'Correspondents in Washington | January 07, 2008
A WHISTLEBLOWER has made extraordinary claims about how corrupt US government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.
Sibel Edmonds, 37, a 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 London's The Sunday Times last month after reading about an al-Qa'ida terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.
Ms 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 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. The agents sold the information 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, Ms 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 would see very high-level people going through criminal trials," she said.
The wider nuclear network has been monitored for many years by a joint Anglo-American intelligence effort.
However, 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.
Ms Edmonds - a fluent speaker of Turkish and Farsi - was recruited by the FBI in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US. Her previous claims about incompetence inside the FBI have been well documented in the US. She has given evidence to closed sessions of Congress and the 9/11commission but many of the key points of her testimony remain secret.
She decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned with the US authorities' failure to act.
One of Ms Edmonds's main roles in the FBI was to translate thousands of hours of conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets that had been recorded covertly by the agency.
A backlog of tapes had built up, dating back to 1997, that were needed for an FBI investigation into links among 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."
She said the Turks and Israelis had planted "moles" in military and academic institutions that handled nuclear technology.
Ms Edmonds said there were several transactions of nuclear material every month - 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 said, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities.
These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.
In one conversation, Ms Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $US15,000 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, Pakistan's spy agency.
"I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2 1/2 years. There are almost certainly more," Ms Edmonds said.
The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.
Ms 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 General Ahmad. The translator was given top-secret clearance, despite FBI protests.
"The wiretaps showed Mahmoud (Ahmad) and his people in Washington were in constant contact with attaches in the Turkish embassy," she said.
Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to al-Qa'ida before and after 9/11.
Indeed, General Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $US100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.
It is likely that secrets stolen from the US would have been sold to a number of rogue states by rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Ms Edmonds said 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.
The Pakistani operation was led by General Ahmad. Intercepted communications showed that General Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attaches in the Turkish embassy.
Ms 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 United States 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.
Ms 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 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," Ms Edmonds 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.
"Certain greedy Turkish operators would make copies of the material and look around for buyers. They had agents who would find potential buyers," Ms Edmonds said.
In mid-2000, she said, the FBI monitored one of the agents as he met two Saudi Arabian businessmen in Detroit to sell nuclear information 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 $US250,000."
Ms Edmonds's employment with the FBI lasted for six months. In March 2002 she was dismissed after accusing a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving Turkish nationals.
She has always claimed 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 one reason 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.
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 program.
The senior official in the State Department no longer works there. Last week he denied all of Ms 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."
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