Lobbyists for Your Insanity

The Pharma-Industrial-Government Complex
Natural News
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
by Tony Isaacs

Thanks to a recent question sent in to this forum*, I discovered that it appears to be common to prescribe the dangerous drug Prozac for PMS -- at least in the United States, that is. Not only that, but it is evidently often prescribed not by the Psychiatrists who successfully lobbied the FDA for approval over the objections of the WHO (World Health Organization), but by ordinary ob/gyn doctors who are making diagnosis of a specially created condition the psychiatrists came up with to justify prescribing it: Pre Menstrual Distress Disorder, or PMDD.

The initial question asked in the forum was :

"Went to the ob/gyn yesterday. I am well into premenopause and he diagnosed me with PMDD. No doubt my PMS is getting worse as I get older. He wants me to start on Prozac for several days a month before I get my period to help with my symptoms. I don't want to go on Prozac or hormone therapy. What can I use naturally to help my symptoms? I think I need to revamp my diet as well. How can I ease into a diet change slowly so as not to overwhelm myself all at once? Also, any supplements I should add? I know there are lots of questions, but I NEED HELP! Thanks."

My initial reaction was one of shock and outrage. Prozac for PMS? What the heck was an ob/gyn doing prescribing that scary drug? And what was PMDD anyway? A quick check of Wikipedia made it all too clear:"Originally called late luteal phase dysphoric disorder (LLPDD), the disorder was renamed PMDD by the American Psychiatric Association in its May 1993 revision of the DSM-IV. PMDD was moved from a position in the appendix of the manual to a "disorder requiring further study."[2][3] Some groups of psychiatrists and women's groups object to the labeling of a severe form of PMS as a psychiatric disorder.

PMDD is accepted as illness by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) but has not been listed as a separate disorder in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases. In 2003, the manufacturer of Prozac (fluoxetine) was required by the Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products to remove PMDD from the list of indications for fluoxetine sold in Europe.[4] The committee found that

...PMDD is not a well-established disease entity across Europe... There was considerable concern that women with less severe pre-menstrual symptoms might erroneously receive a diagnosis of PMDD resulting in widespread inappropriate short and long-term use of fluoxetine.[5]

PMDD is not listed on the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. [6]

Some commentators suggest that PMDD (along with social anxiety disorder, restless leg syndrome, and female sexual dysfunction) has been marketed by pharmaceutical companies in order to increase the demand for treatments.(PMID 16597181)."

For full article, go to: http://www.naturalnews.com/023555.html

*the Ask Tony Isaacs Curezone forum

About the author
Tony Isaacs, is a natural health advocate and researcher and the author of books and articles about natural health including "Cancer's Natural Enemy" and "Collected Remedies"as well as song lyrics and humorous anecdotal stories. Mr. Isaacs also has The Best Years in Life website for baby boomers and others wishing to avoid prescription drugs and mainstream managed illness and live longer, healthier and happier lives naturally. He is currently residing in the scenic Texas hill country near Utopia, Texas where he serves as a consultant to the Utopia Silver colloidal silver and supplement company and where he is working on a major book project due for publication later this year. Mr. Isaacs also hosts the CureZone "Ask Tony Isaacs" forum as well as the Yahoo Health Group "Oleander Soup"

Morning Calories

It’s a well-known weight-loss truism: Eating a lot at night can promote weight gain, primarily because the body doesn’t burn as many calories while you sleep. Happily, the reverse is true: The calories you consume at breakfast are the most likely to be burned (especially if your morning is active) and the least likely to put on extra pounds. Eating breakfast also helps to jump-start your metabolism after a night’s sleep. If you’re trying to lose weight, do not skimp on breakfast. Eat a well-balanced meal that includes protein and complex carbohydrates.

Source: Bally Fitness Subscription

How plants fight back

Posted to ScienceCodex.com
on: May 10, 2007 - 5:34am

Rooted in place, plants can't run from herbivores—but they can fight back. Sensing attack, plants frequently generate toxins, emit volatile chemicals to attract the pest's natural enemies, or launch other defensive tactics.

