Sunday, January 13, 2008

The Bourne Spike

Every morning this week I've checked Google News for American coverage of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds' bombshell in the London Sunday Times last week: For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets.

Nada. Zip. Bupkis.

Edmonds violated a State Secrets gag order to name "names" by posting uncaptioned photos of those she knows are involved. Pentagon and State Department officials selling nuclear information through Turkey to the AQ Khan network and from there to the black market (shades of Iran-Contra). Including this:
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 [of an FBI investigation] 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.
The Jan. 6 Sunday Times story has popped up in Turkey, Italy, Iran, India, Pakistan, Germany, Australia, Azerbaijan, and even Somalia. But of the mere 30+ Google News hits, just one blogger commentary in the Baltimore Chronicle (which ties it to the BCCI scandal). What little else there is in the U.S. comes from "free press" type papers and blogs. The NYTs, the WaPos, LATs and the Gannetts are MIA. Even McClatchy?

Does somebody have photos of somebody with farm animals? Okay, but the whole US press corps? And 535 members of Congress?

Is it me, or does that strike you as just a little creepy? Like something out of a Bourne film?

How is that possible?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I figure it's down to about five to ten pics that would be all that would be needed. See, for example, And Then There Were Eight- 25 Years of Media Mergers from GE NBC to Google YouTube (chart by Mother Jones)

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/03/and_then_there_were_eight.pdf

also of possible interest is a map I made of the Board of Directors overlap between Fortune 500 companies and major media corporations.

http://www.theyrule.net/2004/tr2.php?mapid=5182

I figure this story has been decided to be "too much like how things really are to be good for business" by a few people in high places. That sems to be all it takes, these days.