US Press: Still Silent as the Grave

On January 10 I wrote about British press coverage of former FBI translator turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds’ shocking revelations of high-level nuclear spying. Nearly 2 weeks later Edmonds’ charges have still not seen the light of day in the Corporate Owned Media [COM] in this country. Even after the Sunday Times scooped them all again on January 20.

On Monday (Jan. 21) Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame wrote about the lack of US coverage in an op-ed at Brad Blog and hosted at Huffington Post on Tuesday. Another strong diary at Daily Kos appeared Tuesday, UK media slams US media on Sibel Edmonds case.

[Ellsberg] For the second time in two weeks, the entire US press has let itself be scooped by Rupert Murdoch’s London Sunday Times on a dynamite story of criminal activities by corrupt US officials promoting nuclear proliferation. But there is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped, and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the US Congress and the courts.

Ellsberg notes that some American journalists have reportedly received calls from “intelligence sources” hinting that what Edmonds happened upon is not a ‘real’ spy ring, but a very sensitive covert operation with highest authorization. Yet if her allegations are true, we have this insane operation to thank for the Pakistani bomb and A.Q. Khan selling nuclear technology to places like Syria, Libya, Iran and North Korea!

[Ellsberg] …if there is any truth to that, we clearly have another prize candidate …in the category of “worst covert operation in US history,” rivaling such contenders as the Bay of Pigs, Iran-Contra, and the secret CIA torture camps abroad.

Knowledge of the charges, the backup, the evidence and the players is widespread in D.C. on both sides of the aisle. Complicity in the cover-up is just as widespread and includes the US mainstream media. But the cat’s out of the bag now - the whole world knows about it, except Americans who get their news from newspapers and television. There’s no good reason why the American people should be the last to know about the traitorous deeds of their government.

Links:

US National Security for Sale

US journalists ignore Sunday Times scoop

FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft

Daniel Ellsberg: Covering Up the Coverage

UK media slams US media on Sibel Edmonds case

Filed under Treason, COM, Intelligence, Media, Nuclear Weapons, Balance of Power, Corruption | Comment (0)

US National Security for Sale

The Insane World of Nuclear Spies and Counter-Spies

FBI translator Sibel Edmonds

Britain’s Sunday Times published an article on January 6 entitled For Sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets, detailing the extraordinary claims of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds about how corrupt US government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to ’steal’ nuclear weapons secrets. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a real “bombshell” that ties together many years’ worth of nefarious dealings in the Middle East by officials charged specifically with the task of protecting those nuclear weapons secrets from theft by the very people who were allowed to ’steal’ them!

Edmonds, a Turkish language translator before turning whistleblower, listened to hundreds of sensitive communications intercepted by the FBI while she was stationed at the FBI’s D.C. field office, described to the Sunday Times how foreign intelligence agents enlisted the support of US officials to establish a network of ‘moles’ inside sensitive US military and nuclear installations. The officials involved included one well-known senior official in the US State Department, whom Edmonds says was being paid by Turkish agents in D.C. Those Turks then sold the information to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

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Filed under Intelligence, Counterproliferation, Treason, History, al Quaeda, Nuclear Weapons, War, Corruption | Comment (1)

Those Very Strangely “Missing” Nukes

Update w/New Links and List of Deaths

Way back in early September I posted about a strange incident at Minot AFB in North Dakota, where 5 (now increased to 6) stockpiled nuclear warheads were taken out of storage, armed, attached to supposedly decommissioned Advanced Cruise Missiles, loaded onto the pilons of a B-52 strategic bomber, and flown to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana - a forward staging base for deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

My analysis at that time was that the whistleblowers who reported the incident to The Army Times - which then broke the story - were just doing their job, which had to do with some rather obvious “Saber-Rattling” by the Bush administration against Iran. In that post I noted that ex-CIA analyst Larry Johnson agreed with my analysis on his blog.

On Halloween investigative reporter Dave Lindorff posted a diary on DKos based on his article for The American Conservative [October 22 issue online]. He titled his diary The Air Force Cover-Up of that Minot-Barksdale Nuclear Missile Flight and it’s full of little tidbits of information from the Air Force’s investigation report on the incident.

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Filed under Foreign Policy, Russia, Propaganda, War, Nuclear Weapons, Military | Comments (10)

Saber-Rattling 101:

How to Scare the Bejesus Out of Tyrants and Tin-Horns

The buzz on the left has been insistent for a couple of weeks now about what the Bush administration is planning to do about Iran’s apparently insane Shi’ite political leader and his nuclear ambitions. The carrier fleet and their escorts have been deployed to the Gulf, the rhetoric has kicked up a few notches about how accessible Iran’s nuclear facilities are to air and sea strikes, there’s even been some talk of a draft. Because Iran’s got a heck of an army and they could march it into Iraq if it felt the need.

There are of course many reasons to doubt that our current war-loving band of chicken-hawk miscreants in Washington are really dumb enough to attack Iran, particularly since Israel issued a statement on Wednesday that they’d be willing to live with a nuclear Iran. So long as it’s just power, of course, as opposed to weapons.

Thus it was with a wry smile and a roll of the eyes that I saw the several news reports about 5 ACMs - Advanced Cruise Missiles - mounted with 5-150 kiloton nuclear warheads (these qualify as tactical nukes as opposed to strategic ones on ICBMs that boast multiple megaton warheads) that were ‘accidentally’ flown from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana on August 30. Oops.

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Filed under War, Nuclear Weapons, Military, Bush | Comments (2)