Following is a transcript of the fourth interview in the Gladio B interview series. Listen to the audio of the interview here or watch the video in the player below:
0:00 [START] [MUSIC]
0:12 James Corbett: Welcome, friends. This is James Corbett of CorbettReport.com. It’s the 28th of February, 2013 here in Japan, and today we are talking once again to our old friend Sibel Edmonds of BoilingFrogsPost.com. And a continuation of the series that we’ve been doing on Gladio B: this is the fifth part of this series, for those of you keeping track at home. So once again, the links will be in the show notes for this interview to the previous episodes so that you can catch up on this conversation.
0:38 But that’s kind of what we’re going to do right now: we’re going to take a breather from this ongoing story and try to re-gather and regroup our thoughts, and to do that by recourse to the questions and comments that continue to flood in, that all of you guys out there have, about this conversation. So, hopefully we can answer… well, some of your questions, at any rate. We might not be able to get to all of them, as there have been dozens. But Sibel, once again, thank you so much for your time today and throughout this series. It is truly appreciated.
1:06 Sibel Edmonds: Likewise. Thank you, James.
1:09 James: Well, before we dip into the questions and the comments that are coming in from the viewers out there, are there any news stories or anything else on the horizon that you’d like to bring in before we get started on that?
1:20 Sibel: Gosh. There’s… every day, there are a bunch of news pieces that are coming out of that region. So, some of those I’ve been sharing with you: the arrest of a bunch of supposedly Islamist activist groups, either in Kyrgyzstan or in Uzbekistan. So every day we have pieces of information coming out from very local sources, meaning whether it’s Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan or, as Kerry puts is — what did he call it? — “Kyrgyzmenistan?” [laughter] So from that region of “Kyrgyzmenistan.”
2:02 So again, if people go to my Nightly News on my website Boiling Frogs Post, I usually put them together: all the news from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Russia. And they can see what I put in there, and if it’s there it means it’s important. I don’t put it… it’s not an aggregated news that’s like, “OK, eight people got killed here and two people got wounded there.” I don’t do that. I just go and extract things that are connected, and I try to group them as such in my Nightly News. So, yes: daily we have information coming out, and they are relevant if it’s there. And if people look at it, and if they have watched these series, it’s gonna ring a bell and say, “Huh, I know… I can see where this one is going.”
2:51 James: And let me just independently corroborate what you’re saying there: absolutely. For people who aren’t taking a look at that Nightly News editorial round-up, I hope that they will start doing so, because there is so much news there that’s flying completely under the radar of the mainstream media, but even a lot of the alternative media. You’ve really got an incredibly close eye on a lot of these little details that come out on a daily basis. So I will once again exhort people to do that.
3:14 So let’s start getting into these questions and comments. As I say, we’ve gotten dozens and dozens in, so we’ll try to get to as many as we can. And by all means, please keep bringing them in. If people have more questions, please keep sending them in; and we will address them, hopefully, in further conversations in the future. But let’s get to it: today we’re going to start with an email from Kurt, who has a few different questions, so let’s tackle them one at a time.
3:39 The first one I want to address: he asks, “In your opinion, is David Headley part of Gladio B?” And for people out there who don’t know, David Headley was the DEA informant who happened to be an al-Qaeda double agent and was accused of taking part in setting up the Bombay massacre, the Mumbai massacre that took place a few years ago. A very interesting story. We’ve covered him a little bit; talking with Tom Secker, I did a GRTV backgrounder on that subject. But David Headley, is he actually a part of Gladio B? If so, do we have any evidence of that?
4:17 Sibel: Well, you just summarized all the information I have on him, basically. Outside information, following news, and basically what you just summarized. I don’t know anything about him or any possible connection to Gladio B. So, that’s good: we are starting with… first question, my answer is, “I don’t know.”
4:36 James: OK. Well, it is an interesting story and certainly seems to fit in with a lot of what I’ve been talking about, especially this DEA agent who happened to be also working for the al-Qaeda and they just didn’t know it.
4:46 Sibel: Absolutely.
4:47 James: So anyway, let’s go to this second question: “What role did Sam Brownback, the former ATC member, play — if any — in facilitating Gladio Plan A or Plan B? Was he aware of Gladio Plan A or B?”
5:01 Sibel: His name was a common, regular name. I’ve never heard him speak through my work. And again, I don’t know. All I know is he’s a very active member, and his name has always been mentioned — or, it was mentioned during the period when I worked for the FBI. Is he a key character? As far as I know, no; or, I don’t know.
5:27 James: OK. Next question: “Were any US politicians present when Prince Bandar met with Zawahiri in Baku in 1997? And if so, who were they?”
5:37 Sibel: I can’t talk and name individuals, especially if their names have not been public. But, yes; and some of those people have official positions today under Obama administration. Others have advisors and consulting positions — high-level advisors and consulting positions — with the White House, with the current administration. And I can tell you, almost all of them are board members of… if you were to name the top five or ten military-industrial complex companies, they are sitting on the board of those companies as well.
6:23 James: Extremely interesting. All right; let’s move on to Katya, who writes: “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 pre-dated it. Can you ask Sibel to talk about this?”
6:54 Sibel: That’s a very good question, and I can offer a hypothesis on that. I can’t offer concrete answers, because I know up until mid- to late 2000, if you were to look at the graph — if you had access to FBI counterintelligence information — you could see that the production was going up, and up, and up, and up. And we also talked about the shares at this point, because the Russians had a very big chunk of it; it was under their operations. And then the other actors were Turks, and the Albanians, and NATO: but that was a much, much smaller chunk.
7:35 And then something happened during mid- to end of 2000. And that production didn’t stop completely, but it was reduced by — if I were to throw a number — more than 80 percent. And, what happened? Because again, we talked about these Taliban officials coming to the United States, meeting with some of the groups including Cheney in Texas. This is before the Bush administration; this is during the Clinton administration. We also know that there was supposedly — again, this is public information — this conflict, this disagreement between the administration then — Clinton administration — and people involved, active in “Pipelineistan” — meaning the oil companies, mostly.
8:26 Because the oil companies, they were saying, “Well, who gives a…” whatever. And, “We need to go recognize Taliban because we need to get this done. We need to build the pipes. We need this region. This is part of our New Silk Road. This is extremely important to our projects.” And there were some of these publicities associated from the other side with the Clinton administration during that same period, talking about how the Taliban was abusing women and they were oppressing them, they were stoning them. And as you know, this was also during the time when we had that very mysterious… dropping bombs in the Sudan, that pharmaceutical company. Even though our government knew exactly where Bin Laden, Zawahiris were — we were working with them.
9:17 So, all these strange things were happening: so I think they had this conflict, they had this challenge — the administration at the time, this is the Clinton administration — of biting the bullet and recognizing Taliban as the official authority, government in Afghanistan. Whatever happened, the production stopped. Something happened; something very important happened. Again, we are looking at tens of billions of dollars’ worth of street value of opium, heroin production. And that’s a very important question: I don’t know. It stopped and then, bam! Within a year, or less than a year — you’re looking at within nine, ten months’ period — we had the terror attacks in 9/11.
10:05 And again, the same timeframe, time period, also corresponds to this supposed intensive intelligence activities on Bin Laden. This was when, supposedly, various countries were warning the United States that some terror attack is going to take place. It was from the FBi, but also from outside countries: France, Germany, even Cayman Islands. If you look at those… the peak period for that supposed intelligence that was pouring in, into US intelligence, you’re looking at the same period, same timeframe.
10:46 I don’t believe in coincidences: the longer I’m in this area, the less I become a believer of coincidences. So again, you have that — the opium production almost stops — and then you have 9/11; and then, bam! From that point on it starts picking up and up, up, and exploding currently.
11:08 James: Absolutely. And if I could just add to that, Katya posits that that would tend to go against the idea that 9/11 was directly related to the opium production, because it had only been about a year of opium prohibition, whereas 9/11 would have had to have been planned — if it was planned by elements within the US government — it would have had to have been planned much, much in advance of that. I would say to that, that perhaps 9/11 was the type of plan that would have been operational or could have been on the table: that they could have gone to if they so desired, or they could not have. And that might have been related to that carpet of gold or carpet of bombs that was offered to the Taliban when they were brought to the United States back in the late 1990s as part of their negotiations with Halliburton and others — and Cheney, and the very people who ended up being in the White House. So that’s, at least, one possible explanation for that.
12:03 But on the note of pipelines, we have another question in that brings that into the picture. We have a question from Alan, who writes, “How does China and Russia play into all of this? Many leading companies and even 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 building 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?” Well, a lot of questions in there…
12:35 Sibel: [laughs] Umm, yes.
