Last edited Sat Jul 18, 2015, 04:56 PM - Edit history (1)
Although BCCI as a "bank" eventually failed, spectacularly, costing its unsuspecting customers more than $10 billion, almost no one was punished for its myriad crimes, and the full extent of the organization's activities continue to be shielded by the many national governments that became entangled in its operations, including the United States and Great Britain, where the Labour government has made extraordinary interventions in court cases to protect BCCI's secrets, invoking the most draconian state secret laws to quash a lawsuit against the Bank of England for the blind but knowing eye that the regulator turned toward BCCI's deadly fraud.
Before exploring these deeper connections further, let's review the tip of the iceberg that Edmonds has courageously exposed, despite the very real threat of retaliation from the U.S. government. From the Times:
"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."
Edmonds goes on to provide details of the operation, which "appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States," under the protection of Pentagon and State Department officials. Turkish and Israeli cut-outs were used to get nuclear info to the ultimate recipient, Pakistan's intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and Abdul Qadeer Khan, "father" of Pakistan's nuclear bomb. As the Times notes:
"The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief…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."
While the Times declined to name the top State Department official cited by Edmonds, elsewhere she has said it was Mark Grossman, "former #3 at the State Department, former ambassador to Turkey, and current Vice President at The Cohen Group, the lobbying company run by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen," notes the blogger Lukery, who has long done sterling service in publicizing Edmonds' plight and her revelations – which, as Lukery notes, are not confined to the nuclear proliferation angle featured in the Sunday Times.
Lukery goes on to note that the other "household names" mentioned by Edmonds include "Richard Perle and Douglas Feith and possibly Paul Wolfowitz. Less familiar names include Eric Edelman, Feith's replacement at the Pentagon, and former Congressman Stephen Solarz."
Lukery also zeroes in on this telling revelation:
"The Times article then notes something that I reported 18 months ago. Immediately after 911, the FBI arrested a bunch of people suspected of being involved with the attacks -- including four associates of key targets of FBI's counterintelligence operations. Sibel heard the targets tell Marc Grossman: 'We need to get them out of the US because we can't afford for them to spill the beans.' Grossman duly facilitated their release from jail and the suspects immediately left the country without further investigation or interrogation.
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