Exposed: FBI Cover-Up on Nuclear Spying by U.S. Officials

The cover-up is of the Sibel Edmonds revelations about a nuclear secrets ring wherein high U.S. officials sold information on nuclear weapons technology via Turkish intermediaries to foreign countries, most notably Pakistan. It has been covered by bloggers for years, but was first reported in the mainstream press by the British Sunday Times. Daniel Ellsberg recently excoriated the U.S. press for its suspicious quietude:

For the second time in two weeks, the entire U.S. press has let itself be scooped by Rupert Murdoch's London Sunday Times on a dynamite story of criminal activities by corrupt U.S. officials promoting nuclear proliferation. But there is a worse journalistic sin than being scooped, and that is participating in a cover-up of information that demands urgent attention from the public, the U.S. Congress and the courts.

The second time? Ellsberg is referring to yesterday's second article on the Sibel Edmonds revelations reported in the Sunday Times: FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft. The article exposes an FBI cover-up of a crucial document in the investigation of the nuclear secrets ring.

According to the Sunday Times, the Liberty Coalition made a Freedom of Information request from the FBI for a document, labelled "203A-WF-210023." According to a Sibel Edmonds, this document "refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations." The FBI responded to the FOIA request by saying the file did not exist.

But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.

“I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002."

The Valerie Plame Connection

Just as explosive are the assertions of the anonymous tipster to Liberty Coalition that a U.S. official warned members of the Turkish network to steer clear of the Brewster Jennings company "because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market." Of course, Brewster Jennings was in fact such a CIA front, and the operational cover for Valerie Plame, which was outed by a number of White House operatives back in 2003. This new information corroborates the suppositions of the blogger Lukery, who contended Marc Grossman outed Brewster Jennings as early as 2001. (Grossman was named by prosecutor Fitzgerald as passing information on Valerie Plame to convicted perjurer I. Lewis Libby. He worked in Bush's State Department, and was Clinton's Ambassador to Turkey in the late 1990s.)

How would Grossman know about Brewster Jennings? How widespread was this nuclear secrets cabal within the U.S. government? Widespread enough to have compromised the FBI? These and other equally disturbing questions can and should be asked by politicians and the press in the United States. Yet nothing is heard from either. Why?

Ellsburg's guest op-ed over at Brad Blog explains who in American government should be following up on this:

...there must be pressure by the public on Congressional committee chairpersons, in particular Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Patrick Leahy. Both have been sitting for years on classified, sworn testimony by Edmonds --- as she revealed in the Times' new story on Sunday --- along with documentation, in their possession, confirming parts of her account. Pressure must be brought for them to hold public hearings to investigate her accusations of widespread criminal activities, over several administrations, that endanger national security. They should call for open testimony under oath by Edmonds --- as she has urged for five years --- and by other FBI officials she has named to them, as cited anonymously in the first Times' story.

From Rot to the Danger of Gangrene

The rot of greed and bankrupt great power political maneuvering is totally exposed for all to see. The Sibel Edmonds revelations about U.S. officials selling state nuclear secrets to foreign governments offers a counter-narrative to the myth of U.S. "good intentions" in the world. In fact, it reveals a destabilizing force for war and nuclear blackmail emanating from the most powerful chambers of government. Furthermore, the silence of the press and so-called progressive politicians shows that the corrosion of values and truth-telling in society has seriously degenerated, and gangrene has set in.

I put no faith in Waxman or Leahy. Even less in the New York Times or the Washington Post (who published Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers over a generation ago). The Sunday Times articles are likely the expression (on some level) of a widening breach between the U.S. and Britain, and meant by the British to tweak the beard of their more powerful American patrons (asking the latter, perhaps, not to push the Brits too hard re their commitment to Iraq or Afghanistan).

Ellsberg is right about one thing: unless the American people stand up and make their political voices heard, nothing will be done by the current people in power. And the gangrene will spread. It may already be too late.

See related articles:

*** UK Times: Official Documents Prove FBI lied to protect US officials
*** The Story We've All Been Waiting For
*** UK Sunday Times Scoops US Media Again, Confirms FBI Cover-Up of Documents in Sibel Edmonds Nuke Secrets Case