Researchers have identified a specific class of small peptide elicitors, or plant defense signals, that help plants react to insect attack.

In this colorful self-defense strategy, proteins already present in the plant are ingested by insect attackers. Digesting the proteins, the insects unwittingly convert this food into a peptide elicitor, which gets secreted back onto plants during later feedings. Recognizing the secreted elicitor as a kind of "SOS," plants launch defensive chemistry. This defense discovery opens the door for the development and genetic manipulation of plants with improved protection against pests.

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Although researchers have long known that some plants distinguish different insect attackers, this defensive behavior has proven difficult to describe at the molecular level. Exceedingly few model systems have been utilized to characterize the potential interactions between what researchers estimate to be at least four million insects and 230,000 flowering plant species. Moreover, highly active plant defense signals can occur at trace levels, too small to easily detect or isolate.

Still, scientists have determined that insect herbivory, mechanical damage, and pathogens such as bacteria and fungi can all set off a variety of peptide warning signals in plants, which respond by increasing phytohormones, particularly ethylene, jasmonic acid, or salicylic acid, that regulate defensive responses. But which peptide signals act as alarms—and how"

To address those questions, Dr. Eric Schmelz at the United States Department of Agriculture's Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service in Gainesville, Florida, led a research team that spent three years systematically analyzing the biochemical response of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata), a legume, to herbivory and oral secretions of fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), a general crop pest. During the extensive project, the researchers conducted over 10,000 leaf bioassays, testing for plant phytohormone production after exposure to successively fractionated insect oral secretions, among other experiments. Painstakingly collected just a few microliters at a time, the team tested approximately one full liter of caterpillar secretions.

As previously reported, the scientists identified and isolated an 11 amino acid peptide, inceptin, that plays a pivotal warning role in cowpea plants being attacked by the fall armyworm. Inceptin is part of a larger, essential enzyme, chloroplastic ATP synthase, in plants. When the fall armyworm feeds on cowpea, the insect ingests ATP synthase and breaks it down, releasing inceptin, which then becomes part of the armyworm's oral secretions. When the worm next feeds on cowpea, trace amounts of inceptin recontact the wounded leaf and alerts plants to generate a burst of defensive phytohormones.

In the June issue of Plant Physiology, Schmelz and his USDA collaborators, including Sherry LeClere, Mark Carroll, Hans Alborn, and Peter Teal, take the analysis further. They confirm inceptin's role as the dominant (and most stable) peptide in the cowpea's defense to fall armyworm. In addition, the researchers identify two related but less abundant peptide fragments (Vu-GE+In and Vu-E+In) that provoke similar defense responses in cowpea and a third (Vu-In-A) with no apparent effect. They also show that inceptin-related peptides spark a consistent, sequential cascade of phytohormone increases in cowpea, beginning with jasmonic acid, followed by ethylene and, lastly, salicyclic acid. Finally, the researchers determine critical features of inceptin's structure: To work as a plant defense signal, the peptide must contain a penultimate C-terminal aspartic acid, though the structure is considerably more flexible at its N-terminal. Notably, a number of the general characteristics of inceptin are similar to another known plant defensive peptide signal, systemin.

The new work challenges researchers to reconsider plant-insect interactions. "Scientists searching for defense elicitors need to realize those elicitors may not be synthesized by—or even exist within—the insect pest species," Schmelz said. "Instead, the attacker's proteases may interact with the host proteins, generating an elicitor." Building on this work, Schmelz is now recruiting a post-doctoral scientist to help the team biochemically purify and identify the inceptin receptor from legumes.

The Turks: Masters of Espionage?

Sibel Edmonds vindicated? FBI reveals investigation continues
25.10.2006

On October 10, 2006, FBI spokesman Bill Carter confirmed that matters raised by Sibel Edmonds and shielded form public view by the invocation of the US States Secret privilege were still under internal investigation by the Bureau.

