FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ANGELA DODGE
THURSDAY, OCT. 25, 2007 PUBLIC AFFAIRS SPECIALIST
WWW.USDOJ.GOV/ USAO/TXS (713)567-9388

BP TO PLEAD GUILTY TO FELONY VIOLATION
Assessed largest fine in history for Clean Air Act crime

( HOUSTON , Texas ) - BP Products North America (BP), a subsidiary of BP
plc, has agreed to plead guilty to a one-count Information filed Oct. 22,
2007 , charging it with a felony violation of the Clean Air Act, United
States Attorney Don DeGabrielle announced today. BP will pay a criminal
fine of $50 million and serve a three-year period of probation. The plea
resulted from the Department of Justice’s prosecution of BP for the
catastrophic explosion that occurred at the BP Texas City refinery, March
23, 2005 , causing the deaths of 15 contract employees at the refinery and
injuring more than 170 others. The criminal fine is the largest ever
assessed for a violation of the Clean Air Act. Entry of the plea is
scheduled for Nov. 27, 2007 , before United States District Judge Gray
Miller.

“Today’s announcement is a significant step toward closure for this horrific
accident and the collective criminal mismanagement which preceded it. BP
Products North America has cooperated with federal authorities and with this
plea agreement, announces its intention to confess culpability.”

The catastrophic explosion at the refinery occurred when hydrocarbon vapor
and liquid released from a blowdown stack and reached an ignition source,
believed to be a pickup truck with its engine running. The 15 contract
employees killed at the BP Texas City refinery were located in temporary
trailers approximately 150 feet from the blowdown stack. The deceased were
Glenn Bolton, Lorena Cruz-Alexander, Rafael Herrera, Daniel Hogan, Jimmy
Hunnings, Morris King, Larry Linsenbardt, Arthur Ramos, Ryan Rodriguez,
James Rowe, Linda Rowe, Kimberly Smith, Susan Taylor, Larry Thomas and
Eugene White. The explosion also caused the injuries of more than 170
other workers at the Texas City refinery.

“This case demonstrates one of the pillars of environmental enforcement:
protecting human lives and health,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General
Ronald J. Tenpas for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. “BP cut
corners with disastrous consequences and is being held to account.”

“BP's failure to comply with environmental laws led to the death of 15
people,” said Granta Nakayama, EPA’s [Environmental Protection Agency]
Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. "This
portion of the Clean Air Act is essential to protect workers such as those
in the petro-chemical industry, and EPA will continue to vigilantly
prosecute any violations of these laws.”

BP agreed to plead guilty to a felony violation of Section 112(r)(7) of the
Clean Air Act, which is the first criminal prosecution of that provision.
Section 112r was passed in 1990, in response to the explosion occurring at
the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal , India , where thousands were
killed or injured. Regulations under Section 112(r)(7) require facilities
such as the BP Texas City refinery to ensure “release prevention, detection
and correction requirements” are followed to prevent catastrophic explosions
such as what occurred March 23, 2005.

On March 23, 2005 , BP’s Texas City Refinery was the largest refinery owned
by BP in the United States . The Texas City refinery was previously owned
by Amoco, but in December 1998, BP merged with Amoco and acquired the BP
Texas City Refinery. The BP Texas City Refinery covered more than 1200
acres and employed approximately 1800 permanent BP staff and approximately
2000 contract employees.

The explosion occurred at a refining unit known the Isomerization Unit (ISOM
unit). The ISOM unit’s main function was to increase the octane level in
unleaded gasoline and a tower in the ISOM unit known as the Raffinate
Splitter was used for this process. The Raffinate Splitter was
approximately 164 feet in height and could hold approximately 3700 barrels
of product. On the morning of March 23, the Raffinate Splitter was
undergoing a startup-recognized as one of the most dangerous operations for
the tower due to the high pressure and temperatures necessary to re-start
the process.

BP admitted that by the morning of March 23, 2005, several procedures
required under Section 112(r)(7) of the Clean Air Act for ensuring the
mechanical integrity and a safe startup of the Raffinate Splitter had either
not been established or were being ignored. Operators, with the knowledge
of supervisors, regularly failed to follow written standard operating
procedures that required sending excess hydrocarbons to a flare where they
could be safely burned off before being released into the open air.

