Sibel Edmonds is proof that the “War on Terror” is a Lie
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0601/S00177.htm
By W. David Jenkins III
1/23/2006
There are simply too many dots! I’m not kidding around here. I’ve been through a carton of marking pens and a case and a half of extra strength Excedrin following the trail from the Sibel Edmonds case to Plame to Libby to the NSA to the Whistleblowers Coalition to Turkey to Hastert to Abramoff to the White House and back again. This is not an exercise equivalent to playing “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” but a monstrous series of lines and dots that would produce a flow chart bigger than Rush Limbaugh’s mouth.
Speaking of Limbaugh, his recent slam of Ms. Edmonds and fellow whistleblower, Russell Tice, prompted me to congratulate Sibel the last time we talked. “They must be worried if they’re calling out the right wing radio mouths,” I told her. However, Rove and Co. may want folks like Rush to shut up about Edmonds because the more people hear about her case, the more trouble it invites for this most corrupt administration. Besides, they’ve spent the last few years imposing gag orders on Edmonds out of fear of what she knows.
And now, true to their sleazy ways of doing “business as usual” as Edmonds calls it, the Bush Cabal is going to add insult to Edmonds ’ injury. They’re going to poke her in the eye with “Scooter” Libby’s get of jail free card. Allow me to introduce, as well as concentrate on, Judge Reggie Walton.
Walton is the judge who will not only be presiding over the Libby case, but he has also been “randomly assigned” to Edmonds’ Federal Tort Claim after having upheld her ridiculous gag order imposed by former attorney general, John Ashcroft. I call the gag order ridiculous because technically Edmonds ’ driver’s license, birth certificate and any potential job applications she might file can be considered a “state secret” under the provisions set. As I’ve said many times before, somebody is very worried about what Edmonds wants to talk about.
Very little is known about Walton and it would seem that there are those, including Walton, who would just assume keep it that way. But what little is known should be enough to set off all kinds of bells and whistles, beginning with his long history with the Bush gang.
Eight years after becoming a judge on the D.C. circuit, Walton was introduced to Bush the First’s “drug czar”, Bill (the Gambler) Bennett, who asked him to be his number two guy eight weeks later. Walton accepted the offer and began racking up frequent flyer miles to spread the word on Bush’s war on drugs. Two years after that, he became Bush’s senior White House advisor on crime and was then reappointed to the D.C. circuit. After that, things get fuzzy again.
In fact, even the DOJ web site has very little listed about this guy. A press release here, a press release there, but that’s about it. I found he did overrule a stay on bear hunting in New Jersey and he also weighed in as far as not ordering the ATFE to recognize sport rocket motors as propellant actuated devices.
One would think that someone with such important connections would have an Internet history or any recorded history a tad more interesting than this. I mean, think about it; this is the guy you want to send the Libby case and Edmonds case to? But the more you look at Walton, the more “interesting” things get. In fact, I had to “drudge” through the wacky right wing sites to find the following “interesting” tid bit.
Some may remember the hoopla over alleged connections between the Oklahoma City bombings and Iraq . Now, without going into the nuts and bolts of this particular story, an Oklahoma City lawyer named Mike Johnston, aided by Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch, filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. They sought to obtain FBI files which they felt had been purposely withheld from defense attorneys in the McVeigh trial.
The suit was dismissed in July of 2002 on a technicality. The presiding judge in the decision was none other than Reggie Walton.
Strangely enough, Judicial Watch recently requested and was granted through the FOIA the financial disclosures of federal judges including Walton from the year 2003. Now, if you go to read Walton’s disclosure, you will notice that somebody went wild with one of those black magic markers that have become so popular in DeeCeeVille the last five years or so. In other words, Walton’s 2003 financial disclosure record is completely redacted. And I mean everything.
Subsequently, Professor William Weaver, Senior Legal Advisor for the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) recently filed a request on Walton's redacted background. Sibel Edmonds is the founder and president of the NSWBC.
So to quickly sum up, we have a judge with little background available, with long ties to the Bush’s, who someone doesn’t want the public to know his financial dealings, who has denied requests for domestic intelligence records (at least once), who has now been mysteriously “randomly assigned” to not only hear Edmonds’ FTC case, but is also assigned to a case regarding a senior White House official with whom this judge and the defendant worked with the White House at the same time, albeit in different capacities. Have we flunked the infamous Dan Burton “smell test” yet?
Now, let’s do some of those notorious dots, shall we? A small sampling of coincidences (a term which the past actions of this administration prevent me from believing applies to these criminals) suggests how tangled things are lately.
Walton gets “randomly” assigned to Edmonds ’ original case regarding the gag order after things get bogged down under the original judge appointed to the case in 2002. Edmonds ’ attorneys then file a motion asking the case to be assigned to Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, who is also the judge for Edmonds ’ FOIA case filed in May 2002. Edmonds ’ attorneys argue that the cases were related under the D.C. circuit rules, and so they should both be handled by Judge Huvelle. The court grants Edmonds ’ attorneys request and yet, two weeks after Huvelle is assigned, Walton is reappointed to her case without any explanation. An interesting side note; Huvelle is also the judge who presided over Jack Abramoff’s guilty plea.
From February 2003 to April 2004, Walton repeatedly scheduled and postponed hearings in the Edmonds case without citing any reason. There was no communication from Walton to Edmonds’ attorneys from October ’03 to April ’04 until a lawsuit on behalf of one thousand 9/11 families was filed which requested a deposition from Sibel Edmonds. Only then, does Walton move (at the government’s request) to not only quash Edmonds ’ subpoena on behalf of the 9/11 families, but also upholds the gag order imposed on her using the State Secrets Privilege. So now let’s fast forward to Libby’s case.
Edmonds has confirmed that Walton’s involvement with her original case along with her FTC case has allowed him to be privy to information regarding many of the same players that also appear in the Plame case, most notably, certain Turkish-American organizations. These would be the same semi-legit organizations that were FBI targets of investigation which Edmonds had discovered were being ignored by fellow intelligence translators from within the FBI!
These would also be the same targets that are alleged to have contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Republican Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. But as hard as it can be, let’s not lose focus here.
As Edmonds has stated, the cast of players she stumbled upon during her time at the FBI and some of the very same people that Valerie Plame was investigating involved the actions of top officials in the government and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes. In an August 5th interview, Edmonds said, “You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people.”
Sibel Edmonds testified to all of this and more in a closed session with the Philip Zelikow led 9/11 Commission. Obviously, her testimony was considered too controversial as the Commission completely omitted the information from their final report. Now, the Bush administration has again called on the shadowy Judge Walton to insure that the truth regarding Edmonds , Plame, Libby , Iraq , 9/11 and all things Bush never sees the light of day.
Judge Walton demands much more attention than he’s been given. The mainstream media is obviously oblivious to the effect he will have on the outcome of both the Edmonds case and Libby’s trial. As we have seen, there is far too much at stake to allow any sense of true justice to prevail.
After all these years, there are still far too few Americans who realize that the war on terror is being “selectively waged” as Edmonds so desperately wants the right to prove to everyone. Now we are confronted by an administration that states that spying on Americans is “essential to our safety” and that it allows them to do “everything possible to wage war on those who wish us harm.” Sibel Edmonds is proof that they are lying their faces off.
And Judge Walton is the administration’s insurance policy which will allow them to maintain “business as usual.”
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