FBI Caught Destroying Evidence. Speaking Of Which, What Has The FBI Done With The Tapes It Confiscated At The Pentagon & Surrounding Areas On 9-11?

Did the FBI destroy the tapes that it confiscated at the Pentagon on 9-11, in order to cover up what really happened? Perhaps the FBI has repeatedly refused to release these tapes because they no longer exist.

If so, it won't be the first time that this masquerade as law enforcement has destroyed evidence in a federal crime. The FBI trains its agents to pathologically lie to the public, which is why the FBI must be abolished.

Any organization that exists to violate the rule of constitutional law as the FBI has been doing for the past Century, does not belong in America. So don't be surprised to see petitions being circulated within the coming months calling for the abolition of the FBI. It's about time that this Americanized version of the Gestapo got its plug pulled.

January 19, 2008

UK Times: Official Documents Prove FBI lied to protect US officials

By Luke Ryland

The UK's Sunday Times has another explosive article out tonight.

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

The Times has obtained official documents which prove that the FBI is lying about the existence of a counterintelligence operation targeting high-level US officials and Turkish operatives.

The FBI's comments demonstrate conclusively that either:
a) They are lying, or b) They have destroyed the evidence of this multi-year investigation concerning the corruption of high-level US officials, the nuclear black market, money laundering and narcotics trafficking.

****

The revelations in the Times are also the first known incident where official FBI documents have been leaked to the press confirming the FBI's counterintelligence operations targeting Turkish operatives in US. According to the Times, these operations have been taking place since 1996.

Destruction of Evidence?
The Times has obtained an official FBI document which confirms the existence of the Turkish counter-intelligence operation, including the official Case Number of the operation. This case number, 203A-WF-210023, has been very tightly held because it directly ties the Turkish operation to specific documents and wiretaps which can then be used as evidence.

The FBI has, till recently, been very careful not to respond to any requests that might disclose, confirm or deny any information in this matter, however:

...the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

With the FBI claiming that these documents don't exist, we must conclude either that they are demonstrably lying, or that they have destroyed all the evidence.

Unfortunately for the FBI, we are aware of at least two other cases where this operation was referenced, and those references were documented outside the FBI. The first case was that of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds; her case was reported by the Justice Department's Inspector General, as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the second case was that of former FBI Special Agent Gilbert Graham, whose cases was also documented in Congress and by the Inspector General.

If the FBI is telling the truth that these documents do not (currently) exist, then the FBI must have destroyed them. Did they destroy ALL the copies that existed? Did the FBI retrieve ALL the copies and references seen by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Inspector General's report which was seen by Henry Waxman's office and perhaps elsewhere? How far did they go to retrieve the evidence? We do know that in May 2004, two years after the Senate Judiciary Committee held unclassified hearings into Sibel's case, the Department of Justice retroactively classified details of those hearings. Did the DoJ destroy all the evidence, and all the case files, at the same time?

We also know that at least one other FBI Special Agent filed classified protected reports in early 2002. Special Agent Gilbert Graham, one of Sibel's bosses, worked on "counterintelligence investigations involved espionage activities by Turkish officials and agents in the United States." Graham's primary concern, according to the unclassified version of his filings was that the FBI was using phony FISA warrants to spy on "high-profile U.S. public officials."

Gilbert Graham's filings with the Inspector General, as well as his evidence to the Senate Judiciary Committee certainly contained the relevant Case Numbers that the FBI is now denying exists. Were all of Graham's reports destroyed too?

For years, Sibel has challenged US officials: (youtube):

"We have the facts, we have the documents, we have the witnesses. Put out the tapes, put out the documents, put out the intercepts. Put out the truth."


The FBI is apparently still obstructing justice, and still blocking the truth from coming out.

Asked for a comment, Sibel said:

"I cannot comment on the contents of the case file, however I can tell you with 100% certainty that the FBI lied when they said that it doesn't exist."


The FBI/DoJ is currently investigating the CIA's destruction of evidence, the torture/interrogation tapes of al-Qa'ida suspect Abu Zubaydah and others. If they have destroyed all the evidence in this Turkish Counter-Intelligence operation, how can they possibly be trusted to investigate the CIA's destruction of evidence?


