Thomas Jefferson’s Place in History
Martin A. Larson
In a recent Washington Post article, “Thomas Jefferson, Tarnished Icon?” (Oct. 17, 1992), staff writer Joel Achenbach subtly and snidely sought to dethrone Thomas Jefferson from the pinnacle on which he is so rightly enshrined.
“Among professional historians, Jefferson’s stock has sunk in the last generation, and it has a lot to do with race and slavery,” said historian Peter Onuf at a recent conference at the University of Virginia. In the harsh view of Paul Finkelman, another historian who is quoted here with apparent approval, Jefferson was a “pathetic” racist, and “a profligate, undisciplined spender” who “could not live without slaves. Too self-indulgent to manage carefully his own lands and his life, he relied upon slaves, as a source of ready capital, selling scores of them to support his habits and pleasures.” In Finkelman’s opinion, Jefferson was “the arch traitor” against “the hopes of the world.”
Jefferson authored the Declaration of Indepence, and then served as US minister to France, governor of Virginia, secretary of state, vice president, and president of the United States. During his decades of public service, he received no compensation above actual expenses. His duties required him to be away from his home so much that he fell into debt, and was able to save his home only with the generous help of friends. When he retired from the presidency in 1809, the legislature of Virginia, his native state, paid tribute to him in a resolution that declared:
“We have to thank you for the model of an administration conducted on the purest principles of republicanism; for … patronage discarded; internal taxes abolished; a host of superfluous officers disbanded; … more than thirty-three millions of debt discharged; … and, without the guilt or calamities of conquest, [for] a vast and fertile region added to our country … These are points in your administration which the historian will not fail to seize, to expand, and teach posterity to dwell upon with delight.”
It would take a small book merely to list and describe the blessings he conferred upon America and its people. For example, as president he abolished the internal revenue tax system established by Alexander Hamilton, reduced taxes by fifty percent, and paid off nearly half of the national debt in eight years. Contrast this with what has been and still is being done in Washington!
Jefferson’s interests were always for the welfare of the country and its citizens. Even today, though, there are dishonest individuals and various special interests who hate anyone who shares his ideals. Jefferson once said that he was assailed by so many enemies that if he were to answer them all, he would not have time for anything else. Instead, he declared, he would let judgment of him and his record be made by the people — who responded by electing him to a second term in a landslide. Later generations have similarly shown their appreciation by erecting in his honor one of the most magnificent memorials to be found in our capital.
Concerning the thorny issue of slavery, Jefferson wrote: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these [black] people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live under the same government.” He did not mean that the two races could not somehow co-exist, but rather that they could not live together in peace and harmony.
History has born out the truth of his observation. Since the abolition of slavery, the two races have co-existed in an uneasy state of mutual suspicion and animosity, in spite of the enormous efforts and vast sums spent by white America on behalf of blacks. Black urban areas have degenerated into crime-ridden slums, periodically torn apart by riots. Jefferson proposed that all young blacks, with their children, should be transported from the United States and set up in comfort in a faraway land, probably in Africa. If his proposal had been implemented, this country would have been spared the terrible Civil War, and perhaps other calamities.
Jefferson regarded slavery as an unparalleled iniquity. For this he strongly criticized Britain’s rulers, who fostered the slave trade in large part to discourage emigration to America of their own starving unemployed.
Washington Post writer Achenbach could not deny himself the pleasure of bringing up the tired old accusation that Jefferson took a black slave, Sally Hemings, as a mistress. In fact, there is not the slightest shred of evidence of such a liaison, or that Jefferson was the father of any of her children.
Commenting on lies and calumnies about him that were being published in newspapers at the time, he wrote in 1807: “As for myself, conscious that there was not a truth on earth which I feared, should it be known, I have lent myself willingly as a subject of a great experiment, which was to prove” that the calumnies of a licentious press could not batter down one who had led a blameless life and had nothing to hide.
From The Journal of Historical Review, Jan.- Feb. 1993 (Vol. 13, No. 1), pages 40-41.
About the Author
Martin A. Larson (1897- 1994) was the author of more than 20 books, including the 414-page work, Jefferson: Magnificent Populist. He received a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Michigan.
Did you notice that the ones bitching the most were disinformationalist Jews? No surprise here.
Originally presented at The Journal of Historical Review
Did I rub you the wrong way or stroke you just right? Let me know below in the comments section or Email me at buelahman {AT} g m a i l {DOT} com
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I haven’t followed this as closely as I would have liked. Regardless, I knew from what little I did investigate, It was a ‘False Flag’. The first thing I noticed was the debris around the buildings…. Blown Out … from the explosion coming from inside the building.
I thought this video enlightening. Maybe you will to ?
Visit the YouTube page and check out some of the links in the videos description area, here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z7aUqbgiLE
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Hello Amerika,
This is to let you know that I support the ‘Gun Control’ agenda in your country. In my latest video release this past Friday put together with the help of the CIA and Mossad, I said many many scary things. Since the death of Osama Bin Laden, various agencies have taken a renewed interest in what I can do for them.
In a report released to various news outlets in Amerika they failed to do their homework on the facts. Then again, this story was intended and targeted at those of you with your heads in the sand, or those of you who have no idea what goes on in your country.
You see my friends, many of you know that it is impossible to purchase a ‘Fully Automatic Weapon’ at a gun show. However, my handlers put this in the story in hopes of furthering their agenda of Gun CONtol in your great country. Don’t believe me ? Check for yourself Here, or read it in this snapshot I took to preserve history in the making.
The CONtrollers of news in Amerkia also included some more propaganda for you sheeple. They said .. well let me show you in this snapshot I took….
Isn’t it a good thing that so many of you have no idea of the real restrictions in your county in regards to acquiring a firearm. There are some of you who caught on rather quickly. I first saw this from a person that goes by the name ‘Conspiracydude’ @Buelahman in a tweet he made on Saturday at 12:26 pm his local time. He tweeted, "Adam Gadahn supports / furthers GUN CONTROL agenda". Others have since seen this tweet and are spreading the word.
I must say that word of this isn’t spreading, and thats a good thing. If more people realized how much disinformation and propaganda their news agencies spread, our job would be impossible.
Well Amerika, thats about all I have time for at the moment. My handlers are waiting for me to make more videos. Long live the bogeyman… uh.. Osama.
Yours truly,
Adam Pearlman aka Adam Gadahn, new head of al qaeda.
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The following is presented in full with permission from James Colbertt. I believe this is one of the very best presentations about this subject and that every redneck should read, study the links and gather a true understanding about the myth of OBL and how this bogeyman has been used to make you submit to tyranny of the Fascist state America has become. As I understand it, James is Canadian and I feel it is a shame that he is more patriotic than many Americans. I commend him for his work.
by James Corbett
The Corbett Report
24 May, 2011
This is James Corbett of corbettreport.com with the last word on Osama Bin Laden.
Osama Bin Laden was one of the 54 children of Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a construction magnate who made his fortune by cozying up to the royal family of Saudi Arabia. The bin Laden family has had an intimate relationship with the upper reaches of global power politics for the past half a century.
In 1976 Salem bin Laden, Osama’s half-brother, co-founded Arbusto Energy with George W. Bush.
In 1996, after the bombing of the Khobar Towers for which Osama took credit, the Saudi Binladen Group was given the contract to rebuild the facility (see article on page 14).
Also in 1996, FBI agents in the Washington field office were investigating the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, a suspected terrorist organization that included Abdullah Bin Laden, the group’s president and treasurer, and Omar Bin Laden. BBC News uncovered internal FBI documents showing how the agents were ordered to stop their investigation. The case was only reopened the week after 9/11 and the day after both brothers fled the US with FBI permission.
In 1998, another FBI investigation into the Bin Laden brothers, this one initated by the New York field office, was called off by the State Department because, it was revealed, the Bin Laden family had been granted Saudi diplomatic passports in 1996 and thus had diplomatic immunity inside the United States.
On the morning of 9/11, Osama bin Laden’s half-brother, Shafig bin Laden, was the guest of honour at a meeting of the Carlyle Group in Washington which George H.W. Bush was also addressing.
In the days after 9/11, two dozen members of the Bin Laden family and over 100 members of the Saudi royal family were flown to assembly points in Texas and Washington and then flown out of the country. At least one of these flights took place during the total ban on civilian air traffic over North American airspace. Declassified FBI documents show that the Bureau believed the Bin Laden family flight out of the country—carrying suspected terrorists Abdullah and Omar Bin Laden—was chartered by Osama Bin Laden himself, but some of the passengers, including Abdullah, were not even interviewed in person by the FBI before their departure.
Of course, for the purveyors of the official conspiracy theory of Al-Qaeda, none of this has any relevance because the Saudi Binladin Group, the family business conglomerate, issued a terse, two-sentence statement in April of 1994 publicly disowning Osama. The facts, however, indicate that this public disowning was in fact a ruse.
In 2004, Osama’s half-brother Yeslam Binladin admitted that the family shared a joint Swiss bank account with Osama. The account was not closed until 1997, the year after the Khobar Towers bombing.
Yeslam’s ex-wife, Carmen, has also stated that she “cannot believe” that the family “have cut off Osama completely,” as have Vincent Cannistraro, the former head of the CIA Counter Terrorism Center, Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA Bin Laden unit, and the French intelligence service, which released a report two days after 9/11 indicating they believed the Bin Laden family to be covertly aiding Osama.
Nonetheless, the question remains: do the Bin Laden family connections to the highest circles of power in the American political establishment have any relevance to the story of Osama Bin Laden? Is there any evidence that American intelligence was involved with Osama himself over the years?
During Operation Cyclone, the US government funded the Afghan mujahedeen in their struggle against the Soviets in the largest covert operation in CIA history to that time. An estimated $5 billion in arms and funding were supplied to the jihadis, including stinger anti-aircraft missiles and other equipment that kept the Soviet Red Army bogged down in the country for years.
Officially, the CIA’s contact was limited to the Afghans themselves, and no funding was given to the so-called Arab Afghans like Osama Bin Laden, the Muslims from the Arab world who came to Afghanistan to aid in their fight against the Soviets. In reality, however, CIA funds were being funnelled to the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service that distributed those funds to the Arab Afghans through an organization called MAK, or the Bureau of Services. Osama Bin Laden was the one in charge of MAK’s finances.
This much was admitted by Osama’s brother Salem in 1985, who confessed that Osama was “the liaison between the US, the Saudi government and the Afghan rebels” at the time. In 1986, Salem asked the Pentagon for anti-aircraft missiles on Osama’s behalf.
The former chief of the US visa bureau in Jeddah, Michael Springmann, has testified that during his time there, he was respeatedly ordered by CIA officials to approve visas for Bin Laden’s mujahedeen cohorts so that they could be provided training at US military bases. 11 of the 19 alleged 9/11 hijackers would go on to get their visas from the same consulate.
FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has admitted that in her time at the FBI she saw proof that the US had maintained a “very intimate relationship” with Bin Laden all the way though the 1990s up to September 11th.
The Guardian reported that Osama had travelled to the American Hospital in Dubai for kidney dialysis treatment in June 2001. While there, he was visited by the local CIA station chief. When the CIA official later boasted about having met Osama Bin Laden, he was promptly recalled to Washington.
In a July 2005 article in the Guardian, Robin Cook, the former speaker of the House of Commons, asserted that the name Al Qaeda itself actually referred to the database containing CIA assets from the Afghan mujahedeen struggle.
Even Osama’s alleged responsibility for the 9/11 events has been repeatedly called into question.
In the weeks after the attack, the Taliban offered to hand Bin Laden over if the US provided proof that he was connected to 9/11. Bush turned the offer down. After the invasion of Afghanistan began in October, the Taliban again tried to hand him over, this time dropping the request for proof of Bin Laden’s guilt. Bush again refused.
After video of what the Pentagon alleged was Osama Bin Laden confessing to the 9/11 attacks emerged in December 2001, a German national news program conducted its own investigation into the tape. According to its own, independent translators, every single point in the video that the Pentagon alleges indicate Osama’s foreknowledge or complicity in the 9/11 attack has been mistranslated, and the video does not in fact provide any proof of confession.
Famously, FBI spokesman Rex Tomb told investigative journalist Ed Haas that the FBI did not include 9/11 on Bin Laden’s “most wanted” profile because there was no hard evidence connecting him to the crime.
And yet within the first minute of TV coverage of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11, Osama Bin Laden was named as the likely perpetrator of the event. This idea solidified into a near certainty within hours, and the 24/7 news coverage shifted almost immediately to the question of when the US would invade Afghanistan.
In an interview the day after 9/11, confronted with this tendency of the press to jump to conclusions about Osama Bin Laden, ex-CIA station chief Milt Bearden made some unexpected statements about the supposed terrorist mastermind.
And now, in May of 2011, after Osama Bin Laden has been allegedly tracked down and allegedly shot by a Navy Seal team, after a trillion dollars and two wars have been waged in the name of fighting his shadowy, non-existent terror organization, as the very fabric of our society itself has been torn asunder in the neverending hunt for the terrorist boogeyman under our collective bed, perhaps it is time to ask once again what Osama Bin Laden means to us, after all.
If one were to base their understanding of Osama Bin Laden solely on mainstream media coverage of him over the last 10 years, a very different picture would emerge to the one that you have just been presented.
This media-constructed image would be one of a radical Muslim who appeared out of nowhere in the 1990s to begin a string of increasingly devastating terror attacks on American targets. After masterminding the 9/11 attacks in some undefined manner from a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, he supposedly outwitted and outmanoeuvred the combined might of the most powerful military and the most technologically sophisticated intelligence dragnet in the history of the world for an entire decade, all the while releasing videos and audiotapes from his secret compound to taunt his would-be captors. Finally, we are told, he was tracked down and shot in a special forces raid during which live video transmissions were inexplicably unavailable and then buried at sea before his death could be confirmed by any independent third party.
What emerges from the official Osama Bin Laden story is not a person but a comic book villain, a faceless, mysterious, motivationless embodiment of “terrorism” with all the reality of a Lex Luther or Cobra Commander. His is a powerful myth, made all the more powerful because it has been constructed and promoted by the very politicians and string-pullers who claim to be opposing him. Like Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein, his face can be put before the public from time to time to produce the Two Minute Hate, a cathartic projection of anger upon an empty image. We know to hiss when his picture is dangled before us and cheer when we are told he is dead. But always, always, it is stressed that he is fearsome, that he is ruthless, and that the only way to stop him is to surrender our rights and freedoms. Even in death, we are told, he and the mythical army of devotees he supposedly ruled over, are a clear and present danger to our society necessitating the continuation of the neverending wars against abstract nouns, TSA agents groping children at the airports and extra-judicial no-fly lists that are turning in to no-ride lists and no-buy lists.
The only thing we can say for certain is that the Osama Bin Laden character has now been disposed of in a far-fetched burial story only fitting of his cartoonish myth. And now the public is already being prepared for his replacement myths, a gaggle of similarly cartoonish characters no less connected to the Western intelligence establishment than Osama himself.
But after finally waking from the 10 year nightmare of the Osama Bin Laden fable, are the public willing to go straight back to sleep? Or are they going to start questioning the official narratives that are cemented into place in the wake of every large-scale event, narratives that always support more government intrusion in our lives, expanded wars of aggression around the globe and an ever-expanding police state?
It’s an important question, and one that must be answered quickly, while the public is still wary and skeptical of a government that has lied to them time and time again and then refuses to provide that public with a single credible shred of proof that the largest manhunt in the history of America has ended with the disposal of this intelligence asset, Osama Bin Laden.
For if the public does choose to go back to sleep and dismiss the copious documentary evidence that the entire war on terror is a fraud being perpetrated by the same people who claim to be fighting the terrorists, we may never be able to awake from whatever nightmare they have planned for us next.
For The Corbett Report in western Japan, I am James Corbett.
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“They had every right to fight against me and I had no right to fight against them.”
“My drill instructor was right: I was only in it for what the Marine Corps can give to me.”
h/t Wariscrime.org
This young man realized the same lie told to so many of my friends’ kids. He discusses how he was bullshitted into believing these lies. He acknowledges that he felt that he had no other choice, except low wage jobs such as landscaping and believed that his marine job would lead to something better when he got out.
But then they accuse him of using the marines and try to force him into the old brainwashing that gets most of them, suggesting that he should do it to be a patriot. Well, standing up to the lies is what makes him a patriot. Telling the truth about the illegal and immoral invasions… torture… maiming and killing of innocent people is what makes him a patriot. And I thank him for telling the truth.
But he finally realized that the toll that the Iraqi people paid is far more than any gains he would ever make. The murder of innocents and the fact that people much like those in his hometown were forced either to leave or fight to keep their homes. He saw that depleted uranium weaponry has caused untold birth defects and deaths.
It is these types of young people who need to stand up and tell the real side of the story and help stop the madness. At the very least, they may convince those that feel that this is the only job they can get to keep trying for something else and leave this murderous Empire’s assassin squads.
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She may not be an American patriot, but she is a patriot in Egypt. She says: Grow some ‘nads, Boys, and come fight this battle with me. (Paraphrased)
h/t Organizing Notes
video: http://www.sermonspice.com/product/32960/i-fought-for-you
Remember— teach it— celebrate it.
Start with 1776…
Videos Updated Below:
Ken O’Keefe was a US Marine. That doesn’t make him a patriot.
Ken O’Keefe boarded the Gaza Flotilla in compassion and in support of his brothers and sisters in Gaza. That doesn’t make him a patriot.
Ken O’Keefe renounced his US citizenship over the Imperialism that the US is actively pursuing. That doesn’t make him a patriot.
He tells whomever will watch this interview that the US is a evil cabal and that our little lapdog, Israel, is the personification of evil. He explains that Zionism is the scourge of the world and that the sooner it is abolished the sooner actual peace may occur. That is what makes him a Patriot.
An amazing ass-kissing sycophant interviews Ken below:
Nation building in Afghanistan is not our job— it is theirs.
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, June 25, 2010
Washington Post
The good news? Nobody has to pretend anymore that Gen. Stanley McChrystal knew how to fix Afghanistan within a year. The bad news? No
President Obama was absolutely right to sack the preening McChrystal, whose inner circle, as portrayed in Rolling Stone magazine, had all the seriousness and decorum of a frat house keg party. And it was a brilliant political move to turn to Petraeus, who is made of purest Teflon. Critics who might have been tempted to blast the president for changing horses in midstream can hardly object when he has given the reins to the man who averted a humiliating U.S. defeat in Iraq.
Note that I didn’t credit Petraeus with “winning” in Iraq. He didn’t. What he managed to do was redeem the situation to the point where the United States could begin bringing home its combat troops. If the Obama administration’s aims in Afghanistan are recalibrated to accommodate objective reality, then Petraeus can succeed there, too. But this means that the general’s assignment should be a narrow one: Lay the groundwork for a U.S. withdrawal to begin next summer, as Obama has pledged.
After relieving McChrystal of his command Wednesday, Obama called in his national security team and read the riot act. No more bickering, sniping, backbiting or name-calling, the president ordered. Play nice.
But all the comity in the world doesn’t resolve the essential tension between those who believe our goal in Afghanistan should be defined as “victory” and those who believe it should be defined as “finding the exit.” Two thousand years of history are on the side of the “exit” camp, and the fact is that at some point we’re going to leave. The question is how much time will pass — and how many more young Americans will be killed or wounded — before that inevitable day comes.
McChrystal, who designed the counterinsurgency strategy being attempted in Afghanistan, didn’t disguise his opposition to administration officials such as Vice President Biden, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and special envoy Richard Holbrooke, who questioned whether the strategy could work. Petraeus is far too good a politician to fall into that trap. He won’t allow any daylight between himself and the civilian leadership.
But ultimately, there’s going to be no way to avoid the central question: What kind of Afghanistan will we leave behind?
One answer would be that we have to leave in place a durable, functional central government that has full legitimacy and control within the nation’s borders. This would provide the United States with a reliable ally in a dangerous region and also ensure that Afghanistan would never again be used as a launching pad for attacks by al-Qaeda. But to get the country to that point, given where it is now, could take a decade or more of sustained, concentrated attention. It would mean not just defeating the Taliban but molding the regime of Afghan President Hamid Karzai into a reasonably honest, effective government. This would be a tall order even if Karzai were a stable, consistent, loyal partner. Does anybody believe that he is?
A better answer would be that it’s enough to leave behind an Afghanistan that no longer poses a serious threat to the United States or its vital interests. Nation-building would be the Afghans’ problem, not ours.
Petraeus was successful in Iraq because he realized that he couldn’t create an Athenian democracy in Baghdad. But the highly imperfect Iraqi government is light-years beyond what the general is likely to be able to achieve in Kabul. Even after the war, Iraq was left with modern infrastructure, a highly educated and sophisticated population, and a sizable percentage of the world’s proven oil reserves. Afghanistan has none of these advantages. The political culture is stubbornly medieval; the populace is poor, uneducated and wary of foreign influences. Afghanistan does have great mineral wealth, apparently, but no mining industry to dig it out and no railroads to get it to the marketplace.
In recent testimony before Congress, Petraeus was less than definitive when asked about Obama’s July 2011 deadline. Because he has such credibility and standing in Washington, his view on when we can begin to leave Afghanistan will be more important than McChrystal’s ever was. I hope that by putting Petraeus in charge of the war, President Obama hasn’t consigned us to a longer stay. His comments Thursday seem to indicate the possibility.
Oh– and I can bet you that Petraeus told the President that he would accept this position with a few conditions– Like ‘Hey I am a Battle Field General.. And I want to WIN, [ like there is such a thing as win] not mandy-pandy around. I am going to make a few changes to your rules of combat– LIKE allow the men to shoot!!!!!” “ Oh and by the way, Rolling Stone Mag, set up McChrystal!”
I put on my Dennis Kucinich for President T-Shirt this morning. I saw a video mix of all his answers in the few Dem POTUS debates at AfterDowningStreet (and again, this morning at AmericanEveryman) and as I watched and listened to him, I knew that America had made a humumngous mistake by not electing him (or Nader, after Dennis got out). As much as I respect Nader, Kucinich was my first choice.
Below is why.
Now, I am not interested in the strawmen you erect (just like I snarkily replied at American Everyman, saying, “But he is so short…”), but I am interested in why anyone would think this man is lesser than the fool you elected. Or any of the bunch.
Watch this video and tell me that America doesn’t need a man of this caliber. Just imagine how it would be to elect a president who was right in the first place and right every time. Explain to me one issue he was wrong on. Then compare to the Corporate wienie you elected.
You bunch of dumbasses:
When Crimes Are Too Big To Fail, What Do You Do?
Nothing, of course.
It is amazing to me that it takes Hustler Magazine (h/t America20XY) to publish something as important to America as the following article. Even though I shouldn’t be amazed (the complicity of the major media outlets with the corrupt government is only another sign of fascism). Sibel is labeled “the most gagged person in the history of the U.S.” and from the perspective of the criminal cabal that hijacked America decades ago, I can understand why. What she knows (and has testified to with corroborating evidence) SHOULD bring this murderous, criminal mafioso we call our government down. But that would mean that someone would have to tell you about it.
If you read here, you are one of the lucky (and smart) ones (btw, this is the second time I have highlighted Mrs Edmonds’ as a Patriot). The following is a must-read (then the “must-question” is, why haven’t we heard more about this?)
Another question? Did you ever wonder why Dennis Hastert decided to retire a while back? I think that even us dumb ole rednecks can “follow the money”, can’t we?
SIBEL EDMONDS HAS NAMED NAMES. WHY ISN’T THE MEDIA REPORTING THE STORY?
by Brad Friedman
for HUSTLER MAGAZINE – March 2010
SIBEL EDMONDS, a former FBI translator, claims that the following government officials have committed what amount to acts of treason. They are lawmakers Dennis Hastert, Bob Livingston, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Stephen Solarz and Tom Lantos, as well as at least three members of George W. Bush’s inner circle: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Marc Grossman. But is Sibel Edmonds credible?
“Absolutely, she’s credible,” Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told CBS’s 60 Minutes when he was asked about her in 2002. “The reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.” Edmonds’s remarkable allegations of bribery, blackmail, infiltration of the U.S. government and the theft of nuclear secrets by foreign allies and enemies alike rocked the Bush Administration. In fact, Bush and company actually prevented Edmonds from telling the American people what she knew—up until now.
John M. Cole, an 18-year veteran of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Counterespionage departments, revealed the panic of upper-echelon officials when Edmonds originally started talking back in 2002. “Well, the Bureau is gonna have to try to work something out with Sibel,” Cole said an FBI executive assistant told him at the time, “because they don’t want this to go out and become public.”
But they couldn’t “work something out with Sibel” because, it seems, she wasn’t looking to make a deal. Edmonds says she was looking to expose what she believed to be the ugly truth about the infiltration of the U.S. government by foreign spies. They were enabled, Edmonds claimed, by high-ranking U.S. officials and insider moles planted at nuclear weapons facilities around the nation.
“Everybody at headquarters level at the Bureau knew what she was saying was extremely accurate,” Cole said recently. “They were trying to figure out ways of keeping this whole thing quiet because they didn’t want Sibel to come out.”
Her under-oath testimony for the Ohio Election Commission, given in a recent videotaped deposition, is both shocking and horrifying. (Edmonds was the star witness for Congressional candidate David Krikorian in connection with a formal complaint initiated by Representative Jean Schmidt [R-Ohio]. Challenging her in 2008, a Krikorian flyer had accused Schmidt of accepting “blood money” from Turkish interests to help block a House bill recognizing Turkey’s genocide of Armenians in 1915.) The deposition was allowed to proceed by the Obama Administration, which chose not to invoke the draconian and little-known “State Secrets Privilege” to gag her, as the previous administration had done, twice.
Edmonds testified that Congressman Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois), a former Speaker of the House, was involved in “several categories” of corruption on behalf of Turkish agents, according to information she claims to have heard while translating and analyzing FBI counterintelligence wiretaps recorded from 1996 through 2002. She mentioned his “acceptance of large sums of bribery in forms of cash or laundered cash” coupled with the ability “to do certain favors…make certain things happen for… [the] Turkish government’s interest.”
Edmonds also alleged, on the public record, Hastert’s use of a “townhouse that was not his residence for certain not very morally accepted activities” and said that “foreign entities knew about this. In fact, they sometimes participated in some of those…activities in that particular townhouse.”
The allegations against Hastert include accepting some half-million dollars in bribes. While several FBI sources have corroborated Edmonds’s account, the best Hastert’s attorneys could do was offer a nondenial denial to the charges. But the proof, as they say, may be in the post-Congressional pudding. As Edmonds had predicted years earlier, Hastert—who left Congress in 2007—now makes $35,000 a month lobbying his old colleagues as a registered foreign agent for the Turkish government.
Former Congressman Bob Livingston (RLouisiana), who was set to become Speaker prior to Hastert until evidence of a sexual affair was revealed by Larry Flynt, was described in Edmonds’s deposition as having participated in “not very legal activities on behalf of foreign interests” before leaving office in 1999. Afterward, she said, Livingston acted “as a conduit to…further foreign interests, both overtly and covertly,” and also became both a lobbyist and “an operative” representing Turkish interests.
According to Edmonds, Representative Roy Blunt (R-Missouri)—likely to run for a U.S. Senate seat in 2010—was “the recipient of both legally and illegally raised…campaign donations from…Turkish entities.” Edmonds also claimed that hard-right Representative Dan Burton (R-Indiana), who was instrumental in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, carried out “extremely illegal activities” and covert operations that were “against the United States citizens” and “against the United States’ interests.”
Edmonds named allegedly traitorous Democrats too. She said that former New York Congressman Stephen Solarz, now also a lobbyist, “acted as conduit to deliver or launder contributions and other bribe[s, including blackmail] to certain members of Congress.” And, according to Edmonds, the late Congressman Tom Lantos (D-California) was said to have been involved in “not only…bribe[ry], but also…disclosing [the] highest level protected U.S. intelligence and weapons technology information both to Israel and to Turkey [and] other very serious criminal conduct.”
The most overtly salacious of the allegations involved Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois), who is “married with…grown children, but she is bisexual,” according to Edmonds. The FBI whistleblower described how Schakowsky was “hooked” by Turkish agents into having a lesbian “sexual relationship with one of their spies,” and “the entire episodes of their sexual conduct was being filmed because the entire house…was bugged…to be used for certain things that they wanted to request.”
Edmonds noted, however, that she didn’t “know if she [Schakowsky] did anything illegal afterwards” since Edmonds was fired by the FBI before learning what came of that particular setup. The Turks, she said, intended to get at Schakowsky’s husband, lobbyist Robert Creamer, who in April 2006 began serving five months in prison (and 11 months of house arrest) for check-kiting and failing to collect withholding tax.
Schakowsky’s office has vehemently denied the allegations. As head of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, Schakowsky might be expected to hold hearings on any of the former FBI employee’s revelations but she has not. She has also refused Edmonds’s challenge to take a polygraph test and has not yet sued her for libel, as the whistleblower has challenged her to do.
Edmonds’s most disturbing allegations, however, may be against high-ranking appointed officials in the Bush Administration. Elaborating on testimony she laid out in her sworn deposition, Edmonds told American Conservative magazine’s Phil Giraldi—a 17-year CIA counterterrorism officer—very specific details of alleged traitorous schemes perpetrated by top State and Defense Department officials. As already noted, these included Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and, perhaps most notably, former Deputy Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, the third-highest-ranking official in the Bush State Department.
Edmonds said that Feith and Wolfowitz were involved in plans to break Iraq into U.S. and British protectorates months prior to 9/11. She also claimed that the duo shared information with Grossman on how to blackmail various officials and that Grossman had accepted cash to help procure and sell nuclear weapons technology to Israel and Turkey—and, from there, on to the foreign black market. There the technology would be purchased by the highest bidder, such as Pakistan, Iran, Libya, North Korea or possibly even al-Qaeda.
Additionally, Edmonds claimed that Grossman, the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey before taking his State Department post, had tipped off Turkish diplomats to the true identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson’s front company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, a full three years prior to their being publicly outed by columnist Robert Novak. That in itself, according to George H.W. Bush, would be an act of treason carried out by “the most insidious of traitors.”
Former CIA counterterrorism officer Giraldi summed up Edmonds’s disclosures to me in blunt terms: “This was a massive coordinated espionage effort directed against United States nuclear secrets engineered by foreign agents who successfully corrupted senior government officials and legislators in our Congress. It’s that simple.”
According to a declassified version of a 2005 Department of Justice Inspector General’s report, Sibel Edmonds’s allegations are “credible,” “serious” and “warrant a thorough and careful review by the FBI.”
Perhaps more damningly, the FBI’s John Cole recently confirmed a key element of Edmonds’s claims when he revealed the existence of “the FBI’s decade-long investigation” of the State Department’s Grossman. Edmonds claimed that Grossman was perhaps the top U.S. ringleader for the entire foreign espionage scheme. The probe, Cole added, “ultimately was buried and covered up.”
Cole, who now works as an intelligence contractor for the Air Force, not only finds Edmonds “very credible,” but also confirms the “ongoing and detailed effort by Turkey to develop influence in the United States” through a number of illegal means.
“Turkish individuals would ask for favors—ya know, ‘You help me out, and I’ll help you out’—and basically what would happen is the elected official would either receive money or some kind of gift,” Cole explained. “Or, if it was a government employee, I’ve seen it where after they retired, they get these very lucrative positions with a Turkish company, or whatever the country may be.”
As noted, Hastert now works for Turkey, and Grossman now works for a Turkish company and as a lobbyist—no doubt raking in a pretty penny from both. Hastert and Grossman repeatedly ignored requests to comment on these charges.
The mainstream U.S. media, however, apparently remain uninterested in investigating any of it. Not even after Cole himself called for a “Special Counsel” to investigate and prosecute. So what the hell is going on here?
Giraldi believes that, as with companies such as AIG and GM becoming “too big to fail,” the size and success of this massive national security espionage scandal has simply become too big to bust.
He told me, “You have to look at Marc Grossman being part of a much bigger operation in terms of the Israelis and the Turks obtaining influence over our legislators and over a number of senior government officials at the Pentagon and State Department. Because this thing was so big, and it affected both Democrats and Republicans, I think the U.S. government is terrified of opening up this Pandora’s box.”
Giraldi added, “The people in Congress and in the Justice Department who should be investigating this…and also in the media—because the media is tied hand and foot to government—this is all part of one big, you know, conspiracy, if you want to look at it this way. And, essentially, this is a story that they don’t want to get out.”
So why, exactly, isn’t the media covering Sibel Edmonds, whom the ACLU once described as “the most gagged person in the history of the U.S.,” now that she is finally able to tell her story? It’s a story, after all, that the legendary 1970s whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has deemed “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers.”
“If we had an effective mainstream media that was going after this story, that would make it come out,” Giraldi noted. “But we don’t have an effective media.” He then pointed out one more reason for the media’s reluctance to dig into this story: “According to Sibel, Grossman actually bragged that he would get from the Turks the information that they wanted to appear in an article. He would write it up, and he would fax it over to the New York Times, and they would print it just as he had written it under somebody else’s byline.”
Guess we won’t expect any coverage of this scandal from the New York Times, “the paper of record,” any time soon. And if a story isn’t covered by the Times, and thereafter picked up by everybody else, did it really happen? Given the complicity of the media with regard to Sibel Edmonds, it would appear the government never even needed to invoke the “State Secrets Privilege” in the first place.
As of this writing, HUSTLER stands to be the largest, most “corporate” U.S. outlet in which these startling, now-public, on-the-record disclosures have been reported. The moral: Pull off a large enough crime, and it becomes too big to do anything about.
I have been following Ms Kimberly’s writing for quite some time. She has her own blog named, “Freedom Rider” (where I found the following video):
This is the first time I have seen her on video, so I wanted to share. Not only for exposure, but for what she explains in the video (well worth every minute).
She is also a BAR (Black Agenda Report) editor and senior columnist. I implore everyone to read (and subscribe) to these fine blogs. BAR is one of the most important voices of truth regarding the current administration and a leader in the online black community. As Kelso frequently points out, the two most important movements of change for this country will likely come from the progressive side of the black community that is awakening to the truth about the Empire and the reality that ALL of THEM are owned and fulfilling the purpose of continuing our Imperialization (the other, believe it or not, would be the white Christians who are slowly coming alive).
None of the change will be implemented by the bogus race card and wedge normally used. It will be the realization that even “the first black President” is “one of them”. It will be in spite of the wedge, people will begin to realize that we must band together… forgetting the prejudice and mind games they play us against each other with and we will finally amass a critical movement momentum that will rid us of the corrupt and install rational, true representatives of “The people”.
It won’t be easy, but it will be required.
I don’t pretend to understand Afghanistan, but I do know it’s a big, poor, backward Islamic country in Central Asia with all sorts of warring factions that have been at it for decades, or even centuries. I know that American soldiers have been fighting there for eight years and that the situation is still a huge mess.
And now President Barack Obama, after sending 21,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan in March, is set to announce next week that he’s going to send over another 30,000 or so, which will bring the total number of US troops in that big, poor, backward, bewildering, violent Islamic country to about 100,000.
I don’t know much about Afghanistan, but I’m pretty familiar with America, familiar enough to know that America is not up for this. I don’t know if it’s possible to pacify Afghanistan – or Pakistan, Iraq, Iran or anyplace else in the region. I don’t know if this can be done even with millions of American troops fighting for 100 years.
But I do know, as I think everyone knows or should know, that America is not ready to fight Islamism like it fought Nazism and Communism, which means that in its wars in the Middle East, America is destined to lose. The only question is how long these futile adventures will last.
Actually, America fought one war in the Middle East that was not seemingly futile, not at all – the one in 1991 against Iraq. That was a “necessary war,” to use Obama’s term for the mess in Afghanistan. Back then, Saddam Hussein invaded an American-allied country, he electrified the entire Middle East, he was bidding for control, direct or indirect, over two-thirds of the world’s oil – he had to be stopped and turned back.
So president George H.W. Bush set a very clear, reasonable goal – forcing Saddam out of Kuwait – then sent half a million soldiers to do the job, accomplished it in six weeks with minimal allied casualties, then brought the troops home, leaving Saddam and Saddamism in ruins. That was a so called “good war.” But Afghanistan? After 9/11, the Americans should have retaliated by carpet bombing select areas of that country, killing tens of thousands of people, terrorists and civilians both, to let al-Qaida, the Taliban and everyone in the Islamic world know that there is a terrible price to pay for attacking America and killing 3,000 innocents.
Instead, America decided to “transform” the region. The result is that another 5,000 Americans have been killed, soldiers this time, bombs are still going off every which way in Iraq, and now a new president, this one a liberal Democrat, not a Republican neocon, is driving deeper and deeper into Afghanistan.
And what about Pakistan? And Iran? Are they next? “All options are on the table,” says Obama.
AMERICA’S PROBLEM is that it still wants to be a military superpower but is no longer willing to pay the price in blood and money, so it tries to do it on the cheap and as painlessly as possible, and winds up fighting endless wars with impossible goals in distant, hellish places.
If the US were serious about taking on a military challenge of this scope, it would reinstate the draft. This isn’t Grenada they’re dealing with, this is an enemy with outposts across the Middle East, and parts of Africa too. And the US means to go to war against this enemy with a volunteer army that’s drawn from less than 1 percent of American families!
“The problem in this country with this issue [of Afghanistan],” said Democratic Congressman David Obey, “is that the only people who have to sacrifice are military families, and they’ve had to go to the well again and again and again and again, and everybody else is blithely unaffected by the war.”
The American people won’t stand for a military draft; it’s a taboo subject . They won’t even stand for a war tax; that’s another taboo. But neither will they stand for the idea that America is not a military superpower anymore. And nobody in that country, not even the messiah of change, has the guts to tell them that they can’t have it both ways.
So the US pretends it can fight World War III like Grenada, its army is so far beyond overextended that there isn’t a word for it, the country spends more and more billions of dollars that it doesn’t have, and this has been going on now for almost a decade.
At this point, is anybody confident that if and when the US gets out of Iraq, after all these years of horror and devastation, it will leave behind a stable, decent, more or less pro-American country?
Is anybody confident of such a happy end to the war in Afghanistan?
I don’t think so. I think if America knew right after 9/11 what it knows now, there is no way on earth it would have started these wars.
But now Obama wants more – not because he believes he can salvage the situation in Afghanistan, but because he’s afraid of what will happen if he abandons it to the likes of al-Qaida and the Taliban. Which is a very legitimate worry. I worry about that too.
But the only way the US can salvage Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Pakistan, or Iran, or any country in the Muslim world, is to fight like it fought every other major war in its history – with a draft, with war taxes, with a clear, reasonable goal and the readiness to pursue it to the end.
Is America up for that today? No, it’s not, I’m happy to say, because, like I said, even millions of American soldiers fighting for 100 years might not be enough to neutralize the threat of Islamism.
It’s fight or flight, which means the only choice left is flight. The US is not a military superpower anymore, and it’s just hurting itself and a lot of other people by pretending.
The time has come for America to wrap up these endless, failed third world wars.
It’s not going to be easy. And the worst part is that after Obama deepens America’s commitment with 30,000 new soldiers, getting out is going to be even harder.
JP/LARRY DERFNER