Gladio B: Gladio Revisited

[Magda Hassan]

Part 6: [URL="http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/03/15/corbett-video-report-gladio-series-whos-at-the-top-of-the-pyramid/"]http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/03/15/corbett-video-report-gladio-series-whos-at-the-top-of-the-pyramid/
[/URL]
Friday, 15. March 2013
In this sixth part of the ongoing Sibel Edmonds Gladio B conversation, we ask the question: Who is at the top of the pyramid. We look beyond the usual suspects and follow the money back to the industries and lobbies whose existence depends on the perpetuation of boogeymen enemies.


SHOW NOTES:
10 companies profiting the most from war
The 25 Biggest Defense Companies In America
Graph of US Military Spending Since 1962
The American Turkish Council: US Association Helps Create New World Order
Sibel Edmonds Case: Richard Perle continues criminal enterprise, MSM still silent
Guardian Exposes West-Jordan-Syria Axis … But Only 15 Months Late
American Judas Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part One
Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part Two

[Jan Klimkowski]

American Judas Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part One
Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part Two

These are pretty decent summaries of Sibel Edmond's Gladio B hypothesis, kindly compiled by Robert Paulsen.

Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part One
There are two seminal world events that, more than any other events since, have shaped my understanding of how the world really works as opposed to what we are told and have galvanized my consciousness to document my awareness of political reality. One is the lies that led this country to go to war in Iraq and the government treachery, culminating in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, used to justify this crime. The other is the lies surrounding 9/11 that led to the termination and gagging of FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. Recently, Edmonds was interviewed in a podcast by Canadian journalist James Corbett (Well, he says he's originally from Canada, though his link about his website states he has been living and working in Japan since 2004) for his show The Corbett Report. The interview was broken up into four different segments lasting over four hours, as well as a listener Question and Answer session lasting an hour and a half. I've listened to the interview segments twice, the first time just sitting back having my mind blown, the second time taking feverish notes, trying to lay out all the pieces of the puzzle which Edmonds describes as Gladio B. This blog post is the first in a series attempting to synopsize the interview from the notes I scribbled, as well as to provide analysis with how the explosive information provided by Edmonds connects with earlier research I have conducted on 9/11 and Valerie Plame.

(If you want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth, [no sleight intended toward Sibel Edmonds' appearance, who happens to be quite beautiful] here are the links for the interview: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four and the Question and Answer session.)


Part One Synopsis: Sibel Edmonds begins this mammoth interview with an overview of how Operation Gladio morphed in Turkey. She makes clear that though the field of operations is global, and that she would delve into the former Soviet bloc countries of Central Asia, Turkey was always the most important operation center of Gladio before the fall of the Soviet Union. The reasons for this are a) geographic and b) drugs (Edmonds didn't explicitly make this the b point, but I believe the implication based on the subsequent account is correct). During the Cold War, behind the Turkish military there was always the para-military or ultra-nationalist groups. These groups had their Godfathers, or "Babas" running drugs. She says you could always tell who these guys were by their looks, many wore little "Hitler" mustaches. What NATO, which was running Operation Gladio, did that was so scandalous was they took these guys out of prison, trained with Turkish military and given passports for the express purpose of running operations. What kind of operations? Drug running, false flag ops, assassinations and murder.

The primary example Edmonds gives of this type of Gladio operative is Abdullah Çatlı. He was a major para-military nationalist with a criminal record so notorious he was on Interpol's 10 Most Wanted list. Arrested in Switzerland during the 80's and placed in a high-security prison, he escaped via a helicopter that was owned by NATO! Çatlı (pronounced Chat-lee) next shows up in London in 1989 where he is granted UK citizenship! Next he comes to the United States, specifically Chicago in 1990-1991 where he is given a green card. There are dozens of exits and entrances from America indicating his participation in the kind of nefarious operations listed above, but because he carries 4 or 5 diplomatic passports, he has immunity to do whatever he wants. In 1995, Çatlı travels to Azerbaijan from Chicago and attempts to assassinate President Aliyev. The attempt fails to kill Aliyev, but succeeds in Çatlı's real goal: making Aliyev loyal to US/NATO. Prior to the assassination attempt, Aliyev was loyal to Russia but had a terrible weakness ripe for exploitation: he had big debts with casinos. Following the assassination attempt, Aliyev became pro-US, so with his mission accomplished, Çatlı came back to Chicago. He was also heavily involved with organizing terror operations in an area of West China known as Turkestan prior to his death.

Before discussing the dirty details of Çatlı's death and the scandal erupting from it, Edmonds sets up the context in which this occurs by stating that during the period of 1994-1996, there is a debate within NATO. This debate is focused on how to proceed with Operation Gladio in having Soviet bloc nations on our side. There are two options: 1) Continue like before the fall of the Soviet Union or 2) Proceed like with the Balkans and Afghanistan. Edmonds can't confirm whether the decision to proceed with option 2 occurred prior to Çatlı's death or as a result of it. What's undeniable is that the enormity of scandal in the wake of his death kind of forced NATO's hand to evolve that direction.

In 1996, Çatlı was killed in a major car crash in Susurluk, Turkey. But he was not the only big name involved in this crash. Also in the car with him was the chief of police, a powerful member of Parliament and Çatlı's lover, a former beauty queen. Before the details could be covered up, local police had confirmed the event and local media reported it. The subsequent investigations exposed what is called the Deep State: that killings were done for the state and drug runnings were done by the state. The fear within the US/NATO was that our role in this would come out, state secrets would be exposed. You know how people in this country scream "9/11!" to protest a cover-up and/or conspiracy? Edmonds says that in Turkey people scream "Susurluk!" to protest the cover-up there. The US Ambassador to Turkey Marc Grossman was pulled even though he still had 1-2 years left to serve. Also pulled was someone who figured directly in Sibel Edmonds' termination from the FBI, Major Douglas Dickerson, who directed Gladio in Khazakstan and Turkmenistan. Another big blow was the chief guy in the Turkish military was pulled who was in charge of "counter-terror", i.e. false-flag operations.

At this point in 1997, NATO went ahead with the plans to change to what Edmonds calls Gladio B. Plan B would no longer involve paramilitary, ultra-nationalist groups. Instead they would go with Islamic factions, the Mujahadeen. Some of these ultra-nationalist, paramilitary groups went rogue in some very interesting ways which Edmonds will detail later. There was quite a bit of uncertainty at the time in Turkey as to how the evolution of Operation Gladio would proceed. But in the aftermath of Çatlı's death, it appears they did have a leader in mind.

That leader was Fethullah Gulen. An Islamic preacher who has been called "moderate", his message is similar to other Turkish preachers in calling for bringing Islamic brothers together, but is unique in that it is not nationalistic, but inclusive of other Central Asian nations. But his movement was not particularly well liked by the Turkish military, so after receiving threats from them, he came to Washington, D.C. He now heads a $20 billion organization through which 350 mosques and madrassahs have opened! But there's a catch if you want to join: you must learn English. And all "English teachers" are given diplomatic passports! Edmonds also lists another big player in the Gladio B network, Yusuf Turani. Turani was actually given US citizenship in 1997 and called the President of Turkestan in absentia. Again, Turkestan is an area of West China known as the Xinjiang province.

But another relationship NATO had was with a name more familiar: Ayman al-Zawahiri. Known as the "brains" behind al-Qaeda in many circles, Edmonds says that NATO through Gladio worked closely with Zawahiri and Bin Laden. From 1997-2001, Plan B of Gladio included dozens of operations with Mujahadeen. Edmonds points out that during this time they were never called al-Qaeda within official circles, always Mujahadeen. NATO asked President Mubarak of Egypt (where Zawahiri is originally from) to release anti-regime people (friends of Zawahiri) who they had tasks for in Turkey. During this time, Zawahiri had come to Turkey, but was also working in Albania and Kosovo. Edmonds mentions an interesting fact regarding the FBI: they keep tabs on all countries (their diplomatic arms) through monitoring (i.e. wiretapping) except four. These four countries are 1) Turkey 2) Azerbaijan 3) United Kingdom and 4) Belgium, the seat of NATO. The Cold War within the context of a "war over resources" didn't end. The ultimate prize, as Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in The Grand Chessboard, is Central Asia.

So then 9/11 happens. What's the official reaction? Edmonds characterizes it as the US saying "our partners", those we did joint operations with, did it. And of course we had nothing to do with it. It's one of the oldest games in the UK we've now learned: "Use Islam to get what you want!" Edmonds then goes into the role that drugs played. One of the reasons Belgium is one of the four countries not being monitored is that it is "extremely important" in the distribution of heroin. She notes that while many sites write about the Taliban getting rid of heroin prior to 9/11, this is not quite the whole story. The Taliban cut production from 2000-2001, but did not relinquish control. The Taliban was in charge of Afghanistan since 1996, and from 1996-2000, there was no slack in heroin production. Until 9/11, the majority of heroin operations were by Russia, an estimated 70-80% under Russian control. After 9/11 that control shifts to NATO. With their takeover of the Afghan poppy, production skyrockets. Edmonds ends Part One of the interview mentioning that Gladio operations were linked to Chechnyan operations and that in the wake of the transition to Gladio B, many ultra-nationalists defected to Russia.


Part One Analysis: To call Operation Gladio labyrinthian is an insult to labyrinths, the understatement of the millenium. What really blew my mind is how some of the information within this interview dovetailed with what I learned from my research in 2006 for the second edition of American Judas. Specifically information on Operation Gladio that I obtained from a reporter working for an online news service who wishes to remain anonymous. What I learned about Gladio was in the context of the Valerie Plame scandal and how Michael Ledeen, who was involved with the Niger forgeries that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq that Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, debunked, had a dark history with Italian intelligence going back to the late 70's. Now Edmonds made an effort in the interview to distinguish between the Italian side of Gladio, which has been heavily documented, and the Turkish side, which has received less press here. But I had no idea about the Operation Gladio connection with a Masonic lodge in Italy called P2, which engaged in a series of terror attacks called the Strategy of Tension. It was a campaign of false-flag terror in the late 1970s, waged by outright fascists who enjoyed the patronage of the CIA, the Mafia and far right elements of the Italian State. At the time the reporter detailed this skullduggery culminating in the 1980 Bologna train station bombing that killed 81 people, I really had a faint sketch of how this fit into the context of the War on Terror. After listening to Part One, my understanding is that just as Gladio B is the next stage of Operation Gladio, the War on Terror is the next stage of the Strategy of Tension. 9/11 was an Operation Gladio false-flag operation on steroids.

This is truly terrifying information to digest. It's so much easier for Americans to look at a scandal like Susurluk and say, "Well, that's something that happens over there, we don't have that kind of corruption here." Someone on the internet, I'm not sure who to credit, made this analogy: "Imagine a car accident at, say, a hotel in West Viginia. Several people are killed, among them Jeff Gannon, Douglas Feith, Warren Christopher, and Osama bin Laden." But if we look closer at what Sibel actually says about the scandal, there was a high ranking American official who had to high-tail it out of Turkey in the wake of these criminal revelations: Marc Grossman. I've documented some of his other dark deeds in American Judas, which I will quote directly here:

One man described as a pillar of the ATC that Edmonds has been able to talk about is Marc Grossman. http://sibeledmonds.blogspot.com/2006/09...-marc.html The same Marc Grossman who told Scooter Libby on June 11 or 12, 2003, more than a month before Novak's column, about Wilson's wife working at the CIA. http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001046.php The same Marc Grossman mentioned in the 1st edition of American Judas who had a meeting that was reported on September 10, 2001, as "most important" with General Mahmoud Ahmad, who resigned from being Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Chief the following month in the wake of an investigation by Times of India, confirmed by the FBI, that he authorized ISI agent Omar Saeed Sheikh to wire transfer $100,000 in August 2001 to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker of the 9/11 attacks. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timel...saeed.html When questioned in April 2006 by director Mathieu Verboud for an interview that was later cut out of a documentary about Sibel Edmonds titled Kill the Messenger, Grossman claimed he didn't know anything about Sibel Edmonds or Valerie Plame. This cannot be true, according to Edmonds, because Grossman was one of three officials the other two, she says, are Richard Perle and Douglas Feith who had been watched by both Valerie Plame's Brewster Jennings & Associates CIA team, and by the major FBI investigation of organized crime and governmental corruption on which she herself was working until being terminated in April 2002. http://sibeledmonds.blogspot.com/2006/09...-marc.html


Now, if I'm connecting the dots correctly, I really have a deeper understanding of why Valerie Plame's cover was blown. The popular story has always been either the benign, "Armitage-the-gossiper-made-a-boo-boo" or the malignant, "Neo-cons-made-Plame's-CIA-cover-Fair-Game-for-hubby-criticizing-Bush". I always leaned toward blaming the neo-cons. But when we understand that Grossman is the genesis from which Plame's CIA identity was spread within the government (Armitage, Libby, Rove) and subsequently to reporters (Woodward, Cooper, Miller, Novak), the "Neo-cons-protecting-their-justification-for-invading-Iraq" motive becomes a sheep-dipped cover for the real motive: protecting Operation Gladio's criminal networks, including the A.Q. Khan Nuclear Walmart that Plame was tracking through her CIA cover company. Does this let my favorite American Judas villain Dick Cheney off the hook since he is a neo-con? Not by a long shot. First, the Grossman revelations do not change the documented links between Cheney and the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network where the motive to blow Valerie Plame's CIA cover is concerned. Second, Cheney's complicity in the facilitation of 9/11 in light of the history of Gladio false-flag operations only makes the case seem stronger.