Brewster Jennings
The official document obtained by The Times has some very damning evidence regarding Marc Grossman, former #3 at the State Department and former Ambassador to Turkey. Two weeks ago, The Times ran an explosive article detailing how Marc Grossman was a mole for foreign criminal groups which stole American nuclear secrets and sold them to the highest bidder.

According to the latest Times article, they have an anonymous letter which:

claims the government official [Grossman] warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official's warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

Former CIA agent Phil Giraldi, who was stationed in Turkey, is another who is familiar with these matters. Giraldi wrote a terrific article for the American Conservative in 2006 describing Sibel's case. In Kill The Messenger, a documentary about the nuclear black market element of Sibel case, Giraldi says:

"And that Brewster Jennings was, apparently, working against the target of Turkey, meaning that Turkey was being investigated by the CIA as a proliferator of weapons."


One of Brewster Jennings targets was the American Turkish Council, a lobbying group known to be a hub of the activity facilitating the theft and sale of nuclear secrets, among other things.

Journalist Chris Deliso wrote a terrific article in Nov 2005 linking Marc Grossman, Brewster Jennings, the American Turkish Council and the Turkish connection to the nuclear black market. Although the new Times article doesn't mention Grossman by name, it is clear that Grossman is again the unnamed former official in this article.

Crimes, Cover-ups, and... Consequences?
We are all familiar with the cliche that 'the cover-up is worse than the crime,' but that is often nonsense. Just as in the CIA tape destruction case, here we have rational people making 'rational' decisions, not in the heat of the moment, to commit felonies by destroying evidence of treason amongst other crimes. The original crimes are much worse than the cover-up, and the guilty parties know it, that's why they decided to destroy and cover up all of the evidence.

Will Congress finally hold hearings into the foreign criminal penetration of every branch of the US government which has been repeatedly corroborated?

We have the crimes, we have the cover-ups, where are the consequences?

m The Sunday Times
January 20, 2008
FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft
The FBI has been accused of covering up a file detailing government dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets
INSIGHT

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.

Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it 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 file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations,” she said.

The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.

The letter says: “You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office.”

It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file – many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.

Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion.

She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.

The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.

It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish “targets” talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of “operatives” at the ATC.

Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed.

“I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders,” she said, “but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.

“This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.”


C.I.A. Officers Turn to Legal Insurer
Susan Etheridge for The New York Times

Bryan B. Lewis heads Wright & Company, insuring federal workers for professional liability.

By SCOTT SHANE
Published: January 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — When Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. came under investigation for ordering the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videotapes, one of his first calls was to a small Virginia insurance company that thrives on government trouble.

Like a growing number of C.I.A. employees, Mr. Rodriguez, former head of the agency’s clandestine service, had bought professional liability insurance from Wright & Company. The firm, founded in 1965 by a former F.B.I. agent, is now paying his mounting legal bills.

The standard Wright policy costs a little less than $300 a year. The government pays half the premium for all supervisors and certain other high-risk employees, a group that includes hundreds of C.I.A. officers, including everyone at the agency involved in counterterrorism or counterproliferation.

The more scandal official Washington produces, the better for Wright’s niche business for federal employees. Every whiff of investigation or litigation drives additional nervous federal workers to the company’s door.

When Al Qaeda attacked the United States in 2001, Wright & Company was insuring about 17,000 federal employees against the legal hazards of their work. Today, that total has nearly doubled to 32,000, Wright executives say, spurred in part by a spate of lawsuits, investigations and criminal prosecutions related to mistreatment of detainees from Iraq to Guantánamo Bay, an immigration crackdown and other aftershocks of 9/11. The insurance is popular with F.B.I. agents, Secret Service officers, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement workers as well as C.I.A. officers.

“The things that help us are any negative events related to the federal government, and there have been plenty,” said Bryan B. Lewis, Wright’s president and chief executive, who holds a security clearance that allows him to discuss his clients’ secret business.

Mark Mansfield, an agency spokesman, said that many C.I.A. officers bought the insurance, but that “only a very, very small number of people ever need to invoke it.”