“Due to the fact that the allegations of Sibel Edmonds reflect internal administrative and investigative matters it would not be appropriate to respond to your inquiry. I will point out that the DOJ Office of the Inspector General has reviewed this matter and released a public report. I would refer this report to you for your review. The Inspector General's report concluded that the FBI did not adequately investigate allegations Ms. Edmonds made regarding a co-worker. After the OIG's initial classified report, the FBI conducted further investigation into Ms. Edmonds' allegations. That investigation is continuing.”*

Back in March of 2002, Edmonds was released from the FBI over her discovery of an array of espionage activities. Looking back, and with the benefit of new information from the FBI and elsewhere, it appears that the government of Turkey was spectacularly successful in compromising FBI, CIA, DEA, DIA and DOS operations, and was also able to mount other espionage programs that allowed Turkish interests to obtain assorted military and WMD technology know-how, and garner US and Israeli military support for its bloody internal struggle against its significant and much maligned Kurdish population/opposition.

The Turks: Masters of Espionage

The Turks would not have been successful in staging what may be recorded as one of history’s finest intelligence coups had it not been for many sympathetic US military personnel, bureaucrats and politicians who, whatever their egotistical reasons, believed themselves to be acting in the USA's best interests. Certainly, no one can accuse them of not effectively representing their powerful Turkish clients whether in defeating US Congressional action recognizing the Armenian Genocide or ensuring that US corporations close lucrative deals in Turkey.

The sympathizers names are now overly familiar: Douglas Feith, Brent Scowcroft, William Cohen, Richard Perle, Michael Leeden, Bob Livingston, Marc Grossman, Paul Wolfowitz, Eric Edelman, Richard Armitage, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Dennis Hastert, et al. Rather than re-hash their affiliations and track records here, visit rightweb.irc-online.org to find out more about their linkages to each other and Turkey (Israel too).

The Turks knew it would take lots of cash to pull off such a scheme and sustain it. The illicit drug trade provided an endless source of funds to pay for WMD components, US defense technology, politicians, money laundering schemes, counterterrorist operations, safe interrogation houses, and dozens of front companies. Given Turkey's solid reputation as a key refining point/middleman for opium coming out of Afghanistan (it is ultimately transported into the Balkans and on to Europe and the USA), it is no surprise that the Turkish government always seems to have a steady supply of cash to spread around. Perhaps it is just coincidence, but under the watchful eyes of the Pentagon and US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, opium crop production in Afghanistan has increased over the last decade. The profits from refining and distribution of the product have flooded the black market - the playground for intelligence operatives and assorted criminal enterprises.

Joltin' Joe Ralston

Desmond Fernandes, has recently published an extraordinary piece titled Turkey’s US Backed War on Terror: A Cause for Concern?* The information provided in this publication shows the lengths to which the US and Turkey (and Israel) will go to keep some very nasty activities quiet. One of the more interesting bits of news in the report is that, at the invitation of the Turkish government, US and Israeli forces are assisting the Turkish government in military operations against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PPK) and the Kurdish people and their culture. The US is ostensibly engaged in counter-narcotics operations with the Turks.

Joseph Ralston, former USAF General and now Lockheed Martin employee and American Turkish Council principal, is the special envoy/coordinator for US-Turkey anti-Kurdish operations. In October 2006, the US Congress approved the sale of 30 of F-16 combat aircraft worth $2.9 billion to Turkey.

The world has seen the effects of similar alliances on persecuted people, most notably the tragic one between the US and Israel. That template will now be applied in Turkey to manage the Kurds. It’s their turn to be abused and pushed from their homelands by the same methods and equipment used against the Palestinians (and now the Iraqis). American leaders sanctioned the elimination of the Palestinian leaders and their people, even groups freely elected like Hamas. With eager US approval, Israeli military operations continue unabated in Gaza and the West Bank into late 2006. US support for Israel's destruction of the Shia population in Lebanon during the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict in 2006, along with decades of unswerving support in the United Nations and the US Congress is notoriously legendary. All this bodes ill for the Kurds.