12:35 James: Make of that what you will, but…
12:36 Sibel: And I understand…
12:37 James: But perhaps we should talk about the…
12:39 Sibel: Sure. Some of them, of course, should be directed to people who have much better, deeper expertise in the topic. I say that on one hand. On the other hand, those who are always… show up as guests on NPR and various mainstream media experts: they are spinning things and they are putting out so much misinformation. So not those mainstream experts, but people… there are people who have been researching experts in various areas related to all these questions.
13:11 For example, we have Rick Rozoff, who has been focusing on NATO aspects and the military bases, et cetera, in Central Asian countries; and he’s been reporting consistently. So, that’s his expertise. I know Nafeez Ahmed wrote a very good book, and that dealt a lot with the various factions within Central Asia/Caucasus and how they were playing — if any — roles in some of these developments.
13:40 But if I were to talk about China in relation to this particular question, it’s a totally… you’re looking at a totally different paradigm than Russia, what we had during the Cold War. It was mainly… it was, of course all of those empires. Both sides, they have economic bases; but the majority of it was focused on the military might and militaristic competition between the two sides. With China, you are looking at a totally different picture. You’re looking at someone who is our economic competitor, and not so much militarily — at least up to this point. And… well, I would say at least one-sided as far as China is concerned.
14:38 And as far as the pipelines are concerned, every single day there are tons of news that are never covered in the United States about various pipeline projects between China and various “‘stans,” whether it’s Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan. And these are for gas, and there is some pipeline work for oil. And again, if you start looking at the region, how these pipelines are going to travel from this region into China, this is when you start seeing the extreme importance of Xinjiang area. It’s very, very, very important.
15:17 And also, you’re looking at two different modus operandis between the two powers, the United States and China. I mean, with China, if you look at China’s relationship with these countries, China hasn’t built a single military base anywhere, in any of these countries. They haven’t erected these mighty bases in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan — actually, anywhere. They put their business hat on, and they go and say, “We offer you this deal,” OK? Whether it’s $25 billion dollars or $50 billion dollars to build this pipeline, to get this. Yeah, maybe they would ask for some exclusivity, which you would consider the normal business deal; but that has been China’s modus operandi, MO.
16:07 Now, look at the United States’ modus operandi: it’s never been that. With the US, it’s always been, “Yee-haw!” It’s been, “We’re gonna put our bases, and we’re gonna put our guns, and we’re gonna put our airplanes; and we want the base; and we want the President there as our puppet: we want to install their Presidents.” It’s never been, “Let’s go make a business deal. If China’s offering a better deal to Turkmenistan, be it. But if we go and beat that bid, then we get it.” Well, US never plays that way; it has never played that way.
16:41 I mean, if you were to just look at how we are there trying to really provoke China, it’s amazing. Look at China’s neighbors. There it is, South Korea: Oh! There it is, our base! What we have been trying to do with places like Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan; what we did with Taiwan; and what we have been doing internally within Xinjiang: we are not… we are saying, we can’t separate the two. That’s us, the United States, OK? Military, militaristic competition versus the economic competition: we can’t separate it. We want to go, grab, and say, “Here. We have put our flag here — which is our base — and this is ours.” OK? That is empire-building. That is different than business network.
17:35 And the same thing if you look at Africa and the importance of Africa today, and then look at the region and see what China has been doing in this region. China has been sending their representatives to go and make deals. Say, “OK, we get these minerals or these resources from you.” We… the West doesn’t play that way. We say, “Yee-haw! Here we come, Mali!” — through France — and “Here we come, Somalia!” — with them, through our drones. So we always go and we say, “We are coming in. We want your oil; we want your minerals — but not via business: we want to take over you.” OK? [laughs] I mean, take you over completely. And this is our modus operandi. This is why we are the hub; this is why we always have been the provocateurs. That’s why I don’t call it the Department of Defense, I’m calling it the Department of Offense. When have we been in this position?
18:29 Now, can you imagine if Mexico had, like, lots of oil? And China would come over here to Mexico and put this big-time airbase there — like the base we had in Kyrgyzstan, Manas Airbase — bring their submarines there, and say, “All right, we are gonna get your oil. We’ll pay you money, but we want you…” Imagine what we would do, even as people here? It would be all over the news, and we would be at war in less than a few minutes after that construction of that base starts taking place.
19:04 Chinese response, similarly, is very different than ours. And that is… I mean, to me that’s really puzzling: they have been very patient, OK? We are seeing a little bit of steam here on the Pacific side. They have been patient; and interestingly, in the long run, they have been more successful. I mean, even with some of those Central Asian and Caucasus nations that we went and we grabbed and we put our 1500 soldiers there, et cetera: some of these people are now stopping and saying, “Get out. You know what? We are sick and tired of it. We are so sickened and tired of being stomped upon and being ruled. We’re gonna go and make a deal with China.”
19:50 So China, Russia: we are looking at totally different stories. With Russia, even though it was decreased tremendously since the end of Cold War, you still see some elements there… they do get nervous and upset. I mean, rightfully: here it is, within their borders, these countries. So it’s not only business; it’s both sides: it’s military and business, with their relationship within these Central Asian, Caucasus… states within this region. But with the United States, you only see one line, and that is, “We want to take over.” I mean, “We want you, and if you don’t bow — I mean, if you go and make a business deal, a simple business deal with China — we’ll get some of our Islamic friends there that we are operating to blow up those pipelines.”
20:39 And that’s another important thing: importance of having these operatives on the ground in that region for the United States. Because imagine: you have these pipelines going to China, to Russia, taking gas; and you have the Islamist terrorists blowing up the pipelines. And you usually don’t see those happening to the other side, meaning the pipeline going through Europe. You don’t see it, but you hear — they downplay it — of all these pipelines blowing up; and it’s usually… they are not our pipelines. [laughs] So that’s when you ask the question. The Islamists, they don’t like to damage our pipelines; they go for the other side’s pipelines. And who benefits from that?
21:23 James: And exactly on that note, you talk about this coming out every day: and exactly on that note, from Rferl.org today we have a story — “Gwadar: A Port For China, A Tinderbox For Balochistan?” — talking about the port in the Arabian Sea that China and Pakistan are jointly developing in the southwest portion of Pakistan, there in the Baluchistan area — where, of course, the Baluchi nationals are now getting stirred up and are threatening violence because of this deal that Pakistan is doing with China. So, once again…
21:52 Sibel: Absolutely… and if you…
21:53 James: We have done a…
21:54 Sibel: And if you look at the parallels just in the last one year: how much our NGOs plus our politicans have been suddenly so concerned about human rights in Baluchistan, how they are feeling the pain of these poor Baluchis. I mean, they are poor Baluchis. Don’t take me wrong: I am not underestimating or insulting the people in Baluchistan who have nothing to do with any of these things. However, if you — again, this is why you have to… when you look at the picture, you have to look at if from several angles. You can’t just say, “OK, this is what China’s doing. All right.” But you’ve got to look and see what else has been happening in the region, and then turn around and look at how we have been covering it within the mainstream media, and whether those NGOs have been saying…
22:43 Because, as I said, it doesn’t matter if some Bradley Manning person out there is being tortured in isolation, or the Guantánamo prison out there, what we have been doing there: suddenly we are extremely concerned about the rights of the Baluchi people. And we have been setting up this; we have been setting it up. And again, based on that, you also look at Pakistan and how Pakistan is playing. On the one hand, they just met with the Iranian government for a $4.5 billion dollar deal for Iran to go and build a refinery there. They have this deal with China. So they… in a way, they feel empowered too. They say, “Well, you don’t do this, then we’re gonna go out and make a deal with the next guy.” But they also understand the situation they are in. They know what’s going on in Baluchistan, and they know that it’s gonna be [claps] just like this: whether it’s 9/11 here or some little incident in there, it can turn; and they can be next Assad.
23:46 James: Well, you’re exactly right to point out that of course it’s not the majority of the Baluchi people, who really do have their grievances. It’s… they’re being used as political pawns; and I think we see that time and again. For people who are interested in that story, we did do an EyeOpener specifically on Baluchistan and what’s going on there several months ago now, so people can… I’ll put that in the show notes so people can go back and familiarize themselves with that. Also, in your response you noted analysts like Rick Rozoff, who’s a frequent guest on this program and who does excellent work talking about the NATO-ization of the planet. And interestingly enough, he just came out with an article earlier today talking about NATO targeting the only remaining European state not already a member or partner. And any guesses on what state that might be?
24:29 Sibel: Uh, the only state where? In Europe, are we talking about?
24:34 James: In Europe, yes.
24:36 Sibel: In Europe… well… that is…
24:39 James: Related directly to our conversation last time about an island that is split between two powers.
