Turkish Intelligence Blackmailing Sitting Member of House
By Wayne Madsen/ Wayne Madsen Report
Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds testified August 15th that while she was working for the FBI she was aware of bribes being made by the Turkish government to elected and former members of Congress, as well as senior officials of the executive branch, including the Department of State. Edmonds was subpoenaed by the Ohio Election Commission in a case brought against Ohio Democratic House of Representatives candidate David Krikorian by incumbent Ohio Republican Representative Jean Schmidt. Schmidt alleges in her complaint to the Commission that Krikorian made “false statements” in his 2008 independent race against her.
Edmonds named Rep. Schmidt as one of the recipients of Turkish government bribes along with former House Speakers Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Dick Gephardt (D-MO), and brief House Speaker Robert Livingston (R-LA), as well as Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) and former Representative Stephen Solarz (D-NY). Also named are Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Adviser under George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford, and former George W. Bush State Department Political Undersecretary, Marc Grossman.
Edmonds was fired from her FBI job after she complained to her superiors about Turkish intelligence infiltration of the translation branch of the bureau; she was exonerated in a report by the FBI’s Inspector General.
Edmonds’ testimony also dealt with Turkish and Israeli joint operations to engage in smuggling nuclear technology from the US. In particular, the Turkish espionage and influence-peddling ring was heavily involved in the Bush White House “outing” the covert identities of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates, non-official, CIA- cover firm.
Perhaps the most explosive part of the deposition involved the Turkish government being engaged in a sexual blackmail operation against a sitting member of the House of Representative. In what the FBI termed a “hooking process,” an American-Turkish Council (ATC) female operative enticed a female member of the House into a lesbian sexual encounter at a Washington, DC townhouse. A Turkish intelligence surveillance team had placed surveillance bugs throughout the townhouse, including the bedroom and captured the lesbian tryst on tape, according to Edmonds’s testimony.
WMR has learned that the House member in question is Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a strong supporter of AIPAC and Israel and a close political ally of President Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
To her credit, Schakowsky had been a vocal opponent of private military contractors and the lack of government oversight of their activities, especially in Latin American and Iraq, but since being compromised, she has “gone quiet” on all her signature issues, including private military contractors, and she has become very hawkish in support of Israel.
In January 2007, Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Schakowsky to be a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Currently, Schakowsky is chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations — which puts her in a conflict-of-interest in investigating Turkish and related Israeli intelligence penetration of the FBI and State Department.
WMR has also learned from congressional sources that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was aware of Schakowsky’s “problems,” and he resisted pressure from Obama and Emanuel to appoint Schakowsky to Obama’s vacant Senate seat. When Blagojevich signaled he was going to appoint someone other than Schakowsky to the seat, the joint Israeli and Turkish lobbies, in addition to Emanuel, arranged for US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to receive a green light to arrest Blagojevich, even before any federal corruption indictments were handed down by a grand jury. Blagojevich was later impeached by the Illinois House and removed from office by the state senate. An indictment on multiple counts was later handed down by a federal grand jury.
WMR has previously reported that Fitzgerald dragged his feet on the investigation of the leak by the Bush White House of the covert identities of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates cover firm. Fitzgerald was trying to limit damaging exposure to the nuclear smuggling operation that involved the Turkish and Israeli Lobbies and Turkish MIT and Israeli Mossad intelligence operations. Mrs. Wilson and her team were apparently narrowing in on the Turks and Israelis in nuclear smuggling around the world. The key US government players in outing Brewster Jennings were named by Edmonds in her deposition.
Blackwater (now Xe) has been accused of smuggling weapons through Iraq to Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey. Recent allegations that Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) terrorist attacks in Turkey have been “false flags” carried out by the “deep state” Ergenekon and the allegations by Edmonds that the ATC and its affiliates in Washington are part of the Turkish “deep state” point to possible long-time collusion between Blackwater and Turkish intelligence. The fact that Turkish intelligence successfully blackmailed Schakowsky, the major congressional opponent of Blackwater’s operations, could not have come as better news to the firm.
With the CIA and Blackwater/Xe vigorously opposed to any further details of their cooperation emerging, there is the strong possibility that Turkish state intelligence has shared its “take” with the CIA and Schakowsky is, once again, being blackmailed into submission as she was when the ATC and its sister organization, the Israeli AIPAC lobby, pressured her to back down on her support for an Armenian genocide resolution in the House.
Such juicy blackmail information certainly may have ended up in the hands of those CIA officials who went to work in senior executive positions for Blackwater, including the CIA’s former chief of the Counterterrorism Center Cofer Black, former chief of the CIA’s Near East and South Asia Division Robert Richer, former CIA Special Operations Group official Enrique “Ric” Prado, and Alvin “Buzzy” Krongard, who, while his brother Howard “Cookie” Krongard was blocking an investigation of the State Department’s contracts with Blackwater while serving as State’s Inspector General, was serving on Blackwater’s advisory board. In addition, Joseph Schmitz, the Pentagon’s former Inspector General, was hired on as the general counsel for the Prince Group, the parent company of Erik Prince’s Blackwater.
It is also reported that after CIA director George Tenet canceled the CIA’s contract with Blackwater. His replacement, Porter Goss, renewed the deal. Goss’s Executive Director, Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, now jailed for fraud and corruption, would have been involved in hammering out the CIA’s renewed contract with Blackwater. Foggo, had a personal and business relationship with Pamela Martin & Associates proprietor, his old friend from San Diego the late Deborah Jeane Palfrey, to provide escorts for the agency for clandestine tasks. That activity also involved providing escorts for Washington hotel “poker parties” at which Goss, Foggo, and jailed former Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham were present. Cunningham served as chairman of the powerful House Armed Services Appropriations subcommittee, which approved Blackwater’s Pentagon contracts. Blackwater, according to recent court depositions in Alexandria, Virginia, is accused of running a prostitution camp in Baghdad, which also involved the use of children.
The connections between Blackwater and the CIA now indicate that the Pentagon entity that was working closely with Langley in paramilitary assassination operations was largely composed of Blackwater contractors.
Many in Congress are demanding an explanation for the CIA’s contracts with Blackwater; but with Schakowsky being blackmailed, there is little hope that her subcommittee can look into the contracts between the CIA and Blackwater/Xe, let alone the operations of the Prince Group’s other murky entities, including Presidential Airways, Greystone Ltd. of Barbados, Falcon, EP Investments, Xe Airships, Total Intelligence Solutions, and Raven Development Group.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist and a regular commentator on Russia Today TV. His columns have appeared in the Miami Herald, Houston Chronicle, Philadelphia Inquirer, Columbus Dispatch, Sacramento Bee, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and many other papers.