If all this is correct, that would make the assessment I made on September 11, 2010 that the genesis of 9/11 originates in 1972 with the creation of BCCI a bit premature. The true origins go all the way back to at least 1947, when the United States was constructing a clandestine network in Northern Italy to act if there was a communist electoral victory or insurrection. Operaton Gladio was first coordinated by the Clandestine Committee of the Western Union in 1948, which was integrated into the Clandestine Planning Committee under NATO in 1949. Though Gladio initially referred to the Italian branch, Operation Gladio has become the name for all the NATO "stay behind" paramilitary organizations, each with its own shady history. In Germany, for example, it was involved with the ODESSA ratlines, helping Nazi war criminals escape to safety, through the Gehlen Org, named after Reinhard Gehlen, himself a Nazi Major General who became West Germany's first head of intelligence. But it was in Italy during the 1970's that Gladio erupted into a truly ugly machine of mayhem, murder and false-flag terror operations through the Strategy of Tension, as mentioned above, which almost served as a template for 9/11.


So who do I hold ultimately responsible for this hydra-headed monstrosity? That would be Allen Dulles. The whole exercise that became known as Operation Gladio was "born in the head of Allen Dulles" and was financed by the CIA. For those who are familiar with the political world that author Peter Dale Scott describes as "Deep Politics", this puts Dulles squarely in the nexus of two of the biggest "deep events" in American history. Scott defines a deep event as "events, like the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-in, or 9/11, which violate the … social structure, have a major impact on … society, repeatedly involve law-breaking or violence, and in many cases proceed from an unknown dark force." Dulles has long been suspected of involvement in the assassination of JFK, or at least covering up CIA involvement through his position on the Warren Commission. Though Dulles died in 1969, long before the events of 9/11, by being the architect of Operation Gladio, his influence is all over that conspiracy as well.

Synopsizing Sibel Edmonds: The Evolution of Operation Gladio Part Two
In this continuing series of synopsizing the Sibel Edmonds interviews on The Corbett Report and providing my own analysis as I did in last week's blog post, I think it's important to provide a link to an analysis by Sibel herself at her website, Boiling Frogs Post. She provides the connections linking Afghan heroin business with "cargo" transportation through Azerbaijan and the Balkans in an informative and entertaining way. I also want to encourage everyone interested to read Classified Woman, just written last year, where Sibel tells her whole story.


Part Two Synopsis: In the second part of this interview, James Corbett starts out mentioning a couple recent news reports to provide a starting point. First, he points out a story regarding the recent US Embassy bombing in Ankara, Turkey from the Times of Israel where they describe the bombers as leftist radicals who "didn't get the memo" that the Cold War ended. Sibel Edmonds responds to this by saying that whenever Turkish media or the Turkish government use the word "leftist", that's kind of a code word for Russia, who has been demonized specifically for their aid to Assad in Syria. She then directs the conversation to another recent event, the arrest of Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, Suleyman Abu Ghaith. Reputed to be one of the top five al-Qaeda leaders and number two spokesperson, the rumor was that he had been located in Iran. But Edmonds reminds us that Iran has never had any relations with al-Qaeda. She refers to certain geographical areas that have activity, but not state sanction, they are kind of a "no-man's land" where al-Qaeda has operated, specifically Baluchistan. This region of Baluchistan has also been very important for the United States, like Xinjiang mentioned in Part One, we really don't hear to much in the media, but there is quite a lot of terror activity. But while rumors circulated for years about Abu Ghaith and Zawahiri being imprisoned in Iran, he officially resurfaced in February of this year with his arrest in Turkey, where he had been "hiding" in a penthouse suite of a 5 star hotel just blocks from the Presidential Palace. Supposedly notified about this development by the CIA, he was held and interrogated, but the Turkish police could find no evidence he had done anything to Turkey, so initially they refused to extradite him and the CIA was OK with this! At this point, Corbett interjects that this is the same CIA that has no problem kidnapping other terror suspects, flying them to other countries to be tortured, but not bin Laden's son-in-law!

Edmonds points out that this is similar to the pattern established with Yassin al-Qadi, associated with the Ptech scandal. Just after 9/11, he left the US and spent 6-8 months in Albania, then went to Turkey. The US asked for him to be extradited because he was on their terror blacklist connected with 9/11, but Turkey refused because they had no evidence he had done anything wrong to them. He currently resides in the UK and has cleared himself from terror blacklists there, as well as in Switzerland and the EU. Corbett points out how the US originally tried to prosecute him during the late 90's with the FBI investigation called Operation Vulgar Betrayal. Edmonds relates how both Robert Wright and John Vincent, FBI agents connected with this case, are now members of her organization National Security Whistle Blowers Coalition (NSWBC). She explains how the US government (CIA, State Department and White House) forced this investigation that Wright and Vincent were spearheading to shut down. In fact, as a direct result from this pressure, the FBI said the 9/11 Commission was not allowed to interview Wright! Vincent went directly to the 9/11 Commission to present their investigation that would have lead to 9/11.

This investigation had been centered in Chicago, which Edmonds points out she keeps mentioning Chicago because where Gladio B is concerned, a lot of the operational and logistics were done from Chicago. She describes it as the "easiest" city for money laundering. The United States actually has an office in the Pentagon for Gladio operations. It isn't called Gladio B, but it is a designated section in the Pentagon, the physical office also dealt with the previous Gladio operations. Starting a few days after 9/11 when she was hired by the FBI, Edmonds goes into the tasks she was assigned tracking terror suspects, meeting a quota of how many terror arrests they could publicize, yet Qadi was not detained prior to his departure in October 2001. But a lot of Qadi's operations spill over to white collar crime investigations in Chicago. Because Edmonds was asked by FBI agent Joel Roberts to translate documents pertaining to these investigations as well as crimes involving the Chicago network of Abdullah Çatlı, who was covered in Part One, she was in a unique position to connect the dots with the Operation Vulgar Betrayal investigation.

Getting back to Qadi's Albanian connection, Edmonds explains that the biggest focus of the Gladio B operatives from the early to late 90's was the Balkans. This includes not only Qadi and Çatlı's networks, but also the Fethullah Gulen network discussed in Part One. At this time, many Albanians coming into Chicago were some of the "most ferocious and strongest" mafia operators in the US. Even Italians wouldn't mess with these guys. The FBI set up major arrests that would consistently be thwarted because the State Department would tell them these guys had diplomatic immunity! Why did they do this? Time magazine's 2002 person of the year, FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley believes that it's because there were too many moles in the FBI, that the CIA had penetrated the FBI on behalf of the State Department. The CIA-State Department would "tip off informants" in cases known to the NSWBC of impending sting operations by the FBI. This was really the big underlying problem that Edmonds had to deal with during her employment as an FBI translator. It was not the bureaucratic nobody Mike Feghali that she mentions in her book, it was the CIA-State Department moles within the FBI.

After her termination from the FBI, Edmonds put the pieces of the puzzle together with her NSWBC organization. She knew the 9/11 Commission was "bull" because of all the facts that were intentionally omitted from their report. Time person of the year Colleen Rowley was not even going to be interviewed by the Commission. Rowley, Wright, Vincent; these were all agents 20+ years on the force. Edmonds then went to the media to protest this oversight. She was able to tell her story to the Commission through a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) so that no operatives identities would be compromised. All of these agents she mentioned, as well as Tony Shaffer of Operation Able Danger went on record saying there was a huge 9/11 cover-up! While this may seem like a clear case of Bush administration malfeasance to many, Edmonds clarifies that many of these investigations were stymied during the late 90's, which would implicate the Clinton administration as well.

It is this last point that Americans find especially hard to digest because we are conditioned to think along the lines of a black hat/white hat mentality. It's so much easier to be partisan rather than dig deeper to find the darker truth that intersects across party lines. The classic example is the story of Watergate and how it was covered by Bob Woodward and the Washington Post. That story seems pretty clear-cut, but if they really got Watergate, why didn't they get Iran/contra? Or did they really get Watergate? It seems from Sibel Edmonds perspective that when you really get the story, the way Gary Webb did with Iran/contra, you don't become a multi-millionaire entrenched in the system like Woodward, you get marginalized like Webb. Corbett concurs, noting that the Watergate burglary was purposely screwed up and Woodward had the story handed to him on a silver platter.

Corbett wraps up Part Two addressing some viewers questions. Were the Gladio B transition plans in existence before Susurluk? Edmonds says yes, pointing out how our relationship with the Mujahadeen started in the 1980's in Afghanistan. These religious relationships existed, but were on the periphery and not the focal point of Operation Gladio. They were operating through CIA and British intelligence, but it was not until after Susurluk that it became part of NATO and Gladio operations. Another question: how do we know Grossman and Dickerson being pulled from Turkey was connected with Susurluk? While so much is classified where proof is concerned, Edmonds was part of an FBI investigation directly focused on Grossman. While his high profile job was the #3 guy (at the time she investigated him at FBI) at the State Department, his real job was always with NATO/Gladio operations. Same thing with Dickerson: NATO got him out of US into Brussels. FBI Counter-Intelligence has established this; their file on Grey Wolves (Turkish paramilitary) was turned to Gladio B. That's why these operations had to be stopped by the State Department and Pentagon: it steps on their operations through NATO! The final question concerns Ergenekon trials in Turkey: are they a US backed operation to replace secular government with more compliant capitalists? Edmonds says yes, 100%, the Turkish military "can't even pee" without permission from the United States. It's that way everywhere, even Iran, why did the Shah fall? The US felt it was time, he was "fair game". (Edmonds hates the Shah BTW, he tortured her father!) So what is happening in Turkey is all with a US green light. Edmonds concludes Part Two by saying the worst, self-destructive element of the 9/11 Truth movement is this divisiveness over LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purpose) vs. MIHOP (Made It Happen On Purpose). She doesn't know how much is caused by planted elements or just naturally misguided viewpoints. But we must stop the semantics. You've got to get rid of the old conditioning, the black hat/white hat mentality, and do your own research!

Part Two Analysis: Lots of new characters and relationships revealed in this part! There's a lot that's familiar to me through my previous research, but some that I hadn't heard yet. Working backwards, I had not heard about Ergenekon, wouldn't even know how to spell it if not for the diligent research of Wombaticus Rex at Rigorous Intuition (RI) who provided this link detailing this part of Turkish history and how it relates to Operation Gladio. The RI forum discussion is worth following on this topic. My contribution so far has been finding out about the Grey Wolves referred to in the Q and A section of this interview. I thought it sounded familiar. Turns out this is the organization that Mehmet Ali Agca was part of. That's the guy who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981. Grey Wolves, according to this link on their history, were ideologically neo-fascist. This goes against the rumor at the time that Agca was working with Bulgarian Communists at the behest of the Soviet Union. Who was responsible for this phoney rumor? That would be Michael Ledeen, of P2, Iran/contra and Niger forgery infamy.

If I could ask Sibel Edmonds one question in regard to this part of the interview, I would ask what is the name the Pentagon gave their designated section she refers to as Gladio B? We know these "stay-behind" armies existed, page 7 of the link above states the State Department finally admitted the existence in 2006. Finding out what the official name is could help researchers like me immensely! I'm sure Sibel knows what it is, but I'm not sure if the States Secret gag order prevents her from disclosing the exact name on the grounds of "national security", of course.

There are two sections of this interview that I believe deserve deeper analysis: Ptech and Able Danger. I put a couple links into the synopsis on Yassin al-Qadi and Ptech. In addition to the investigation Edmonds refers to that Robert Wright and John Vincent were conducting for the FBI, there was a whistleblower who really helped shine the light on this scandal named Indira Singh. History Commons has neatly condensed the beginnings of her story:


May-December 5, 2002: US Investigators Pressed to Look Into Ptech
Edit event
Indira Singh. Indira Singh. [Source: Michael Kane]In October 2001, Ptech insiders attempted to warn the FBI that suspected terrorist financier Yassin al-Qadi had funded Ptech (see Shortly After October 12, 2001). Then Indira Singh, an employee at JP Morgan Chase bank, develops her own suspicions about Ptech after her bank assigned her to investigate Ptech for a potential business deal. In May 2002, she speaks with the FBI about her concerns. Weeks later, she learns the FBI still has not told any other government agencies about the potential Ptech security threat. She later will recall, "the language, the kind of language law enforcement, counterterrorism, and the FBI agents themselves were using basically indicated to me that absolutely no investigation was going on, that it was totally at a standstill, at which point my hair stood on end." She contacts a Boston CBS television station, WBZ-TV, and a reporter for the station named Joe Bergantino begins investigating Ptech. [Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; National Public Radio, 12/8/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] Around the same time, a former government official with contacts in the Bush administration tells officials at the National Security Council about the Ptech allegations. By late August, Operation Greenquest then opens its own Ptech investigation. The FBI then tries "to muscle its way back into the probe once it [becomes] clear that [Greenquest is] taking the case seriously." [Newsweek, 12/6/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] Beginning in late November, US agents begin calling Ptech officials and asking them if they have ties to money laundering, thus tipping them off. Ptech will also be notified when a December raid will be occurring before it happens. [Associated Press, 1/3/2003] WBZ-TV prepared a story on Ptech, but withheld it from the public for more than three months after receiving "calls from federal law enforcement agencies, some at the highest levels." The station claims the government launched its Ptech probe in August 2002, after they "got wind of our investigation" and "asked us to hold the story so they could come out and do their raid and look like they're ahead of the game." [Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002]
Entity Tags: Operation Greenquest, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ptech Inc., National Security Council, Indira Singh
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline



How much damage could Ptech have potentially done? In an interview with From the Wilderness, Singh gives a pretty dark indication by answering a scary question:

FTW: You said at the 9/11 Citizens' Commission hearings, you mentioned - it's on page 139 of transcript - that Ptech was with Mitre Corporation in the basement of the FAA for 2 years prior to 9/11 and their specific job was to look at interoperability issues the FAA had with NORAD and the Air Force, in case of an emergency.

