Max Holland; Leak: Why Mark Felt became Deep Throat; Univ Press of Kansas (March 2012)

What was Watergate about?  Who was Mark Felt?  Was he “Deep Throat?� If he was, why did he do it?  Why should we care, now?  These are some of the questions underlying, addressed in, and raised by a new book by Max Holland titled Leak:  Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat.[1]

Watergate, at its root, was about the abuse of executive branch powers.  The discovery of a break-in at the office of a rival political party spiraled into an affair leading to impeachment proceedings and the resignation of a President, following revelations of high-level support for illegal activity including campaign finance violations, money laundering, wiretapping, and burglaries.

In a country based on constitutional principles like ours, drawn on a tapestry following a war for independence from tyrannical government authority, the exercise of executive branch authority always calls for oversight.  And good lessons from history can help illuminate current events.  In Leak, Holland provides a valuable and original inquiry into important historical questions.  Holland’s interpretation gives us some insight into a murky history, and it also provides context for currently pressing questions about the integrity of government and our Rule of Law.

Who Do You Trust?

Who can we trust, when lawmakers and law enforcers become lawbreakers?  What motivates those who speak out, or “leak,â€� to provide sensitive and previously secret information to society?  Can we always rely on people of integrity to speak out when warranted?   What if we can’t trust the people who do speak out, or the people who report what they say? Read more È

A string of suspicious events and encounters lead FBI translator Sibel Edmonds to the center of a conspiratorial net of cover-ups and possible espionage, as she attempts to unravel the truth behind buried sensitive case files that could shed light and incriminate high-profile individuals in connection with the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York.

Her struggle takes her to the halls of Congress, U.S. courtrooms, and, finally, the National Whistleblowers Coalition she helped found.

When Edmonds, a Turkish-speaking U.S. citizen, is hired by the FBI as a translator, she is eager to serve her adopted country in the wake of the terrorist attacks. But she soon finds out that the FBI’s translation department is anything but transparent, and accountability and oversight are sorely lacking. Files go missing. Translations are sabotaged, putting lives—the lives of FBI agents—in danger. Her immediate boss seems more and more unprincipled and crooked with every passing encounter. An atmosphere of fear and hopelessness prevents others from speaking out.

Edmonds, however, is determined to fight, even though it may cost her the job, and her and her family’s safety.

Yes, this is a memoir. We feel her frustration and puzzlement as she is discouraged, sabotaged, and even threatened during her search for answers. When a new co-worker stops by her house unannounced, Edmonds is convinced it is an attempt to recruit her and her husband into the Turkish lobby. She takes note. She begins to meticulously chronicle her encounters, meetings, and the brow-raising conduct of her bosses and colleagues…

Read the rest of this review here

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How Obama’s Targeted Killings, Leaks, and the Everything-is-Classified State Have Fused

White is black and down is up. Leaks that favor the president are shoveled out regardless of national security, while national security is twisted to pummel leaks that do not favor him. Watching their boss, bureaucrats act on their own, freelancing the punishment of whistleblowers, knowing their retaliatory actions will be condoned. The United States rains Hellfire missiles down on its enemies, with the president alone sitting in judgment of who will live and who will die by his hand.

The issue of whether the White House leaked information to support the president’s reelection while crushing whistleblower leaks it disfavors shouldn’t be seen as just another O’Reilly v. Maddow sporting event. What lies at the nexus of Obama’s targeted drone killings, his self-serving leaks, and his aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers is a president who believes himself above the law, and seems convinced that he alone has a preternatural ability to determine right from wrong.

If the President Does It, It’s Legal?

In May 2011 the Pentagon declared that another country’s cyber-attacks — computer sabotage, against the U.S. — could be considered an “act of war.â€� Then, one morning in 2012 readers of the New York Times woke up to headlines announcing that the Stuxnet worm had been dispatched into Iran’s nuclear facilities to shut down its computer-controlled centrifuges (essential to nuclear fuel processing) by order of President Obama and executed by the US and Israel. The info had been leaked to the paper by anonymous “high ranking officials.â€� In other words, the speculation about Stuxnet was at an end. It was an act of war ordered by the president alone.

Similarly, after years of now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t stories about drone attacks across the Greater Middle East launched “presumablyâ€� by the U.S., the Times (again) carried a remarkable story not only confirming the drone killings — a technology that had morphed into a policy — but noting that Obama himself was the Great Bombardier. He had, the newspaper reported, designated himself the final decision-maker on an eyes-only “kill listâ€� of human beings the United States wanted to destroy. It was, in short, the ultimate no-fly list. Clearly, this, too, had previously been classified top-secret material, and yet its disclosure was attributed directly to White House sources. Read more È

In this startling new memoir, Sibel Edmonds—the most classified woman in U.S. history—takes us on a surreal journey that begins with the secretive FBI and down the dark halls of a feckless Congress to a stonewalling judiciary and finally, to the national security whistleblowers movement she spearheaded. Having lived under Middle East dictatorships, Edmonds knows firsthand what can happen when government is allowed to operate in secret. Hers is a sobering perspective that combines painful experience with a rallying cry for the public’s right to know and to hold the lawbreakers accountable. With U.S. citizens increasingly stripped of their rights in a calibrated media blackout, Edmonds’ story is a wake-up call for all Americans who, willingly or unwillingly, traded liberty for illusive security in the wake of 9/11.

You can visit the Classified Woman website here: http://classifiedwoman.com

Classified Woman can now be purchased at Amazon, Kindle, Nook and directly here:

Personalized Signed Copies

You can purchase your personalized signed copy for $49.95 + Shipping & Handling.

When will Classified Woman be available in bookstores?

The short answer is: I don’t know. And here is the longer version as to why: This book is self-published. Despite its success during the very short period of its availability the corporate publishers and major distributors are still sitting on the sidelines, watching, and hoping for it to simply go away. To place this book on the shelves in bookstores takes a lot of work: Printing, warehousing, cataloguing, selling and marketing to bookstores, delivering, book-keeping and return policy implementation, accounting… In the next few weeks, depending on how we do with our online print and e-book sales, we’ll know more. I will keep you posted and welcome suggestions from those of you experienced in this area.

What is the status of government threats against this book?

My attorneys are still on top of the case. So are the government attorneys. I call this stage: the letter-waiting-letter period. A threat letter comes-we wait and assess-our letter is drafted and sent-we wait again-then another letter comes… Again, I believe the government is also watching the status of this book and the court of public opinion on it.

Why there hasn’t been a single peep in the mainstream media on this book?

That’s funny. Where have you been? You need to join, read, listen to, and watch Boiling Frogs Post!

How come you haven’t received any coverage from alternative publications such as Amy Goodman and Thom Hartmann?

I am not going to get into the philosophical discussion of what constitutes being alternative. I have written many analyses and commentaries on this. And of course, I cannot provide a definite answer since I don’t have it yet. Suffice to say that they have received their review copies, and they all know about the book. Sometimes these things take time. Sometimes it becomes a totally different ball game. If I were to guess: it is because George W. Bush is not in office any longer. You see, during George W. Bush I was welcomed more than once or twice at these alternatives. Then, something happened. George was gone, and I no longer was welcomed or needed for the game. Again, I’ll have a definite answer in the next few couple of weeks and I’ll keep you posted.

Do you have signing and speaking events coming up in California, Wisconsin, etc.? Read more È

Chase Madar joins us to discuss his new book The Passion of Bradley Manning, and talk about Manning’s motives, his treatment by the U.S. government and mainstream media, and the political issues brought up by his case.

Chase Madar is the author of a new book The Passion of Bradley Manning. He is a lawyer in New York and a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, the American Conservative Magazine, and Le Monde Diplomatique.

Listen to the preview Here
 

Here is our guest Chase Madar unplugged! (Subscribers only)

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From the Book the Establishment Doesn’t Want you to Read to 9/11, Perpetual War, Police State & Beyond

Yesterday (Friday, May 18), I had another video-radio session with Alex Jones that was supposed to be for 20 minutes but went on for over an hour. I was completely (utterly-totally) unplugged. Mr. Jones has a way of opening up his interviewees. Not only that, he is not afraid of getting into the ‘real’ issues-the macro topics. Some of you may know this already, but for those of you who don’t: I get miserably bored (and frustrated) when I am asked to recap the sufferings related to the whistleblowing journey, and to talk about the minute issues of bureaucratic bungling and incompetence. Unfortunately that happens to be the norm. Fortunately, for this Jones’ session I was not placed in that utterly boring and sleep-inducing position. We got to talk, passionately talk, about the macro issues, the most important aspects of my case and whistleblowing journey, and the core problems facing our nation. Thank you Alex Jones!

Here is the video interview session with Alex Jones:

I am thankful to all of you who have been supporting Classified Woman. Thanks to you we have been on Amazon’s top selling Memoirs lists, and rank 140 of all Amazon print books. The government, the mega corporate publishers, the mainstream media … in short, the establishment has been doing everything to bury this book. You, the readers, and I the author and independent-publisher, have been challenging them all, and so far we seem to be doing a good job of that. Please don’t give up. Together, collectively, we are setting precedence here by making ‘them’ irrelevant. Please help us get the word out there on this book- encourage those you know to join our movement. Let’s show them the power of the people. Thank you all!

*We are still offering personalized and signed copies of Classified Woman on our homepage.

Classified Woman Updates & Heads Up

For the past ten years, yes-that makes it a decade already, I’ve been asked repeatedly, whether by interviewers- researchers or the general public, ‘How can we bring about needed changes? How can we make a difference? What can we the people do?’ My answer throughout this decade has been consistent-always the same, ‘Stand up and challenge this rotten system. Resist. The least you can do is to support those who stand up and challenge the system. Whether it is a lone voice in Congress or a true journalist or a whistleblower … lend your support and stand by them.’

I have to say, for me, one of the main reasons I kept fighting back and resisting, the main factor in not giving up, was the support and encouragement I received from the people, albeit a very few-the irate minority. And today, that reason, that factor, still remains the same.

Writing Classified Woman was the continuation of my battle against our despotic government and the one percent who’ve been thriving upon it.

Publishing Classified Woman was a fight against that same government who tried, and is still trying, to censor every single word of it, and against the one percent who aided and abetted the government along the way. Read more È

Last Thursday I was on Occupied Territory with Mike Feder at Progressive Radio Network. This was my first experience with this show and it left me impressed with Mr. Feder. No boohaha, no sound bites, no boisterous interruptions … A highly informed and articulate host who comes prepared and tackles his subjects with diligence .

You can listen to the show here.

Also last week, on Friday, I was on Declare Your Independence with Ernest Hancock. I had an entire hour to discuss Classified Woman and beyond. I’ve been on Mr. Hancock’s show many times and truly enjoy his passion and stand on ‘real independence.’

You can check out the entire show here (I am on hour two), or, you can listen to my interview section here:

Sibel on Ernest Hancock Show [ 50:37 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A few notes on the decision to bypass the “System� in order to expose the “System�

Since the release of my book Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story I’ve been getting the same question in different variations: why did you decide to self-publish your book? What made you opt for self-publishing? What was the response you got on your manuscript/book? Did you even try to get this book published in the traditional way?

I know I promised you a series of articles and stories on getting this book published. I am going to keep that promise and give you plenty of ‘backstage’ stories. I’ll be doing all that once things calm down a bit around here. Meanwhile, to give you an idea, I’ll provide you with a few excerpts and snapshots. Life is short. Who knows if we’ll all make it to tomorrow? At least this way you get a pretty good idea, and no one will accuse of me playing the ‘suspense’ game.

We Need a Government Guarantee

One of the top 5 mega corporate publishers specifically sought ‘a guarantee by the Department of Justice.’ Let’s call the individual on the decision-making (for book selection) editorial board: Mega Publisher A. Here is how it went:

Mega Publisher A: It is an amazing story. You have an amazing case. It is simply amazing. BUT, considering the length the government has gone to silence you and classify everything about you, what makes you think they’d let this book see the light of day?

Me: There is this process called pre publication review. The government has 30 business days to review my manuscript, redact whatever they deem classified, and once they do that, the manuscript is free to be published. Read more È