Sibel's interview with Meria Heller

(update for those of you coming from dkos - there's more on Hastert's crimes related to Sibel Edmonds here)

here's some more from Sibel's interview with Meria Heller - see Meria.net - the show is in the archives, with all of Meria's other interviews

firstly, congratulations to meria and her audience for asking some great, direct, simple question. from my own experience, when i (and others) am talking to the 'most gagged person in american history' - for some reason, the tendency is to tiptoe around certain questions - which is dumb - sibel knows what she can, and can't, answer.

secondly, for more background, read my earlier pieces about Sibel, starting with how we got in contact here, and read here about our new campaign about Hastert here.

my transcription isnt quite verbatim, and there's some paraphrasing. all errors are mine.

Sibel was asked whether she knew anything about the 911 hijackers - she responded:

I don't have any direct information that relates to these 19 hijackers - I've never said that I did have any direct information. The information that I reported to COngress and the 911 Commission and the Inspector General's office - and even during a court hearing - that had to do with indirect involvement of certain people and/or entities and organizations involved with the money laundering aspect of it.

In certain cases - in return for bribery - providing certain visas for some of the hijackers - that information didn't directly relate to the hijackers themselves - but to their support network, their financial network. So to answer that question - I never had any direct information about the hijackers.

However - there were - and there still are today - certain individuals and entities and organisations who are very closely associated with the terrorist network - and they have not been touched.

now i'll paraphrase because this isn't new

and i would like to give an analogy - if you take the War on Drugs, imagine if they only went after street dealers and they refused to investigate the mid-level dealers or the drug lords. This is very similar.

and now back again to more or less direct quotes

What occured with the 911 related investigation - be it the FBI, or the Department of Defense, or the Department of State, or the CIA or the Pentagon - they choose to basically publicise the deal (?) at the hijacker level - and completely went about covering up certain entities that they had DIRECT evidence, DOCUMENTED evidence of the support networks - be it the financial support networks, or communications, or obtaining visas - they have not touched those individuals. Those individuals are still roaimng free! Today!

Meria then had another question from the audience: Do you really believe that Arabs were involved in 911?
Sibel:

Ok - I have my own piece - and there are so many pieces involved - and I can't speak to many other pieces - so I'll just limit myself to my own direct experience, and direct information. We are talking about many countries - several countries. We're not just talking about - as they say - Saudi Arabia and Egypt - but they have glossed over the involvement of certain entities within other countries - such as Turkey, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan - many central asian countries.

They have absolutely covered up the involvement of certain entities - it's not necessarily only governmental - from these other countries - central asia - they call it "Sensitive Diplomatic Relations' - you know they are putting (military) bases there.

We are actually supporting what they are doing - even certain abuses - they are involved in... certain criminal activities.

Meria:

In effect - we are supporting terrorism

Sibel:

yes

Sibel then goes on to say that Saudi business people and officials, including Bin Ladens were moved out of the country immediately after 911 without even the slightest questioning - and then notes that 911 was used by the government as an excuse to implement a police state

Sibel then talks about a lot of whistblower stuff - which is important, but has been covered elsewhere

Another question from Meria "Do you believe 911 was an inside job?"

Sibel responded that she can't answer that definitively because she only has a piece of the information puzzle - then:

"I don't know everything that was involved but I can tell you -for sure - with 100% certainty - that they have gone out of their way to cover up the real entities involved in the 911 terrorist attacks - they have gone out of their way NOT to investigate. In fact, we warned (phonetic?) certain people who had involvement with 911 - and that raises the question that you just asked - WHY? Just why would they go to such lengths to cover up all the related, factual information about 911? And therefore, that gives credence to people who are asking the question!

If I was the government, and this outrageous incident took place in my country, I'd do EVERYTHING to bring about accountability - and to put out all the information if I really am saying that 'I'm fighting the terrorists'. WHY? The question is WHY?

And a part of that is - were there certain individuals (officials - some appointed, some of them elected) who were involved with these support networks?

Yes, there were!

Were some of them indirectly, but yet knowingly and directly involved?

Yes, they were!

Are these people still around? Are they some highly-recognizable, highly-known names? Yes! And that's why they invoked the States Secret privilege in my case. It's not because the information involved some low-level highjackers or some individual in Egypt or Saudi Arabia.

They are protecting certain individuals whose names will automatically come out and have to be investigated if the entire information that I reported to COngress and to the Inspector General, and to the 911 Commission were to come out.

And as I said - highly recognizable individuals . Now, granted - some of them willingly left their positions due to the revolving door - and they are now with one firm or another - some of them don't have their governmental positions - or elected positions - but were there (people knowingly and directly involved)? Yes!

Is that the reason they have been invoking the gag orders and state's secret privilege? Yes!

Would we have criminal indictments of these people if - at least my part of the information - were to come out? Yes! Absolutely!

Sibel then went onto describe the Hastert situation with Louis Freeh - transcribed by the ever-wonderful Miguel:

“…what happened was, FBI had this information since 1997. In 1999, the Clinton Administration actually asked the Department of Justice to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Hastert, and certain other elected officials that were not named in this (VF) article, to be investigated formally. And the Department of Justice actually went about appointing this prosecutor, but after the Administration changed they quashed that investigation and they closed it despite the fact they had all sorts of evidence, again I’m talking about wiretaps, documents- paper documents- that was highly explosive and could have been easily used to indict the Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. That investigation was closed in 2001, and this was around the time I started reporting my cases to the Congress.”

She then described the the VF article and Hastert and the American Turkish Council which I've previously discussed at length (see here for the claims against Perle and Feith, and as a general starting point for all things related to Sibel. See here for the Hastert bribery campaign)

Sibel then mentioned that the corruption extended beyond Perle and Feith to Grossman and Edelman - again, start here and here for more of that

She then went on to mention a Europol report which I havent yet seen for 2000-2005 which says that 30% of Turkish GDP is narcotics, and that 98% of Europe's narcotics are processed in Turkish labs

And then she discussed Judge Reggie Walton - we should have more on him in the next few weeks - but he is a bit of a concern - he keeps getting allocated to Sibel's cases, and he is the judge in the Libby/plame case. He was a Drug Czar in Bush 41's administration - and he is the only judge in history to have all of his personal records redacted... in fact, he worked with cheney and libby in previous administrations.

(and a final hat tip to miguel, again)