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And so it begins. According to kurdmedia.com, “the PKK - the most prominent Kurdish freedom movement - declared a unilateral ceasefire that went into effect on Sunday 1 October. It still remains unilateral - the entire Turkish establishment, from top general Yasar Buyukanit to prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has rejected it, clearly stating their determination to continue the war… Joseph Ralston spoke for the US government when he indicated that “a ceasefire sort of implies an act that is taken between two states, two actors, to do that. And I don’t want to confer that kind of status on the PKK by saying a ceasefire…”

According to Fernandes, “General Joseph W. Ralston, the US government’s Special Envoy who is responsible for countering the terrorist PKK and coordinating actions and eliminationist strategies with the Turkish and Iraqi states…He…just so happens to be a member of the Board of Directors of Lockheed Martin, the same corporation whose deal for the sale of 30 F-16s to Turkey sits in the venerable halls of Congress at this very moment” in time. F-16s it must be remembered, were needed during Turkey’s genocidal War on Terror during the 1990s because of their usefulness in obliterating Kurdish settlements, killing civilians and terrifying Kurdish civilians.

It is widely known that the Turkish military used Lockheed Martin F-16s to assist with the destruction of Kurdish villages in North Kurdistan during the 1990’s Dirty War, with the facts well-documented by human rights groups. In 1995, Human Rights Watch documented arms sales to Turkey, along with related violations of the laws of war by that state…It included the many gross abuses that Turkey … perpetrated against the Kurdish people with the F-16 fighter jet figure[ing] prominently…In a report ordered by the US Congress, the State Department admitted that the abuses included the use of US Cobra helicopters, armored personnel carriers, and F-16 fighter bombers. In some instances, critics say, entire Kurdish villages were obliterated from the air.

This proposed new multi-billion dollar sale in 2006, the Pentagon has claimed, will enhance the Turkish Air Force’s ability to defend Turkey, no doubt against its internal Kurdish threat in the Kurdish colony in the southeast, and its external one in southern Kurdistan/Northern Iraq…The aircraft will be used to patrol the nation’s extensive coastline and borders against future threats and to contribute to the Global War on Terrorism and NATO operations… With this in mind, you should ask yourself what, exactly, General Ralston is coordinating. We all know the real deal, don’t we? We all know who have been the targets of those F-16s…”

LtCol Dickerson: Human Hot Potato… Plame & Wilson: Spies Like Us

On Monday, October 2, 2006, Captain Warren Comer (USAF, 374AW/PA, Yakota Japan) indicated that the USAF could provide no further information about Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Dickerson, a central figure in the Edmonds’ matter. “Looking at your request, the only information that I can confirm to you is what is written in the Fuji Flyer newspaper that you read. For any other questions on this subject, please refer to the FBI or the US State Department.”***

Taking Captain Comer’s advice, the US State Department was contacted. On Tuesday, October 3, 2006, Ms Nancy L. Beck (US DOS, PACE) indicated that “Responding to your inquiry, this is not a matter for the US Department of State. Recommend you direct your question to the FBI or Department of Justice.”

Dickerson was recently deployed to the Iraqi theater of operations where he heads up logistics matters for an element of the USAF. His handlers in the intelligence community apparently are happy about that and so must be the public affairs personnel who don’t want anything to do with him.

In 2002, Dickerson and his spouse Melek Can left the country for Belgium and a quiet post with NATO after Edmonds’ exposed them as Turkish operatives or, perhaps, US counterintelligence operatives. Dickerson and his wife’s activities remain a mystery. According to various reports, they were once stationed in Ankara, Turkey in the 1990s, and had contact with Douglas Feith and Marc Grossman. Another report indicated that: in 1995, while in Turkey, Dickerson was the subject of investigation for accepting money from foreign agents, whereupon he was abruptly transferred to Germany. In 1999, Major Douglas Dickerson returned to the United States. His wife, Melek Can Dickerson, started to work for American Turkish Council (atc.org) and related Turkish American business groups.

