Is there something I'm totally missing about the utter lack of coverage in the U.S. of the big article in The Times of London ten days ago detailing former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds' explosive charges, "For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets."
If check Google News, you see a fair amount of coverage in India, Turkey, Iran, Israel, and other places, but not much at all in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Is there some kind of law against mentioning this case? (That's a serious question.)
Blogger Steve Clemons writes:
I have received a few dozen emails asking my thoughts on the Sibel Edmonds case. My response won't please many of the readers advocating on her behalf or asking if there are ways in which I can help her get more mainstream press attention.
I am not going to parse the details of her first story or her latest revelations. I will say that if she was doing what she was doing -- and I don't contest that -- she worked in a highly compartmentalized operation. She could have had access to what her colleagues were doing and the quality or alleged crimes in their translated work product. But the other materials she was dealing with were "raw intel", unprocessed, or coordinated, or fit into the equation with other material or American objectives.
I am not in a place to judge the veracity of her claims, but I do find it odd that the Senators and investigators involved were vigorously seeking to know the back story to her narrative until a certain point. And then, it's like someone pushed an off button, cease and desist.
Again, I won't argue details of the case with her or others about this -- but the thought has occurred to me that she may have been unaware of a larger operation in which she was in a compartmentalized piece of the game. I think that much of the effort to get A.Q. Khan involved aggressive, comprehensive, globally deployed intelligence efforts to penetrate networks and to quickly animate action through the attempted sale of bogus nuclear equipment and blueprints.
Well, that's definitely a possibility -- that the high official who appeared to be on the take in the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation case might have just been pretending. Or maybe he was just pretending to be pretending. Or maybe he was pretending to be pretending to be pretending. As James Jesus Angleton used to say, it all turns into a wilderness of mirrors pretty quickly.
But isn't this at least potentially interesting to some American readers?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
You've worked in journalism. Have you talked to people at UPI, National Review, Washington Times or the American Conservative about this?
ReplyDeleteDoes the gag order that earlier covered the case apply to reporting on it?
ReplyDeleteVery interesting, and would not be out of step with other things going on at Foggy Bottom. But the involvement of the ACLU is troubling, as they seem only to get involved when there is a significant chance of hastening the fall of western civilization.
ReplyDeleteSteve, your most revealing posts are the ones where people are either afraid of commenting or simply at a loss. In other words, to ask the question is to answer it.
ReplyDeleteYes, America has a "memory hole". And that shouldn't happen in the land of the free and the home of the brave. But, oh sh#t, it has happened. Ostensibly, that means that we're not very free and we're not very brave after all.
Can you imagine the total number of journalists across the country who are well aware of the memory hole, and how many know exactly how to avoid being tossed into it and ending their careers...but they stay silent on the question of its existence and its administration? This is a "soft" version of the GDR (East German communist state) that we are entering into here. Mass dishonesty.
Duh? Someone screwed up again (never blame conspiracy for what sheer incompetence can produce). And the Media protects their sources. Who did the screwing up.
ReplyDeleteI mean, the FBI couldn't even keep anti-terror wiretaps going because they forgot to pay their phone bills.
Sibel won the 2006 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award at least for her whistleblowing efforts.
ReplyDeleteSibel names some names of the FBI translators and managers who were involved in this spy scandal.
Someone else speculates on the names of the high ranking US State and DOD officials who were taking bribes, planting moles in key military and research organizations, giving security clearances and/or running interference to protect them.
Absolutely no American coverage or government crackdown on perhaps the biggest spy scandal that could directly result in the deaths of 100,000s of US civilians. Astounding.