Leading Law Firm Hires Accused Criminal to Head Up New Office in Turkey

DLA Piper, one of the world’s largest international law firms, is opening for business in Turkey. According to The Lawyer magazine,”DLA Piper has been targeting Turkey after bringing on board (former Under Secretary of State) Marc Grossman.”

Choosing Marc Grossman to front for the Turkish operation is an unusual decision for DLA Piper. Grossman has been credibly accused of serious criminal activity involving the nuclear black market, facilitating terrorism, visa fraud, congressional bribery and blackmail. Former FBI Counterintelligence and Counterespionage Manager, John Cole has confirmed that the FBI investigated Grossman for a decade, and stated that the investigation was “buried and covered up.”

Under normal circumstances, one might expect that these allegations against Marc Grossman would hinder his career until the charges were confronted and dismissed, but the Turkish Lobby appears to applaud and appreciate Grossman’s ability to avoid any accountability.

In a recent court case regarding the Turkish Lobby and their operations in the US, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds stated under oath (pdf) that she had first-hand knowledge that Marc Grossman has engaged in this serious criminal activities. These activities, these allegations against Grossman, were again highlighted and expanded upon in a November cover story for American Conservative magazine.

Given that the charges against Grossman are well documented and date back to his time as U.S. ambassador to Turkey in the mid-Nineties, and given his subsequent career success, one can only assume that his long rap sheet is not a source of shame or embarrassment, but is actually highlighted on his curriculum vitae. Undoubtedly, Grossman’s employers; DLA Piper, The Cohen Group, and the ‘alleged shady Ihlas Holdings have done their due diligence and know exactly what they are getting when they employ Grossman.

It is still an open question which of Grossman’s clients know exactly which ‘abilities’ they are paying when they pay Grossman to achieve their goals. Surely DLA Piper’s most ‘important’ clients recognized that Grossman’s tongue was firmly planted in his cheek when he recently told Zaman that “the whole purpose of law firms is to promote the rule of law and that the presence of DLA Piper and other international law firms in the Turkish market will add to the legal standards of Turkey.” In fact, this is such transparent nonsense, that it is easy to imagine Grossman’s ‘important’ clients applauding him for being so brazen, as if it were a nod-and-a-wink in their direction.

Of course, Grossman need not have said anything at all in the direction of his ‘important’ clients. The simple fact that one of the leading law firms in the world was willing to even consider Grossman for this position is the most brazen signal of all.

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The Boiling Frogs Presents Naomi Wolf

Naomi Wolf discusses the fascist shift in the United States, how the state of our liberties has been getting worse under the Obama administration, and how President Obama has assumed the same position as Bush on States Secrets Privilege, unlawful detention and torture, and other similar assaults on our liberties. Ms. Wolf talks about the deplorable state of our two-party system and alternative approaches, the hypocritical silence of liberal antiwar activists, the need for new grassroots institutions and approaches to take back our civil liberties, and more.

Naomi Wolf is an author, activist and political consultant. She is known as an avid advocate of feminist causes and progressive politics, with a more recent emphasis on arguing that there has been a deterioration of democratic institutions in the United States. In The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, Wolf takes a historical look at the rise of Fascism, outlining the 10 steps necessary for a Fascistic group (or government) to destroy the democratic character of a nation-state and subvert the social/political liberty previously exercised by its citizens. The book details how this pattern was implemented in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and elsewhere, and analyzes its emergence and application in American political affairs since the September 11 attacks.

Here is our guest Naomi Wolf unplugged!

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A Book on ‘Arming America’s Enemies’ Written by America’s Enemies?!

David Albright, President of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), has a new book out (which I haven’t read) about AQ Khan and the nuclear black market called Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America’s Enemies.

In the “Acknowledgements” section of the book, Albright writes: “Many former government officials generously provided critical knowledge about the Khan Network, US policy, nuclear terrorism, and illicit nuclear trade. In particular, I would like to thank Richard Barlow, Joseph DeThomas, Robert Einhorn, Mark Fitzpatrick, Robert Galluci, Thomas Graham, Marc Grossman, Khalid Hassan, Fred McGoldrick, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Joseph Nye, Howard Shaffer and John Wolf.”

While most of these people are acknowledged experts in nuclear matters, the name Marc Grossman stands out as someone without particular expertise in this area. Since when has Marc Grossman been an informed source on these matters? Why is David Albright talking to Grossman? And why is Grossman talking to David Albright? And for how long has Grossman been plying Albright with ‘information‘?

Albright has been criticized by many in the intelligence community, and if Marc Grossman has always been a source, then it is no wonder that Alright is poorly regarded.

It is true that Grossman was a political officer at the Pakistan Embassy in the early 1970s when AQ Khan was getting started, and Grossman was Ambassador to Turkey from 1994-1997 when Turkish entities were involved in supplying the Khan network, and he was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in 2003 when a US-based Turkish company was caught supplying the Khan network – so he could conceivably assist Albright in some of these matters, but as far as I can tell, nobody has ever turned to Grossman for expertise on any of these issues, at least not publicly.

Is it possible that Grossman has been offering himself as a ’source’ to various authors to spin the stories away from the truth?

First, let’s revisit some of the Grossman’s activities according to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. In an article in the American Conservative by Phil Giraldi, Ms Edmonds describes systemic blackmail operations where Richard Perle and Douglas Feith supplied Grossman with information about specific (sexual, financial etc) vulnerabilities which could be used to blackmail people who had access to secret information, including nuclear secrets. Grossman would then give the information “to foreign agents who exploited the vulnerabilities of these people to recruit them as sources of information.”

In the same article, Ms Edmonds also states that the criminal network also “had a network of Turkish professors in various universities with access to government information.” In order to maintain and expand the network, a key asset, who was a professor of nuclear physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “would place a bunch of Ph.D. or graduate-level students in various nuclear facilities like Sandia or Los Alamos, and some of them were able to work for the Air Force.” Ms Edmonds further stated that “If for some reason they had difficulty getting a security clearance, Grossman would ensure that the State Department would arrange to clear them.”