In 2001, Dickerson was apparently given a position in the weapons systems acquisition arena with the Pentagon and US Department of State. Dickerson’s areas of responsibility supposedly included Turkey, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. He also had dealings with Edelman formerly US Ambassador to Turkey, and now with the Pentagon’s Policy Organization. Dickerson was also active with ATC and Scowcroft. He and his wife associated with several Turkish and American individuals from the Turkish Embassy and the ATC. Many of these folks were targeted by FBI counterintelligence for criminal activity. But thanks to the Turkish government’s penetration of the highest echelons of the US political-military-intelligence-corporate apparatus, the Pentagon and US State Department forced the FBI to back off any criminal investigations that may expose criminal activity, and untidy and covert operations.

Finally, there’s the perplexing case of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson. According to dozens of media reports, Valerie Plame was introduced to Joe Wilson by Brent Scowcroft at an ATC function. Shortly thereafter, the pair was invited to a Turkish Embassy function. Quickly after that, Plame’s CIA WMD operation (Brewster Jennings) was exposed by then Under Secretary of State, Richard Armitage. Coincidently, Dickerson was in close proximity to Plame & Wilson in the 1999-2002 timeframe and the Pentagon and US State Department. It seems likely that only a Turkish operative located somewhere in the US government/intelligence community would have uncovered that information and disclosed it to the Turks and their US sympathizers. Was it Wilson? Dickerson? Armitage?

More fallout is to come from the Edmonds’ matter and the word in Washington, DC-Metro is that it will involve some individuals named in this piece.

John Stanton
John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security and political matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com

* Email to FBI PA Bill Carter from John Stanton. Thanks to Mir Carter and the FBI, plus the reference to usdoj.gov/oig/special/0501/index.htm. The CIA, DOD-IG, DEA and Turkish Intelligence did respond.

** From the October 2006 electronic edition of Variant: Cross Currents in Culture, No. 27, Winter 2006 variant.randomstate.org and from Chapter 5 of the book by Desmond Fernandes and Iskender Ozden (2006) US, UK, German and NATO ‘Inspired’ Psychological Warfare Operations Against The Kurdish ‘Communist’ Threat in Turkey and Northern Iraq (Apec Press, Stockholm)

*** www.yokota.af.mil/BaseNews/ FujiFlyer /2006/Sept%2008.pdf

© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.

Turkey's 'Deep-State' Mafia in Bed with US Govt

The Secrets Behind ‘State Secrets’: How Turkey's Mafia-like 'Deep State' (and its Neocon Friends) Penetrated US Government

Submitted by David Swanson

to afterdowningstreet.org

on Tue, July 25, 2007

By Mike Mejia

*******

French filmmaker Mathieu Verboud is set to release a new documentary for European television this fall, which will reveal important new insights into the case of former FBI translator and president of the National Security Whistleblower’s Coalition Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds, a Turkish-American whose wrongful termination lawsuit was suppressed by the government’s invocation of the all-too-common “state secrets privilege”, reported to her superiors espionage and deliberate mistranslations on the part of fellow Turkish translator, Melek Can Dickerson. It seems Ms. Dickerson had relationships with targets of FBI investigation working at the Turkish Embassy and the American Turkish Council, a fact which meant that anything she translated was likely to be false. However, instead of receiving a promotion for bringing Ms. Dickerson’s’ espionage to the attention of her bosses, Edmonds was fired after she went in frustration to the U.S. Senate. The FBI refused to investigate Edmonds’ claims, at least in part, because the contract linguist had discovered quite a messy scandal: the content of the mistranslated documents revealed that some very powerful people in the U.S. government, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert, were connected to foreign organized crime. Even worse, these foreign criminals connected to the high and mighty in the U.S. were also connected internationally, through the heroin trade and associated money laundering, to international terrorist organizations like al Qaeda.

