Spying on Congress

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I’ve long said that there is something off about how Congress has, for the last nearly eight years, bent over for this administration. At first, I had assumed it was that each member had been Watergated (vis a vis illegal wiretapping AKA spying). I’ve even crawled under a tin-foil hat and wondered about that all too forgotten Anthrax attack just after 9/11 where several Democrats were on the receiving end. That, indeed, would be a mighty powerful message: play ball with this administration or die.

Now, it appears that Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, will be coming out with proof that the administration did indeed spy on Congress. This from OpEdNews:

Edmonds and the group she founded, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, will be coming forward with hard evidence, obtained legally from third-party sources, demonstrating that the Bush administration has used FISA warrants to engage in unauthorized surveillance of members of Congress and their staffs, and allegedly the FISA court was not aware of this misuse of the warrants.

Don’t know much about Sibel Edmonds? You, and every American should. Read about this amazing woman below the fold.

Sibel Edmonds is a former FBI translation specialist fluent in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani. She founded, and is the President of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. You can read all about her here, but I will give some highlights.

The former FBI translator turned whistleblower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington’s highest levels—sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage.

Edmonds’s account is full of dates, places, and names. And if she is to be believed, a treasonous plot to embed moles in American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli, Pakistani, and Turkish sources was facilitated by figures in the upper echelons of the State and Defense Departments.

But Congress has refused to act, and the Justice Department has shrouded Edmonds’s case in the state-secrets privilege, a rarely used measure so sweeping that it precludes even a closed hearing attended only by officials with top-secret security clearances. According to the Department of Justice, such an investigation “could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the foreign policy and national security of the United States.”

After five years of thwarted legal challenges and fruitless attempts to launch a congressional investigation, Sibel Edmonds is telling her story, though her defiance could land her in jail. After reading its November piece about Louai al-Sakka, an al-Qaeda terrorist who trained 9/11 hijackers in Turkey, Edmonds approached the Sunday Times of London. On Jan. 6, the Times, a Murdoch-owned paper that does not normally encourage exposés damaging to the Bush administration, featured a long article. The news quickly spread around the world, with follow-ups appearing in Israel, Europe, India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Japan—but not in the United States.

Should you care to read the entire chronology of corruption, one which explicitly shows just how disastrous this administration has been at keeping America safe, this will keep you busy for hours. Be sure to follow all the links, including her own words at what is now called the TimesOnline, the London based news outlet (formerly The Times of London), where she names names, including high level people in the Bush administration. If you haven’t gotten enough details at the above links, you can also read BradBlog’s exclusive interview with Ms. Edmonds and other entries on this whole situation.

Sibel Edmonds makes the Valerie Plame affair look like child’s play. Outing a covert CIA agent, whose specific job it was to follow nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is treasonous enough. Actually selling nuclear information goes beyond treason and into the realm of enabling nuclear annihilation.

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Filed under America - Terrorism, America - War on Terror, Human & Civil Rights - Domestic Surveillance, International - Middle East, Media - Whistleblowers, News - Politics, Uncategorized

Tags: Warrantless Wiretapping, Sibel Edmonds, Treason, MsJoanne @TPZoo