BP admitted it had failed to perform a relief valve study to determine
whether the blowdown stack had the capacity to safely release excess
hydrocarbons. In fact, the blowdown stack itself had been in poor operating
condition since at least April 2003. Alarms in both the Raffinate Splitter
and the blowdown stack failed to function or were ignored.

BP also admitted that it had become a regular practice at BP to locate
temporary trailers occupied by contract employees near the blowdown stacks,
even though BP knew there had been previous releases of liquid hydrocarbons
from the blowdown stacks. Ultimately, BP failed to inform contractors that
the start-up process was about to commence.

Pursuant to a plea agreement, BP will pay $50 million and serve a three-year
probation period. During its term of probation, BP will be required to
complete a facility-wide relief valve study under a settlement agreement
with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and to complete an
agreement with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Under that
agreement, BP will be required to implement facility-wide renovations of its
flare systems to prevent excess unplanned emissions as required by the Clean
Air Act. These conditions of probation are expected to cost BP $265
million. Furthermore, if BP fails to complete the requirements, its
probation could be revoked or extended.

"The FBI takes great pride in having had the opportunity to work closely
with the United states Attorney's Office and the Environmental Protection
Agency on this successful investigation which culminated in a precedent
setting plea agreement," said Andrew R. Bland, Special Agent in Charge of
the Houston office of the FBI. "Dangers to the community arise from various
and diverse sources, and the FBI is committed to aggressively investigating
these matters. Whether it be an environmental violation, a terrorism
violation or an internet safety violation, the end result is a safer
community.”

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark McIntyre,
United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, and
Trial Attorney Daniel W. Dooher, Environmental Crimes Section of the
Department of Justice, and was investigated by the EPA’s Criminal
Investigation Division and FBI.