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Okay, take a deep breath and take a step back: it’s not a pretty picture. According to what we know so far from Sibel Edmonds’ many interviews and from the groundbreaking story on her case from Vanity Fair, “An Inconvenient Patriot” , Edmonds found that within the U.S. a nest of Turkish spies, some working at the Turkish embassy, others affiliated with namely the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), the American Turkish Associations (ATA) and the American Turkish Council (ATC), were involved in espionage, bribery, illegal lobbying, drug trafficking and the infiltration of U.S nuclear research labs. Separately, from a former CIA Counterterrorism official, Phillip Giraldi, who himself was once based in Turkey, we know that some arms sales meant for Turkey and Israel were actually meant for resale to countries like China and India- and perhaps even to international terrorists- using fake end-user certificates. So we have Turkish nationals at the Embassy and NGOs stealing U.S. secrets for sale to the highest bidder, re-selling arms meant for Turkey, bringing in drugs from Europe, and pouring money into bribes and lobbying activities.

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To understand how these activities fit together- Americans must first understand what Europeans call the Turkish ‘deep state’. In 1996, a car crash in a town called Susurluk revealed “link between politics, organized crime and the bureaucracy” in Turkey. As it turns out, its crippled economy in the 1990s meant Turkey had become the European equivalent of Colombia- a state almost completely dependent on the Turkish mafia and by extension, the Southwest Asian Heroin trade. Which is where the Turkish ‘deep state’ comes in- it becomes very difficult to determine where the ‘government’ ends and the ‘mafia’ begins. What we do know from Sibel Edmonds and other sources is this: Turkey’s secular establishment, including the Turkish military and intelligence services (MIT), as well as political parties associated with former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller, appear to have been more connected to the Turkish mafia than the Turkish Islamic Parties that Washington abhors. Furthermore, it appears from reading into some of Edmonds’ statements that the Turkish mafia was partnered with Osama Bin Laden’s al Qaeda network in the drug trade- meaning Turkey’s secular establishment was more connected to al Qaeda- pre/9-11- than were the Islamists in Turkey. Which is quite ironic, to say the least.

*******

If you think this story sounds too convoluted to be true, and you feel the instinct to dismiss Edmonds’ claims, think again. Every investigation into the whistleblower’s charges- from the Senate Judiciary Committee to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General Report, has found that Edmonds’ story is corroborated within the FBI, which means her translations, not those of Melek Can Dickerson, were the correct ones. This also means that the aforementioned Turkish organizations, and certain Turkish diplomats, were indeed under FBI investigation. And all this put together means that people like Dennis Hastert probably were- and perhaps still are- on the payroll of Turkish ‘deep state’ interests.

*******

A recent article published in the U.K. Guardian about the well-connected Kurdish Baybasin clan also gives important backing to the former translator’s story. The article details how Europe’s “Pablo Escobar”, Huseyin Baybasin, has “alleged that he had received the assistance of Turkish embassies and consulates while moving huge consignments of drugs around Europe, and that Turkish army officers serving with NATO in Belgium were also involved." This information, of course, dovetails most precisely with what Sibel Edmonds has been hinting at for over 3 years now; that targets of FBI investigations linked with the Turkish embassy and Turkish organizations were involved in narcotics trafficking. It is clear the Baybasin gang and the secular factions in Turkey had a seemingly symbiotic relationship, with the government providing the traffickers diplomatic passports and thus free reign to travel around the world without fear of prosecution. Also involved in the scandalous Turkish drug running are the very notorious, Pope-killing Grey Wolves, a fascist organization connected to human rights abuses in Turkey.

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As for who else besides Hastert might have been on the payroll of Mr. Baybasin and friends- we turn next to the Executive Branch. In an interview with Chris Deliso of antiwar.com, Edmonds hinted at key roles played by some powerful unelected officials-important Neoconservatives like Marc Grossman of the State Department, and Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, formerly of the Defense Department. If we hit the rewind button and go back to a CBS 60 Minutes’ interview in October, 2002, we remember the ex-contract linguist stated that Turkish targets of FBI investigation had spies inside the U.S. State Department and at the Pentagon in order to “obtain the United States military and intelligence secrets.” It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that Grossman, Feith and Perle might have been the persons to whom she was referring in 2002. Furthermore, the language specialist has repeatedly stated in past interviews that investigations into pre-9/11 terrorist financing activities were blocked “per State Department request”, leaving open the question whether it was Mr. Grossman, then Undersecretary of State for European Affairs, who actively hindered investigations into the Turkey-Bin Laden link.

*******

Perle and Feith are an interesting case in this hidden scandal. Their consultancy, International Advisors (IA), has done extensive work for the Republic of Turkey, though it is questionable who is paying the invoices. Ms. Edmonds rhetorically asked the question of Phoenix radio personality Charles Goyette in January 2006, “For what [were they paid]? One could imagine, hypothetically, that passing state secrets might be one “service” provided to the Turkish mafia/government by IA. But would Perle and Feith have gone beyond that? Would they have introduced the Turkish mafia types to Denny Hastert, and counseled “deep state” interests in how to skirt U.S. campaign finance laws? After all, the Turks were reported to have made their initial payments from 1996-1998 through “unitemized (less than $200) contributions”, after which they allegedly delivered suitcases of cash to the Speaker’s front door. Someone had to teach them the intricacies of campaign finance law: was it IA? What we do know is that Perle was a key architect of the Israeli/Turkish alliance forged in the late 90s, and that Edmonds case also is connected to the AIPAC spy scandal- leaving lots of room for speculation on how the rest of the story pans out.

*******

As messy and ugly as this, for lack of a better phrase, “Turkish DeepState Gate” scandal appears, the consequences of continuing to do nothing about it- of allowing the government’s outrageous use of ‘state secrets’ to insure Dennis Hastert, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Marc Grossman and others are never investigated, could be horrific. Ms. Edmonds plans to take petitions to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming months to finally force full and open hearings on her case. She will try to do the type of lobbying that does not involve foreign bribery or ill-gotten gains. This will be the simple type of petitioning guaranteed of every citizen in the Constitution under the First Amendment, a long forgotten portion of the Bill of Rights. Americans aware of the situation can only hope, and do everything in their power to insure, that Ms. Edmonds’ type of lobbying prevails.

Mike Mejia is a freelance writer with a Master’s in International Policy Studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where he specialized in International Trade and Arms Proliferation. He currently resides in an undisclosed location in the American Heartland and can be contacted at lenlarga@yahoo.com .

Whistleblower accuses Turkish diplomats

ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News
Monday, January 7, 2008

A former Turkish language translator for the FBI has claimed that some United States government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to “steal nuclear weapons secrets.”

Sibel Edmonds, 37, said “Turkish agents in Washington” were also involved, adding that a “well-known senior official in the U.S. State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.”

Edmonds has been quoted as saying by The Sunday Times, that the official, whose name is withheld by the British paper, was “aiding foreign operatives against U.S. interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

Claiming that the FBI was gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials “who were aiding foreign agents” while she still worked as a translator, Edmonds said, “If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials.”

She added that Turks often acted as “a conduit for Pakistan's intelligence agency” and venues such as the American-Turkish Council in Washington were used to exchange cash. Edmonds also alleged Pakistanis in pursuit of nuclear secrets were “in constant contact with the Turkish embassy.”

Edmonds, who also speaks Farsi, was recruited by the FBI in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Her main job was to translate conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets that had been covertly recorded by the agency, The Sunday Times wrote. She left the FBI in 2002, after six months, allegedly after becoming “disillusioned with the U.S. authorities' failure to act” against terrorism. Her allegations were heard in a closed session of the U.S. Congress, but no action has been taken and she continues to campaign for a public hearing.

© Dogan Daily News Inc.
www.turkishdailynews.com.tr