Indira Singh: Yes, I have a good diagram for that.


FTW: And that relationship had been going on mediated by Ptech for 2 years prior to 9/11. You elsewhere say that the Secret Service is among the government entities that had a contract with Ptech. Mike Ruppert's thesis in Crossing the Rubicon, as you know, is that the software that was running information between FAA & NORAD was superseded by a parallel, subsuming, version of itself that was being run by the Secret Service on state of the art parallel equipment in the PEOC with a nucleus of Secret Service personnel around Cheney. In your view, might it have been the case that Cheney was using Ptech to surveil the function of the people in FAA & NORAD who wanted to do their jobs on 9/11, and then intervene to turn off the legitimate response?


Indira Singh: Is it possible from a software point of view? Absolutely it's possible. Did he (Cheney) have such a capability? I don't know. But that's the ideal risk scenario - to have an overarching view of what's going on in data. That's exactly what I wanted for JP Morgan. You know what's ironic about this - I wanted to take my operational risk blueprint which is for an operational event going wrong and I wanted to make it generic for extreme event risk to surveil across intelligence networks. What you're describing is something that I said, 'boy if we had this in place maybe 9/11 wouldn't have happened.' When I was going down to DARPA and getting these guys excited about creating an extreme event risk blueprint to do this, I'm thinking of doing exactly what you're saying Cheney might have already had!

Effectively, we have deep black cells, operating in isolation from one another, performing drug trafficking, money laundering, sabotage, assassinations and bombings.

Many of the individuals in these cells are hardened ruthless killers, recruited from mafia or extremist organisations, sometimes even spirited out of prison.

Key individuals are given every conceivable form of protection, as if they are invisible: diplomatic immunity to move freely with their wares across borders, immunity from prosecution because the grunts are called off, literally untouchable.

We only know about the murderer Çatlı's celebrity car crash - the serial killer accompanied by the Turkish Chief of Police, a senior politician and a glamour queen - because it was an unscripted accident, and the street cops released details before Gladio could cover the tracks.

Gladio is not really about "anti-communist stay behind armies".

Gladio is The Strategy of Tension.

Some of the individuals were recruited from European rightist and Nazi elements, and their anti-communist ideology may have been exploited as they bombed civilians so the atrocity could be blamed on "terror groups" of say the Left or Islam.

Some of the indivudals were simply violent criminals who liked money, drugs, violent sex and hurting other people.

The "stay-behind" structures merely provided killers that geopolitical elements - some within NATO, some using Trade groups as cover (eg Clay Shaw), some probably using business-intelligence-reliigious lodges (eg P2) - could exploit.

The cells, or indviduals within them, could be tasked to create chaos and terror, to further The Strategy of Tension.

From what we can tell, Çatlı loved violence. His God was the infliction of Violence and the spreading of Terror.

I'm reminded of the tale told by Lt Commander Thomas Narut, as recalled by Walter Bowart:

According to the Sunday Times story, naval psychologist
Lt. Comdr. Thomas Narut was assigned to the
U.S. Regional Medical Center at Naples, Italy. When he
first made public the navy's part in programming assassins,
he was attending a NATO conference in Oslo on "Dimensions
of Stress and Anxiety." In attendance at that conference
were 120 psychologists of all descriptions and from
many countries. Many of them were involved in research
on how to improve man's ability to cope with stress, but
none of them felt compelled, as Narut did, to discuss their
work so fully or so frankly.
The stated objective of the conference was to exchange
information on how soldiers and people in difficult jobs
could cope with stress. Dr. Narut's talk was on "The Use
of a Symbolic Model and Verbal Intervention in Inducing
and Reducing Stress." His speech began with a plug for the
navy. He knew, he said, that many of the scientists present
had often encountered problems in their purely scientific
research because of the military's inclination to research
that would yield quick and useful results. He sympathized
with those who had trouble getting subjects, funds, or both,
out of the military for their purely scientific research. But
things were different in the navy he said.
In the navy, Narut bragged, there were plenty of captive
personnel who could be used as guinea pigs. In the navy
there was a computerized record of each man's background
and psychological profile, so that a quick selection of men
with suitable psychological inclinations for experiments
could be made. Navy psychologists not only had access to
computerized records, but also to psychological tests and
background data on a large number of people. In the navy,
Narut said, funds were plentiful, and there were no problems
with transporting subjects for study to nearly any
place in the world. Narut stated proudly that the U.S.
Navy provided scientists with the most advanced research
facilities in the world.
A Canadian psychologist at the conference later remarked,
"Narut's message was loud and clear�'Join the
navy and study the world.'"
In his brief discourse, Dr. Narut did no more than hint
at the work he had been doing in teaching "combat readi-
Operation Mind Control 163
ness units" to cope with the stress of killing. Later, however,
during private questioning with a small group of listeners
(reporter Peter Watson of the Sunday Times, a
former psychologist, among them), Narut unfolded the
amazing story of the navy's programming of assassins on
an assembly-line basis.
In his mid-thirties, Dr. Narut had just completed his
doctoral dissertation on the question of whether certain
films provoke anxiety, and whether forcing a man to do
irrelevant tasks while watching violent films would help
him cope with the anxiety they produced.
When pressed by Watson to explain the details of this
kind of conditioning, Narut said that he had worked with
"combat readiness units" which included men being programmed
for commando-type operations and for undercover
placement at U.S. embassies. These, Narut said, were
"hit men and assassins" (Narut's words) made ready to kill
in selected countries should the need arise. Dr. Alfred Zitani,
an American delegate to the conference, was very surprised
by Narut's disclosure. "Do you think Dr. Narut realizes
what he has just said?" Zitani asked. "That kind of
information must be classified."
The conditioning of Narut's assassins was accomplished
by audio-visual desensitization, a standard behavior modification
process. These men were "desensitized" to mayhem
by being shown films of people being killed or injured in a
number of different ways. At first the films would show
only mild forms of bloodshed. As the men became acclimated
to the scenes of carnage, they would see progressively
more violent scenes. The assassin candidates, Narut
explained, would eventually be able to dissociate any feelings
they might have from even the goriest scenes they
viewed.
Narut said that of course U.S. naval psychologists would
have first selected the candidates for training by their psychological
makeup. Those selected for assassination assignments
were often from submarine crews and paratroops.
Others were convicted murderers from military prisons
who had already shown a proclivity for violence.
Still others were men who had been given awards for
valor. World War II Medal of Honor winner Audie Murphy
was a subject of extensive research.
The best killers, according to Narut, were men whom psychologists would classify as "passive-aggressive" personalities.
These were people with strong drives that were
usually kept under tight control. Such types were usually
calm, but from time to time would exhibit outbursts of temper
during which they could literally kill without remorse.
Narut said that through psychological testing, he and his
colleagues were looking for more such men, for further
conditioning.
Among the tests used by the navy to determine violent
natures was the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory,
which is used widely by educators and businessmen to
determine psychological qualities of students and employees.
The tests consist of hundreds of questions designed to
measure such personality traits as hostility, depression, and
psychopathy.
According to Narut, the men selected by the tests, or by
evidence of past violence, were taken for programming to
the navy's neuropsychiatric laboratory in San Diego, California,
or to the Naples medical center which employed
Dr. Narut.
Audio-visual desensitization was the major technique
used in programming the assassins. Psychological indoctrination
completed the programming by instilling the desired
prejudicial attitudes.
The audio-visual desensitization began with the subject
strapped into a chair with his head clamped so that he
could not look away from the screen. A special mechanism
prevented the subject's eyelids from closing.
The candidate was then shown a film of an African
youth being crudely circumcised by fellow members of his
tribe. The youth was circumcised with a blunt knife, painfully
and without anesthetic. This well-known film is used
widely in psychological experiments to create stress. Afterwards
the candidate was asked about details of what he had
seen. He was asked, for example, to describe the color of
the belt on the doctor's trousers, or the motif on the handle
of the knife that cut off the foreskin.
The next film showed a man in a sawmill, where planks
were sliced from huge logs. In the operation of the saw the
man slipped and cut off his fingers.
As the films progressed in gruesomeness, the reactions of
the candidate were measured by sensing devices. Heartbeat,
breathing rate, and brain waves were recorded, very much
Operation Mind Control 165
as on a polygraph. If the physiological responses, which
might have been great in the beginning, slowed down and
resumed normal patterns as the more bloodthirsty scenes
were viewed, the candidates were judged to have completed
this stage of conditioning.
The last phase of conditioning, Narut said, was to indoctrinate
the candidates to think of their potential enemies as
inferior forms of life. By this stage, the candidates would
have already been selected for assignment to particular
countries. They would be shown films and given lectures
which portrayed the customs and cultural habits of the foreign
countries in a biased fashion. The people of those
countries would be portrayed as enemies of the United
States and were always spoken of in demeaning terms.
They were often presented as if they were "less than human."
Their customs were ridiculed, and local leaders were
presented as evil demagogues, even if they were legitimate
political figures.
According to Dr. Narut it took only a few weeks to indoctrinate
susceptible candidates by this process. Those
who were not susceptible to the conditioning were dropped
earlier in the program and returned to other assignments.
Narut admitted that he did not have the necessary "need to
know" as to where all the programmed men were sent, although
at one point in his conversation with Peter Watson,
Narut specified that programmed assassins have been installed
in the Athens embassy. He said that his busiest time
was when a large group of men went through such training
towards the end of 1973, at the time of the Yom Kippur
War.
After the Oslo conference interview, Watson returned to
London to file his story. Writing up the details, he found a
few points which needed clarification but he could not
reach Narut either at his home or in his laboratory in Naples.
Watson then asked the U.S. embassy in London to
comment on the information Narut had volunteered. The
embassy passed the buck to the U.S. Navy.
Within a few days the Pentagon issued a categorical denial
that the U.S. Navy had ever "engaged in psychological
training or other types of training of personnel as assassins.
"They also denied that any such training had ever taken
place either in San Diego or in Naples. They said they too
had been unable to contact Lieutenant Commander Narut, but they did confirm that he was on the staff of the U.S.
Regional Medical Center in Naples as a psychologist. But
Dr. Zitani later offered to testify about what Narut had told
him to "appropriate authorities." Watson was also approached
later by a psychologist in Los Angeles who said
he had seen the Pentagon denials so thought Watson would
like to know that he had lent the San Diego psychologists a
copy of his film on circumcision which was used in the
desensitization conditioning.
A few days later Narut was located. He flew to London
to discuss the matter ostensibly with Watson's paper, the
Sunday Times, but instead he held a press conference saying
only that he had been talking in "theoretical and not
practical terms." He then flew back to the Naples base.
After his return to Naples, U.S. naval headquarters in
London offered the official explanation for Narut's statement:
Narut had "personal problems." A few days later
Watson was able to contact Narut at the U.S. hospital in
Naples, but he refused to elaborate on his disclosure.
During the Oslo conference interview, Narut had said
several times that what he was saying about the assassins
was "coming out anyway." He was referring to the congressional
disclosures about CIA assassination plots. But the
fact that the navy had been operating along lines similar to
the CIA was not known to the public nor has it subsequently
been admitted. The details of the story that Lieutenant
Commander Narut related have been strongly and
categorically denied in all subsequent queries of the navy.
It came as no surprise to many that the navy had been
interested in psychological research to help its men cope
with "stress." Several years before, one of the organizers of
the Oslo conference, Dr. Irwin Sarason, had been approached
by the navy to work on projects similar to Narut's.
At the time, the navy had said nothing to him about
programming assassins; it said it wanted him to adapt his
work for applications to "spies."
In response to that request, Sarason devised a film which
showed how successful students asked questions in school.
The film was shown to a group of juvenile delinquents for a
period of time until they, too, learned how to pose the right
questions. As a result, over the next two years they did
much better in their studies and got in trouble less. The
control group who had not seen the films did just as poorly
Operation Mind Control 167
in school as they'd always done and were just as delinquent.
Since his "symbolic modeling" study had been successful,
Sarason wanted to continue his research and applied to
the Office of Naval Research for more funding. A few
weeks after his application was received, Sarason was
called by a navy official who asked him if he would object
to having his work classified. Sarason wondered why, and
the navy official told him his research would be most valuable
to the navy's neuropsychiatric laboratory in California,
as spies were being trained there to resist interrogation.
The naval official said that if Sarason would allow his work
to be classified, he'd get all the funds he needed.
But Sarason was interested in the peaceful scientific nature
of his work, not its military applications, so he refused
to have the project classified. His goal was the exception
rather than the rule.
The federal government supports most scientific research
in the United States. Enough psychologists and other social
scientists haven't asked questions about what their research
is to be used for; their main objective has been to get the
grant, so they could support themselves and their scientific
curiosity. Since too many of them have been politically disinterested
or naive, they have been easy prey for the cryptocracy.
Lieutenant Commander Narut was therefore but
one in a long line of psychologists being employed for psychological
warfare and illegal clandestine operations.
Another such operation was the training of security officers
at the Washington-based International Police Academy
by psychologists and sociologists. The officers were
supposedly being taught interrogation techniques for Third
World countries; actually it was a highly sensitive clandestine
operation organized for the training of U.S. spies. Congress
closed the Academy on January 1, 1974, after its real
purpose was disclosed to the press.

[Phil Dragoo]

Robert Paulsen's synopsis of Sibel Edmonds' hypothesis of the evolution of Gladio B provides illumination of a number of concepts developed in the deep political analysis of the last quarter century.

Consider Paulsen's fertile three paragraphs replicated here:

Getting back to Qadi's Albanian connection, Edmonds explains that the biggest focus of the Gladio B operatives from the early to late 90's was the Balkans. This includes not only Qadi and Çatlı's networks, but also the Fethullah Gulen network discussed in Part One. At this time, many Albanians coming into Chicago were some of the "most ferocious and strongest" mafia operators in the US. Even Italians wouldn't mess with these guys. The FBI set up major arrests that would consistently be thwarted because the State Department would tell them these guys had diplomatic immunity! Why did they do this? Time magazine's 2002 person of the year, FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley believes that it's because there were too many moles in the FBI, that the CIA had penetrated the FBI on behalf of the State Department. The CIA-State Department would "tip off informants" in cases known to the NSWBC of impending sting operations by the FBI. This was really the big underlying problem that Edmonds had to deal with during her employment as an FBI translator. It was not the bureaucratic nobody Mike Feghali that she mentions in her book, it was the CIA-State Department moles within the FBI.

After her termination from the FBI, Edmonds put the pieces of the puzzle together with her NSWBC organization. She knew the 9/11 Commission was "bull" because of all the facts that were intentionally omitted from their report. Time person of the year Colleen Rowley was not even going to be interviewed by the Commission. Rowley, Wright, Vincent; these were all agents 20+ years on the force. Edmonds then went to the media to protest this oversight. She was able to tell her story to the Commission through a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) so that no operatives identities would be compromised. All of these agents she mentioned, as well as Tony Shaffer of Operation Able Danger went on record saying there was a huge 9/11 cover-up! While this may seem like a clear case of Bush administration malfeasance to many, Edmonds clarifies that many of these investigations were stymied during the late 90's, which would implicate the Clinton administration as well.

It is this last point that Americans find especially hard to digest because we are conditioned to think along the lines of a black hat/white hat mentality. It's so much easier to be partisan rather than dig deeper to find the darker truth that intersects across party lines. The classic example is the story of Watergate and how it was covered by Bob Woodward and the Washington Post. That story seems pretty clear-cut, but if they really got Watergate, why didn't they get Iran/contra? Or did they really get Watergate? It seems from Sibel Edmonds perspective that when you really get the story, the way Gary Webb did with Iran/contra, you don't become a multi-millionaire entrenched in the system like Woodward, you get marginalized like Webb. Corbett concurs, noting that the Watergate burglary was purposely screwed up and Woodward had the story handed to him on a silver platter.

The Balkans. Clinton spoke at the USNA Commencement May 1994 defensively claiming he could not unilaterally arm the Bosniansbut he had no need, having allowed Iran to do that. He would use Wesley Clark at Waco and in the former Yugoslavia. While the extant treatise on Naval production of assassins by demonizing targets applies in spades to Koresh and the ninety civilians massacred including three dozen women and children.

CIA moles penetrating? Dulles had his people in all the agencies. Helms had ten on Garrison's staff (see James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, 2012). Rowley would know about FBI acting against its chartershe complained to Mueller and was retaliated against, while Obama kept Mueller on for two additional years.

FBI hounded John O'Neill, stole his confidential files, and though he tried to warn of an attack, he was its victim in the towers' collapse. FBI would refuse to respond to the warnings of confidential informant Carol Howe and her BATF handler agent Angela Finney, and another false-flag op went down with OKCBomb. FBI Kalstrom would prosecute investigators who found traces of explosives on seats recovered from TWA 800, evidence of the shoulder-launched missile from the fast boat on the radar track.

Edmonds' reference to Baluchistan echoes that of Jayna Davis, whose insistence there was a Middle Eastern John Doe No. 2 was vehemently denied by an FBI which destroyed motel records and found nothing amiss in the death of the waitress who witnessed Andreas Carl Strassmeier reconnoitering targets with McVeigh. The foreign (German) intelligence asset leaves the country with immunity.

Attempts by Curt Weldon to pursue Able Danger were shut down. Edmonds' message, says Paulsen, is:

It's so much easier to be partisan rather than dig deeper to find the darker truth that intersects across party lines.

Which we see in Terry Reed and John Cummings, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, SPI/Shapolsky, 1994.

The example of Watergate is of note: Helms sabotaged Nixon with the addition of McCord, Sturgis, Hunt, Barker et al on the crew. DiEugenio puts McCord with Phillips running the FPCC op using Oswald.

And of course the placement of Dulles as central to Gladio's origination.

There was enough tension during the Cold War. It was an armature lending itself to triggering of flashpoints. Now the model is the War on Terror yet the AP stylebook eschews "Islamist" and the DCI is a Muslim. Are we witnessing the Gladio use of Mujahadeen with greater finesse.

Edmonds' mention of the treatment of Gary Webb and the use of FTW for interview quotes brings up the comments of former US Customs officer John Carman here not so long ago.

https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...#post50250

[Lauren Johnson]

First of all, I would like to thank James Corbett for mentioning American Judas in his latest interview with Sibel Edmonds and providing links to the last two parts of my analysis. Second, big thanks to Sibel Edmonds for providing the same links at her website, as well as answering the question that I asked in my analysis of Part Two. If you want to know the tantalizing clues she leaves regarding the identity of the Pentagon "Gladio B" designated section, please watch the interview! I'll be providing a detailed analysis of this when I get to Part Six. But for now, let's dig in to Part Three!

Part Three Synopsis: James Corbett gets the ball rolling by highlighting an incident that may be unfamiliar to most Americans called the "Hood Event". Sibel Edmonds proceeds to give the "original version" of what happened in July of 2003 in Iraq. Subsequent MSM reports in the US describe it as a "misunderstanding" where a bunch of US colonels in Northern Iraq busted an operation center on an unexplained "tip" filled with high ranking Turkish officers in plainclothes. They put hoods on their heads, shackled them and imprisoned them. There was a huge diplomatic uproar from NATO ally Turkey; within 24 hours they were released. Much confusion exists over why this happened.

Edmonds provides a context for understanding this from her translation work in the FBI focused on targets of an investigation: months before 9/11, there were conversations between high-level State Department and Pentagon officials and the Turkish government, both in the US and in Turkey. You're looking at some very big US names in these conversations: Brent Scowcroft, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. They were discussing Iraq; the US and UK had already decided and were preparing plans to invade Iraq. Before 9/11! They needed Turkey's backing, but without their direct involvement on the ground in Iraq. With a "butler" country like Turkey, they wanted compensation beyond money: they originally wanted Northern Iraq for both the oil and control of the Kurds. US balked, both because they didn't want their NATO ally bombing the Kurds to the Stone Age, but also because Israel had a deal already working with Kurdish commandos to have a base for the express purpose of spying on Iran. All this was being discussed in July/August 2001! Turkey's reaction was screw you, you don't get to use our bases. This was a disappointment to the US, but they went ahead with their plans anyway.

While it may sound surprising to hear Israel involved in pre-planning for the Iraq invasion, Edmonds points out that Israel knows how to play both sides. Israel did a lot to arm Turkey to fight the Kurds, next to the US, Turkey bows down the most to Israel. But some were still upset that Israel got the Northern Iraq base instead of Turkey. So a fraction of the more nationalistic Turkish generals decided to get some high-level military intelligence and commandos and establish a base nearby to spy on the Israelis as well as identify the high-level Kurds for assassination! Now because there is such extreme compartmentalization where not everyone in the Pentagon knows about Operation Gladio, when the US military in the region got the tip from the Kurds that there was this base conducting terror attacks, they busted them not realizing they were Gladio generals from Turkey! So even though they weren't supposed to be there, because it looked bad for the US to be arresting military officers from their NATO ally, they let them go. The US media then downplayed the incident, but it created a huge uproar in Turkey, inspiring the big budget (for Turkey) film Valley of the Wolves: Iraq, which fired up anti-US sentiment in Turkey.

All of this was part of the Gladio transition from A to B, which wasn't always a neat transition, in fact the head Turkish general in charge of the Hood Event team was forced to retire. In 2002, there was a switch in Turkish government to the AKP under ErdoÄŸan. There was concern that the Gladio generals were becoming a huge liability to the US and they wanted the new Turkish government to take care of them, either through arrests or assassinations. This is when some of the Plan A operatives (nationalists, Grey Wolves) began leaving for Russia. Being under threat of arrest or assassination in their home country, they got political asylum; both parties looking at the situation as "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". In return, they were able to supply Russia with information on Chechnya. These Turkish Gladio A Generals then trained Russian FSB (intelligence, the successor to the KGB) and in 2003 and 2004, there were quite a number of assassinations of Chechnyan leaders in Istanbul! There were many assassinations abroad that received a lot of international media coverage, but very little in America. Russia understands what's happening with Gladio, though they have yet to play that card internationally yet.

Corbett then directs the conversation back to Israel, though Edmonds was planning on revisiting that topic as well. Israel is fully aware of Operation Gladio Plan B, if you look at some of the players, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith and Marc Grossman, of course they're aware! Many of these players may have Israeli diplomatic passports. Edmonds believes it's very important to look at the relationship between Israel and Azerbaijan. There were several false-flag operations where there were a number of arrests of Iranian assassins supposedly trying to assassinate Israeli diplomats - in Azerbaijan. She points out there is a great deal of military cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan such as the sale of drones. There is a similar arrangement with the Kurds that she elaborates on.

Edmonds transitions into an account of Huseyin Baybasin, "Europe's Pablo Escobar". He was a huge heroin dealer arrested in the UK in 2001 and sent to Holland. His attorney contacted her saying there were similarities with their cases she could help with. Baybasin claimed he was on the state payroll for the Turkish government and that he conducted heroin operations (distribution to UK and US) under state actors. So she went along with an anonymous journalist for a meeting with the attorney which also included members of his clan who are Kurdish. The journalist pointed out what a contradiction it was for them to be supporting Israel since the Israelis were selling weapons that Turkey was using against the Kurds. But the Kurds said they were OK with that arrangement. Ultimately, Edmonds was not able to help the attorney. But the conversation certainly illuminates the situation with Turkey, Israel and the Kurds in the context of Turkey's bombing of the Kurds in Northern Iraq, which occurred after the US withdrawal.

Corbett then asks some viewer questions. He asks if she knows about Olaf Palme, but she has no information. Then the question of what Ayman al-Zawahiri is all about comes up. She reiterates the FBI file started in 1996 running past 9/11 tracking "mujahadeen"; never referred to as al-Qaeda, and many of his operations were not connected with bin Laden. During this time, you have Zawahiri in Turkey a lot, in Bulgaria working with the Turkish arm of NATO and with NATO, and in Azerbaijan meeting with a US military attache. He even had several meetings in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1997 and 1998 where in addition to high-level NATO officials there were a couple high-level Saudis (on behalf of intelligence and the embassy) in attendance. Edmonds points out there were several Bin Ladens working with the Saudi embassy in the US as well as Fethullah Gulen, whose network was detailed in Part One. She also details how Zawahiri was arrested in Russia. He was carrying a laptop computer filled with US/NATO operations that Zawahiri was carrying out for the US/NATO. But he was let go because the FSB couldn't translate the files, which is a pretty flimsy excuse for the former KGB! But whatever the truth is about what Russia has on Zawahiri, there's no question he was a major actor in Gladio B and Edmonds has been led to believe Zawahiri is currently either in Dagestan or Azerbaijan.

Finally, while Corbett tries to ascertain Zawahiri's motive from his background, Edmonds concurs his background is very muddy. He supposedly had a hand in Sadat's assassination, yet he's been jailed and released so many times in Egypt, where executions and "disappearances" of real enemies of the state were commonplace, it's hard to buy the validity of that claim. Edmonds then segues into the story of Ali Mohamed, "one of the most important actors" of Gladio Plan B. He was a military officer in Egypt who then went to America and joined the Green Berets! He was sent to a high-security jail in Colorado in 1998, but the transcipts for his court hearing are classified. Even the details of his sentencing are classified, though we do know the prosecutor was the same Chicago prosecutor of the Brewster/Jennings case! Edmonds asked the author of Triple Cross, Peter Lance, who is the only journalist to write about Mohamed whether he has actually seen Mohamed. He hasn't. Nobody has seen Ali Mohamed, in court, in prison, anywhere. This is Hosni Mubarak's military man who carried clearance in the US, this is Osama bin Laden's personal bodyguard! As Edmonds chillingly puts it, "You are looking at a ghost".



Ali Mohamed, Egyptian Army Special Forces Major, Sergeant in US Army Special Forces (Green Berets), member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and CIA asset.



Part Three Analysis: So have you ever heard of the Hood Event? With all the dark, sinister incidents in the Iraq War, I had forgotten the whole affair. But I was surprised about the context Sibel Edmonds lays out from which this originates. Not surprised that Perle and Wolfowitz were preparing to invade Iraq prior to 9/11, just astounded to hear that Brent Scowcroft was part of this. Scowcroft was one of the first people from Poppy Bush's team to voice opposition to Dubya's sabre-rattling build-up to war in Iraq as early as October 2001. So did 9/11 make him change his mind? He gives that impression, but who can say if it's true? My take on this is that the rift between the Old Guard conservatives (Scowcroft, Kissinger, Armitage) and the neo-cons (Wolfowitz, Perle, Libby) is a cosmetic front for media consumption. It evaporates where money and geopolitical power is concerned.

What I took away from Edmonds' account of the transition from Gladio A to B is that as with any big operation that involve intelligence, organized crime, drugs and the military, there's bound to be blowback. Someone's gonna feel screwed and enact revenge. In this case, we have the Turkish generals helping the Russians. But she makes an excellent point that there's a lot more these disgruntled Gladio generals could do, such as where China is concerned in the Xinjiang province. You would think these Deep Political actors would learn, but maybe where their concerns lie, the risk doesn't even come close to the reward. And for third party actors to this game like the Kurds, you just take the best deal that comes down the pike.

But the most explosive revelations for me came toward the end. I had heard about the infamous Le Figaro article which they refused to retract regarding Osama bin Laden getting surgery at an American hospital in Dubai and was visited by a local CIA agent - in July 2001. And of course I knew from Sibel's previous interviews that the U.S. had a working relationship with bin Laden up until 9/11. But I didn't know until this interview that there were multiple bin Laden family members that were part of the Gladio B network. This information along with the ease through which Zawahiri glided from country to country show the depth of protection that this "Secret Team" provides. When I say Secret Team, I'm referring to a specific term coined by L. Fletcher Prouty in his book of the same title. Prouty was the inspiration for the X character played by Donald Sutherland in the Oliver Stone film JFK. I think the wikipedia entry provides the best definition of what Prouty is talking about:

The Secret Team, or ST, is a phrase coined by L. Fletcher Prouty in 1973, alleging a covert alliance between the United States' military, intelligence, and private sectors to influence political decisions. The phrase suggests the existence of a covert alliance between certain people within the U.S. intelligence community, the United States military, and American private industry who use their collective wealth, influence, and resources to manipulate current events to steer public policy and maximize profits. The term is pejorative since it accuses the organizations of prioritizing their personal fortunes above the national interest, as well as eliminating any opposition, whether through targeted propaganda or assassination.

Considering that Operation Gladio has its origins in the CIA, has in its conception been a group of "stay-behind armies" and in its practice been an operation heavily involved in the distribution of narcotics, I would say this definitely qualifies as Secret Team.

Edmonds final revelation about Ali Mohamed had a personal significance for me. That's because I know who she speaks of when she refers to the "Chicago prosecutor" who handled both the Mohamed case and the "Brewster-Jennings" case. That's Patrick Fitzgerald, "modern-day Eliot Ness", the prosecutor of Scooter Libby who claimed that Libby's obstruction of justice concerning the blown cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame was like an umpire who "gets sand thrown in his eyes". That always seemed like a weak excuse to me and when I had the opportunity to ask famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi what he thought of Fitzgerald's prosecution of the Plame case on January 10, 2009, here is how it went:

I asked him what he thought of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame and if he felt Fitzgerald could have gone farther in prosecuting Cheney. Bugliosi said that he was "very disappointed" in the outcome of that investigation. He definitely felt that Fitzgerald could have and should have gone higher up the food chain.

Now we know this wasn't the first time Fitzgerald refrained from going higher up the food chain in a case that concerned national security. I haven't yet read Peter Lance's book Triple Cross on the subject, but after reading about how Fitzgerald sent 4 threat letters totaling 32 pages in an attempt to scare Lance and his publisher Harper Collins from releasing the book or he would sue, I am definitely putting that on my must-read list. That he neglected to follow through on his threats after publication in 2009 speaks volumes about how much truth is in these charges.

Stay tuned for more in Part Four!

[Lauren Johnson]

Part Four Synopsis: James Corbett returns to one of the subjects of Part Three, Huseyin Baybasin, described as "Europe's Pablo Escobar", part of the Gladio network. He wondered, since the topic grew out of a discussion they were having on Israel, how they factored into the subject of narcotics. Sibel Edmonds explains that while the subject of Israel came up in the last interview in the context of the Hood Event, she does not have any information on narcotics connections with Israel, but there were a lot of illegal activities by Israelis monitored by her (along with Pakistanis and Turkish targets) while at the FBI that included black market nuclear proliferation and espionage related. Getting back to Huseyin Baybasin, she reviews her experience form Part Three and on the subject of drug dealers tied to Gladio brings up someone who worked for Abdullah Çatlı, who was detailed in Part One. His name is Yaşar Öz, (pronounce Ya-sher Erz) and he was also a major operative for Gladio Plan A. In 1996 and 1997, Öz brought Afghan heroin through Europe to the United States. During his last trip, he was arrested in New Jersey as part of a FBI/DEA bust with several kilos. While at the New Jersey office for interrogation, he found a way to escape, then flew from JFK Airport to Turkey 1st class! What really happened? Upon arrest, the news went to the State Department and the FBI/DEA was told Öz has diplomatic immunity, including a special NATO ID!

Edmonds then details the hierarchy of Çatlı being Öz's boss, and that Çatlı's boss was Mehmet Ağar, who was police chief at the time of Çatlı's death; Ağar's boss would be higher-ups in NATO. This runs counter to the popular media meme that the Taliban stopped heroin production when they came into power in 1996, which didn't actually occur until 2000. We tried to be friends with the Taliban then, overlooking human rights abuses because we were after "Pipelinestan", to connect with Caspian oil. After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the relationship didn't end because of the opium poppy. During the 90's, a lot of heroin processing was done by the Russian mafia, just some was done by Turkish/NATO forces. Edmonds says, "Don't quote me on the percentage" but if you throw out a rough number, it would be 70% Russians, 30% Turks. The processing in mass quantities was something that could not be done in Afghanistan. In 1996 and 1997, many of the Turkish labs were moved to pro-NATO Central Asian countries, specifically Azerbaijan. She points out that there are huge amounts of heroin coming to the US through official channels. Some people might dismiss this as conspiracy theory, but those who would say heroin being imported through Andrews Air Force Base is a conspiracy theory are the same who dismiss Iran/contra, in spite of overwhelming documentation, as a conspiracy theory.

Corbett then notes how US involvement in the Afghan narcotics market actually pre-dates the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, specifically with Operation Cyclone through their support of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan warlord/drug lord. All of this history has been documented by Alfred McCoy, showing the parallels with the Golden Triangle and Golden Crescent, such as the increase in narcotics production in Vietnam and Laos with the entry of US/NATO/CIA which happened as well with Afghanistan. This happens because it's such a lucrative market, there's intense competition, which Edmonds brings back to Russian mafia involvement post-9/11. During this period, Russian share of drug profits went down, while US/NATO share of profits went up. Russia's response has been to publicize the enormous amount of heroin addicts in their country, MPs and generals have come out against NATO's dominance of the market, so now they want a deal to "eradicate" the opium poppy. "What a joke", Edmonds says, though part of what they say is true, regarding the high number of addicts, (reminiscent of the Opium Wars in China) Russia doesn't want eradication where the narcotics market is concerned, they just want a bigger piece of the action! She then highlights a specific incident documenting NATO involvement: Willem Matser, a NATO general active in Romania, was arrested by Dutch police for money laundering in a $15-20 million cocaine deal for a drug cartel. Through some "Kafkaesque court process" with NATO generals coming in and out of court, he's released 6-7 months later! Not one American media outlet reported this.

The charge for Matser was actually laundering $200 million for drug lords like Mohammed Kadem and Pietro Fedino, Corbett interjects. He then asks what is the difference between "accidental" arrests of folks like Matser and Yaşar Öz, who are later released, and Huseyin Baybasin who is still in prison. Edmonds' take on this is that some people stay within the system but that some people get hubris. Sometimes it happens with heads of state, like Qaddafi or Saddam, but where Baybasin is concerned there is also the ethnic aspect; he is Kurdish and as discussed in Part Three, the Kurds are used on all sides. Her hypothesis is that with the Turkish government wanting to extradite him from Holland to Turkey, and Baybasin dead set against that, some deal was made.

This massive narcotics market cannot occur without massive money laundering, which Corbett brings up in the context of First Merchant Bank. There is quite a lot of information on this bank that has been made public, but also some specific to cases Edmonds handled at the FBI. First Merchant first came up during the Susurluk scandal discussed in Part One. It was the main bank used by NATO/CIA/Mafia, including head of states in Turkey for the Cyprus branch. Cyprus was the top center for money laundering, drugs and weapons smuggling. Cyprus is one of three major centers for financing illegal (drugs, weapons, terror) operations; the other two are Dubai and the Cayman Islands. This aspect concerns money that came back to the US revolving around characters Sibel Edmonds posted pictures of to show why she had the States Secret gag and who in the US was being protected by it. Bob Livington was Speaker of the House until scandals forced him to resign in 1999. He was replaced by Dennis Hastert, who had an article about him in Vanity Fair before he left. When Dan Burton was a Congressman, he played the same role as Hastert for these Gladio operations and CIA black ops involving Zawahiri and bin Laden! What is Congress' role in all this? They fund these black ops (supplementing the funds from drugs, weapons, etc.) through Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). These NGOs have "noble" aims like improving prison conditions in Kazakhstan, but in reality the money was used to fund al-Qaeda!

Here's how the process originated: in the 1990's, the CIA and State Department set it up so that NGOs, with Congressional approval, would give "grants" so that roads in other countries could be improved, prisons, education, etc. These were funds in the range of 10s of millions of dollars rubber-stamped by CIA-aligned Congresspeople. Turkey even noted in the late 90's that these NGOs were not building roads but that madrassahs were being built, but with the CIA controlling the heads of Congressional committees that this concerned, there was no investigation. When Bob Livingston resigned in 1999, he became the official foreign lobbyist for Turkey and the Cayman Islands, making tens of millions of dollars. This is a pattern; when Dan Burton, who scratched India or Pakistan's back while in Congress, resigned, he becomes lobbyist for India or Pakistan. Same situation for Dennis Hastert: after the Vanity Fair article comes out exposing his connection with Sibel Edmonds' case, he leaves Congress and receives $3.5 million a year to lobby for Turkey. This happens not so much because they served the government of those particular countries, but because they served the CIA-State Department's illegal operations in Central Asian Caucuses via Islamization. Edmonds states they were fully aware in the 90's that these Congressional-approved funds totaling close to one billion dollars went to front companies who then gave it to sub-contractors (such as the American Turkish Council that Edmonds tracked) where nothing visible is produced on the other end, but behind the scenes what was produced was heroin, money laundering, and the training of terrorists.

Getting back to First Merchant Bank, they were the number one bank for al-Qaeda. Long before 9/11, the FBI was regularly reporting their activity with criminal targets to two places, the State Department and Commerce. State Department did nothing during the late 90's through 2001. 9/11 happens and the FBI is livid, demanding this be shut down and that arrests be made. The government shut down a number of banks involved with Palestinian causes, but the Commerce Department did not do anything about First Merchant until 2004! Why? Edmonds believes it was going to take that long (from 9/11 to 2004) for continuing operations to be concluded so they could switch to other banks. There are so many ways to launder money, one way First Merchant operated that caught Edmonds' attention was by converting the funds to government bonds. She's not quite sure exactly how it all worked, but it all falls within money laundering watchdog expertise.

Corbett finds it interesting how it involved the Cyprus branch, because they are famous for being connected to the Russian mafia and Russian oligarchs; Cyprus is actually Russia's largest foreign investor. Edmonds says there are two sides to Cyprus banks, a Greek side and Turkish side. Russia and NATO are both using Cyprus, she believes Russia is probably using the Greek side as US/NATO is using the Turkish side. She finds the intrigue between the two sides fascinating, especially in light of Russia saying they are going to kick out US NGOs. Explaining how the cliche used to be the spies in foreign countries were placed in embassies, she says because everyone knows that it would be the dumbest thing to do now; that's the first place the host nation would look! So for the United States, the number one place we put our top intelligence gathering officers and informants are NGOs. Over 90% of them are the best operation base for the CIA. Again, they use the same technique as the Fethullah Gulen movement mentioned in Part One saying the host country has a need for "English teachers". Those "English teachers" with diplomatic passports - they're spies! Russia knows this game, calls them out, but the NGO response is "we are improving humanity"! What wonderful altruists, never mind the homeless and starving in this country, let's spend money abroad teaching English! The interview concludes with a description of Sibel Edmonds' website Boiling Frogs Post and how to help with their fundraising drive to help remain true to their mission.



Bob Livingston, House Speaker-Elect 1998



Dennis Hastert, House Speaker 1999-2006

Part Four Analysis: In the cloak and dagger world of spy games, this interview really clarifies a lot of the "cloak" aspect that Sibel Edmonds knows about. The world of narcotics is, by nature of its global illegality, a clandestine market. Since the world of intelligence is also by definition clandestine, perhaps it was only a question of time before those two worlds intersected. How much time? Believe it or not, the CIA has been involved in the narcotics market since before the CIA existed. Actually, it's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of fact documented by the same history professor Edmonds and Corbett refer to in the interview, Alfred McCoy. In his book The Politics of Heroin, he documents how the forerunner of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), as well as the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) worked with Italian mobsters like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky as part of Operation Underworld to gain intelligence through Sicilian mobsters to prepare for the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. Obtaining a pardon for these wartime services, Luciano was deported to Sicily at the conclusion of World War II, where he proceeded to build his heroin empire. Another mafiosi used in this operation, Don Calogero, was actually appointed by the US Army to be the mayor of the town of Villalba! Calogero went on to use his influence to become one of the major supporters of the Sicilian independence movement, which enjoyed the support of the OSS prior to 1945, out of fear the mainland might turn Communist. Calogero even used gunfire to break up leftist political rallies, a precursor to the tactics the CIA used in, you guessed it, Operation Gladio. But there is an even darker example presented by David Guyatt on his Deep Black Lies website around the same time, involving even darker characters:

Even before the CIA was founded in 1947, its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) already had grimy hands. This arose from a private agreement between Allen Dulles, later to become Director of the CIA, and a group of Nazi SS thugs seeking to escape war crimes trials at the end of WW11. SS General Karl Wolff held a series of secret meetings with Dulles, who was then Swiss "Station Chief" for the OSS. The two men thrashed out an agreement - against the direct, written orders of President Roosevelt. This gave the SS group freedom from prosecution in return for agreeing to secretly work for American intelligence against the Russians in the cold war.

Since it was impossible for the OSS to fund this secret network, Dulles agreed the Nazi's would finance themselves from their vast stocks of Morphine, plundered gold and a mass of counterfeit British bank-notes. These were smuggled to Austria in the last days of the war and hidden. They were later sold on the black market and the proceeds used to finance the black SS-OSS network. The subterfuge was so successful that it would later become an irresistible method of underwriting "off-the-books" CIA black operations.

Once again, the original Dr. Evil, Allen Dulles is behind this! Where does he get such diabolical ideas? I found it fascinating how in discussing what Russia is currently experiencing regarding heroin addiction, Edmonds compared it to the Opium Wars in China from the 19th century. There was discussion on that in the comments section of Part One of my analysis, with Abbie Normal calling it "a blueprint for what is going on today". I've no doubt Dulles simply took a closer look at the darker parts of world history and chose expediency over morality. And as Dulles himself is reported to have said regarding Warren Report inconsistencies, "But nobody reads. Don't believe people read in this country. There will be a few professors that will read the record...The public will read very little." That's why it's so easy for history to repeat itself, why someone like Gary Webb, who Sibel Edmonds mentioned in Part Two, could connect the L.A. crack epidemic of the 80's with the illegal covert funding of the contras by our government, yet have the story, his career, and his entire life buried.

Gary Webb, author of Dark Alliance, 1955-2004

I'm glad Edmonds mentioned the State Secrets Gallery! As someone who followed her case closely, I remember how, prior to her 2009 testimony in the Schmidt v. Krikorian court case which I covered here, she found a way around the gag order imposed on her by Attorney General John Ashcroft, by posting pictures online in 2008 of the people involved in her case. It's certainly an impressive array of characters, many of which were mentioned in all four parts of the interview, such as Marc Grossman, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, as well as others not yet mentioned like Larry Franklin of the AIPAC scandal that I've written about multiple times on this blog. I remember wondering if Dick Cheney could possibly have been one of the question marks put in place of a picture, I can only assume that would be a possible reason why no picture would be put up, unless it concerned the identity of someone whose picture could not be obtained. But I'm always amazed how after all this time I can still learn something new from what Edmonds has to reveal. It looks like Dick Cheney is connected with the NATO-Gladio-narcotics market through a man I had not heard of until this interview: Willem Matser. Edmonds revealed more at her website:

Anyone here remember Jan Willem Matser? Of course not. How could we be asked to remember something we never knew about? Thanks to our media here the name wouldn't ring a bell with anyone except a few irate members here who read my piece last June.

Matser, a Dutch Lieutenant Colonel in Staff to NATO Secretary General George Robertson in charge of Eastern Europe, whose job gave him access to classified NATO material, was arrested on February 2003 in Wemmel, Belgium, and charged with trying to launder at least $200 million for an international drug cartel from his office at the alliance's HQ in Brussels. Other criminals involved in Matser's case were Mohammed Kadem, a Moroccan, and Pietro Fedino, a wealthy Sicilian with a previous conviction for cocaine smuggling.

Here is some background as reported by Times UK :

According to documents seen by The Sunday Times, the investigation began last September after customs police at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam received a tip-off about a FedEx parcel sent from Colombia to an address in the Netherlands. The parcel was found to contain a receipt for a £120m deposit at a bank in Bogotá and a fake document authorising the transfer of the same amount of money to Tender SA, a company registered in the Romanian town of Timisoara. The company is not suspected of any wrongdoing.

And here is some more background on the investigations from the same report by Times UK:

The information was passed to a police unit working for the Dutch finance ministry that specializes in combating organised crime. The package was fitted with a bug and resealed. It was allegedly received by Fedino, who is suspected by the Dutch police of being an Italian mafia boss. Five agents monitored him around the clock and listened to his telephone calls. It was this surveillance that led police to Matser. In a call taped on September 7, a man later identified as Matser said he was "going to be leaving NATO in half an hour".

In a further conversation, on December 27, Matser allegedly said: "I'll make false documents for the entire transaction . . . It's no problem; my computer's very patient and I can even recreate the official notary seals from old documents." Matser also held several meetings with his alleged accomplices. One meeting with Kadem on Christmas Eve at the Airport hotel in Rotterdam was filmed by the surveillance team. Kadem was already the focus of four international drug investigations and had been sought by Interpol since 1996."Investigators believe Matser helped to set up the scheme when NATO sent him to Romania last year to instruct central European intelligence chiefs on how to raise standards."

Interestingly Dick Cheney's Halliburton happened to be another contender for control of Romania's Petrom. Here is the Interesting' Connection:

Matser and Tender are further connected by their failed attempt to gain control of PETROM National Society (SNP), a soon-to-be privatized Romanian oil-company, which produces 10% of the Romanian GDP. Tender, Matser and Halliburton formed a consortium in an effort to gain controlling stakes 51% estimated to be worth approx. US$ 1 billion. A few days following the announcement of this trio's interest, Matser was arrested. Subsequently, Romania's Economy Ministry has made it known that the consortium had not met its criteria and was no longer being considered."

[Lauren Johnson]

While there were a few viewer questions that were addressed by Sibel Edmonds in Part Two, Three and Four of this series, this next interview focuses solely on the viewer questions that The Corbett Report has compiled over the course of these interviews. At one hour and thirty two minutes running time, it's the longest of the interviews so far, so I will do my best to be concise and precise!

Part Five Synopsis: The question/answer session starts off by stating that her Nightly News links on her website Boiling Frogs Post has great updates on the Caucuses, Central Asia and Russia. James Corbett then addresses an email from Kurt who asks, "In your opinion is David Headley part of Gladio B?" Corbett prefaces this by saying Headley was the DEA informant who was accused of setting up the Mumbai Massacre a few years ago. Edmonds says all the info Corbett mentioned is all that she has, she doesn't know if Headley was part of Gladio B or not. Kurt's second question is, "What role did Sam Brownback, a former ATC member play, if any, in facilitating Gladio Plan A or Plan B? Was he aware of Gladio Plan A or B?" Edmonds explains his name was a regular name, but she's not sure, he was an active member but not a key figure. Kurt's third question, "Were any US politicians present when Prince Bandar met with Zawahiri in Baku in 1997, and if so, who were they?" Edmonds can't name individuals if their names have not been made public, but yes, and some of those Americans have official positions today under the Obama administration. Others have advisory and consulting positions, almost all are board members of the top 10 companies of the military-industrial complex.

Next, Katya asks, "In the last part of our interview, Sibel mentioned that the sharp drop in the opium production in Afghanistan in 2001 was not for the reason everyone thinks it is, that is prohibition by the Taliban, but I don't believe she expanded on that. I was always curious about this drop and its possible relationship to 9/11, which seems unlikely on first glance, since plans for the WTC attack and invasion of Afghanistan must have predated it. Could you ask Sibel to talk about this?" Edmonds can only give hypotheses on this. Production was going up and up from 1996 to 2000. But between the middle and end of 2000, something happened. We know production was reduced by more than 80%. But why? We know around this time Taliban officials were coming to the US, meeting with Dick Cheney in Texas during the Clinton administration. We also know there were disagreements between the Clinton administration and those actively involved in "Pipelinestan". The oil companies were saying, "We need to recognize the Taliban so we can build the pipelines and get this done", the Clinton adminstration was balking regarding human rights abuses by the Taliban. This was also the same time you had the "very mysterious" bombing of Sudan supposedly targeting Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, even though the US knew where he was the whole time. Within this political milieu, "something happened" to cause the heroin, but she can only speculate on what. Corbett elaborates that 9/11 may have been a plan on the table that could have gone either way but was given the green light around the time the "carpet of bombs" threat was given to the Taliban.

He then brings a question from Alan, "How does China and Russia play into all this? Many leading companies and NWO people have moved to China. Is China going to be the center of the New World Order, or is China going to be the enemy, like Russia was? Are the powers supporting China to destroy the USA? Is there an oil pipeline to China? Have they sold us out completely to China and it just hasn't hit us yet?" Edmonds summarizes that talking about China in relation to Russia, you're talking about two totally different paradigms. With Russia in the Cold War, the focus was on militaristic competion. With China, that's an economic competition. As far as pipelines go, there's plenty of news not reported in the US media between China and the various "Stans". Through this, you can see the Xinchiang region is very important. Their modus operandi is business deals, whereas the US is building military bases. The US can't seem to separate their economic interests from their military interests. With Russia post-Cold War, there is a bit of both military and economic where pipeline tactics go. But Edmonds points out that where pipeline blow-ups occur, the Islamists typically don't damage our pipelines, they damage the other guys!

Corbett then interjects his link to a recent article on China developing a pipeline in Baluchistan. Edmonds notes how that dovetails with NGOs recently crying out about human rights abuses in Baluchistan. Not that there isn't, just that the Baluchi people are being used as political pawns. Corbett then points out how NATO is courting a country they discussed in Part Four, Cyprus. Edmonds distinguishes between member nations and "partner members" to note that NATO has recently been opening offices in the United Arab Emirates! How does any of this figure into the original charter for what was a "North Atlantic" treaty to protect against the Soviet Bloc?! They should have been dissolved at the end of the Cold War.

The confusion over the motives perpetuating this figures into the next question from John, "In Part One, I was a bit confused when Sibel says as long as they, i.e. Central Asia, Caucuses region, are attached to Islam, they are going to pooh-pooh China and Russia, they're going to side with us. My understanding of Islam is always kind of anti-American sentiment, maybe it's that way with China and Russia as well. But why would this be a factor for them to side with NATO and the US?" Edmonds explains if you look throughout history, religion has always been used as a factor for choosing sides. Even before the Cold War choice of capitalism/communism, the United Kingdom did the same thing in the Middle East as part of The Great Game.

On the subject of blowback from Islamists, Bill asks, "There is a tremendous amount of great information in the most recent Gladio video. With regard to the Islamization of Eurasia, is it Mrs. Edmonds opinion that we in the West are being double-crossed by the Islamic organizations that the US and NATO have partnered with?" Edmonds thinks this mentality is like comparing apples and oranges. There's a parallel mentality where the Saudis involvement in 9/11 is concerned. Some say, 'Saudis did 9/11! Let's get them!' Sibel talks about her encounters with Saudi princes in college and how apolitical they were, summing up that the Saudis are our puppets. They know their police and their military respond to the US. The whole country, the oil refineries, all managed by the US. If you say the Saudis did it, you are automatically saying the United States did 9/11. Corbett points out again how it goes back to the UK inventing the Saudi royalty and Edmonds agrees, saying the idea that we're getting blowback is something the powers in charge want you to believe. She highlights that this is why CIA officer Michael Scheuer who wrote Imperial Hubris under Anonymous to print this slant that Edmonds calls "misinformation" that can't be further from the truth.

Corbett moves on to a related question from Jay, "If Zawahiri is an asset, do you have any evidence that he's just acting like a radical Muslim, in other words, is even his backstory a fraud?" Edmonds says there's nothing to back up his backstory, the numbers don't add up on his wikipedia entry, nothing to prove even his connection with the assassination of Anwar Sadat. She has difficulty characterizing him as an asset, he is more like one of the Majors or Lieutenant Colonels of Gladio B. Corbett finds that a fascinating distinction, then moves on to a question from Rowan, "How much did A) Qaddafi and B) Assad know about all this and were the renditions to them just patsies or wiseguys?" Edmonds can answer about Assad with confidence from her FBI days. In the first 7 or 8 months after 9/11, we were working very closely with Assad. An example she cites is the case of Canadian Maher Arar, who was sent by the US to Syria to be tortured. There is a mutual understanding in the case of Assad and others that in order to remain in power you must tell your constituents how much you hate Israel, but behind the scenes you can serve US and/or Israel's interests. At least until 2002, we had that relationship with Assad. Edmonds sees Assad and Qaddafi as patsies for NATO. Her hypothesis is that, like the UK did so well in the Great Game, the US goal is for Iraq to be split in two or three states. Why? To keep the countries at each other's throats, both as neighbors and internally: Sunni/Shia/Kurds. Also Pakistan/Baluchistan. To some degree it will happen in Afghanistan. But the area she believes will be the stickiest for the US is Kurdistan; Turkey says "over my dead body" will there be an independent Kurdistan. The biggest lesson the US learned from the OPEC crisis of the 70's is keep Middle East countries at each other's throats, or they'll band together and be at our throat.

After citing a link on drawing up the Middle East borders in 1919, Corbett brings up a question from Rob, "In an Infowars interview with Richard Cottrell, he states it was Lyman Lemnitzer who was responsible for adopting the Northwood strategy ideas into NATO Gladio. What is your or Sibel's idea on this and what evidence there is to support this claim?" Corbett states he will have Cottrell on his program at a later date, Edmonds says good, he is in a much better position to answer the question than she is. Corbett moves on to an email from Bradley, "Listening to Sibel, it does occur to one, how does she know all this, did she really have access to FBI reports that would supply her with all this information, or would she be limited more to the reports that related to her assigned tasks? Maybe she documents a lot of stuff in other venues in publications, I don't know. Just wondering what your take on this question would be: are you satisfied that you are getting true information from her and do you trust her sources?" Edmonds believes it would be important to have a future program detailing the methods for obtaining intelligence, because while she can't detail specifics for reasons of classification, she can detail the macro picture. With her background, she spent her life in Central Asia prior to working for the FBI. She lived in Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkey. She had a very politically active background with her father and other activists. She speaks Farsi and Turkish, which is helpful for understanding other languages in the region, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, etc. When she started working for the FBI after 9/11, she was originally assigned to the Iran division, which was not getting much work. Because there was no Turkish division, she took those jobs. There was huge demand within the FBI to start up a division because there was much intelligence in the wake of 9/11. These agents were hungry for information, so she helped agents like Dennis Sacher, who she mentions in her book. So all of the stuff that she speaks about, whether it relates to Gladio B or not, was something she learned within the first two weeks of working there. Then after discovering more about her background, the agents involved basically asked her to train them, since she knew how to look through Turkish papers, for example, to separate real intelligence from non-essential information. This basically gave her two jobs there: translation and analysis. She was the only person Turkish language specialist in the entire FBI. So she was really in a central position for gathering intelligence. Then after being fired from the FBI and becoming a whistleblower, the line of questioning that she would receive in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) would enlighten her on intelligence she had not previously received. There were also so many other agents who gave her information, some after they had retired, but some before. Creating the NSWC (National Security Whistleblowers Coalition) has given her a network of resources. On top of this, she stresses the need for critical thinking, that there is an absence of this in our culture. That's the real problem that allows the real powers controlling the world to get away with their crimes: we let them with our ignorance and apathy.

While it may be easy for some who want to dismiss her, Corbett points out that 99% of what she's talking about is available through other sources. Edmonds says she connects the dots as she can, but too many people want it all pre-digested, easy to swallow. But how many whistleblowers have had the State Secrets Privilege gag like Sibel has? Three. Richard Barlow was a CIA analyst who went to Congress and blew the whistle in 1989 on A.Q. Khan getting the bomb for Pakistan and that the CIA and Pentagon were hiding it because they wanted them to get nukes! Dick Horn was a high-level senior DEA agent who was about to bust a major heroin group in 1993 in Myanmar when the CIA tipped off the targets, endangering all the informants! They bugged his house to do this. After blowing the whistle, the case was settled for $3 million, but he had the State Secrets gag put on him. The third whistleblower is herself, and she went through the same thing as those guys. She was advised by her attorneys after the State Secrets gag was put on her prior to her appellate court hearing to come up with a number for settlement. But how do you put a price tag on never being able to go back to Turkey to visit relatives? It cheapens her roots. She says the FBI was willing to settle for $2 million, but Edmonds refused, she'd rather have justice; her freedom is not for sale. But what they were so afraid of in 2002-2004, they are not afraid of anymore. They used to be afraid of their warrantless wiretapping becoming public knowledge, now they openly talk about kill lists targetting Americans abroad without thinking twice. Nothing exists to galvanize mass outrage, they know now that no one cares enough. People need to trace the money line and connect it with the agenda and ask, "What does this fulfill?" Joseph and Valerie Plame Wilson campaigned for Hillary Clinton, then after the election were rewarded with millions of dollars. This doesn't happen to real whistleblowers. If you're not playing a partisan game, if you're not making millions of dollars, not getting a Hollywood movie made about you, either you must be a sick masochist, or this must be real. In Sibel's case, they tried to smear her by digging up dirt from exes she dated over 20 years ago! They couldn't find anything. Why does she continue? Not to hype a public image of being smart or pretty, but to tell the truth and fire up an irate minority! It's not difficult to be popular, but she's not concerned with that banality at all.

This answers the question of why she hasn't been killed yet. Sibel says she's too insignificant at this point. Since 9/11, David Kelly is the only one killed, she believes there was a cover-up, that it was not a suicide. But the rest, no one knows or cares enough. Thomas Drake is an NSA whistleblower, who's been on the front page of The Washington Post. Who in the general public knows who he is? Who cares enough to warrant him getting killed? They control all the legal outlets and the media. Edmonds received a couple death threats, but she feels they were mostly smoke. Corbett then states many people wrote in thanking her for her perspective. He mentions that Dick wrote in, "It occurred to me it would be fun to have a contest for the best liner notes" and while he can't have a contest, Corbett encouraged people to synopsize on their blog or website. Once again, he ends the broadcast like Part Four with an update on the fundraising drive for her website, Boiling Frogs Post.






Richard Barlow, CIA whistleblower



Part Five Analysis: Well, so much for being concise! There is so much to chew on that there's really only a couple areas I'd like to comment on. First, I want to talk about the concept of a "limited hangout". This is what Edmonds is talking about when she brings Michael Scheuer to task. Here's how wikipedia defines it:

A limited hangout, or partial hangout, is a public relations or propaganda technique that involves the release of previously hidden information in order to prevent a greater exposure of more important details. It takes the form of deception, misdirection, or coverup often associated with intelligence agencies involving a release or "mea culpa" type of confession of only part of a set of previously hidden sensitive information, that establishes credibility for the one releasing the information who by the very act of confession appears to be "coming clean" and acting with integrity; but in actuality, by withholding key facts, is protecting a deeper operation and those who could be exposed if the whole truth came out. In effect, if an array of offenses or misdeeds is suspected, this confession admits to a lesser offense while covering up the greater ones.

A limited hangout typically is a response to lower the pressure felt from inquisitive investigators pursuing clues that threaten to expose everything, and the disclosure is often combined with red herrings or propaganda elements that lead to false trails, distractions, or ideological disinformation; thus allowing covert or criminal elements to continue in their improper activities.

This is exactly the type of activity to describe someone who initially publishes an anonymous "expose" on the failings that lead to 9/11, then after revealing his identity, goes on to call for greater violence in the War on Terror. That's a pretty easy definition from my perspective, what's more difficult is where it concerns the case of Valerie Plame. I don't believe Sibel Edmonds is trying to say that Valerie Plame did not have a great injustice perpetrated against her. But when the pursuit of justice narrowed to focus on who had "sand thrown" rather than why she had her cover blown and who benefited, the case became a limited hangout. Which was a real travesty, because as I highlighted in the second edition of American Judas, Patrick Fitzgerald could have connected the dots between the outing of Plame, the Niger forgeries and the whole AIPAC spy scandal:

The identity of two of these ex-CIA officers was revealed by a former CIA officer in a story Justin Raimondo broke that Patrick Fitzgerald, in his grand jury investigation of the Plame scandal, had received a full copy of the Italian parliamentary oversight report on the forged Niger uranium document. Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi.' Wolf is dead now, but was CIA chief of station in Rome after Clarridge. The former CIA officer says Wolf was Clarridge's Agency godfather. Significantly, both Clarridge and Wolf also spent considerable time in the Africa division, so they both had the Africa and Rome connection and both were close to Ledeen, closing the loop.' Fitzgerald asked the Italians if he could share the report with Paul McNulty, the prosecutor in the AIPAC case. http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=P2452_0_1_0

To do this would have meant uncovering the whole dark truth, which would have exposed what Sibel Edmonds knew about but was gagged from revealing. As she put it:

Essentially, there is only one investigation a very big one, an all-inclusive one. Completely by chance, I, a lowly translator, stumbled over one piece of it. But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it. And of course a lot of people from abroad are involved. It's massive. So to do this investigation, to really do it, they will have to look into everything… That's the beauty of it. You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people. There may be a lot of them, but it is one group. And they are very dangerous for all of us.

-Sibel Edmonds http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=6934

But that's the problem: the real powers in control won't let that thread unravel completely. The solution is always to allow a limited hangout to sweep the darker truth under the rug. Play your cards right and you might even get a seven figure payout for your troubles. But some people won't have that payout, not because they couldn't use the money, but because they have integrity. Sibel Edmonds is one and I'm glad she mentioned Richard Barlow as another. I mentioned him in the first edition of American Judas because he actually exposed the A.Q. Khan network to Dick Cheney when he was Defense Secretary back in 1989 and Cheney covered up Barlow's report so that he could sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan!


Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, circa 1989

So what happens to real whistleblowers whose truth threatens to upset the system? It saddens me to read Barlow's wikipedia entry:

Following congressionally ordered investigations, the inspector-general at the State Department concluded that Barlow had been fired as a reprisal; however, the inspector-generals at the CIA and the Defense Department stated that the Pentagon was within its rights to fire Barlow. A final investigation by Congress' own Government Accountability Office was completed in 1997 and "largely vindicated" Barlow, who had his security clearance restored.[SUP][1][/SUP] During the investigation, the State department inspector-general, Sherman Funk, described Barlow as ""one of the most brilliant analysts I've ever seen".[SUP][6][/SUP]

The activities of the Defense Department officials, however, including Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz and Hadley, were never investigated. Rep. Stephen Solarz, a major player in counter-proliferation, told Seymour Hersh for the latter's famous exposé of the Pakistani nuclear programme that "If what Barlow says is true, this would have been a major scandal of Iran-Contra proportions, and the officials involved would have had to resign".[SUP][2][/SUP][SUP][6][/SUP]

Barlow, however, was unable to find employment after his clearance was removed and marriage broke up. "They viciously tried to destroy my life, personally and professionally" he is quoted as saying. "Not just my career, but they went after my marriage, my livelihood, and smeared my name in truly extraordinary ways that no one had ever seen before or sinceat least not until the Wilsons were victims of the same people years later." According to Barlow the allegations included the "fabrication" that he "was an intended' Congressional spy", that he was an alcoholic, had not paid his taxes, and was an adulterer. "Then they accused me of being psychotic and used that to invade my marital privacy, including that of my now ex-wife who also worked at the CIA, and sought to destroy my marriage as punishment."[SUP][2][/SUP]

Although he was found to have breached no national security regulations and was vindicated, Barlow did not receive his government pension and has had trouble finding employment. The authors of The Nuclear Jihadist, a biography of A.Q. Khan, caused a sensation in 2005 when they revealed that they had tracked him down to a motor home in Montana where he lived with two dogs.[SUP][5][/SUP]

What a shame. I hope he doesn't end up like the subject of my last blog entry, Gary Webb. Keeping your honor shouldn't mean losing your life.

[Phil Dragoo]

Augmenting the above account is the Raw Story of 2007:

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/They_sold_..._0426.html

Richard Barlow is lucky he didn't suck a shotgun in a bathtub of the Breezeway Motel in Alexandria as John Millis did for talking smack on Deutch

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/po...illis.html

or take a canoe ride (on Deutch's watch) as did William Colby who blabbed the Family Jewels

http://www.pythiapress.com/wartales/colby.htm

or bury him in the Towers as they did with John O'Neill

[URL="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/"]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/knew/


[/URL]

[Jan Klimkowski]

Getting back to First Merchant Bank, they were the number one bank for al-Qaeda. Long before 9/11, the FBI was regularly reporting their activity with criminal targets to two places, the State Department and Commerce. State Department did nothing during the late 90's through 2001. 9/11 happens and the FBI is livid, demanding this be shut down and that arrests be made. The government shut down a number of banks involved with Palestinian causes, but the Commerce Department did not do anything about First Merchant until 2004! Why? Edmonds believes it was going to take that long (from 9/11 to 2004) for continuing operations to be concluded so they could switch to other banks. There are so many ways to launder money, one way First Merchant operated that caught Edmonds' attention was by converting the funds to government bonds. She's not quite sure exactly how it all worked, but it all falls within money laundering watchdog expertise.

Corbett finds it interesting how it involved the Cyprus branch, because they are famous for being connected to the Russian mafia and Russian oligarchs; Cyprus is actually Russia's largest foreign investor. Edmonds says there are two sides to Cyprus banks, a Greek side and Turkish side. Russia and NATO are both using Cyprus, she believes Russia is probably using the Greek side as US/NATO is using the Turkish side. She finds the intrigue between the two sides fascinating, especially in light of Russia saying they are going to kick out US NGOs. Explaining how the cliche used to be the spies in foreign countries were placed in embassies, she says because everyone knows that it would be the dumbest thing to do now; that's the first place the host nation would look! So for the United States, the number one place we put our top intelligence gathering officers and informants are NGOs.

Very provocative and timely information about the divided island of Cyprus.

At one level it's a war between elite criminal cartels.

Above that are the Secret Team puppetmasters, who are pursuing the Stategy of Tension.

Ordinary people are always flotsam and jetsam, entirely disposable in these criminal and geopolitical games.

Anyone here remember Jan Willem Matser? Of course not. How could we be asked to remember something we never knew about? Thanks to our media here the name wouldn't ring a bell with anyone except a few irate members here who read my piece last June.
Matser, a Dutch Lieutenant Colonel in Staff to NATO Secretary General George Robertson in charge of Eastern Europe, whose job gave him access to classified NATO material, was arrested on February 2003 in Wemmel, Belgium, and charged with trying to launder at least $200 million for an international drug cartel from his office at the alliance's HQ in Brussels. Other criminals involved in Matser's case were Mohammed Kadem, a Moroccan, and Pietro Fedino, a wealthy Sicilian with a previous conviction for cocaine smuggling.
Here is some background as reported by Times UK :
According to documents seen by The Sunday Times, the investigation began last September after customs police at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam received a tip-off about a FedEx parcel sent from Colombia to an address in the Netherlands. The parcel was found to contain a receipt for a £120m deposit at a bank in Bogotá and a fake document authorising the transfer of the same amount of money to Tender SA, a company registered in the Romanian town of Timisoara. The company is not suspected of any wrongdoing.

And here is some more background on the investigations from the same report by Times UK:
The information was passed to a police unit working for the Dutch finance ministry that specializes in combating organised crime. The package was fitted with a bug and resealed. It was allegedly received by Fedino, who is suspected by the Dutch police of being an Italian mafia boss. Five agents monitored him around the clock and listened to his telephone calls. It was this surveillance that led police to Matser. In a call taped on September 7, a man later identified as Matser said he was "going to be leaving NATO in half an hour".

In a further conversation, on December 27, Matser allegedly said: "I'll make false documents for the entire transaction . . . It's no problem; my computer's very patient and I can even recreate the official notary seals from old documents." Matser also held several meetings with his alleged accomplices. One meeting with Kadem on Christmas Eve at the Airport hotel in Rotterdam was filmed by the surveillance team. Kadem was already the focus of four international drug investigations and had been sought by Interpol since 1996."Investigators believe Matser helped to set up the scheme when NATO sent him to Romania last year to instruct central European intelligence chiefs on how to raise standards."

Interestingly Dick Cheney's Halliburton happened to be another contender for control of Romania's Petrom. Here is the Interesting' Connection:
Matser and Tender are further connected by their failed attempt to gain control of PETROM National Society (SNP), a soon-to-be privatized Romanian oil-company, which produces 10% of the Romanian GDP. Tender, Matser and Halliburton formed a consortium in an effort to gain controlling stakes 51% estimated to be worth approx. US$ 1 billion. A few days following the announcement of this trio's interest, Matser was arrested. Subsequently, Romania's Economy Ministry has made it known that the consortium had not met its criteria and was no longer being considered."

For those of us who've watched, with curiosity, the career of George Robertson, a completely talentless non-entity who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time just before his meteoric rise, this comes as little suprise.

Compromised, bought and owned.

[Magda Hassan]

Fascinating...

George Robertson, Baron Robertson of Port Ellen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Islay MacNeill Robertson, Baron Robertson of Port Ellen, KT, GCMG, FRSA,FRSE, PC (born 12 April 1946) is a British Labour Party politician who was the tenthSecretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, between October 1999 and early January 2004; he succeeded Javier Solana in that position. He served as Defence Secretary for the United Kingdom from 1997 to 1999, before taking up his NATO position and becoming a life peer as Baron Robertson of Port Ellen, of Islay in Argyll and Bute.

Early life

Born in Port Ellen, Isle of Islay, Scotland, the son of a policeman, he was educated atDunoon Grammar School and studied Economics at the Queen's College, Dundee. When he was 15 years of age, he was involved with protests against US nuclear submarines docking in Britain.[SUP][1][/SUP]
During Robertson's time at Queen's College it broke away from the University of St Andrews to become the University of Dundee, of which Robertson was one of the first graduates (MA, 1968).[SUP][2][/SUP] During his time at University he played a full part in student life. Notably he wrote a column for the student newspaper Annasach, launched in 1967, and took an active role in student protests.[SUP][2][/SUP][SUP][3][/SUP][SUP][4][/SUP] Robertson used his newspaper column to back the new University and encouraged his fellow students to take a University of Dundee degree (students who had started before 1967 could opt to take a degree from either the University of Dundee or the University of St Andrews).[SUP][4][/SUP] In 1968 Robertson was one of a number of Dundee students to invade the pitch during a rugby match at St. Andrewsinvolving a team from the Orange Free State to protest against apartheid.[SUP][5][/SUP] The same year he organised a 24-hour work-in by students in the university library in opposition to proposed cuts by the government in student grants.[SUP][5][/SUP]
Lord Robertson married Sandra Wallace on 1 June 1970. They are the parents of three children: Malcolm, Martin and Rachael.
Robertson survived a serious crash in January 1977 of his car with a Navy Land Rover, which was carrying 100 lb of gelignite and a box of detonators, and hit his car head-on in the Drumochter Pass, leaving him with two wrecked knees and a broken jaw. Robertson was wearing a seat belt at the time and attributes his survival to this factor.[SUP][citation needed][/SUP]
Political career

He was six times elected to the United Kingdom House of Commons, was Chairman of theLabour Party in Scotland, and was appointed to the Privy Council.[SUP][6][/SUP] After Labour won the1997 General Election, Robertson was appointed Secretary of State for Defence, a position he held until he resigned from the Cabinet in order to become Secretary General of NATO in 1999.
Quote on devolution

In 1995, Robertson said that "Devolution will kill Nationalism stone dead" while he was Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland.[SUP][7][/SUP] This quote was designed to assuage fears that devolution would provide a greater platform for the Scottish National Party (SNP). Robertson's quote has been frequently recalled, usually in a mocking fashion, after the SNP won Scottish Parliament elections in 2007[SUP][7][/SUP][SUP][8][/SUP] and2011.[SUP][9][/SUP][SUP][10][/SUP]
Dunblane libel action

Robertson's three children are former pupils of the school in Dunblane where gunman Thomas Hamilton went on the rampage in 1996, murdering 16 children and their teacher. After the massacre, Mr Robertson, a long-time resident of the town, acted as a spokesman for the victims' families. He was also a key figure in the subsequent campaign that led to the ban on handguns in Great Britain.[SUP][11][/SUP]
In 2003, the Sunday Herald newspaper ran an article entitled "Should the Dunblane dossier be kept secret?", a reference to documents relating to the Cullen Inquiry into the massacre which are to remain classified for 100 years. In a discussion board on the newspaper'swebsite, anonymous contributors claimed that Robertson had signed a recommendation for a gun licence for Thomas Hamilton in his capacity as Hamilton's MP. In fact, Robertson had never been the gunman's MP, and the claims were totally unfounded. Robertson sued the Sunday Herald and the paper settled by paying him a five-figure sum plus costs. A subsequent action by Robertson, related to the terms of the newspaper's apology, was unsuccessful. The first case became an important test case as to whether publishers can be held responsible for comments posted on their websites.[SUP][12][/SUP][SUP][13][/SUP]
After NATO

Robertson has received numerous honours (including a total of 12 Honorary doctorates from various universities). Currently he holds directorships of several notable companies in the UK, including the Weir Group,[SUP][14][/SUP] and Cable and Wireless.
In addition, Lord Robertson is a Senior Counselor at The Cohen Group, a consulting firm in Washington D.C. that provides advice and assistance in marketing and regulatory affairs.
Career

• 19681978, Official of the GMB Union for the Scottish whisky industry.
  
• 19781999, Member of the United Kingdom House of Commons, member for Hamilton or Hamilton South, elected six times.
  
• 1979, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Social Services.
  
• 1979??, Opposition Spokesman on Scottish Affairs.
  
• 19??82, Opposition Spokesman on Defence.
  
• 198293, Opposition Spokesman on Foreign Affairs.
  
• 198393, Chief Opposition Spokesman on Europe.
  
• 199397, Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland.
  
• May 1997, Appointed to the Privy Council
  
• May 1997 October 1999, Defence Secretary of the United Kingdom
  
• October 1999 January 2004, 10th Secretary General of NATO and Chairman of the North Atlantic Council.
  

Other former or present posts

• Chairman of the Labour Party in Scotland
  
• Vice-chairman of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy
  
• Vice-Chairman of the British Council for nine years
  
• Vice-Chairman of the Britain-Russia Centre
  
• Member of the Council of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) seven years, now President
  
• Member of the Pilgrims Society
  
• Governor of the Ditchley Foundation
  
• Trustee of the 21st Century Trust
  
• Patron to the British-American Project
  
• Currently serves on the Board of Cable & Wireless International
  
• Currently serves on the Board of The Weir Group PLC
  
• Currently serves on the Board of The TNK-BP
  
• Currently serves on the Global Panel America Advisory Board
  
• Currently a member of the Top Level Group of UK Parliamentarians for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation, established in October 2009.[SUP][15][/SUP]
  

Honours and awards

• 4th recipient of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award
  
• 2004 Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, First class[SUP][16][/SUP]
  
• 30 November 2004 Knight of the Order of the Thistle
  
• 12 November 2003 Presidential Medal of Freedom (United States)
  
• 8 September 2003 Ridder Grootkruis in de Orde van Oranje Nassau (Knight Grand Cross in the Order of Orange-Nassau).
  
• 2003 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
  
• 2000 Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Romania
  
• 24 August 1999 created a life peer as Baron Robertson of Port Ellen.
  
• 1 December 2003 - Grand Order of King Petar KreÅ¡imir IV (Croatia)
  
• 1993 joint Parliamentarian of the Year for his role in the Maastricht Treaty ratification
  
• 1991 Grand Cross of the German Order of Merit
  
• Honorary Regimental Colonel of the London Scottish (Volunteers)
  
• Honorary Doctorate from the University of Paisley (awarded 5 July 2006)
  
• Honorary Doctorate from the University of Dundee
  
• Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bradford
  
• Honorary Doctorate from Cranfield University (Royal Military College of Science)
  
• Honorary Doctorate from the Baku State University, Azerbaijan
  
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA)
  
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE)
  
• Elder Brother of Trinity House.
  
• 2003 - Atlantic Solidarity Award bestowed by the Manfred Wörner Foundation
  

References

• ^ The Future of NATO - C-SPAN Video Library
  
• ^ [SUP]a[/SUP] [SUP]b[/SUP] "General Election Special 2". Archives Records and Artefacts at the University of Dundee. Retrieved 11 September 2011.
  
• ^ "Making Contact. 12 decades of staff and student magazines". Contact: 27. June 2011. Retrieved 11 September 2011.
  
• ^ [SUP]a[/SUP] [SUP]b[/SUP] Baxter, Kenneth, Rolfe, Mervyn and Swinfen, David (2007). A Dundee Celebration. Dundee: University of Dundee. p. 34.
  
• ^ [SUP]a[/SUP] [SUP]b[/SUP] Baxter, Kenneth, Rolfe, Mervyn and Swinfen, David (2007). A Dundee Celebration. Dundee: University of Dundee. p. 35.
  
• ^ NATO (6 January 2004). "NATO Secretary General (19992003) The Rt. Hon. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen". Who is who at NATO?.NATO. Retrieved 2007-02-22.
  
• ^ [SUP]a[/SUP] [SUP]b[/SUP] Warner, Gerald (6 May 2007). "How Bulldog Brown could call Braveheart Salmond's bluff". Scotland on Sunday. Johnston Press. Retrieved 2007-05-06.
  
• ^ Devine, Tom (11 May 2008). "Old Scotland took the high road. New Scotland is upwardly mobile". The Independent (London). Retrieved 17 September 2008.
  
• ^ Watt, Nicholas (6 May 2011). "Tony Blair's Scottish nightmare comes true as Alex Salmond trounces Labour". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 August 2011.
  
• ^ "Q&A: Scottish independence referendum". BBC News (BBC). 29 May 2011. Retrieved 4 August 2011. "The 2011 result has blown out of the water the claim once made by Labour veteran Lord Robertson that devolution would "kill nationalism stone dead" - ironically, Labour, the party which set up devolution - has never managed to gain the overall majority achieved by the SNP."
  
• ^ BBC profile, 1999
  
• ^ McDougall, Dan (October 2005). "Robertson sues over Dunblane killer allegations". The Dunbane Shootings and Gun Law. Martin Frost. Retrieved 2007-02-22.
  
• ^ Thompson, Bill (10 September 2004). "Be careful what you say on the net". BBC News. Retrieved 2007-02-22.
  
• ^ http://www.weir.co.uk/Group/home.nsf/luP...edirectors
  
• ^ Borger, Julian (8 September 2009). "Nuclear-free world ultimate aim of new cross-party pressure group". The Guardian (London).
  
• ^ (in Estonian) EESTI TÄNAB 1995-2009
  

External links

• Lord Robertson of Port Ellen profile, www.parliament.uk
  
• Hansard 18032005: contributions in Parliament by George Robertson
  

The Cohen Group




The Cohen Group is a firm providing advice to corporate leadership and assistance in marketing and regulatory affairs.[SUP][1][/SUP] It is based inWashington, D.C. with offices in Beijing and Tianjin, People's Republic of China.[SUP][2][/SUP]

History

The firm was founded by former United States Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen in 2001 to help multinational clients expand overseas. The Cohen Group has a strategic alliance with DLA Piper, a global law firm specializing in business, real estate, and technology.[SUP][3][/SUP]
Staff

Team members of The Cohen Group bring years of experience from the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department, and Congress. The senior talent at the Cohen Group includes, among others:

• Joseph Ralston, former United States Air Force general, NATO Supreme Allied Commander and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
  
• Marc Grossman, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, United States Ambassador to Turkey
  
• R. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, United States Ambassador to Greece
  
• James Loy, who served as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration,Commandant of the Coast Guard
  
• George Robertson, Baron Robertson of Port Ellen, who served as Secretary General of NATO and United Kingdom Secretary of State for Defence
  
• Paul J. Kern, who served as the Commander of the Army Materiel Command and the Senior Adviser for Army Research, Development and Acquisition
  
• Joe Yakovac, who served as Director of the Army Acquisition Corps and Military Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology
  
• Harry Raduege, who served as Director of the Defense Information Systems Agency and Commander of the Joint Task Force Global Network Operations
  
• Frank Miller, who served as Senior Director for Defense Policy at the National Security Council as well as many years in senior roles at the Department of Defense.
  

[Jan Klimkowski]

Sometime British Defence Secretary, NATO Secretary and Cohen Group member, George Robertson has an:

Honorary Doctorate from the Baku State University, Azerbaijan

I wonder what services were rendered and learning delivered for that resonant honour?

:monkeypiss: