest to their ATC
interlocutors in buying the firm along with other energy
consulting companies. In the two phone calls intercepted by the
FBI, Grossman told the called parties to ?stay away from
Brewster Jennings . . . they're the government . . . they're
nothing but a cover.? One of the calls was to a Pakistani Inter
Services Intelligence (ISI) top agent in Washington. The other
call, bearing an almost identical message, was made to a
Northrop Grumman official who was a key player with the ATC. The
Northrop Grumman official made a phone call to his ATC handler,
stating, "Our guy warned us off Brewster Jennings.? A U.S.
intelligence source stated that "Grossman's name was all over
the FBI wiretaps in 2001."
"Grossman, who now works for the Cohen Group of former
Defense Secretary William Cohen, was, according to U.S.
intelligence sources, a subject of interest to
counter-intelligence agents since his stint as U.S. ambassador
in Ankara. One of Grossman's embassy officials was U.S. Air
Force Major Douglas Dickerson, who worked in the embassy's
military attaché office and was responsible for logistics
matters with the Turkish military. While in Ankara, Dickerson
met and later married Melek Can Harputlu, who U.S. intelligence
sources claim was on the payroll of the MIT -- the Turkish
Intelligence Agency. U.S. intelligence sources confirmed that
Grossman ordered Dickerson to assist International Advisors,
Inc. (IAI), a lobbying firm registered in 1989 by Douglas Feith
[former Under Secretary of Defense] under the stewardship of
Richard Perle [former Assistant Secretary of Defense]. The main
task of IAI was to represent the government of Turkey in the
United States and "promote the objective of U.S.-Turkey defense
industrial cooperation." IAI, for which Feith was CEO and sole
stockholder, also steered hundreds of thousands of dollars to
Feith's law firm, Feith and Zell (FANZ).
"Soon, Dickerson, under Grossman's aegis, was promoted to
handle all U.S. weapons procurement for Turkey, Azerbaijan
(where Richard Armitage was heading up the U.S.-Azerbaijan
Chamber of Commerce), Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and
Turkmenistan. In 1996, the Defense Department's Inspector
General's office launched an investigation of a U.S. military
officer at the Ankara embassy who was caught receiving a bribe
from MIT agents. Shortly after the investigation started,
Dickerson was transferred to a U.S. Air Force base in Germany.
Dickerson's wife, Melek Can worked for the German-Turkish
Business and Cultural Association, known to be a cover for MIT
activities in Germany.
"In 2001, after George W. Bush became president, Dickerson
was promoted and placed in charge of weapons procurement for
Turkey, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Turkmenistan at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at Bolling
Air Force Base in Washington. Melek Can obtained positions with
the ATC and ATAA.
"Following the 9/11 attacks, Melek Can applied for a
translator job at the FBI's Washington Field Office. In a
Justice Department Inspector General report, it is stated that
Melek Can failed to list on her application her prior jobs with
ATC, ATAA, and the German-Turkish Business and Cultural
Association. When FBI translator Sibel Edmonds (a Turkish,
Farsi, and Azerbaijani translator who worked with Melek Can)
complained publicly about MIT's penetration of the FBI, Senators
Patrick Leahy and Charles Grassley pointedly asked the FBI why
no Special Background Investigation (SBI) was conducted on Melek
Can. The FBI's responded that Melek Can entered the FBI ?through
the backdoor? with her husband's Top Secret/SBI being sufficient
grounds to grant Melek Can access to FBI classified information.
At the same time, the Dickersons were, according to U.S.
intelligence sources, working closely with the ATC.
"Edmonds' charges against the Dickersons were highlighted
in a June 2002 Washington Post article. On September 9, 2002,
the Dickersons left Washington for Belgium, where Major
Dickerson was assigned to the U.S. Air Force NATO office. Soon,
there were three separate investigations of Edmonds' espionage
charges against the Dickersons: the Justice Department IG probe,
a similar probe by the Department of Defense IG led by Joseph
Schmitz, and a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee investigation led
by Leahy and Grassley.