__._,_.___

Ashcroft Deal Brings Scrutiny in Justice Department
By Philip Shenon
The New York Times
Thursday 10 January 2008
Washington - When the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey needed to find an outside lawyer to monitor a large corporation willing to settle criminal charges out of court last fall, he turned to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, his onetime boss. With no public notice and no bidding, the company awarded Mr. Ashcroft an 18-month contract worth $28 million to $52 million.
That contract, which Justice Department officials in Washington learned about only several weeks ago, has prompted an internal inquiry into the department's procedures for selecting outside monitors to police settlements with large companies.
The contract between Mr. Ashcroft's consulting firm, the Ashcroft Group, and Zimmer Holdings, a medical supply company in Indiana, has also drawn the attention of Congressional investigators.
The New Jersey prosecutor, United States Attorney Christopher J. Christie, directed similar monitoring contracts last year to two other former Justice Department colleagues from the Bush administration, as well as to a former Republican state attorney general in New Jersey.
Officials said that while there had been no accusations of wrongdoing on the part of Mr. Christie or Mr. Ashcroft, aides to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey were concerned about the appearance of favoritism.
Mr. Mukasey, a former federal judge who was sworn in as attorney general in November, has vowed to remove political considerations from decision-making at the department in the wake of a series of scandals under his predecessor, Alberto R. Gonzales.
Mr. Ashcroft was awarded the contract last fall at the direction of Mr. Christie as part of his office's settlement of criminal accusations against Zimmer Holdings and four smaller firms accused of paying kickbacks to doctors.
A spokesman for Mr. Ashcroft said that the Ashcroft Group had not lobbied for the contract but was pleased by the referral.
The disclosure of the monitoring agreement, in which Mr. Ashcroft's fees are paid directly by Zimmer, prompted Democratic lawmakers from New Jersey to question if the contract was new evidence of political favoritism in the Bush administration's long-embattled Justice Department.
Justice Department officials said the internal inquiry by the Criminal Division began several weeks ago with no public announcement.
Department officials said the review was expected to result this year in formal guidelines to prevent the appearance of conflicts in the choice of monitors to oversee out-of-court settlements reached between federal prosecutors and companies accused of wrongdoing.
In the Bush administration, federal prosecutors have increasingly relied on out-of-court settlements with large corporations in criminal investigations that in the past might have resulted in indictments and trials. The settlements often call for outside lawyers to be retained by the companies to monitor the agreements. The contracts call for the lawyers to monitor the company's compliance with the settlements through financial audits and other types of internal investigations.
A new study by two Texas lawyers, Lawrence D. Finder and Ryan D. McConnell, found that the number of so-called deferred-prosecution or nonprosecution agreements between the department and large companies grew to 35 last year from 5 in 2003.
Often, the names of corporate monitors are not made public. The internal inquiry started after Zimmer Holdings revealed in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in late October that it had hired Mr. Ashcroft's consulting firm, based in Washington, to monitor its settlement of criminal charges based on accusations of kickbacks to doctors involving the company's knee and hip implants.
The firm said Mr. Christie had directed it to hire Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. Christie has acknowledged that he chose Mr. Ashcroft for the assignment. The disclosures in Zimmer's filings about Mr. Ashcroft were first reported several weeks ago by The Star-Ledger of Newark and other New Jersey news organizations.
Mr. Christie directed similar contracts in settlements with other medical-supply companies to two other former Justice Department colleagues - David N. Kelley, the former United States attorney in Manhattan, and Debra Wong Yang, his counterpart in Los Angeles - and to David Samson, the former Republican attorney general in New Jersey.
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Christie said he chose Mr. Ashcroft and the others for the monitoring assignments because they had impeccable legal credentials and he knew and trusted them.
"It's really important that the working relationship between this office and the monitors is very, very close," he said. "I can't tell you how much work we do with these monitors." He said he had selected Mr. Ashcroft to work with Zimmer, the largest of five companies in the criminal investigation, because "I knew he was somebody who understands these issues and would be taken seriously by the company as an authority figure."
Mr. Christie has disputed accusations raised by Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey that it was a conflict of interest for him to direct large, no-bid contracts to former colleagues and friends, but he has referred those questions to the Justice Department in Washington.
Department officials said they had no formal comment but noted that the monitoring agreements were not given only to Republicans and that Mr. Christie's recommendations of outside monitors in other large corporate investigations had been praised.
Although he was a prosecutor in the Bush administration, Mr. Kelley has registered as a Democrat in the past. Mr. Kelley, who has done legal work for The New York Times, did not respond to e-mail messages on Wednesday. Mr. Samson and Ms. Yang did not return phone calls.
The dollar value of the contracts obtained by Mr. Kelley, Ms. Yang and Mr. Samson is unclear, since the medical-supply companies they are monitoring have not revealed those details, suggesting that they are smaller than Mr. Ashcroft's.
Under the settlements with the Justice Department, the companies negotiate the fees with the monitors themselves, a situation legal scholars say has the potential for abuse because companies might be overly generous to encourage leniency.
Department officials said that there were few internal guidelines for hiring independent monitors and that Mr. Christie was not required to seek approval from the Justice Department to name Mr. Ashcroft and the others and had not done so.
A spokesman for Mr. Ashcroft's firm, Mark Corallo, said that Mr. Ashcroft was an obvious choice as a monitor.
"I know John Ashcroft, I know his capabilities," Mr. Corallo said. "No matter what people think of his politics, he ran an unbelievably efficient operation at Justice as a manager. He understands the law. He understands how to manage an enormous organization."
He said that Mr. Ashcroft knew nothing about the assignment until the possibility was raised by Mr. Christie, who was confirmed as United States attorney in 2002, shortly before Mr. Ashcroft was sworn in as attorney general. Mr. Christie had been a lawyer in private practice and a Republican fund-raiser in New Jersey.
Mr. Corallo said that Mr. Ashcroft's firm had hired more than 30 employees and outside advisers, including accountants and lawyers, to oversee the monitoring contract and that Mr. Ashcroft had traveled to Indiana several times for the assignment.
"It's taken a large personal commitment from him," Mr. Corallo said, adding, "In coming months, people will realize that Chris Christie did exactly the right thing in choosing these folks to be monitors."
In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Zimmer said it had agreed to pay the Ashcroft firm a monthly fee of $750,000, and to reimburse it for expenses that were expected to total $150,000 to $250,000 a month.
-------

CIA Tapes Destroyed as Pressure Mounted
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 07 January 2008

The CIA destroyed videotapes showing its agents subjecting high-level al-Qaeda detainees to waterboarding after the agency's inspector general issued a classified report in the spring of 2004 that concluded the interrogation methods used on the prisoners "appeared to constitute cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, as defined by the International Convention Against Torture."

Details about when the videotapes were expected to be destroyed were revealed in a February 2003 letter released last week by Congresswoman Jane Harman (D-California). Harman was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee at the time she wrote the letter to the CIA advising the agency against destroying the videotapes. Prior to writing the letter to then CIA General Counsel Scott Muller, Harman had been briefed about the CIA's interrogation methods against so-called high-level detainees. The CIA declassified Harman's letter at the congresswoman's request.

Harman's letter provides a more thorough account of the possible reasons CIA officials destroyed the videotaped interrogations, which, according to public accounts, took place in November 2005, more than two years after Harman sent a letter to Muller voicing disapproval about purging the videotapes. It also suggests intelligence officials heeded prior warnings to preserve the videotapes and destroyed the videotapes only after evidence of the agency's covert interrogation practices were revealed publicly in news reports.

Harman's letter did not raise concerns or express disapproval about the CIA's use of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques." Moreover, her letter advising the agency against destroying the videotapes were made out of concern the footage CIA agents captured "would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future." It is believed Harman was referring to information about the 9/11 attacks and other purported plots against the United States.

At the time Harman wrote to Muller, CIA Inspector General John Helgerson was in the midst of an internal investigation into the agency's interrogation methods, which Truthout reported last week. Helgerson personally viewed the videotapes that showed two detainees being subjected to waterboarding by CIA officers, which formed the foundation for his still classified report on the CIA's methods of interrogation.

"In his report, Mr. Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability," according to a November 9, 2005, story in The New York Times was published around the same month the tapes were destroyed. "They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States."

"The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world," The New York Times reported." They said it referred in particular to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mr. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe he is drowning.

Last week, the Justice Department announced it had opened a formal criminal investigation into the destruction of the videotapes headed by John Durham, an assistant attorney general from Connecticut. Helgerson, who had been investigating the circumstances behind the tapes' destruction before the launch of the criminal probe, said he would recuse himself from the matter.

Inspector General Probe Launched Shortly After Issuance of "Torture Memo"

Helgerson launched a review of the CIA's interrogation techniques less than a year after a meeting was convened at the White House in July 2002. It was at this meeting former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Justice Department attorney John Yoo, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's attorney David Addington, and unknown CIA officials discussed whether the CIA could interrogate Abu Zubaydah, a high-level al-Qaeda detainee captured in Pakistan in March 2002, more aggressively in order to get him to respond to questions about plots against the United States and its interests abroad.

Yoo, Gonzales and Addington gave the CIA the green light to use a wide variety of techniques, including waterboarding, on Zubaydah and other detainees at several secret prisons overseas to "break" them and force them to cooperate with interrogators, according to an account published in Newsweek in late December 2003. Less than a month after the meeting, on August 1, 2002, Yoo drafted a memo to Gonzales that was signed by Jay Bybee, the assistant attorney general at the time. That memo declared President Bush had the legal authority to allow CIA interrogators to employ harsh tactics to extract information from detainees. Human rights organizations and Democratic and Republican lawmakers have characterized the methods outlined in the Yoo memo as torture.

Chertoff Provides Legal Guidance to CIA on Interrogation Methods

During this time, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff advised the CIA that its agents had the legal authority to use what was referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques" on Abu Zubaydah, according to a little-known report published in The New York Times in January 2005.

Chertoff was head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division when CIA officials inquired whether its agents could be charged with violating the federal anti-torture statute for employing interrogation methods such as waterboarding. The tactic causes detainees to slowly drown, and is generally terminated before the detainees die.

"The CIA was seeking to determine the legal limits of interrogation practices for use in cases like that of Abu Zubaydah, the Qaeda lieutenant who was captured in March 2002," says a January 29, 2005, New York Times story. That story quoted unnamed sources who told the newspaper "Chertoff was directly involved in these discussions, in effect evaluating the legality of techniques proposed by the CIA by advising the agency whether its employees could go ahead with proposed interrogation methods without fear of prosecution."

During his Senate confirmation hearing in February 2005, Chertoff maintained he provided the CIA broad guidance in response to its questions about interrogation methods and never specifically addressed the legality regarding waterboarding or other techniques.

Chertoff told former CIA General Counsel Scott Muller and his deputy, John Rizzo, that an August 1, 2002, memo widely referred to as the "Torture Memo" put the CIA on solid legal ground and that its agents could waterboard a prisoner without fear of prosecution. The memo was written by former Justice Department attorney John Yoo.

Yoo's memo said Congress "may no more regulate the president's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield."

New Legal Guidelines Defining Torture

In the summer of 2004, Yoo's memo was publicly disclosed which led the administration to reject the former Justice Department official's legal opinion on interrogation methods. A new opinion made public in December 2004, signed by former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, rejected Yoo's interpretation of the law defining torture and more restrictive standards defining it were adopted.

"But a cryptic footnote to the new document about the 'treatment of detainees' referred to what the officials said were other still-classified opinions. Officials have said the footnote meant coercive techniques approved by the Justice Department under the looser interpretation of the torture statutes were still lawful even under the new, more restrictive standards," according to a November 9, 2005, report in The New York Times.

The new legal opinion meant agents involved in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah could have found themselves in legal jeopardy if their conduct had been exposed publicly. And it was just a matter of time before details of the CIA's covert operations surfaced.

Deputy Inspector General Believed "CIA People" Lied to Congress

Shortly before Helgerson completed his internal investigation in the spring of 2004, he tapped Mary O. McCarthy, a career CIA official, as deputy inspector general to assist him with a number of investigations including his probe of the CIA's interrogation methods.

McCarthy was also personally briefed on the existence and content of the videotapes, according to several CIA officials who worked closely with her, however it's unknown whether she viewed the material. McCarthy also oversaw the inspector general's investigation into the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. But something related to the CIA's treatment of detainees had disturbed McCarthy enough to confide in her friends that the CIA covered-up the methods officers used when interrogating certain detainees.

According to a May 2006, Washington Post story, McCarthy "worried that neither Helgerson nor the agency's Congressional overseers would fully examine what happened or why." Another friend said, "She had the impression that this stuff has been pretty well buried." The Post story reported, "In McCarthy's view and that of many colleagues, friends say, torture was not only wrong but also misguided, because it rarely produced useful results."

McCarthy was among a group of former intelligence officials who late last year signed a letter opposing the nomination of Attorney General Michael Mukasey on grounds he would not denounce waterboarding. She alleged - two years or so after she and Helgerson completed their report into the agency's interrogation practices - CIA officials lied to members of Congress during an intelligence briefing when they said the agency did not violate treaties that bar, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees during interrogations, according to a May 14, 2006, front-page story in The Washington Post.

"A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that 'CIA people had lied' in that briefing, as one of her friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading," The Washington Post reported.

In April 2006, ten days before she was due to retire, McCarthy was fired from the CIA for allegedly leaking classified information to the media, a CIA spokeswoman told reporters at the time.

The CIA said McCarthy had spoken with numerous journalists, including The Washington Post's Dana Priest, who in November 2005 exposed the CIA's secret prison sites, where in 2002 the CIA videotaped its agents interrogating a so-called high-level detainee, Abu Zubaydah. The videotaped interrogation of Zubaydah, which is said to have shown the prisoner being subjected to waterboarding, was destroyed after Priest's story was published, and is now at the center of a wide-ranging Congressional and Justice Department investigation. Priest won a Pulitzer Prize for her expose. The CIA did not say whether McCarthy was a source for Priest's story.

Following news reports of her dismissal from the CIA, McCarthy, through her attorney Ty Cobb, vehemently denied leaking classified information to the media. However, the CIA said she failed a polygraph test after the agency launched an internal investigation in late 2005. The agency said the investigation was an attempt to find out who provided The Washington Post and The New York Times with information about its covert activities, including domestic surveillance, and it promptly fired her.

The Washington Post reported, "McCarthy was not an ideologue, her friends say, but at some point fell into a camp of CIA officers who felt that the Bush administration's venture into Iraq had dangerously diverted US counterterrorism policy. After seeing - in e-mails, cable traffic, interview transcripts and field reports - some of the secret fruits of the Iraq intervention, McCarthy became disenchanted, three of her friends say."

"In addition to CIA misrepresentations at the session last summer, McCarthy told the friends, a senior agency official failed to provide a full account of the CIA's detainee-treatment policy at a closed hearing of the House intelligence committee in February 2005, under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman (California), the senior Democrat," The Washington Post says. "McCarthy also told others she was offended that the CIA's general counsel had worked to secure a secret Justice Department opinion in 2004 authorizing the agency's creation of "ghost detainees" - prisoners removed from Iraq for secret interrogations without notice to the International Committee of the Red Cross - because the Geneva Conventions prohibit such practices."

The fact the videotapes were allegedly destroyed during the same month The New York Times published a story about Helgerson's classified report on CIA interrogation methods, and The Washington Post published a story exposing the CIA's covert interrogation activities at overseas prisons, suggests the CIA may have decided to destroy the videotaped interrogations because it feared that if the tapes became part of the public record it could expose its agents to a federal criminal investigation.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Jason Leopold is senior editor and reporter for Truthout. He received a Project Censored award in 2007 for his story on Halliburton's work in Iran.

Sibel Speaks Part II:
Naming Names...
By Larisa Alexandrovna

January 7, 2008

I have decided that after years of not getting anyone to publish what I have found out about the Edmonds case, I am simply going to give you folks some names. I won't explain what the allegations are, or how these people might fit together or even if they fit together. I also don't claim to have all the names or know the full story by any means.

But I am certain, that brilliant bloggers, researchers, and journalists will finally figure it out:

Richard Perle

Doug Feith

Eric Edelman

Marc Grossman

Larry Franklin

Dennis Hastert

Roy Blunt

Dan Burton

Tom Lantos

Bob Livingston

Stephen Solarz

Graham Fuller

David Makovsky

Alan Markovsky

Enver Yusuf

Sabri Sayari

Mehmet Eymur

And a few phrases for you folks to play around with (in no particular order):

Gray Wolves

Shanghai Cooperation Organization

RAND Corporation

PNAC

East Turkmenistan

Iran

Syria

Foreign Policy

King Faisal

ISI

http://www.atlargely.com/2008/01/sibel-speaks-pa.html

FOR SALE: West’s Deadly Nuclear Secrets

January 6, 2008

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

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

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.



Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.

Her story shows just how much the West was infiltrated by foreign states seeking nuclear secrets. It illustrates how western government officials turned a blind eye to, or were even helping, countries such as Pakistan acquire bomb technology.

The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort. But rather than shut it down, investigations by law enforcement bodies such as the FBI and Britain’s Revenue & Customs have been aborted to preserve diplomatic relations.

Edmonds, a fluent speaker of Turkish and Farsi, was recruited by the FBI in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Her previous claims about incompetence inside the FBI have been well documented in America.

She has given evidence to closed sessions of Congress and the 9/11 commission, but many of the key points of her testimony have remained secret. She has now decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned with the US authorities’ failure to act.

One of Edmonds’s main roles in the FBI was to translate thousands of hours of conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets that had been covertly recorded by the agency.

A backlog of tapes had built up, dating back to 1997, which were needed for an FBI investigation into links between the Turks and Pakistani, Israeli and US targets. Before she left the FBI in 2002 she heard evidence that pointed to money laundering, drug imports and attempts to acquire nuclear and conventional weapons technology.

“What I found was damning,” she said. “While the FBI was investigating, several arms of the government were shielding what was going on.”

The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.

They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.

In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed location by someone in the Turkish diplomatic community who was working for the network.

The Turks, she says, often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract suspicion. Venues such as the American Turkish Council in Washington were used to drop off the cash, which was picked up by the official.

Edmonds said: “I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost certainly more.”

The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.

Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attachés in the Turkish embassy.

Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.

The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan’s nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme.

Khan caused an alert among western intelligence agencies when his aides met Osama Bin Laden. “We were aware of contact between A Q Khan’s people and Al-Qaeda,” a former CIA officer said last week. “There was absolute panic when we initially discovered this, but it kind of panned out in the end.”

It is likely that the nuclear secrets stolen from the United States would have been sold to a number of rogue states by Khan.

Edmonds was later to see the scope of the Pakistani connections when it was revealed that one of her fellow translators at the FBI was the daughter of a Pakistani embassy official who worked for Ahmad. The translator was given top secret clearance despite protests from FBI investigators.

Edmonds says packages containing nuclear secrets were delivered by Turkish operatives, using their cover as members of the diplomatic and military community, to contacts at the Pakistani embassy in Washington.

Following 9/11, a number of the foreign operatives were taken in for questioning by the FBI on suspicion that they knew about or somehow aided the attacks.

Edmonds said the State Department official once again proved useful. “A primary target would call the official and point to names on the list and say, ‘We need to get them out of the US because we can’t afford for them to spill the beans’,” she said. “The official said that he would ‘take care of it’.”

The four suspects on the list were released from interrogation and extradited.

Edmonds also claims that a number of senior officials in the Pentagon had helped Israeli and Turkish agents.

“The people provided lists of potential moles from Pentagon-related institutions who had access to databases concerning this information,” she said.

“The handlers, who were part of the diplomatic community, would then try to recruit those people to become moles for the network. The lists contained all their ‘hooking points’, which could be financial or sexual pressure points, their exact job in the Pentagon and what stuff they had access to.”

One of the Pentagon figures under investigation was Lawrence Franklin, a former Pentagon analyst, who was jailed in 2006 for passing US defence information to lobbyists and sharing classified information with an Israeli diplomat.

“He was one of the top people providing information and packages during 2000 and 2001,” she said.

Once acquired, the nuclear secrets could have gone anywhere. The FBI monitored Turkish diplomats who were selling copies of the information to the highest bidder.

Edmonds said: “Certain greedy Turkish operators would make copies of the material and look around for buyers. They had agents who would find potential buyers.”

In summer 2000, Edmonds says the FBI monitored one of the agents as he met two Saudi Arabian businessmen in Detroit to sell nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama. She overheard the agent saying: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.”

Edmonds’s employment with the FBI lasted for just six months. In March 2002 she was dismissed after accusing a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving Turkish nationals.

She has always claimed that she was victimised for being outspoken and was vindicated by an Office of the Inspector General review of her case three years later. It found that one of the contributory reasons for her sacking was that she had made valid complaints.

The US attorney-general has imposed a state secrets privilege order on her, which prevents her revealing more details of the FBI’s methods and current investigations.

Her allegations were heard in a closed session of Congress, but no action has been taken and she continues to campaign for a public hearing.

She was able to discuss the case with The Sunday Times because, by the end of January 2002, the justice department had shut down the programme.

The senior official in the State Department no longer works there. Last week he denied all of Edmonds’s allegations: “If you are calling me to say somebody said that I took money, that’s outrageous . . . I do not have anything to say about such stupid ridiculous things as this.”

In researching this article, The Sunday Times has talked to two FBI officers (one serving, one former) and two former CIA sources who worked on nuclear proliferation. While none was aware of specific allegations against officials she names, they did provide overlapping corroboration of Edmonds’s story.

One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,” the source said.

How Pakistan got the bomb, then sold it to the highest bidders

1965 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s foreign minister, says: “If India builds the bomb we will eat grass . . . but we will get one of our own”

1974 Nuclear programme becomes increased priority as India tests a nuclear device

1976 Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist, steals secrets from Dutch uranium plant. Made head of his nation’s nuclear programme by Bhutto, now prime minister

1976 onwards Clandestine network established to obtain materials and technology for uranium enrichment from the West

1985 Pakistan produces weapons-grade uranium for the first time

1989-91 Khan’s network sells Iran nuclear weapons information and technology

1991-97 Khan sells weapons technology to North Korea and Libya

1998 India tests nuclear bomb and Pakistan follows with a series of nuclear tests. Khan says: “I never had any doubts I was building a bomb. We had to do it”

2001 CIA chief George Tenet gathers officials for crisis summit on the proliferation of nuclear technology from Pakistan to other countries

2001 Weeks before 9/11, Khan’s aides meet Osama Bin Laden to discuss an Al-Qaeda nuclear device

2001 After 9/11 proliferation crisis becomes secondary as Pakistan is seen as important ally in war on terror

2003 Libya abandons nuclear weapons programme and admits acquiring components through Pakistani nuclear scientists

2004 Khan placed under house arrest and confesses to supplying Iran, Libya and North Korea with weapons technology. He is pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf

2006 North Korea tests a nuclear bomb

2007 Renewed fears that bomb may fall into hands of Islamic extremists as killing of Benazir Bhutto throws country into turmoil



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece