Day By Day

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Scary If True

A former CIA agent, writing in The American Conservative reports:
Most Americans have never heard of Sibel Edmonds, and if the U.S. government has its way, they never will. The former FBI translator turned whistleblower tells a chilling story of corruption at Washington’s highest levels—sale of nuclear secrets, shielding of terrorist suspects, illegal arms transfers, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, espionage. She may be a first-rate fabulist, but Edmonds’s account is full of dates, places, and names. And if she is to be believed, a treasonous plot to embed moles in American military and nuclear installations and pass sensitive intelligence to Israeli, Pakistani, and Turkish sources was facilitated by figures in the upper echelons of the State and Defense Departments. Her charges could be easily confirmed or dismissed if classified government documents were made available to investigators.

But Congress has refused to act, and the Justice Department has shrouded Edmonds’s case in the state-secrets privilege, a rarely used measure so sweeping that it precludes even a closed hearing attended only by officials with top-secret security clearances.

Read the whole thing here.

Another former CIA agent notes that the charges are:
jaw-dropping, and (if confirmed) could shakes the highest reaches of our diplomatic and security establishments.
Read it here.

Wretchard, over at the Belmont Club, notes that the author of the article is not a particularly reliable source, having predicted a U.S. nuclear attack on Iran in 2005 [here]. Still, the allegations are striking and should be fully investigated.