For sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets - Times Online - The Diigo Meta page

• 09 Jul 08
  

  Arne Løining

  nuclear weapons

• 29 Jan 08
  

  arabist arabist

  Whistleblower says top US officials sold nuke secrets to Pakistan (the person is not named in the article, but others say it's Marc Grossman)

  turkey us pakistan nuclear spy

• 20 Jan 08
  

  mailforlen yahoo
• 08 Jan 08
  

  Al Pasternak

  politics news history hubris usa world 08jan 2008 delimport

• 

  peterwyspianski

  war on terror pakistan

• 

  Energy Net

  mideast nuclear nuke.news nuke.news.int security us whistleblower n-weapons

• 07 Jan 08
  

  triple_ t

  nuclear whistleblower conspiracy pakistan

• 

  Colton Telford

  articles politics

• 

  Zee ----------

  • 
    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.

• 06 Jan 08
  

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

  • • 
      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.
    • She has
      now decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned
      with the US authorities’ failure to act.

    • “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.”

    • 
      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 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.
    • 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.

    • 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.”
    • which prevents her revealing more details of the FBI’s methods and current
      investigations.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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
    • 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

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