Under oath (PDF), Ms Edmonds stated that Marc Grossman was on the payroll of various players in the nuclear black market and that he actively hindered efforts by the CIA to penetrate and unravel the nuclear black market. Ms Edmonds said that, in 2001, Grossman alerted his ‘business associates’ that nuclear consulting company, Brewster Jennings, was actually a CIA front company which was investigating the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Grossman’s outing of Brewster Jennings forced the CIA to shutter the company, doing untold damage to the anti-proliferation efforts, and putting many agents and sources in danger.

In short, Marc Grossman was actually a vital player in the so-called ‘AQ Khan network,’ and should be facing criminal charges.

David Albright’s use of Grossman as a credible source in a book about ‘arming America’s enemies’ is beyond ironic, and it undermines everything that Albright says or writes, and yet for some reason Albright is consistently presented as a serious expert on TV and radio, and given a chance to peddle his book.
 

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Newly Released FBI Documents Support Explosive Claims by Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds

Recently released FBI documents prove the existence of highly sensitive National Security and criminal investigations of “Turkish Activities” in Chicago prior to September 11, 2001. These documents add further support to many of the allegations that former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has claimed, in public and in Congress, since 2002. The documents were released under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into an organization called the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (TACA), an organization repeatedly named by Ms. Edmonds as being complicit in the crimes that she became aware of when she was a translator at the FBI.

The documents released under FOIA are almost completely redacted, but they do support many of Edmonds’ claims, including:
 

There were a number of very serious FBI investigations into “Turkish activity in Chicago” involving a number of targets, including TACA

These investigations were related to “National Security” among other things.

These investigations were regarded as so sensitive that no files were to be uploaded to FBI’s computer system.

Congressional corruption was involved.

The FBI repeatedly conducted actual “physical surveillance” against Turkish and American targets.

Some of these investigations were shut down in 2001.

The documents comprise primarily of internal FBI ECs (Electronic Communications) between FBI offices. Most of the ECs are titled “Turkish American Cultural Association” although one  from Feb 2000 is titled “Turkish Investigations in Chicago” which indicates that there were at least seven different pending investigations into Turkish activity in Chicago, and another later document from July 2001 indicates that there were at least ten investigations into TACA alone.

The earliest document is a November 1999 EC from the FBI’s National Security Division (NS-2D) to FBI field offices in Chicago, Washington DC, Los Angeles and New York (although there is a reference to a September 1999 EC from NSD.) The timing is significant. In an article in The American Conservative by Phil Giraldi, Ms. Edmonds notes that although there were investigations into Turkish activity dating back to 1996, most of that activity was being monitored by Counter-Intelligence based on FISA warrants because the main targets were foreigners, however in 1999 investigations were opened into ‘US Persons‘ and “they wiretapped the congressmen directly.”

The FBI was obviously concerned about ‘campaign donations’ being paid to Congressional Representatives by these groups. Ms. Edmonds has repeatedly referred to certain groups making “different kinds of campaign contributions – legal and illegal, declared and undeclared” to various congressional members. Two days after an EC from the National Security Division, Chicago reviewed the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC) database which contains details of donations to congressional campaigns. Chicago was apparently interested in donations made by “three individuals who attended the meeting at TACA.”

The FBI was also interested in the leadership of TACA. One EC notes that TACA held elections in 2000 and provides a list of all the newly elected officials. The EC states “Most pertinent to the above investigations was the fact that REDACTED had been REDACTED.” We know that Mehmet Celebi was elected President of TACA at that meeting. Ms. Edmonds has previously referred to Celebi as a key player in the Turkish mafia in the US, noting that the Celebi family is involved in arms and heroin trafficking. Celebi was also Vice-President of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations (ATAA), another organization named by Ms. Edmonds and others as being involved in various criminal activities.

In 2008, Celebi briefly received some attention when he was key fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, and was nominated as one of Clinton’s Chicago delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He was eventually kicked out of the Clinton campaign because of the scrutiny.

At the time, Ms. Edmonds said:

“In 2005, Vanity Fair reported that Dennis Hastert had been bribed by Turkish interests. If people want to investigate this further they should FOIA the FBI’s Chicago Field Office for information regarding Mehmet Celebi going back to 1997. If the FBI is honest, there will be boxes and boxes of files responsive to these FOIA requests.“

Famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg once said that “Sibel says that suitcases of cash have been delivered to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, at his home, near Chicago, from Turkish sources, knowing that a lot of that is drug money.”

The aforementioned Vanity Fair article, apparently trying to dodge some potential legal liability, suggested that “the reported content of the Chicago wiretaps may well have been sheer bravado, and there is no evidence that any payment was ever made to Hastert,” however a July 2001 EC regarding the “Statistical Accomplishments” of the TACA case notes that there were thirteen separate instances of actual ‘Physical Surveillance’ in the TACA case alone, suggesting that the FBI may very well have first-hand evidence of some of these crimes.

One fascinating feature of many of these documents is that many of them ominously warn about the sensitivity of the investigation. A typical warning reads:

“Extreme caution must be exercised in the handling of sensitive information contained within. No material pertaining to this investigation is to be computer uploaded. Information concerning this REDACTED investigation is not to be shared with CID (Criminal Investigation Division) absent FBIHQ/DOJ concurrence.“

Ms. Edmonds has often stated that these investigations into illegal Turkish activity were shut down by the White House and State Department in 2001 and 2002, but that the FBI Chicago Office fought to keep them open. Two of the ten cases related to TACA were officially closed by Chicago in July 2001, however even the documents relating to these ‘closed’ cases still warned that the information required ‘extreme caution’ and were not to be uploaded or shared with CID.

Asked to comment on these new documents, Ms. Edmonds replied:

“Finally! I’ve been saying this for years, and now we finally have documented proof from the FBI of this Turkish criminal activity based in Chicago.

This is fantastic, but even this is only the tip of the iceberg. The main question is this: Why has the White House and the State Dept been so determined to shut these investigations down? They shut down these investigations at the FBI, they shut me down with the State Secrets Privilege.

What are they hiding? Chicago was the center of it all, Chicago was the center of the foreign espionage activity, and the center for money laundering, and also a major heroin distribution center. Celebi was a key player, but Dennis Hastert, Mayor Daley, Robert Creamer and other US officials also helped facilitate these activities. When will we see some accountability?“

That is the ultimate question. We now have even more evidence of these crimes – but there is still no sign of any accountability. What will it take?

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Boiling Frogs Updates, Obama’s Preferred Killing Machines, Obama: Armed & Dangerous with States Secrets Privilege, & More

A major snow storm in effect with seven inches of snow already on the ground, fireplace roaring in the background, an ultra large mug of traditionally brewed Darjeeling tea sitting next to my pc, and my now 17 month old daughter playing right in front of the window where she can have a full view of the winter wonderland, make up the personal side of my update for this Saturday.

As for site updates, not much to report. Our site traffic this week was simply amazing, which is what it takes to get me going and make my ambitious to-do list even longer and more outrageous than it already is!

Peter B and I had a very interesting and informative string of interview sessions: Daniel Ellsberg, Nafeez Ahmed, and Andy Worthington. There will be no new interview posted next week, since I’ll be taking a real break from my computer for a few days starting on Wednesday, Dec 23. After that, I still have our interview with Mark Klein (AT&T-NSA) to post, and after that we’ll have the new year series starting with Dan Ellsberg.

I’ve been working with two producer-editor friends on a very exciting new project for Boiling Frogs Post. We’re planning to produce and publish an exclusive online documentary series, and we are already rolling! I won’t give out too much here, but in a month or so we’ll have much more to report on this. Stay tuned.

Now, here are a few items of interest:

Obama’s Preferred Killing Machines: Drones, drones, and more drone attacks

President Obama and his hawks are planning to increase the number of drone attacks. Since the new administration has taken office, the campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, which ironically began during the final months of the Bush administration, has intensified significantly. The US establishment media’s reporting on this issue has been limited to cursory and ultra-shallow pieces with a cosmetic line or two to give the effect of covering all sides; I’m sure all are vetted, approved, and dictated by the usual puppet masters. Absent in almost all these reports are: the real number of civilian casualties and the implications, and the real assessment of the purpose and effectiveness of our new president’s preferred killing machines in our undeclared wars.

Let me give you a few examples and a bit of a context:

Here are a few excerpts from L.A. Times reporting on this:

Senior U.S. officials are pushing to expand CIA drone strikes beyond Pakistan’s tribal region and into a major city in an attempt to pressure the Pakistani government to pursue Taliban leaders based in Quetta.

Okay, so that’s the introduction. They sanitize the real purpose with key words: Taliban Leaders. They want the reader to take that as the purpose.  Next is this:

The proposal has opened a contentious new front in the clandestine war. The prospect of Predator aircraft strikes in Quetta, a sprawling city, signals a new U.S. resolve to decapitate the Taliban. But it also risks rupturing Washington’s relationship with Islamabad.

As you can see it is indirectly, but not very subtly, justifying and cheering the drone attacks. Pay special attention to the following: ‘A new U.S. Resolve’- As in a strong, determined new administration, and ‘decapitate the Taliban’- as in wiping out the big bad evil shalvars-wearing curly-bearded cavemen who have been somehow declared, without technically being declared, as the terrorists and culprits in 9/11.

The side effect, the only tiny side effect aka risk cited is: oh it may put a little dent in our relationship with Pakistan.

The propaganda piece published by the stenographers at LA Times first offers the mike to the proponents of upping the killing machines:

The concern has created tension among Obama administration officials over whether unmanned aircraft strikes in a city of 850,000 are a realistic option. Proponents, including some military leaders, argue that attacking the Taliban in Quetta — or at least threatening to do so — is critical to the success of the revised war strategy President Obama unveiled last week.

As for the opponents, they only site the possibility of some dents on our relationship with Pakistan:

But others, including high-ranking U.S. intelligence officials, have been more skeptical of employing drone attacks in a place that Pakistanis see as part of their country’s core. Pakistani officials have warned that the fallout would be severe.” We are not a banana republic,” said a senior Pakistani official involved in discussions of security issues with the Obama administration. If the United States follows through, the official said, “this might be the end of the road.”

And finally, the stenographers continue with this glowing report on this now widely popular war machine strategy, albeit stating a false and unproven success record:

The CIA has carried out dozens of Predator strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt over the last two years, relying extensively on information provided by informant networks run by Pakistan’s spy service, Inter-Services Intelligence.

The campaign is credited with killing at least 10 senior Al Qaeda operatives since the pace of the strikes was accelerated in August 2008, but has enraged many Pakistanis because of civilian casualties.

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The so-called report conveniently omits the number of civilian casualties, the ratio between the actual targets hit and the innocents murdered, the real cost, and the implications when it comes to probable violation of sections 4 and 5 of Article 51, which prohibits attacks that treat military and civilian objects as one and the same. Yap, as always, the establishment media provides zip zip zilch on all the important facts and issues that really matter. Now, please read this propaganda trash that is being marketed by not only the L.A. Times stenographers but almost all the other establishment propaganda machines collectively referred to as the US Media.

Now, let’s look at some facts and reality points involving these drone attacks our new president seems to be so enamored with:

The US Drone Attacks, its Casualties, and the Implications

How long have we been hearing and reading glowing reports by our establishment media on ‘allegedly killed Al Qaeda Leaders’ and the glowing success of our drone attacks? And, once in a while, in small print, back-page, after-the-fact, corrections saying ‘ooooppps, now they say it couldn’t be confirmed whether these top Al Qaeda targets were actually killed’? You know exactly what I’m talking about. So, where are the balancing reports that are alleged, and in some cases supported and confirmed, from the other side?

For instance, there are reports that allege that between January 2006 and April 2009, U.S. drone attacks have killed 687 civilians and 14 al-Qaeda operatives, amounting to a ratio of 50 civilians killed per one al-Qaeda target killed. In other words, our drone attacks civilian death ratio has been around 95%. Or that of 60 drone strikes only 10 of them hit actual al-Qaeda targets, because of either faulty intelligence or reasons deemed top classified. Read more ?