"Two weeks after the Dickersons arrived in Belgium, Schmitz
sent a letter stating that Major Dickerson's relationship with
the ATC while at DIA was ?within the scope of his duties.? The
DOD IG terminated the investigation.?
Attorney General John Ashcroft then "invoked the State
Secrets Privilege and imposed a 'gag order' on Edmonds' making
any further comments to the media about her wrongful termination
suit against the FBI, which was prompted by her raising concerns
about the Dickersons. The invocation of the State Secrets
Privilege by Ashcroft was specifically requested by the Defense
and State Departments.
"Upon publication of a Vanity Fair article in August 2005
about the Edmonds case and those of other national security
whistleblowers, the Department of Defense and U.S. Air Force
opened a joint IG investigation of Major Dickerson and Edmonds'
charges, who was still safely ensconced at the NATO office in
Belgium.
"When the DoD/USAF IG investigators asked Major Dickerson
once again about the allegations that had re-surfaced against
him, U.S. intelligence sources report he told them that he would
?start talking? if the investigation proceeded. The DoD/USAF IG
investigation of Dickerson was once again quickly terminated. In
January 2006, Dickerson was promoted in rank to Lieutenant
Colonel and transferred to the U.S. Air Force base in Yokota,
Japan, where he was assigned as the 374th Logistics Readiness
Squadron?s acting commander.
"U.S. intelligence sources stated that the ?same people?
who have continually protected Perle and Feith since the 1980s
were also protecting Dickerson and Grossman. CIA sources,
including those who served in Istanbul tracking nuclear
smuggling in the late 1980s, also confirm that the Turkish-U.S.
nuclear black marketeering ring was directly tied to the Abdul
Qadeer Khan nuclear smuggling ring in Pakistan, an operation
that sold sensitive nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, and
Libya. The ATC and ATAA in Washington are directly tied to and
supported by AIPAC and the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs (JINSA), reported a U.S. counter-intelligence
source. In fact, JINSA is an 'Aegean' member of the ATC. The
source said that Valerie Plame Wilson was targeting the ATC and
Turkey at the height of her counter-proliferation work in 2001,
but special interests associated with AIPAC and JINSA, which the
source claims control ATC, scuttled Plame Wilson's operation by
exposing Brewster Jennings as a CIA front company.
"The CIA's counter-narcotics division is also keenly
interested in ATC and its connections to NATO. A Turkish hashish
kingpin, Huseyin Baybasin, now jailed in the Netherlands for
narcotics smuggling, stated that the Turkish military and its
NATO interlocutors are totally involved in the drug trade in
Turkey. He said the Turkish military uses MIT and Turkish
embassies, consulates, military missions (particularly the
Turkish military attaché offices in London and Amsterdam) as
drug smuggling facilitators. The Turkish military also
reportedly uses its hated Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) enemies
to help transport drugs throughout Western Asia, especially
heroin now being produced in Afghanistan at record high levels?.
"Since Grossman joined the Cohen Group as Vice Chairman in
January 2005, the firm has become a top client for the ATC. In
October 2005, Grossman was appointed a board member of Ihlas
Holding, a media corporation that recently sold its TGRT
Television network to Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp. U.S. law
enforcement sources confirm that Feith remains under a DoD IG
investigation that is being spurred by North Carolina Republican
Rep. Walter Jones."
There is a clear need for a congressional hearing to expose
all the facts of this very serious matter. However, it would be
impossible to hold such a hearing as long as the White House and
the Congress are controlled by Republicans who are eager to
protect not only their own leadership in the House but also many
top officials in both the Pentagon and the State Department who
are allegedly involved in these illegal activities.
Furthermore, while the Bush administration is aggressively
confronting the Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, shouldn't
the American public expect a similar concern for Turkey's
efforts in this regard, particularly since it is alleged that
high ranking current and former administration officials are
covertly assisting Turkey to go nuclear?