24:45 Sibel: Oh, Cyprus! [laughs]
24:47 James: Cyprus, yes. So yes, even Cyprus is being NATO-ized, or courted, or wooed by NATO, at this point. So…
24:54 Sibel: And with NATO… and this is extremely important for people who really want to understand this — and again we are looking at a small percentage of people who see the extreme importance of these points we’ve been discussing — is the correlation when you talk about taking these nations and make them official NATO members. Azerbaijan, OK? — and you and I have discussed this — and they went from spending something like $30, $40 million dollars on their defense, to today $4, $5 billion dollars that they have to give the United States. Which is actually… a lot of it is our money given to them as aid, and then it comes back here — the same, our money — and then buys this from Northrop Grumman, or General Dynamics, or whatever. But then you’re looking at, not official members, but partner members and all the offices that NATO has been opening — where? — United [Arab] Emirates.
25:53 I mean, “North Atlantic,” OK? “NATO.” What was the purpose of NATO when it was established after World War II? What was the region… there were some specifics. All those today are irrelevant. It’s moot. NATO should have been dissolved, if that was what their mission — I mean, that was what the [unintelligible 26:15] for NATO — in 1989, 1990, after the Berlin Wall, after the Soviet Union’s collapse. And as neocons and even neoliberals’ hero Francis Fukuyama said, “The End is in. It is it, finished. Now we’re gonna be one global, one happy world; everybody loves everybody, and the end of all wars.” And NATO should have been dissolved; NATO has been expanding, OK?
26:40 So you have all these countries such as Azerbaijan: they are looking at Kazakhstan. They conceive Kazakhstan to be… become a very, very important, a strategic member of NATO. Again, look at the location: Kazakhstan. Then turn around: look at China. So, it’s those; but then: all these offices we have been putting in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and all these different countries, the little nations within the United [Arab] Emirates, and say… I mean, “What is going on here?”
27:14 And that goes back to what we have been talking about since the beginning, the Plan B. And then you’re looking at the Islamization of Central Asia/Caucasus and using Islam by NATO for carrying some of these operations and bringing these states within their sphere of influence; while you are looking at some of the helpers, partners they have had, which has come from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United [Arab] Emirates…
27:45 And then again, you look at some of the partnership that’s being established between those nations and some of the Central Asian and Caucasus. And I have, again, been covering those within my nightly news episodes: and that is, OK, here is Saudi Arabia, $200 — whatever — million dollar agreement with Azerbaijan on this project. And you’ve got to really keep a close eye on it. I mean, really: look at it and analyze it. You don’t have to even spend hours: once you do it for a while, then all you have to do is see the headlines, read the first paragraph, and you know how this links to everything else we have been talking about.
28:25 James: And on that note, there is some confusion out there. For example, I note an email that we got in from John who said that, “In part one, I am a bit confused when Sibel says, “As long as they — i.e. Central Asia, Caucasus region — are attached to Islam, they are going to pooh-pooh China and Russia. They are going to side with us.'” And he says, “My understanding of Islam is always qualitative of anti-American sentiment. Maybe it is with China and Russia as well, but why would this be a factor for them to side with NATO and the US?” And I think we’ve talked a little bit about how that works…
28:57 Sibel: Yes, we have.
28:58 James: And how they’re being puppetteered. But perhaps we can just explicitly state that.
29:01 Sibel: And also it goes back to the whole history, if you look at the history for the last 100 years. And then if you want to shorten that period and start since the Cold War, and see… you have to choose and say, “Well, which one is it to my benefit to side with?” And that is the Communists, which is China — and today, they’re not Communist — and then — back then, during the Cold War — was the Soviet Union.
29:30 And religion always has been our weapon of choice to prevent these nations from falling into Soviets’ lap. It wasn’t the case, let’s say, with the Eastern Bloc, with Eastern Europe. But if you look at some of those countries, if you look at Iran, if you at Turkey, you look at that region: the number one preventive factor on the ground for these nations from not siding with the Soviet Union was Islam. And so that’s number one.
30:11 And even before the Cold War, even before the United States, that always has been the modus operandi for the British Empire and for the later… for what we know as Britain today. In Iran — and this is a joke that everybody in Iran uses — and people would say, “You know, those mullahs, Rafsanjani and all those guys? What would happen if you were to shave their long beard?” You know, that’s one of the things, people, they talk about. And it’s not so much of a joke, because it’s true: if you were to shave that,. you would see that it’s written, “Made in UK.” And that was a common understanding.
30:52 And if you look at some of those guys who were the most influential among the mullahs — because the mullahs in Iran, again, can be divided into two. You have those little mufti mullahs who are more regional; they have usually less than high school education; they read the Qu’ran and they rock back and forth, et cetera. But then you have the savvy mullahs. Now, you look at some character like Ayatollah Rafsanjani in Iran, and then you look at his education: you’re looking at Cambridge or Oxford, and you’re looking at someone who spent most of his life in the UK. In fact his kids — after the Islamic Revolution — were sent to UK for their education.
31:34 And that’s where he came from, into Iran. Because these were — some of them by their own decisions, some of them during Shah regime — they were either exiled, in exile by their own decisions, or by the government in Iran: Shah’s regime. But they were in France; and they were — most of them — they were in the United Kingdom. And they were in England, and they were educated there. So religion has always been one of the tools that Brits have used very savvily. They know… they are much better and savvier than the US. Again, our operatives: they’re not as savvy. And as far as the strategic planners goes, the real sneaky, shrewd ones are out there in Britain. They know how to play this like [unintelligible 32:20].
32:21 James: It’s interesting that most of the really sneaky strategists in the American political context tend to be foreigners. They don’t tend to be Americans.
32:28 Sibel: [laughs] Right! Israel…
32:29 James: So, Kissinger and Brzezinski…
32:30 Sibel: You’re looking at the United Kingdom and Israel, really. The two most important, influential people in terms of guiding. And if you were to say, “Yeah, US is the big brother and Britain is the little brother,” I would say, “Well, if you think — only if the size matters.” But if you look at the knowledge and the specialty with political science and political strategy, and really sneaky, shrewd — awfully shrewd, backstabbing shrewd, not straightforward politics — which… it’s kind of an oxymoron, politics and being straightforward. But you’re looking at Brits: they are very savvy. They know how to plan things. They know how to actually engage in long-term planning. To say, “This is what we are planting today; here are the seeds; and we are happy if within 20 years from here we get to here.”
33:20 Americans within the political sphere, whether they are the so-called Ph.D analysts there in the Pentagon, they… for some reason, that is not the state of mind. They are more short-term, go there. And Bush, in a way, represented that: that, like, “Yee-haw! We gonna go, we gonna show them!” and that mentality, for most Americans. But you’re looking at Henry Kissinger, and then you start looking at some of the organizations that — they are not so secret — that you’ve been covering. You will see Britain all over it.
33:58 James: Well, they invented the Great Game as it’s played today, so I suppose they know what they’re talking about. Well, on this note, the idea of blowback is something that’s really been hammered home to the left side of the left-right political spectrum for the last several years to try to explain Islamic terrorism. So we have an email in from Bill, who writes, “There is a tremendous amount of great information in the most recent Gladio video. With regards to the Islamization of Eurasia, is it Ms. Edmonds’ opinion that we, the West, are being double-crossed by the Islamic organizations that the US and NATO have partnered with?
34:35 Sibel: Umm, OK; well… I don’t know: maybe we have to start the series all over again. Because this is almost like a state of mind that compares… it’s one thing to talk about some blowback with China or with Russia in our competition, and with all the stuff that they are pursuing. It’s another thing — and you are absolutely right, this has been really pounded over and over again, especially by the left — “This was a blowback.” Even people like Seymour Hersh: they subscribe to this notion that we go for a while, we say, “OK, our enemies’ enemies is our friend,” we do that; but later it comes back and haunts us because [claps] they double-cross us.
35:18 I mean, it’s like apples and oranges: I don’t even know where to begin with this. OK, another parallel thing and relevant state of mind on this would be Saudis. All this thing, that “Saudis did 9/11, why aren’t we going after the Saudis?” Well, all right: in Saudi Arabia you have — let’s say if you have 50 million people or 20 million people. You have about, let’s say, 50 million. You have 49 million and 900 thousand regular people. [laughs] OK? And there is the monarch — kings — and the prince[s]. And there are about… thousands of them, OK?
35:58 I used to have friends in Georgetown when I was at George Washington University — Georgetown University. I hung out with some of these princes, because there are so many of them at Georgetown University. They’re all “Prince,” they all carry the title “Prince.” And their mamas and dadas come here every year while they are in school and they donate to Georgetown University something like $2 million dollars. And these guys: they never showed up in classes — in my classes, as well, at George Washington. They would go to Bahamas, and they would have parties and bring in all these models from New York City. And, lo and behold, they would all graduate with master’s degrees from Georgetown University. But every year… I mean, and their parents always stayed at this Four Seasons Hotel next to Georgetown University.
36:41 Anyhow, there are thousands of them. And these guys? They have nothing to do with politics. They don’t sit down and think about, “We’re gonna blow up buildings,” or “What we gonna…” They are our puppets there, OK? They know — these are all these princes and princesses and the kings there — that as long as they serve US and sit there as symbols… you know, this is no different than the Queen in England. In fact it’s even lesser-degree importance.