The standard Wright policy pays up to $200,000 in legal fees for administrative matters like investigations by Congress or an inspector general, or cases involving demotion or dismissal. An additional $100,000 is available for legal fees in criminal investigations, and the policy pays up to $1 million in damages in a civil suit.
As the subject of both Congressional and criminal investigations, Mr. Rodriguez, former head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, has $300,000 in coverage for legal fees. How long that might last is anybody’s guess. He has hired Robert S. Bennett, a Washington lawyer who represented President Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones sexual misconduct lawsuit and whose standard rate was described by colleagues as more than $900 an hour.

Wright & Company often negotiates a discounted rate, but neither the company nor Mr. Bennett would say what he was being paid for representing Mr. Rodriguez.

Mr. Bennett, who is seeking immunity for Mr. Rodriguez in return for his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, would say only that he was dismayed by the very need for his services.

“It’s an absolute travesty that the people on the front line defending us from terrorists have to go out and hire lawyers to defend themselves from their own government,” said Mr. Bennett, who holds the top secret clearance necessary to discuss the videotapes and the harsh interrogations of Qaeda suspects that they documented.

Travesty or not, the spectacle of C.I.A. officers under investigation has been a recurring drama in Washington. In 1973, as domestic spying and foreign assassination plots by the agency came under review, a memorandum from headquarters warned officers that the agency would not represent them in case of legal trouble. It became known in-house as the “get-your-own-lawyer cable,” veteran case officers recalled.

Since the late 1980s, however, Wright and a handful of competitors have offered at least some shelter from bankrupting legal costs. The Justice Department will represent federal employees in noncriminal matters if it is judged to be in the government’s interest and the employee’s acts were within the scope of his employment. But government lawyers represent the government’s interest, and an employee facing potentially serious accusations may want a lawyer looking out just for him.

One former C.I.A. officer said he bought the insurance because when a scandal broke “you figured the government would moonwalk away from you as fast as it could.”

The videotape case has brought claims for legal representation from several C.I.A. employees other than Mr. Rodriguez, said Mr. Lewis, who declined to name them. George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence; Scott W. Muller, the agency’s former general counsel; and John A. Rizzo, the current acting general counsel, are among those who have retained counsel. Spokesmen for the three men declined to comment.

The Wright policy covers only claims filed within 36 months after the insured person leaves government service. Mr. Tenet and Mr. Muller left the agency in the summer of 2004, so presumably they would no longer be covered.

A new possible source of reimbursement for legal fees was created in 2006 by the Military Commissions Act, which requires the government to pay lawyers for C.I.A. and military officers facing lawsuits or criminal investigations for “authorized” actions involving detention of suspected terrorists. Whether the destruction of the videotapes would qualify is uncertain, but lawyers in the matter are studying the question.

The standard Wright coverage would probably fall far short the legal costs in a criminal prosecution, and the company is considering introducing a second option, with higher limits. The defense on perjury charges of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President **** Cheney’s former chief of staff, cost more than $5 million, which was covered by donations to a defense fund.

Still, C.I.A. veterans who weathered past investigations say any insurance coverage would have been welcome.

“I never knew such a thing existed,” said Duane R. Clarridge, a C.I.A. officer from 1955 to 1988 who was indicted in 1991 for perjury and false statement in the Iran-contra affair. He was pardoned the next year by the first President Bush, but not before running up a huge legal bill.

Initially, Mr. Clarridge said, he believed that his lawyer, William A. McDaniel Jr., would handle the case pro bono. That turned out to be wrong, and donations from friends and part of a publisher’s advance for his memoirs fell far short of the total bill. Mr. McDaniel sued Mr. Clarridge for $140,000 in unpaid fees, but the lawyer said he dropped the case without collecting.

Mr. Clarridge said he saw the investigation of Mr. Rodriguez, who once worked under him in the agency’s Latin America division, as a reprise of the “political theater” of his own prosecution. But he said he was glad his one-time subordinate had the insurance he lacked.

“It might not have paid the whole bill,” Mr. Clarridge said, “but it sure would have helped.”