This Made Ashcroft Gag

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0421/mondo1.php
Translator keeps blowing 9-11 whistle on FBI; U.S. Keeps shutting her up


Details of a Florida drug case may well shed light on the claims of an FBI translator who says the agency covered up evidence warning of the 9-11 attack.

Sibel Edmonds, the translator, said in an interview Monday with the Voice that the Florida case illustrates the issues and evidence she has been trying to make public for two years. Edmonds claimed to have translated testimony in criminal and counter-intelligence cases involving different FBI field offices, going back into the late 1990s. Much of this involved tracking money, she said.

Among the Farsi translators working for the FBI, she said, it was common knowledge that a longtime, highly regarded FBI "asset" placed in Afghanistan told the agency in April 2001 that he had information from his contacts there that bin Laden was planning a major attack, involving the use of planes, in one or another of big American cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York among them. The agents who took down the information from the spy wrote up reports and sent them to their superiors. That was the last the agents heard of the matter.

Edmonds said she had heard the details of the Afghan asset story in an unclassified meeting at the Capitol, but she cannot talk about the specifics because of a Justice Department gag order that classifies as secret what she has to say.

She said, however, that "there are a lot of activities in the U.S. A lot of money . . . and these activities involve money laundering, drugs, a support network for terrorism . . . people in high places . . . {people} in the political arena."

more

[lostnfound]

1. This article is lacking.

The paragraph
"Most of the government's efforts to stop terrorists from entering the country are focused on airports and ports. Using drug dealers to smuggle terrorists adds a new dimension to the problem. Drug sales such as the trade in opium from Afghanistan are often used to help finance terrorist groups. Dealers have long been successful in confounding narcs, and it would be difficult if not impossible to ever know whether any terrorists they transported got into the country. Ironically, our victory in Afghanistan has led to a boom in opium selling—the Taliban had slowed the growing and harvesting of poppies."

completely ignores the role of the US government in the drug trade. Doesn't the author know about the CIA connections and the use of drugs to fund CIA operations? (i.e., as exposed by Gary Webb 'Dark Alliance' and others?)

Instead, it parrots the party line that drug dealing is something that the US government truly wants to stop.

[Warpy]

3. There are stories on the net about those "flight schools"

..in Florida recruiting Atta and the other pilots (already licensed in other countries) had connections to drugrunning and the CIA. Atta's US girlfriend has been threatened, as have nearly everyone he had contact with in the US. Two flight school "operators" disappeared right after 9/11.

The whole thing is hazy and weird, and may only be a pile of coincidence involving a rougue agent or two who luckied into a wildly profitable thing during Iran Contra and kept it going on the side.

What we do know is that there are so many lies, so many holes in so many stories, that we may never sort the whole thing out. What we do know is that the Bush gang are involved in hushing everything up, and that they've got to go.

[lil-petunia]

2. Anything that gags him is a good thing. How about a 4 ton truck?

This story has been around, and has been ignored for a couple of months now. Why are the media too afraid to touch it?

(DISCLAIMER:
NO THREATS WERE MADE, NOR INTENDED, TO THE PERSON WHO LOST HIS RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN TO A CORPSE. NO THREATS WERE MADE, NOR INTENDED, TO THE PERSON MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR DEMOLISHING OUR CONSTITUTION RIGHTS. NO THREATS WERE MADE, NOR INTENDED, TO THAT MAN MORE CONCERNED WITH COVERING A MARBLE BREAST THAN FOLLOWING THE RULE OF LAW. HONEST. REALLY. THIS POST WAS MERELY A POLITICAL STATEMENT, INTENDED TO INFORM, ENTERTAIN, AMUSE AND SCREAM BLOODY IDIOT SHOULD HIS GOONS APPEAR AT MY FRONT DOOR.)