37:10 They’re symbolic figures, OK? And they know that the police — their police, and their military — responds to the United States. Look at… the whole country is managed by the United States, OK? All those oil refineries: if you go in there, you won’t see a single Saudi engineer or manager or anybody in there. They are all ran by the United States and some European people. Both the oil companies that are managing those, the military base, their generals’ bosses there on the ground is… they’re the Americans, OK?
37:44 There are no Saudis running Saudi Arabia — and these little funny, comical characters have nothing to do with Islam, by the way; and they serve Israel’s interests all the time. So, again, a lot of leftists are gonna say, “What? Saudis are all Wahhabis and they hate Israel!” I say, “Not the kings and the princes!” Actually, Israelis are fine: they love them because they know how these guys up there symbolically can pacify and oppress the public.
38:12 But these people don’t have any powers. I don’t want to insult them too much and say they don’t even have brain, or they have been mutated genetically, or anything — I don’t want to get into that — but to take these comical characters and say, “Saudis? Who are the Saudis who would do that?” It’s not the Saudi kings and the princes. They are so busy having fun, having yachts, having gold and diamond bathrooms and have sex all around the world and drink: nobody is into the world politics within Saudi Arabia regime. And the people? What kind of power do the people have? They don’t have parliaments. They don’t have any of their own military, defense department: none of this stuff. So that is in line with that, to… if you say, “Well, Saudis did it,” then those people are automatically saying that the United States did it. OK?
39:05 James: Right, right. But of course the Saudi royalty itself was an invention of the British that was used to…
39:10 Sibel: Exactly! And they…
39:12 James: …specifically in order to bribe certain people, in order to take over the country.
39:14 Sibel: Absolutely, absolutely. So to say “blowback,” it’s like, no. This is what, actually, the powers want you to think. They are very comfortable, the powers — I’m talking about the real powers — they’re very comfortable when people, they start thinking within these lines. This is why they put that guy, that CIA guy — and he’s publishing on anti-war, and he calls himself a whistleblower; what’s his name? Scheuer; Mike Scheuer — I mean, that’s what these guys have been doing. He was supposedly the head of the Bin Laden unit, and he wrote the book under Anonymous, the Imperial Hubris. “This is what we did and this is — guess what? — it blew back!” [laughs] You know, “We have this, and we have it blow back in our hands.” This is absolute misinformation. This is exactly what they want you to think, and it can’t be further from the truth.
40:16 James: Right.
40:17 Sibel: Because if you go along the hierarchy of these operatives and you keep climbing up and up and up: well, really what you get is you get is you get to the West; you get to NATO; you get to the United States. You know, “All roads,” they say, “lead to Rome.” Well, all of these Islamic factions: you go up the chain, you go up the hierarchy, and you end up here. You are not even there.
40:37 James: Right. And for those who don’t know about Michael Scheuer, I did do an article a few years ago when he was calling for more terror attacks so that people understand just how big a threat al-Qaeda really is and can do something about it. So yes: quite a CIA “whistleblower,” right?
40:50 Sibel: [laughs] [sarcastically:] Yes, he is.
40:51 James: Yeah. Well, let’s move on to a related question. We have one from Jay who writes, “If Zawahiri — Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda number one — 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?
41:09 Sibel: Nobody can go and do a backstory on him. Because, as we said, you go to Wikipedia: some of the numbers don’t add up. Even the chronology of where he’s been. Even his release from the jail. Even… there’s not even anything to back up his supposed connection, or what that connection was, to Anwar Sadat’s assassination. So as far as his background, we don’t know, OK? We don’t know. It is a scripted… it is a…
41:40 But then, I would be really careful to use words such as, titles like, “assets.” Because within the intelligence community, when someone says “asset” to me, I’m thinking well, assets: you know, informants. You have assets. It is actually more than that: it is more like… I would liken it more to military hierarchy than to intelligence assets. Because there you’re looking at totally a different thing; so that itself would take us into a wrong path. I would say, you know, there would be generals, and colonels, and lieutenant colonels: let’s say, he would be in that lieutenant colonel position within the operations — US intelligence and US NATO intelligence, military operations. He’s one of the lieutenant colonels — majors or lieutenant colonels. I wouldn’t call him an “asset.”
42:30 James: That is a fascinating distinction, and I would like to get more into that.
42:33 Sibel: Sure.
42:34 James: So perhaps we can talk about that later; but let’s see if we can get to at least the rest of these questions before we run out of time here. We have Rowan asking, “How much did A. Gaddafi and B. Assad know about all this, and were the renditions to them that the CIA was doing in years past just patsies, or were they wise guys?
42:55 Sibel: Pat–… OK, I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on this topic, or having any extra information that nobody has and I got from the FBI. With Assad, it’s really important: because you’re looking at — and that I can answer with confidence from my FBI days — and that is, at least during the first seven, eight months after 9/11, we were working very closely with Assad. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, the guy that we sent to be tortured, Maher Arrar — the guy, the Canadian guy — we detained him and then we sent him to Syria to be tortured because we couldn’t do it here. You would think, if you’re gonna send someone to be tortured somewhere and have that arrangement, that country and those torturers and those dictator regimes happen to be your friends. You don’t sent them to… nobody sends anybody to, let’s say, Fidel Castro in Cuba. [laughs] They sent him to Assad, and Assad happily accepted the role.
43:53 That’s number one. Number two: and this is from, again, my political background and being associated a lot with Middle East, with the Middle East and with the people that I’m in touch with — and even this before, long before, 9/11. With Assad — and this is, again, very similar to most of the regimes in Turkey; same thing with Saudi Arabia — it’s a mutual understanding. Everybody is comfortable with it: Israel is comfortable, the US is comfortable — that, in order to remain in power, you have to tell your public how much you hate Israel. You have to look tough when it comes to Israel and the US. Behind the scenes, you can serve completely US’s interests, Israel’s interests. And at least until 2002, the Assad that we worked with behind the scenes — I know Bush was jumbling it with an axis of evil and sometimes theater — but again, it was Bush administration that sent some of these people we detained to Assad saying, “Assad, boy: you torture them.” [laughs] I mean, “Keep them in your dungeon.” OK? You don’t do that with your enemies. You just simply don’t do that.
45:07 And again, there was intelligence sharing, mutual intelligence sharing — more one-sided — between Syria and the United States, as far as the intelligence agencies are concerned — whether it was the CIA or even, to a certain degree, with the FBI. So again, Assad was cooperating with the United States: his intelligence people, his military. They were not our enemies. Now, in front of his public, Assad always has to show — or had to show — himself as tough. Tough on Israel. Same thing with Israel: Israel and Assad behind the scenes, they had an OK relationship. So I would… my guess would be patsies.
45:46 My guess would be the strategic planning for the region… and that’s another important point. And you would see that, again, Middle Easterners and even, to a certain degree, Europeans are more familiar with this than the Americans, so it’s gonna sound really foreign to our American audience. And that is — and this is my hypothesis for this — one of the things that we have done as an empire — and the Brits were very good in doing that — is taking a little marker, let’s call it the magic marker, and make up countries; and draw borders, OK? Even with Iraq: I mean, you look at the history of Iraq. How was Iraq created? How was it established, the current border lines, OK? The borders. Certainly, the same thing is true with Africa.
46:40 And in some of these redrawings of the map — we like to do that, and we usually do that — if there was some kind of a graph showing statistically — I don’t know: every 80 years, or 70 years, or 50 years. We have to take our marker and — very, very arrogantly — to go and divide countries, or unite countries, and re-draw the map. And how do we re-draw the maps? It’s usually based on the notion to keep the countries at each other’s throat. That’s very important.
47:14 And again, it goes back to this long-time saying of the British motto. It’s like, “We divide and conquer,” right? And that is, as long as you draw it in such a way that the country is constantly bogged down, both with its neighbors, but also internally with various sects within its borders or outside its borders — it can be along religious lines, Shias and Sunnis and Alawites, Kurds; if you are looking at Africa, you are looking at various tribes — that is one of the best methods to keep these countries under control, to keep these countries weak, and to keep these countries from even ever getting united or getting to a strength position. This has been the modus operandi.
48:04 And my guess is — if I were to throw in a hypothesis here — is that that’s one of the next things we’re gonna be seeing. And it was time, and it was decided, that we have to re-draw the maps. I believe Iraq is going to be divided into two or three nations, OK? Because we are done with doing this in the Balkan region. Bye, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia — gone are all those days. Look at all those things we have [laughs] that we didn’t have before. That is now… it’s going to be implemented in this region. It’s gonna happen with Pakistan and Baluchistan: Baluchistan is gonna be a separate country. It’s gonna happen to a certain degree in Afghanistan. But it’s going to happen in Syria, and it’s going to happen in Iraq. It’s about to take place: Iraq is going to be divided into three. You’re gonna have a Sunni country, you’re gonna have a Shia country, and you’re going to have the northern portion Kurdish country.
48:59 And this is why every time I’m giving an interview, I tell people — and one of the people who understands me is Pepe Escobar — it’s like, nobody’s really paying attention to all these tensions and everything that is happening with the Kurdistan region of Iraq. You have to pay attention, because that is one area that is gonna be really, really sticky for the big powers — Britons and the US. Because Turkey said, “Over my dead body: you’re not gonna make a Kurdistan out there and put some Kurds in charge of Kirkuk and the oil well. And they are Kurds, and a region? Next we’re gonna have independence!” Well, that’s exactly what they want.
49:36 Another quick example I want to give people who don’t understand — and this is going to be because of the education in the United States: you don’t cover this stuff, we don’t cover this stuff in our schools — is what happened with OPEC crisis in 1970s: ’77, ’78. The lesson learned is you have be, again, very careful: you have to keep these nations on each other’s throats. If you see the amount of power, even, that they can exert: they have the power, these nations — the Arab nations, the oil nations in the Gulf. If they were to get together — think about it: Iran, Iraq, Libya — and then say, “You do this to Afghanistan, or you continue this, here it is: we’re not gonna… we’re gonna put sanction on you!” What would happen here in the United States? We got a tiny bit of taste of that during the OPEC crisis in 1970s.
50:26 How do you want to prevent this from ever occurring, is: Saudi Arabia hates Iran, OK? Iran and Turkey, Shia and Sunni, they hate each other. You have to have those divisions along the religious lines, along the ethnicity lines; if it’s in Africa, along the tribal lines. Because if you have that, [unintelligible 50:51] they hate each other’s guts. They are so busy hitting each other, and spitting and kicking and hissing at each other; they will never be able to unite and say, “You know what? We have some power too. We have the power of energy, we have the power of oil. And together, if we put a united front, we can have you not do this, or stop doing this.” Well, look: they have never done that. And how did we manage putting them in these postions? And… OK, I’ll let you ask me another question before I keep getting deeper and deeper.
51:25 James: Again, this is fascinating stuff and we could go on for hours, I’m sure. Just on the note of drawing and re-drawing the maps of the world to suit the imperial powers’ fancies, I would direct people to Episode #234 of my podcast, “How to Carve Up the World,” where we explored how the Paris 1919 Conference shaped the map of the Middle East as we know it today. And we can’t understand what’s happening there today without an understanding of that history. But we have several more questions to go. We’re almost brushing up on one hour, so perhaps we can save some questions for next time as well.
51:57 Sibel: Sure.
51:58 James: But there’s a couple I wanted to hit up before we move on. There’s a good question in from Rob, who asks: “I do have a question for you or Sibel: in an Infowars interview with Richard Cottrell, he states it was Lyman Lemnitzer who was responsible for adopting the Northwoods strategy ideas into NATO Gladio. What is your or Sibel’s idea on this, and what evidence exists to support this claim?” And just on that note, I am planning to have Richard on the program at some point in the near future to talk about Gladio in some more depth, so we can get him to talk about that as well.
52:27 Sibel: Fantastic.
52:28 James: But any thoughts on that yourself, Sibel?
52:30 Sibel: Then… that’s good, because I think you are in a much better position to answer this question than me. Because I am not familiar with… I’m familiar with the Operation Northwoods, but other than that, I am not familiar with the particular specific actors this gentleman is referring to. I have no idea. So you…
52:50 James: All right. Well, this…
52:50 Sibel: If you want to take the question, [unintelligible 52:51]
52:51 James: This goes back to the very founding of the whole NATO program…
52:55 Sibel: Right.
52:56 James: So we will talk with Richard Cottrell about that in greater detail. But on that note of what it is you know and how you know it, there were questions in from people who — I think quite rightly — want to know about the information that you have and how you came across it — and what you know, and what you don’t know. So, for example, we had an email in from Bradley who said, “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 were related to her assigned tasks? Maybe she documents a lot of stuff in other venues and 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?” Well, it’s a valid question. People want to know why they should listen to you.
53:39 Sibel: Yeah.
53:40 James: So, what’s your take on that?
53:41 Sibel: I could easily spend 20 minutes talking about this, because you and I discussed once — I don’t know if we discussed it on camera during the recording or not — about… talking about various methods of intelligence gathering and targets. We just briefly mentioned that everybody knows embassies are always being monitored by the host countries; there are different ways. So that’s one thing that it would be good to cover one day, hopefully, so people can understand: saying “Well, where are these…?”
54:10 In general… I can’t talk about the specifics, and it’s nobody’s business. Because it’s not going to make anybody any wiser or more informed if they know that the name of a particular foreign target was X-Y-Z, or that the method of intelligence gathering involved either phone or… et cetera. So, those are really irrelevant. The information, the main macro picture, is the important point.
54:33 But there are several elements into this, OK? One, it starts with my own background And that is, I spent basically my entire life in — before I joined the FBI — one way or another with the world politics specific to that region: and that is Central Asia, Caucasus, and the Middle East, OK? I have lived in Azerbaijan; I have lived in Iran; I have lived in Turkey. And I come from a very politically active background in terms of family as well — and that’s my father. And even while I was growing up, I grew up being surrounded by people who were either high-level activists — and these were organizers — or they were historians, they were analysts, these were… in those nations, in those countries.
55:23 So, that’s my background from that side of it. Now, when I came to the FBI — and this was, they called me. They said they needed… because they didn’t have anyone who brought all these elements together, all these different languages. You know, you have someone who speaks Farsi: well, if you speak Farsi and if you happen to come across Dari — the Afghan language spoken in Afghanistan, Dari — well, Dari is 90 percent Farsi. For example, one of my neighbors before I moved here, in Alexandria, was this lady who was from Afghanistan; and she and I could carry a conversation and talk as if we were both from Iran, but she was from Afghanistan; and Dari is a very slight variation, differentiation, between… the differences between the two languages.
56:10 So, you can cover Dari and Farsi and Turkish; and because you speak Turkish, you also can cover basically all the Turkic-speaking nations in this region, which is 90 percent of them. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, et cetera: again, various dialects. So you may not be able to translate verbatim, everything word-by-word; but you can say, “You know what? They are discussing this, and this is going to happen. Why? Because…” You know, the general overall thing.
56:37 So when I started working for the FBI right after 9/11, first they put me in the Iranian division; and that was for Farsi. Well, [laughs] they already had a pretty big team for Iran, OK? And these guys had, really, nothing to do. They were like… they were not busy. And the only cases they could get were cases in the United States that had nothing to do with the Iranian government. These are the immigrant, first-generation Iranians who are engaged in some petty crime in Los Angeles area or in Las Vegas. Small crime, money laundering: has nothing to do with Iran. They are already Green Cards, they have Green Cards or citizenship here. So, basically: go to court and get the documents from eavesdropping; translate. But there… we didn’t get anything that implicated Iran to anything: either espionage, or… anything. It’s like, they are hands-off. So, they were bored.
57:34 And yet, the Turkish department, which… they didn’t have an official Turkish department in the FBI there. They didn’t have a single Turkish language specialist. And for years they had the head agents for the division, knowing all the stuff that we talked about, begging for FBI to establish a formal Turkish division for all these countries and Turkey. But as I said, because of that unwritten agreement, you can’t do it — because of all these operations. Well, 9/11 changed a little bit, initially: because there was this chaos. [laughs] Within the FBI and all the other agencies, you know? With all the new Department of Homeland Security, I mean, you know how everything was chaotic.
58:18 So the agents said — the agents on top of these… counterintelligence and espionage, Turkish espionage division — they said, “Let’s take advantage of this and push our case and have an official Turkish division. And we have, already, so much evidence showing that they are involved in a lot of terrorist activities, and some of them related to 9/11.” During this time, DOJ couldn’t refuse it. So they said, “Fine, fine. Go ahead and establish a counterterrorism, counterintelligence, officially. Turkish.” And there I was. And this was after the fourth day within the FBI.
58:56 And one of the things that takes place for training… and I’m not going to get into specifics. First, it doesn’t matter; and second, I don’t think it’s anybody’s business: like, some details that may be justifiably classified, in terms of training. But as I joined the session, the semi-training session with these agents who have been doing this for years, they were hungry for information. Because they couldn’t have an official Turkish division, they didn’t have access to any analysts. Since there was no official division, they had to analyze the stuff themselves.
59:33 Well, these were really nice guys, OK? One of them, Dennis Saccher: if you read the book, he used to work the White-Collar Crime Division in Los Angeles before, in 1994, he was — ’95 — transferred to Washington, DC. He was thrown in counterintelligence for Turkey — but unofficial. He really had to go educate himself. There was nothing! Because his background… he didn’t even know where Turkey was, OK? He… [laughs] I mean, these are… when he started, he’s like, “Well, I know the capital city of Turkey was Constantinople…” I said, “It was not called that for, like, 500 years.” [laughs] “Second of all, it’s Ankara; it’s not Istanbul.”
60:12 Anyhow: after these sessions, it turned around. And as they brought me up to date with the general picture of what the operations involved, who were the primary targets, who were the secondary targets, and how it related to high-level US officials — also, a lot of stuff about their frustration of how some investigations were shut down, the ones that really touched some big US officials; and how, in some cases, their hands were tied because of NATO operations with the CIA. So, all this stuff I learned within the first two weeks, because I had to know that in order to be able to listen or look and find what was pertinent — significant — and what was not. So that was part of the training.
61:03 But then, after a few training sessions, it turned around; and they said… they looked at my background, both education but also my family, my political activism, and they said, “Well, now we need you to train us. Because you can read Turkish newspapers; you have Turkish sources; a lot of things that would not ring a bell inside our heads would just…” [snaps fingers]. So then I started, in a way, training them. So I started acting with double jobs. One was the translation: what is pertinent, what is not, how it links to… et cetera. The other one was as an analyst — even though I was hired as a contract linguist — because they didn’t have an analyst. So I was performing both tasks.
61:49 Not only that: because I was the only Turkish language specialist for the entire FBi — not only Washington Field Office in Washington, DC, but for the entire country — I was the one who was getting all the files and tapes and recorded material, conversation, from all over the country, from different FBI field offices, in order to translate. Because they didn’t have anyone. So I had backlogs. I mean, I didn’t have to go and create backlogs, like the supervisor was trying to expand the division’s budget. There was a backlog, really, there.
62:25 So some guy in L.A., FBI agent in L.A. Field Office, had a Turkish target and believed there was something with money laundering that was important. He would send it to me; I would say, “Yeah, well, this target, I know him from my Operation ‘C’ that came from Chicago.” I was sitting in this central position, working both translating and analyzing all this intelligence — huge amounts, OK? — divided into counterterrorism, espionage, and counterintelligence. Not only for my primary bosses — these agents in the Washington Field Office such as Saccher — but also for Chicago and Los Angeles, et cetera. So, a lot of stuff that I gathered during that time.
63:09 Then it was the period of time when I blew the whistle. Then I had to work for months… [laughs] Because they were gonna hold this hearing, we were gonna have accountability with all this: Intelligence Committee and Judiciary Committee in the Senate. Well, it was both-way streets: because I was giving them information inside the SCIF, but during some of these meetings, they were giving me information as well. Because it, just… even when they’re asking the questions, the line of questions will enlighten you in so many ways, inside a SCIF — SCIF is the Secure Compartmentalized… [Information] Facility where you can talk about classified stuff, because everybody there has clearance and nobody can bug the room, et cetera, et cetera. So, it was that period of time.
63:51 Then, to that you add… I ended up contacting — even after I was fired, after I became the FBI whistleblower — so many other agents from the FBI. Some of them joined me after they retired and gave me information. Some of them actually did that before they retired. And then, through my organization, I ended up establishing networks of DEA agents. I mean, I have access at any given time to over 150 veteran — these are retired or with 20-plus years’ experience — intelligence officers, whether from Pentagon or DEA or FBI or the CIA. And then because — again, I go back to my upbringing: this, again, is very un-American — it’s a lot of research, and reading, and thinking. Critical thinking. And that is one thing that is, unfortunately, missing. And I believe it ends up being one of the macro causes of where we are today, even with 9/11.
64:57 Because 99 percent of people here: they don’t read, they don’t want to understand. And again, there is this cognitive dissonance. There is this detached mental processing, dysfunctionality. Or specific functions; because… I’ll just give you a quick example. I do my own little surveys — unofficial surveys, it’s not at all valid — but I come across people: they don’t even know what NDAA stands for. And these people, they have master’s degrees. One of them is a financial analyst. Then I’d explain and I’d say, “indefinite detention,” and I… they’d shake their heads. Like, “Well…” — or in my case, or 9/11 — they say things like, “You know something? We are so busy with our daily lives, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s just that we don’t have the time to find out about these things.”
65:54 And then the importance: “I don’t believe this affects my life. It doesn’t relate to my daily life, the stuff you’re talking about.” This is, you’re looking at NSA’s illegal eavesdropping. These are Americans, the majority of them Americans. Initially, I would engage in this discussion with these people: I would say, “But this is your phone that is wiretapped,” et cetera. Right? Today, I don’t. I just learned a new way and line to deal with this, James. I will say… because I come to this point and they say, “Well, I’m too busy, plus it doesn’t affect me personally. This doesn’t have anything to do with my daily life.” And then I’d say, “Well, how come, then, you know about Kardashian’s boobsies? Because how does that affect your daily life?”
66:38 You get… I mean, this is not… I don’t even go and say, “Your phone is tapped.” I say, “That excuse, even, doesn’t hold. Because ‘it doesn’t affect my life?’ Well, that woman’s boobsies doesn’t affect your life either, but you know about that; and so that is not an explanation either.” And to me, that is the biggest obstacle we are facing. The biggest obstacle we are facing is not how powerful the powers are — I’m not talking about Obama or Bush, I’m talking about the real powers. And we would like to… I would like to have a segment we just talk about who are these powers. And everybody will go, “OK, powers, powers… who are these powers?” And we’ll discuss that, but I… — the biggest obstacles are not those people.
67:24 The biggest obstacles are us, our people. And their… the successful, systematic brainwash and “dumbification” and “numbification” of the masses. That, to me, is the biggest obstacle. That, to me, is the most discouraging thing. For me, it’s the most frustrating thing. Initially, when I had just started this whistleblowing journey, it was Congress. Then I said… I said, “No, it’s the courts.” Then I said, “It’s the mainstream media.” And after that, I came back and I found the real obstacle, the real enemy here. The real enemy is our majority and its ignorance; and their ignorance. Unfortunately, that is… that has been my answer for the past four years. And it’s like, this is the obstacle we are facing.
68:19 James: It’s such an important point, and there’s a lot more to be said on that. But may I just add, also: it would be very easy for people who want to dismiss all the information we’re talking about, or don’t want to commit themselves to actually learning about this information, to simply say, “Oh, she’s just making stuff up, and why should we trust her?” When if you actually go back and listen to the information that we’ve been talking about, 99 percent of the events and people that we’re talking about are out in the public record, and you can go and look these things up. You’re just putting some of this together from the information you have from behind the scenes to give the narrative of how these pieces fit togther.
68:54 James: But all the pieces are out there… [unintelligible 68:56]
68:55 Sibel: Right, how people refer to as “connecting the dots.” And say, “Let’s bring these dots… instead of having them scattered here and there, let’s put it and then let’s connect it and see where it goes.” And one of the other answers I would give some of these… some of these people I don’t even answer, OK? Because even the line of thinking, it’s like, where would you start with them? But it would be… all right: you turn around and ask them and say… you know, all the whistleblowers: we have had hundreds of whistleblowers, if you look at National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. From Pentagon, Able Danger, the so-called… and there are the pseudo ones like this Scheuer, et cetera, et cetera.
69:34 But I would say one of the things I would want people to do — but that’s… again: the laziness is preventing it. That, “I want everything to be given to me in the little small pieces. In fact, chew it first, then put it in my mouth. All I have to do is swallow, so I don’t even have to chew.” [laughs] “Chew it.” But I would say: state secrets privilege; gag orders, right? And this is one of the most drastic ones, sure: the government has been invoking it in some of these spy cases, like the NSA’s illegal eavesdropping. How many whistleblowers in the history of the United States has received this? Official gag order and the state secrets privilege? Three.
70:15 Three! Only three whistleblowers have received this. One is Richard Barlow. And we have talked about him: he was the CIA analyst who went to Congress and told them that A. Q. Khan was getting the bomb, and this is how they were getting it; how, CIA and Pentagon, they were hiding it from… because they wanted A. Q. Khan to get it. They wanted Pakistan to get it, OK? It was a huge thing. And again, I mean, everybody knows Dan Ellsberg’s name, but nobody would say… “Who is Richard Barlow?” Even though, I mean, it was even covered by Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker, in 1993. That’s one whistleblower.
70:54 Number two whistleblower is Richard Horn; he is referred to as Dick Horn. He is a high-level senior DEA agent, Drug Enforcement Agency. What happened was he was in charge of this operation for DEA in Burma — Myanmar — on these heroin, opium production, and the drugs. And they were about to have a bust, and go and bust this major group. And the CIA found out about it, and they tipped off their targets, OK? They endangered all the informants that the DEA had. Not only that: in order to remain up to date, the CIA had bugged his entire house, the unit he was living in — and this is Dick Horn — with microphones, with the listening device, so they could get real-hand information and pass it to the enemy, OK? So you’re looking at major drug lords. And again, this is 1990s during the Clinton administration.
71:55 So he blew the whistle, they invoked the state secrets privilege, and finally CIA admitted that they were wrong but they didn’t want this court case to go through. They gave him $3 million dollars. And they said, “We were wrong; however, as part of this $3 million dollar settlement, you’re gonna have a gag order.” I mean, you know, “You can’t talk about the case.” The clause that you sign, you know, when you have a settlement outside the court. You get the $3 million dollars, but the $3 million dollars comes with a price tag. They say, “OK, we give you $3 million dollars, but you can’t ever talk about the case.” So, he went away; but you can see it on the Wikipedia. Just type “Dick Horn.”
72:34 Well, the third whistleblower is me, OK? And with me: I went through the same thing as Richard Barlow, and also as Dick Horn. Before, even, I was getting ready to go to the Supreme Court — as I was getting ready for my appelate court — I was told by my attorney that I should just sit around the table and throw in a number and say, what would I settle for. OK? And this is after the state secrets privilege. As a… OK, settlement for what? Well, how do you put a price on something like I can’t ever go back to Turkey? I can’t see… I can’t put a price. I take $3 million dollars? It cheapens it: it cheapens my roots.
73:14 And the second question I asked was… and I said, “What’s the caveat? What am I supposed… does it mean that if I settle… let’s say, if I say, $2 million,”– and this is what the FBI was willing to settle with me. And my attorneys sat around the table, and I was any attorney’s nightmare. Because attorneys, that’s their wet dream: “My client gets $2 million, I get 30…” my agreement said 35 percent. So that would be $700,000 dollars my attorney was gonna get. And I said, “Well, I want justice.” They said, “The legal system doesn’t work that way, woman! You naive, naive, stupid woman! You have to put a number: this is the dance, and they come, and then we negotiate.”
73:59 I said, “All right.” I said, “Fine. Even if I were to put the number, does it come with a caveat saying I cannot talk about this case?” “Well, sure it does. Meaning, we settle with you; it won’t go through court; but you are prohibited for a lifetime to write about it, to give any interviews about it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” And I said, “My freedom, my First Amendment, is not for sale.” OK? “The whole reason this started, this case, was on the First Amendment basis. I’m not gonna grant… that would be worse than a war, you know? I sold my freedom of speech — my freedom, period!” Anyhow, I went through those steps, too.
74:39 For anybody says, first of all, “They’re making it up,” saying “Eh!” … They have to be able to — and most of these people, I don’t want to be insulting, but [points to forehead] they are not there — but if you were to ask them and say, “Why would someone become the most gagged woman in the history of the US? What is it the government really is so afraid of people getting to know?”
75:03 And I would say this also, James: they were afraid of this in 2002, ‘3, ‘4. Today they are not. 2006, 200–… Look, they were afraid of, once upon a time, for this NSA’s illegal eavesdropping to be public and known. Today, they even tell you, “Yeah, we have a secret kill list and we can kill Americans.” I think this Boiling Frogs Post phenomenon has come to a point where the water is boiling, and they know there is no secret — there is no information or pictures of abuse, tortured person, you can put — that would bring about any kind of mass public outrage. Because it doesn’t exist.
75:43 And I’m thinking, compared to my case, I would consider the kill list with the drones and Americans here: that’s even bigger. If that doesn’t make people outraged, right now in the street, a huge revolution, my c– … they wouldn’t invoke, maybe, the state secrets privilege today! Because it’s like, “You know what? Go on CNN and say it. We say, OK: ‘Ha-ha, funny!'” They won’t even challenge it, and nobody cares — because nobody does. So, that’s number two.
76:15 And the other, third thing, is: I always tell people to trace and chase the money line and the agenda; and see, what does this fulfill? Whether it’s Michael Scheuer, or some… you know, the Valerie Plame case: she and her husband, they ended up campaigning for Hillary Clinton, for her presidency. And after this administration came, they were rewarded with millions of dollars of contracts again. That never happens to real whistleblowers, because nobody wants a big mouth. [laughs] I mean, nobody wants someone with the reputation of whistleblower, because they can never trust you. Because you can find thousands of things that are horrible, criminal: and you would blow the whistle on them. But if you’re not, you would play that partisan game.
77:05 And that is, I would look at a whistleblower and say, “Has she been campaigning and supporting one party, or not?” I would say, “Is she on the board of advisors of ACLU or… whatever: POGO, GAP, or those organizations? Is she making money by being with that — whatever, the big name publishers — and selling millions of books, and having a Hollywood movie coming out? No? Well, then either she’s got to be a really sick person — yeah [laughs] [points to forehead] I would say… yeah, I mean, really a masochist to do that — or, this must be real.
77:44 And as far as here: this is another thing that the government does, and they do it big-time with the whistleblowers. They tried to do it with me. As soon as they fired me, they started calling — I’ve been married for 21 years, OK? — they started contacting my exes: meaning from 22 years ago, when I was 19. They went to them — one of the guys owned a restaurant — and they had a meeting. They wanted to find out if there was anything I did — maybe S&M, or heroin, or something — that… and then this guy called my attorney and said, “Uh…” And then my attorney called me and said, “Your ex…” I’m like, “My ex?!” [laughs] I mean, I have to think, like, 15 years back, right? Because I was married for that long. Anyhow, they like to throw that kind of dirt. Even if you have been to counseling — which I have not been, not that there is anything wrong — they would use that. She is [gestures circles around head] “woo-hoo! woo-hoo!” Or, “She was this,” or “She used drugs.” Or… et cetera. They tried: they couldn’t find anything.
78:40 And so… the craziness they try very hard to find. And the other thing they try to do is, they try to find people who are isolated. And the downer for them was, “OK, here is a marriage that has lasted for 21 years and [unintelligible 78:54].” So it’s a hard target to smear. It’s a very hard target to say, “Pfft! She was there for six months and got some electric shock;” or, “She has done this and that.” That’s for those people; but…
79:08 And I want to finalize, and put some finale to this, is: the other beauty of the place I am today — and that makes me far more confident than I was maybe eleven years ago or ten years ago; even five, six years ago — is, I don’t care what my public image is in terms of what people think of me: “Am I pretty?” or, “Am I ultra-smart?” This is not why I have been in this. And I want the truth; and I want to have that irate minority. That’s why all over my website you will see… I think if today, if one million people were to visit my site, I would get really scared. Especially if most of them, you know, from the US, they come? I would say I’m doing something wrong. I would really think, “Am I putting in keywords ‘Kardshian’ or something?” [laughs] Because, go look at the sites that are visited by millions of people.
80:06 I still believe in irate minority and the power of those people to lead the way for the real needed changes; and also for the truth, and for progress. I don’t believe in going and trying to be popular, because it’s not difficult to be popular. Believe me or not, it’s not. I mean, I could think of five different things today to make myself very popular. [laughs] That’s not what I’m after. And I don’t mind being totally unpopular, because — I would like to be the most popular mother to my child, that’s important — but as far as popularity is concerned, that’s the limit of it.
80:46 James: Well, that’s such an important point, too: because I hope that people out there also reflect on the fact of just how easy it would be to get a big website going by making things up…
80:57 Sibel: Mm-hmm.
80:57 James: And by putting out all sorts of garbage that people would lap up with absolutely no evidence whatsoever. It’s very easy to become popular in that sense.
81:06 Sibel: Absolutely.
81:06 James: I also hope people are cogitating on the — literally — millions of dollars that you’ve passed up in order to bring this information to people for free on the Internet. So again, another incredible part of this story. And we will get to that in a moment; but I think you’ve also just answered one of the other most common questions we get, which is, “Why are you still alive? Why hasn’t the CIA taken care of you? Why are you allowed to talk about this?”
81:30 Sibel: Right.
81:30 James: It’s precisely because there is so little interest in this story at this point, because people are just so immune to all of the corruption that’s going on right now. It is a ridiculous state of affairs.
81:41 Sibel: Absolutely. And also, maybe in a way it’s humbling, because for the powers — you know, CIA and CIA’s bosses — and we will have, hopefully, one segment just on that. You know, it’s like, “Oh, Dick Cheney is the top of the line:” to look at view the powers that way — which is totally wrong — is really insignificant. I mean, they wouldn’t even bother killing me. I mean, there… David Kelly is the only one, really, I know since 9/11. And that is a really big mystery, and I believe in a complete coverup. I don’t believe it was a suicide. That’s my opinion, that’s my hypothesis. Could I prove it? No. But other than that, I mean, today…
82:21 OK, the NSA whistleblower who had to suffer through all the courts, and they were gonna throw him in jail: Thomas Drake. If you were to go and ask Americans — what, 360 million; let’s say 250 million adults; and let’s say… get rid of the ones who have lost their sanity, et cetera: 200 million — Thomas Drake: I would be surprised if more than a thousand people would say, “Yes, I know who he is.” And he’s been… he’s been on the front page of Washington Post, initially, because it was a huge case. It was a major — he’s a real whistleblower, OK? He’s a real case, he’s the real deal — and New York Times, et cetera, et cetera. But you still — it’s not secret, you know? He did it; this is what the government did to him — you can’t find more than a thousand people who know Thomas Drake. Why would they want to kill Thomas Drake?
83:11 I mean this is… and the same thing, I repeat that: if my case were to happen today, during this climate — after 2006, 2007 — they wouldn’t even go as far as invoking they state secrets privilege. They’d say, “Go, go! First of all, we have the mainstream media under our control. Go to alternative media and say — da-da-da-da-da — and see who’s gonna believe you. And even if you were to show documents… pfft! Who gives a…” You know, that is.. that has been their winning recipe: “Who gives a damn?” Nobody does!
83:42 And I’ve received letters from some people who are, unfortunately, troubled somewhere; and they’re like, “You know, I used to work for NSA as a secretary, and the government is following me. In fact they have planted, implanted a bunch of stuff in my teeth,” et cetera, et cetera. And this person was a secretary, and… So when I get this, I’m like, “Why would they do that?” Because we are insignificant to these people. We are! They have the control of the outlets — and that is courts, partliaments or Congress — and they have the media. And you go out in public, you jump on the street — up and down, up and down — and tell them anything: they couldn’t care less.
84:26 So no, I’m not concerned. I did receive several death threats initially. These were… a lot of them were smoke, you know? Somebody blowing smoke. Maybe a couple of them were from Turkish people who were offended and saying, “You are anti-Turk and I’m gonna kill you just like a little rat and I’m gonna pull your fingern–… I mean, that kind of stuff — which, I’ll say, I didn’t really take it that seriously. But the other thing is, you can’t live with that kind of fear. If somebody wants to kill you, they can so easily do it — I mean, those powers. It is not a matter of, “Oh, I’ll take some precautions, and I won’t do that, and I’ll have a bodyguard.” If somebody wants to take you out, it’s very easy to do. [chuckles] Very, very easy to do. And I just don’t even think about it in those terms.
85:12 James: Well, we just have to keep doing what we’re doing, and in the confidence that this is going to make a difference at some level to some of the people out there. And I want to stress that we have gotten so much positive feedback about what we’re doing here: just tons and tons of stuff coming in from people.
85:28 Sibel: Thank you.
85:27 James: And just one example: Simon writes, “Thanks for the interview. Everything she said is correct and there is more. Very informative for the people who look at things in a different perspective.” I wouldn’t have time to go through all the emails we’ve gotten thanking…
85:39 Sibel: And I’m glad you said “different perspective,” for those people who are able to have a critical mind and, I would say, libertarian — I’m not talking about party libertarian — independent thinkers, who can put all those… and to really look and absorb, process. And, absolutely true; and I agree with him.
85:59 James: Excellent. Well, and just finally, then: I want to bring this back to a couple of things that people can do about this and ways that they can help spread this information. For example, we had Dick write in talking about.. that this is all a lot of information to take in; and he’s saying that, “It occurred to me that it would be a lot of fun to have a contest to see who can write the best liner notes for the thriller that Sibel Edmonds is describing.” Because he describes what you’re talking about as a type of thriller story, really. And that’s an interesting idea. I’m not planning on setting up a contest at this point, literally…
86:34 Sibel: [laughs]
86:34 James: But if people want to, I mean, please: for people out there who are listening, please do try to tell other people about this story. Please do come up with your summaries. Please do start writing articles about various aspects of what we’re talking about, filling in blanks. There’s so much material in here that, really, I truly hope people with any type of outlet — or even just people with their own personal blog or even in their own personal life — will start taking this up.
86:59 And on that note, we do already have the first, kind of… submission, I suppose, to something like that. That came in from Tjeerd, who has a website where they posted a mind map of the conversation that we had in the first three parts of our conversation, with some of the characters and how they’re related, et cetera. So I will post the link to that in the show notes for this so that people can take a look at that, and I encourage other people to take up that mantle.
87:25 But on that note, of course, it does often come back to funding and our ability to bring this to you. So, once again: we are completely listener-supported and 100 percent supported by the people out there who are engaged in this conversation with us. So on that note, of course, we are in the quarterly fund drive for BoilingFrogsPost.com. Can you update us as to where we are?
87:45 Sibel: Well, I’m pleased to say that we are 65, 70 percent there, to last for another quarter. And I also have received notes and emails; and there were three or four who were suggesting, actually, the same thing that you and discussed a long time ago, James: and that was, “Man, I would love to see you and James and maybe one other person having weekly roundtables.” And I was thinking, “God, if we had more funding…” I mean, this is one of the things that we discussed. And we don’t even have to say, “OK, it’s only for subscribers.”
88:20 The reason we have subscribers is because we never have enough, and we won’t even know if we’re gonna last for one or two months. It’s both of them that are right now sustaining us. If we had enough contributions, we would love to be able to… I mean, even currently, when it is for subscribers, a program — whether it’s video or podcast — is that way for four weeks, and then we’ll open it up; and it’s always public after four weeks, once it’s archived. And again, these topics that we discuss: they’re not time-sensitive. They’re always… they are always important. So it’s not like, “Oh, some event took place, and we were covering that.”
88:55 But that, again, goes to the funding: I would love to be able to have a show, a joint show, with your program, James. And we can have another person: I don’t know, we… there are so many good people that, now, we know. And that’s another great thing that happened with Boiling Frogs Post, and also through you: and I’m getting to meet and have as partners these fabulous, fabulous people — critical thinkers, independent minds — to have this roundtable. Again, once… if we had the funding, if we had the public support, yes: I would love to. It would be very, very interesting. It would be highly enjoyable to have a roundtable with you. Now, I didn’t even check with you, James. What do you say? [laughs]
89:37 James: I can’t think of anything that I would rather do than to engage in this type of conversation on a weekly basis. Especially with yourself and people like-minded who have this type of knowledge. I am getting so much out of this personally that I certainly hope it’s…
89:52 Sibel: Likewise, likewise.
89:53 James: Yeah. Well, then hopefully we can do that. Tell people once again how they can contribute to this quarterly funding drive.
89:58 Sibel: Well, if you do to our website now, BoilingFrogsPost.com — and the water is boiling, and that’s the metaphor with the boiling frogs. And this is one of the things that I can’t emphasize loudly enough, strongly enough: that it is boiling, and it… and the majority of the frogs are just sitting there, and we are just letting it happen. It’s like, “Let us burn!” — they can go to our website, BoilingFrogsPost.com. And as soon as they go, the first post on the top, it shows our thermometer there, the graph, how much we raised. And we are shooting for $8,000 dollars; we are around $5,500, $5,600 dollars. So we are almost there, not quite there. And this will support us until next quarter, which is until June.
90:47 But you know, the level of support, the amount, what we get in, gets shared among the partners of this website. We don’t have anybody who works for us. So basically it’s all of us who have gathered, we say, for Boiling Frogs Post. This person produces this podcast for Wednesday; James produces his wonderful Tuesday EyeOpener video reports. And the resources we get from you — and from no advertisements, from no foundation, just from you — gets accordingly divided, based on seniority and amount of time spent on the project, among the partners. So that’s how these resources are used.
91:24 We went from one podcast, to one podcast and one video report; today we have four podcasts, interviews, a week. Four podcast shows, and we have one video report, investigative video report show. We have our own editorial cartoon. We have our own aggregated news that is not going anywhere near the mainstream media, it’s coming only from the alternatives. So with resources coming from our listeners, from our supporters — I call them our irate minority members: they are the ones we need for the real change — once our number increases, once we have more resources, we’re gonna be giving back more. Meaning we’ll be producing more shows; we will hopefully have that talk show; and we’ll keep expanding. And hopefully we’ll make the pseudo-alternative and the mainstream medias and their influence, to a certain degree — to a certain degree: I’m trying to be humble here — irrelevant.
92:22 James: Well, let’s hope we can do that, and let’s continue working together. And obviously we’re going to have a lot more to talk about. Regardless of whether or not we have that weekly show, we’re still going to be continuing this series of conversations…
92:32 Sibel: Yes.
92:33 James: I understand you’re doing some traveling in March, so we’ll work around that schedule, and we’ll decide when and how we can have our next conversation. But at any rate, still lots to talk about. So Sibel…
92:42 Sibel: Absolutely.
92:44 James: Once again, thank you so much for your time.
92:45 Sibel: And thank you, James.
92:48 [END]
GLADIO B SERIES: [PART ONE] [PART TWO] [PART THREE] [PART FOUR] [PART SIX]
This transcript by “Adjuvant” is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.