sibelology

as i mentioned the other day, i got an email from sibel edmonds the other day after she had read some of my posts about her story - basically she wanted to let me know that i was on the right track (and that virtually no-one else is). Before we get into the details, my summary of the Sibel story is here (fwiw - she hadn't read that summary post when she contacted me)

(update-you can read about the phone call here)

via the magic of the server logs, as best as i can tell, she read the following posts in forming her opinion:

This post called "sibel and feith and perle?" which also discusses Grossman
This post which is largely about Bolton
This post which has some snippets of the Scott Horton interview
This post about Melek Can Dickerson
This post which is mainly about Charlie Black (and Bolton and Freedman)

as far as i know, they were the posts that got her attention and prompted her to contact me because those posts demonstrated somehow that i 'got' the story.

in any case, so she emailed me trying to hook up a phone call - i asked her what particular issues she wanted to discuss so that i could do some research before the phone call and she replied with this:

"You seem to know how to connect some of these dots; do so pretty well. Yet, even some of the savvy media here don't get it (or don't want to!). You picked the Zogby report, even though it was written a while ago (good research); cleverly put it together with Mahmud, Grossman, and even Brewster Jennings.

Working around the gag orders, I tried to put bits & pieces, making sure each could be pointed out to as public info; almost everyone either missed it entirely, or, wondered off on a totally irrelevant road. You took each piece, and with a good research job, started connecting the dots. Now that I've discovered your site, I can send people (reporters) to your site. That's why I want to know a bit more about you, and how you ended up on the right track.

Here is another dot for you:
(snip)

Joe Wilson met his wife, Plame, at ATC (American Turkish Council) in 1997. Look up his book, it is there.

Brewster Jennings, Plame, dealt with ATC, ATA, and Turkey a lot. Her UC job took him* to Turkey more than 4-5 times to Turkey between 1997 & 2001. This info has been printed on the front-page of main Turkish papers.

IAI, International Advisors Inc, owned & operated by Perle & Feith, was set up & registered as 'Agents for Turkey.'"

(*based on our conversation, i think that she meant to say "her")

i had to snip a bit of her email because it isnt yet public, but it refers to another link between her case and libby's case.

(**update: the announcement has been made, the redacted text was "Judge Walton, my original judge (on State Secret Privilege) happened to be 'randomly' appointed to Libby/Plame case. More on Walton later (how he ended up with my case...)." my response is here )

the fact that she has provided these extra dots probably means that they are specifically important - but what is she saying? the point about wilson and plame meeting at the ATC is probably just to highlight that plame hung out at the ATC, im guessing. i dont think she is saying anything about wilson here.

sibel then says "Brewster Jennings, Plame, dealt with ATC, ATA, and Turkey a lot. " and that plame visited there. again, im not sure what she is implying here. i did ask her whether wilson and plame were innocent and her response (from memory) was something like 'i think so.' - perhaps she hadnt read my posts closely and was trying to tell me that BJ was intentionally outed, not plame - although ive thought that for a long time.

its not obvious why brewsterjennings would work with the ATC and the ATA a lot, nor whether they were doing so as 'BJ, energy company' or as "BJ, CIA front'. if it's the latter, then the ATA and the ATC have some splaining to do. its my guess that sibel is simply trying to tell us that plame-gate and sibel-gate are related.

As to her last point about Feith and Perle, i think that sibel came to my site by googling ""international advisors inc" and Feith" (although she did mention, in passing, that someone had sent her one of my posts.) regardless, she obviously sees that connection as significant. (i wrote a post about feith and IAI and perle here).

in any case, when you put her three points together, if we assume that they are meant to be related, the simplest answer seems to be that sibel is suggesting that there were people at the ATC and the ATA who knew that Plame was a spy, and somehow that information got to Feith and he engineered her outing - probably through grossman somehow. (That doesnt quite explain why the OVP was called in to do the dirty work - did they recruit wurmser?)

as an aside, jane and emptywheel both note Judy's claim that "Libby never told her that Joe Wilson's wife had any part in sending him on the Niger trip" but that plame was still "potentially newsworthy," *and* "undercut [Wilson's] credibility. if it wasnt the fact that Wilson was a girly man who needed his wife for work, then what other element of the 'wife' story is judyjudyjudy talking about?

the good news of course, is that Sibel is helping us chase down the missing threads, and confirming certain parts of the story so we can focus our energies a little better when trying to dig deeper. sibelologists, start your engines.

i must admit, even i still dont know much of the story beyond some vague sense of the people and the activities generally involved. for example, i dont have a clue why grossman, or edelman, is important - or what he is specifically doing, and how he gets paid. why does the american ambassador in turkey have to be involved in the scheme? i dunno.

more later.

in the meantime, prior to our phonecall, sibel sent me three press articles for me to read - she included some highlighting and underlining and such - so i'll post those immediately under this post - with her emphasis. There are surely some clues hidden in plain view in these documents.


(update, you can read about the phone call here)
---------

The three articles are:
1. "Case Reveals Nuts and Bolts of Nuclear Network, Officials Say" by Josh Myer at the LATimes in May 2004. (link)
2. "Turkish businessman denies nuclear goods claim" by STEPHEN FIDLER June 11, 04, FT (link)
3. "U.S. Firm Said Among Nuclear Black Market" by GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press
Posted on Fri, Jul. 09, 2004 (link)

(sibel read this before i posted it, and made some minor corrections)