It’s Time to Get the Facts Straight

I want to revisit a topic which happens to be extremely important to me, both personally and politically, and even more important to our civil liberties.

Some of you have already read my brief piece on Richard Horn & the CIA dishing out $3 million to buy silence in this narco scandal. Those of you who have not read it click here and read it – because this story also goes to the heart of a very significant and ongoing issue: The State Secrets Privilege.

My recent heads-up piece on Horn focused mainly on the CIA’s attempt to hush another narco scandal where the agency was directly and actively involved. Although I introduced Horn as ‘another recipient of the government’s State Secrets Privilege invocation’, I didn’t delve into the significance of this case on this repeatedly used and abused draconian privilege. This was partly due to wrongly assuming that the media, at least the alternative media, would have gotten all over it since lately the SSP has been a quite fashionable and talked about topic among the wanna-be progressive community. Well, I was wrong. Despite the scandalous nature of the case, and despite the massive implications to SSP, those who’ve been publicizing themselves and cashing in using SSP did not touch or mention the case.

The last time I wrote about the State Secrets Privilege and how it was being misrepresented and twisted by puppets in the media my blood was very close to reaching the boiling point. This time, with this recent Horn case and its direct SSP implications, my blood actually did reach the boiling point. In fact it is boiling now!

Here are a few excerpts from my previous piece on the State Secrets Privilege, starting with the intro:

During the past few months I have been actively following the latest activity on the state secrets privilege (SSP). First, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this issue of extreme importance to our civil liberties and constitutional rights was finally getting long-over-due and deserved attention from the media. After all, the memories of fighting SSP in the federal courts all the way up to the Supreme Court, holding press conferences together with the ACLU to bring needed media attention to this draconian abuse, making the rounds in Congress to have them address this ‘privilege’ through legislation to restrict its misuse and abuse, are still fresh and vivid for me.

Then I started detecting some troubling common trends showing up in media reports and subsequently in discussions and statements within Congress. The most suspicious of these came in the form of sanitizing major SSP abuse cases from reports put forth by both the mainstream media and some in alternative publications. The first invocation of the SSP by the Bush Administration was in my case. Back then, if you had done a Google search on ‘state secrets privilege’ you would have come up with only ‘7’ results; three of them repeats. After successfully getting away with SSP invocation in my case, the administration opened the flood gates for others. Now I invite you to search all the archived news reports on SSP in the last year or so. As you will see, in every single report in which the abuses of SSP and its history are cited, you will not find this first case; my case. Further, if you were to look for other major abuses of SSP, such as the Barlow Case, you will find none. The valid cases cited are mainly limited to:

I then went on citing the cases covered by the MSM and pseudo-alternative alike: Khalid Al-Masri, Maher Arar, Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, and Binyam Mohamed. Read more ?

The Mighty Agency on it’s Knees in a Legal Battle

After 15 years of legal battles the CIA agrees to pay $3 million to a former DEA agent who accused a former CIA official of illegally eavesdropping on him as part of a joint CIA and State Department effort to thwart DEA’s anti-narcotics mission in Burma in the early 1990s.

Richard Horn was stationed in Burma in the early 1990s as the DEA country attaché to Burma, a nation that is ranked as one of the top opium poppy producing countries in the world. He was in charge of overseeing DEA’s mission in Burma involving eradication of the opium poppy, which is used to produce heroin.

Bill Conroy of Narco News covers the latest on State Secrets Privilege recipient Richard Horn. As always Conroy dares to dig and cover this significant story when the rest of the media stenographers are avoiding it like the plague and as they are told by their mighty government sources above.

“The CIA’s efforts to undermine Horn’s work in Burma in getting that nation’s government to stem the flow of heroin to the United States should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with the “Agency’s” history. It seems the CIA, over the decades, has often found itself in the corner of narco-traffickers and thugs who support the Agency’s covert objectives in areas deemed critical to U.S. special interests – whether that be in Southeast Asia, Central Asia or Latin America.”

The CIA list of hotshots involved in the case includes former CIA Director George Tenet and recently retired Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo. Tenet and Rizzo played major roles in setting up the legal basis to justify the CIA’s use of torture. Here is Mr. Rizzo in action during the agency’s cover up operation on torture:

Conroy sums up the latest status of the case and the potential deserved sanctions that may be brought against Tenet, Rizzo, and other current and former CIA culprits:

And now, as part of the Horn case filed in a Washington D.C. federal court, we find a U.S. District judge, former FISA court member Royce Lamberth, opening the door for sanctions to be brought (as a result of the fraud, or lie, perpetrated on the court) against Tenet and Rizzo — as well as several other current and former CIA officials, among whom is Robert Eatinger, the current Acting Deputy General Counsel for Operations in the CIA’s Office of General Counsel (OGC).

If Lamberth’s judicial opinions in the Horn case are allowed to remain in the court record — to be recalled and cited going forward by other lawyers, judges and academics — then untold damage could be done to the reputation of the CIA and its leadership. Those judicial opinions memorializing the CIA’s fraud on the court also would serve as a permanent reminder of the occasionally dubious credibility of the Agency’s pronouncements invoking national security and the state-secrets privilege.

As part of this article Conroy provides a complete timeline and background on Horn’s case, involved CIA culprits, and of course, the mind-boggling and nauseating conclusions and implications. I highly encourage you to read Bill Conroy’s A+ piece: Click Here. Afterwards we will have plenty to discuss over here, and plenty to show those who write off CIA’s long past and still present involvement in global Narco-Trafficking as fiction or conspiracy!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

The Boiling Frogs Presents Richard Barlow

Richard Barlow discusses his experience as a counter-proliferation intelligence officer with the CIA in the 1980s, his work for the Office of the Secretary of Defense under Dick Cheney, and his incredible journey in trying to stop the proliferation efforts of the now infamous A.Q. Khan. He talks about the ‘real politics’ involving our relations with Pakistan and the Congress’ role, the draconian State Secrets Privilege, current disheartening status of whistleblower protection laws, and more!

Richard Barlow worked as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counter-proliferation intelligence officer in the 1980s. He learned that top U.S. officials were allowing Pakistan to manufacture and possess nuclear weapons, and that the A.Q. Khan nuclear network was violating U.S. laws. He also discovered that top officials were hiding these activities from Congress, since telling the truth would have legally obligated the U.S. government to cut off its overt military aid to Pakistan at a time when covert military aid was being funneled through Pakistan to Afghan Jihadists in the war against the Soviets. Barlow’s response: to organize the first interagency efforts to go after the A.Q. Khan nuclear network, well before it spread nuclear weapons to Iran, North Korea and Libya. After engineering the arrests of Khan’s nuclear agents operating in the U.S. in 1987, Mr. Barlow was sent by high levels of the CIA to testify before Congress, where he revealed that certain members of the Reagan administration had been misleading Congress. Barlow’s efforts to enforce the law and tell the truth caused Congress to come within an inch of terminating aid to Pakistan. As a result, he was persecuted as a traitor by some cold warriors in the CIA and State Department, shutting down his operations and clouding his future in the Agency.

For additional information on Richard Barlow and related documents visit POGO.

Here is our guest Richard Barlow unplugged!

A Few New Developments in The Makings of a Police State

What happened to the month of September?! For me, it just flew by: The Krikorian Case, the American Conservative Magazine article, the latest from former FBI CI Specialist John Cole, several interesting interviews for our upcoming Boiling Frogs Show, building and designing my soon-to-be-launched website…and of course full-time motherhood and my part time job. Well, I am still standing!

I am expecting to have the new site up and running by mid October. Since ‘blogger’ doesn’t have a forwarding function I’ll post the notice for the new site as my last post to direct our readers to the site. It’s not going to be just a new site but the beginning of a new exciting project. Once the move is completed and we are settled, I’ll announce the names of my investigative journalist partners whom you all will recognize, together with a few other projects and objectives.

I’ve been running behind in publishing my next series of Boiling Frogs Interviews. In the next few weeks I’ll post interviews with John Cole (Former FBI CI Specialist), Melvin Goodman (Former CIA Analyst), Richard Barlow (Former CIA Analyst), and Steve Kohn (Attorney & the Founder of National Whistleblowers Center).

Speaking of interviews, here is the transcript of a great interview by Scott Horton with Philip Giraldi and Joe Lauria based on the American Conservative Magazine cover story.

Here is some semi-recent news and developments related to our ‘Police State’ topics I’ve been meaning to post, but for one reason or another were unable to actually sit down and do:

President of words but not actions

Those of you who’ve been following the latest on the President’s half-hearted promises on the future of the State Secrets Privilege may want to check out his latest action in ‘action’ and ‘implementation.’ The informed civil libertarians have been cautioning against celebrating our Attorney General’s vague announcement of improvements in using and implementing this privilege. They are right. The changes are in words only and cosmetic at best. As we all know the new administration has been defending, justifying and actually promoting the former administration’s abuses of this unconstitutional privilege. Here is the latest case:

The government’s assertion of the state secrets privilege in a pending lawsuit brought by a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent will not be affected by the new Attorney General policy limiting the use of the privilege, the Justice Department said last week, because it is already in compliance with the new policy.

In a September 24 appellate brief (pdf) in the case of Horn v. Huddle, Justice Department attorneys urged an appeals court to overturn a lower court ruling that would authorize the parties in the lawsuit to disclose classified information to their attorneys. The Department also defended its use of the state secrets privilege.

An August 26 ruling in the case held that the parties’ counsel had a “need to know” the classified information possessed by their clients, and the court therefore directed the government to authorize the sharing of that information.

The government immediately objected. “The district court’s extraordinary order — compelling the government to grant security clearances and to authorize disclosure of classified national security information to private counsel… — unnecessarily usurps the Executive Branch’s authority and responsibility to protect from disclosure classified national security information as to which the state secrets privilege has been invoked,” the government argued in its September 24 brief.

The government also declared that the Attorney General’s new policy limiting the use of the state secrets privilege, which takes effect on October 1, would have no impact on the present case.

“The assertion of the privilege in this case satisfies the standards in the new policy concerning the applicable legal standards, narrow tailoring, and limitations on the assertion of the privilege. Moreover, the privilege as invoked in this case has been carefully reviewed by senior Department of Justice officials, who have determined that invocation of the privilege in this litigation is warranted,” the government brief stated.

That’s right. This, in addition to the rest (NSA & CIA extraordinary rendition cases). Make sure you cite these cases (among many others, including the mounting civilian casualties in Afghanistan) next time you hear one of those ‘Obama Apologists’ rant on about the greatness of this president …

President Fights to Keep the Worst PATRIOT ACT Provisions Extended & Alive

Our ‘President of Change’ has done another flip on one of his many campaign promises. Now Mr. Obama is vehemently seeking to have Congress extend all three expiring provisions of the so very unpatriotic and un-American PATRIOT ACT.

This is from a report released on Monday, September 15:

“Despite promises during the campaign that he would review certain of the most intrusive portions of the PATRIOT Act, President Barack Obama’s Justice Department today is calling for Congress to extend all three expiring provisions, though they were “willing to consider” civil rights protections “as long as they don’t weaken” the president’s powers under the act”

Among those provisions the administration is seeking to extend is the infamous Section 215: the provision which allows law enforcement access to library and bookstore records, without probable cause, for “national security” reasons. The American Library Association has been complaining for years that the provision was overbroad and many fear it could prove to have a chilling effect on the ability to read potentially subversive literature.

Another of the provisions the administration wants extended is the so-called “lone wolf” provision, which amends the FISA definition of “agent of a foreign power” to include people the government can’t establish as having any link to a foreign government or terrorist organization.”

You can read the rest of this article and supporting links here.

I know my readers are too sophisticated and informed to need any explanation of these unconstitutional provisions, so I won’t provide any. Come on, even the least informed citizen of this country should shudder after reading the ‘lone wolf’ provision. It says it plain and simple: the government doesn’t need ANY cause WHATSOEVER to target a citizen whenever and wherever it chooses to go after him/her. Period.

Let’s go ahead and add this to the long list of President Obama’s ‘changes on change.’ If you haven’t read my piece on this topic, Two Sides of the Same Coin, here is the link:

I am afraid at this rate soon we may deservedly call our new president ‘Bush Dark.’ Let’s hope I am wrong…

Girl Scouts: From Cookies to Guns?

Part I of my Police State Series was on ‘The National Security Generation’. As a reminder here are a few excerpts from that piece:

On May 15 this year Telegraph UK ran an article on a nationwide Boy Scouts training program on combating terrorism. The reported number of scouts between the ages of 14 and 21 who are currently enrolled in law enforcement and terrorism programs across the United States is around 35,000.

“Dressed in combat fatigues and armed with air guns firing tiny plastic pellets, they are taught how to assault buses, raid marijuana fields and rescue terrorist hostages from buildings.”

LA Times reports on Meade High School in Northern Maryland, the first high school in the country to offer a four-year course in Domestic Security. The article’s ‘sexy’ title goes like this: ‘The School Mixes Algebra, Homeland Security.’ The goal is identified as ‘to help graduates build careers in one of America’s few growth industries.’ By the ‘few growth industries’ they mean not only the intelligence agencies, Department of Homeland Security, etc, but all the parasitic related private contractors such as private weapons companies and mercenary contractor firms like well-known Blackwater.

“the 90 ninth-graders who chose the new homeland security program this last school year focused on topics torn from the headlines: Islamic jihadism, nuclear arms, cyber-crime, domestic militias and the like.”

Mother Jones reports further on Joppatowne High School:

“Dedicated to everything from architecture to sports medicine, “career academies” claim to offer high school kids focus, relevancy, and solid job prospects. Now add a new kind of program to the list: homeland security high. In late August, Maryland’s Joppatowne High School became the first school in the country dedicated to churning out would-be Jack Bauers. The 75 students in the Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness magnet program will study cybersecurity and geospatial intelligence, respond to mock terror attacks, and receive limited security clearances at the nearby Army chemical warfare lab.”

Here is more in another article covering the same topic on Chicago schools:

“One in 10 public high school students in Chicago wears a military uniform to school and takes classes — including how to shoot a gun properly — from retired veterans.
That number is expected to rise as junior military reserve programs expand across the country now that a congressional cap of 3,500 units has been lifted from the nearly century-old scheme.”

Now the Department of Homeland Security has decided to expand their ‘Homeland Security Youth’ doctrinarian program. Their new target: Girl Scouts. They appear intent on replacing our little girl scouts’ cookies with guns and their old line community work with snitching and militancy:

“The United States wants to enlist its 3.4 million Girl Scouts in the effort to combat hurricanes, pandemics, terror attacks and other disasters.”

“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched a campaign Tuesday to entice the blue, brown and green-clad multitudes to be even more prepared, with the promise of a new patch if they pitch in.”

I tried to find some pictures of our soon to be transformed Scouts, but couldn’t find any. So I decided that these old pictures from the last century would work just as well:

The Homeland’s objective one: start them really young.

The Homeland’s Objective Two: Train and militarize for Homeland Security.

The Homeland’s Objective Three: Don’t forget the little girls.

Testimony Subpoenaed in Turkish Lobby & Congressional Campaign Case

Last week I received a request to provide my sworn deposition and affidavit testimony in a case pending before the Ohio Elections Commission; Schmidt v. Krikorian.

Here are a few excerpts by politico on the case:

“Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), a two-term congresswoman, has filed a formal complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission contending that David Krikorian, who ran against her in 2008 as an independent but is challenging her again in 2010 as a Democrat, slandered her in the closing weeks of last year’s campaign. At issue is a hard-hitting flier Krikorian distributed, accusing Schmidt of taking campaign cash — “blood money,” as he declared in the leaflet — from Turkish interests in exchange for her opposition to recognizing the World War I-era deaths of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman government in Turkey.”

”Schmidt, for her part, has become something of a hero to the Turkish-American community. The co-chairwoman of the Congressional Turkish Caucus, Schmidt has taken more than $10,000 from the Turkish Coalition USA Political Action Committee over the past several years — making it one of her top campaign contributors. The Turkish Coalition of America, an organization that opposes genocide recognition, sponsored a Schmidt trip to Turkey over the Memorial Day recess which cost more than $10,000, according to LegiStorm, a congressional watchdog website.”

”Krikorian — who has regularly blasted Schmidt on a host of other issues — argues that with that stream of funding, Schmidt has become beholden to a Turkish lobby that now views Schmidt as one of its top champions in Congress. “It looks like Turkish interests have focused in on a particular representative,” said Krikorian. “They’ve found a taker in Rep. Schmidt.””

On Monday, August 3, I submitted my sealed unsigned declaration to the Attorney General’s Office at the Department of Justice. The government was given until the end of the day to respond, however, we received no response. My attorneys then gave the government another chance to respond, requesting their response in writing by noon today. Again, we received no official response. Later, DOJ attorneys asserted that the Attorney General’s Office at the Justice Department had either lost or could not locate the confidential sealed affidavit and the accompanying letter!!!

After the second deadline expired I provided my signed declaration to the attorneys for Mr. Krikorian. They are also subpoenaing my deposition, which is scheduled to take place on Saturday, August 8, at 10:30 a.m., in Washington DC.

My sworn declaration includes information in the following areas:

How certain Turkish entities had illegally infiltrated and influenced various U.S. government agencies and officials, including but not limited to the Department of State, the Department of Defense and individual members of the United States Congress.

How certain Turkish American cultural and business lobby groups conduct their illegal operations with direct and indirect support from the foreign governments.

Here is the press release by my attorneys’, Kohn, Kohn & Colapinto:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEAugust 4, 20094:08 PM
CONTACT: National Whistleblowers Center [1]Stephen M. Kohn (202) 342-6980Lindsey M. Williams (202) 342-1903

Sibel Edmonds Requests Attorney General Review the Invocation of State Secrets Privilege

Edmonds to Testify in Ohio Case Unless Attorney General Re-Invokes the Privilege

WASHINGTON – August 4 – Attorneys for FBI whistleblower Sibel D. Edmonds have requested that Attorney General Holder review the state secrets privilege invoked in her case and reverse the decision made under former President Bush. A copy of the letter can be found here
[2].
Ms. Edmonds was illegally fired from the FBI due to her protected disclosures. An independent investigation by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General confirmed the serious misconduct committed by the FBI and the illegality of her termination. On or about October 18, 2002 the previous administration invoked the state secrets privilege in order to have Ms. Edmonds’s whistleblower/First Amendment claims dismissed and to protect the government from embarrassment.

Ms. Edmonds has now been requested to provide sworn deposition and affidavit testimony in a case pending before the Ohio Elections Commission in the Schmidt v. Krikorian [3] case. This case raises nationally significant issues of electoral fraud and violation of law. The state secrets privilege has stifled Ms. Edmonds for the past seven years, and this deposition will be the first time that she will put her knowledge on the record.

Given the pendency of this case and the request for her testimony, the National Whistleblowers Legal Defense and Education Fund requested that the Attorney General immediately and independently review the basis upon which that privilege was initially invoked, and formally and in writing withdraw that privilege. At the time of this release, two separate deadlines for the Department of Justice to respond to the attorney’s letter had passed, and consequently the deposition has been scheduled for Saturday. Although a request was hand delivered to the Department of Justice, the Attorney General’s office informed counsel that they were having difficulty locating it. According to Stephen M. Kohn, the Executive Director of the National Whistleblowers Center and one of Ms. Edmonds’s attorneys, “The Obama administration must take a fresh look at how the state secrets privilege was improperly used to hide government misconduct from the public view. The Edmonds case was the first case the ‘privilege’ was invoked, and it must be the first case the ‘privilege’ is revoked. The government’s misguided attempt to cover up wrongdoing by abusing the state secrets privilege to bully a whistleblower must end. Ms. Edmonds has been requested to provide testimony in court. She will do so unless the government again invokes the privilege to quash her First Amendment rights.”

Ms. Edmonds’s deposition is scheduled for Saturday, August 8, 2009, at 10:30am. It will be held at the National Whistleblowers Center at 3238 P. St. NW, Washington, DC. The event is open to the press.
###

Russ Tice Interview, The True Face of Facebook?, Outlaw Rabbis Busted & More

This Thursday I’ll post our second ‘Boiling Frogs’ Podcast interview, with Russ Tice, Former NSA Intelligence Analyst & Capabilities Operations Officer Specializing in Offensive Information Warfare (O-IW). You may want to check out the post I had on Tice last month. It’s a full hour show with Tice unplugged on the latest NSA related developments, US Congress, his Kafkaesque journey as a whistleblower, and more.

Our list of upcoming Boiling Frogs guests includes Peter Lance, Phil Giraldi, Sandalio Gonzalez, and Stephen Kohn. Stay Tuned!

Here are a few interesting stories from last week:

Here is a very interesting developing story about a gang of rabbis arrested in New Jersey:

“Several rabbis were arrested as part of a public corruption and international money-laundering investigation in New Jersey. According to reports, among the 44 people arrested Thursday morning by the FBI along with the rabbis were the mayors of three New Jersey towns, a deputy mayor and a state assemblyman. They were to appear in federal court in Newark later in the day. The money-laundering suspects were accused of moving “at least tens of millions of dollars through charitable, nonprofit entities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey,” according to a release by acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra.”

…

The story goes beyond money laundering and reaches the shadowy world of illicit organ trade:

“Even by New Jersey standards, Thursday’s roundup of three mayors, five rabbis and 36 others on charges of money laundering and public corruption was big. But what put this FBI dragnet head and shoulders above the rest are the charges of trafficking in human body parts.

According to a federal criminal complaint filed in district court in New Jersey, Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn conspired to broker the sale of a human kidney for a transplant. The cost was $160,000 to the recipient of the transplant, of which the donor got $10,000. According to the complaint, Mr. Rosenbaum said he had brokered such sales many times over the past 10 years.”

Here is the Youtube Clip:

As you can see these rabbis were not dealing in peanuts. Their money-laundering deals involved moving “at least tens of millions of dollars through charitable, nonprofit entities controlled by rabbis in New York and New Jersey.” I recommend that you put this story on your radar, since the case may end up mysteriously dropped once AIPAC and JINSA make their congressional rounds and poke their men inside various executive branch agencies. Remember the Franklin, AIPAC, and Asher Karni cases? Okay, so that you know what I’m talking about here is a sample of what will be coming and will be done so very typically shrewdly and effectively:

“Anti-Semitism was behind the highly publicized arrests last week of rabbis, including three from the Aleppo-Syrian Jewish community in New York and New Jersey, according to Yitzhak Kakun, editor-in-chief of the Shas weekly Yom Le’Yom.
“There is a feeling here that the FBI purposely attempted to arrest as many rabbis as possible at once in an attempt to humiliate them,” Kakun said in a telephone interview Sunday.

“Regardless of the details of the case – I am not familiar with the precise charges and the evidence – you would never see the FBI and police behaving that way with Muslim sheikhs or Christian priests. It is so obvious that the whole thing is motivated by anti-Semitism,” he said. Kakun added that he planned on devoting the editorial of his paper to an attack on the Obama administration for attempting to whip up anti-Semitic feelings against the Orthodox Jewish community in the US.”

…

What has this guy been smoking?! “…you would never see the FBI and police behaving that way with Muslim sheikhs…”! Can someone send him the known list of Guantanamo inmates held there for eight years with no charges? Or maybe the secret list of those kidnapped and tortured around the world by our government? Did the Brooklyn mobs ever use this line; you know, the fact that the FBI was targeting devote churchgoing Catholics?! Okay I’ll leave it here because I am sick of this tactic, used over and over in cases ranging from espionage to plain ole criminal!

Is Facebook joining AT&T, Verizon and others who are willing to act as the extension of US Government policing practices? It may be. Check out this recent article, and let me know what you think:

“The operators of the internet site Facebook have recently removed a webpage dedicated to fans of Hamas’ prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, the London-based Al-Hayat reported Sunday. The webpage, called ‘Commander Ismail Haniyeh’, had attracted more than 10,000 Facebook users by the time it was removed from the internet.

One such user told the Arab daily that the site’s operators had not provided an explanation for their action. He warned that similar action may be taken against other Hamas-affiliated Facebook webpages, including that of Hamas’ politburo chief, Khaled Mashaal, which has already accumulated 17,000 ‘friends’.”

…

This story is worth putting on our radar…Is this the true face of Facebook? Where is the outrage? Where are the riots?!

Bill Conroy of NarcoNews reports on how former a DEA agent’s lawsuit exposes CIA fraud, and on the litigation’s claim that the spook agency engages in wholesale spying on other federal agencies:

“The secretive government agency is now coping with the embarrassing exposure of its deceit in a lawsuit filed by Horn, who previously served as the DEA’s country attaché in Burma (now officially known as the Union of Myanmar) from June 1992 to September 1993. In addition, the events that prompted the CIA’s lie appear to point to serious dysfunction within the agency that potentially poses a threat to the very U.S. national security it is charged with protecting.”

…

“After Tenant filed his declaration with the court invoking state secrets privilege, Judge Lamberth discovered that several CIA attorneys were likely aware as early as 2002 that Brown was no longer officially deemed to be undercover, yet those attorneys and Brown failed to inform the court. That deception resulted in a ruling by Lamberth, and subsequently a U.S. Appeals Court, that hamstrung Horn’s case under national security restrictions and led to Brown being dismissed as a defendant in the case.”

…

“Narco News has previously reported at length on the Horn case in a 2004 story that was based on leaked court pleadings. That story can be found at this link.
Horn’s lawsuit was filed in 1994 against Brown and State Department Chief of Mission in Burma Franklin Huddle Jr., who also was stationed in Burma at the same time Horn served as DEA’s country attaché. In the litigation, both Brown and Huddle are accused of violating Horn’s constitutional rights by conspiring to plant an eavesdropping bug in his government-leased quarters in Burma. Horn also alleges in the lawsuit that the eavesdropping was part of a larger effort by Brown and Horn to undermine DEA’s anti-narcotics mission in Burma.”

…

I strongly encourage you to read the entire piece, including the link provided by Conroy to Horn’s original leaked story. We have covered the CIA-Narc ties and history, and of course the MSM chronic agenda-driven blackout of similar cases.

Here is the latest by Jeremy Scahill published in Nation on Blackwater, now ‘Xe,’ titled ‘Blackwater Seeks to Gag Iraqi Victims & Their Lawyers’:

“Now, Blackwater (which recently renamed itself “Xe”) is attempting to use other means to silence its victims. On July 20, the company’s high-powered lawyers from Mayer Brown, which boasts that it represents eighty-nine of the Fortune 100 companies and thirty-five of the fifty largest US banks, filed a motion in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to impose a gag order on Iraqi civilians suing the company. The motion also seeks to silence the lawyers representing the families of Iraqis allegedly killed or injured by Blackwater in a series of violent incidents spanning several years. Four cases in the Washington, DC, area were recently consolidated before Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia for pretrial motions.”

“At the same time, according to a court filing, Blackwater is also asking Judge Ellis to seal evidence that Blackwater claims is confidential or could impact national security. The company argues that if its contracts with the State Department and its “Tactical Standard Operating Procedure” guide are publicly revealed, it “could give valuable information to those who wish to plan more effective attacks against diplomatic personnel stationed in Iraq.” Susan Burke, the lead attorney on the civil lawsuits against Blackwater, is not contesting Blackwater’s request to seal these specific documents–primarily because they will still remain evidence. But, it does mean that the public will not be able to view them. “Blackwater is basically trying to keep from public view all of the evidence that shows their criminality,” says Burke. “They are trying to ensure that we cannot apprise the public of the progress of the lawsuit.””

…

I wonder how long before intelligence related firms and mercenary government contractors will feel bold enough to invoke their own ‘State Secrets Privilege’ or other classification and gag orders. It may seem farfetched, but so many other cases we’ve been witness to in the past eight years or so…

And finally,

The Center for Public Integrity ran an interesting story about how the US government retroactively classifies information when they get stuck and engage in CYA. This is especially prevalent when they deal with whistleblowers. One of the stories is about Robert MacLean, US Air Marshal, who is also a member of my organization:

“The elements are all there for another thrilling episode of the TV program “24.” The backdrop: A U.S. agency of armed government agents who fly anonymously as passengers on airlines to stop terrorist hijackings. In the summer of 2006, British authorities subvert a plot to blow up transatlantic flights to the U.S. and Canada. But then, eight days later, sensitive information about a cutback on agent deployments on flights over the United Kingdom spills onto the public pages of an online forum. The U.S. agency, while monitoring websites where its employees post, rapidly mounts an inquiry into who posted the information.”
…

“In 2003, federal air marshal Robert MacLean blew the whistle to the press about an attempt by his agency to cut air marshal coverage of flights during a period of heightened threat warnings. His disclosure led to a congressional outcry that the Federal Air Marshal Service was putting security at risk, leading the decision to be reversed. Though the information was not marked “sensitive security information” when MacLean received it, it was retroactively determined to be sensitive after he was fired on the basis of disclosing SSI.”

“MacLean’s case illustrates the complex dynamic between secrecy and security. TSA argues that his disclosures weakened security, were in violation of agency regulations, and that MacLean should have known the information was SSI whether it was marked or not. MacLean, several members of Congress, and others say he prevented a policy that would have left airlines more vulnerable to attacks, improving security. And the way the TSA utilized the “sensitive security information” label retroactively to fire him could create a chilling effect, preventing future potential whistleblowers…”