Vanity Fair floats allegations GOP chief Hastert took Turkish bribes

Vanity Fair’s September edition, now out in New York but yet to hit national newsstands, packs a punch with an article about Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who has been gagged by the Bush Administration from revealing information about conversations she translated surrounding a seemingly major corruption scandal involving Turkish nationals and U.S. lawmakers, RAW STORY can reveal.

RAW STORY acquired a copy of the article by David Rose this evening. The following are some brief excerpts surrounding the meatier allegations Edmonds has made—some of which the FBI has confirmed—about the specifics surrounding her case. According to those briefed on the case, Edmonds says she has heard classified wiretaps which indicate Turkish nationals tried to bribe both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in Chicago and Washington.

Edmonds was fired from the FBI after trying to persuade her bosses to investigation a Turkish family, the Dickersons, she said was trying to trade on her status as an FBI operative. She suspected that the American Turkish Council, which the family tried to persuade her to join, was a front group for criminal activity.

On top of the usual prohibition against disclosing classified information, the Bush administration has smothered her case beneath the all-encompassing blanket of the “state-secrets privilege”—a Draconian and rarely used legal weapon that allows the government, merely by asserting a risk to national security, to prevent the lawsuits Edmonds has field contesting her treatment from being heard in court at all. According to the Department of Justice, to allow Edmonds her day in court, even at a closed hearing attended only by personnel with full security clearance, “could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the foreign policy and national security of the United States.”

Edmonds’ attorney, who works for the ACLU, says: “It also begs a question: Just what in the world is the government trying to hide?”

It may be more than another embarrassing security scandal,” writes Rose. “One counterintelligence official familiar with Edmonds’s case has told Vanity Fair that the FBI opened an investigation into covert activity by Turkish nations in the late 1990s. That inquiry found evidence, mainly via wiretaps, of attempts to corrupt senior American politicians in at least two major cities—Washington and Chicago. Toward the end of 2001, Edmonds was asked to translate some of the thousands of calls that had been record by this operation, some dating back to 1997.

"Edmonds has given confidential testimony inside a secure Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility on several occasions: to congressional staffers, to investigators from the OIG, and to staff from the 9/11 commission," Rose continues. "Sources familiar with this testimony say that, in addition to her allegations about the Dickersons, she reported hearing Turkish wiretap targets boast that they had a covert relationship with a very senior Republican indeed—Dennis Hastert, Republican congressman from Illinois and Speak of the House since 1999. The targets reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information. “The Dickersons,” says one official familiar with the case, “are just the tip of the iceberg.”

"Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes," writes Rose. "One name, however, apparently stood out—a man the Turkish callers often referred to by the nickname “Denny boy.” It was the Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert. According to some of the wiretaps, the FBI’s targets had arranged for thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks. Under Federal Election Commission rules, donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings.

"Hastert himself was never heard on the recordings, Edmonds told investigators and it is possible that the claims of covert payments were hollow boasts," Rose says. "Nevertheless, an examination of Hastert’s federal filings shows that the level of un-itemized payments his campaigns received over many years was relatively high. Between April 1996 and December 2002, un-itemized personal donations to the Hastert for Congress fund amounted to $483,000.

In contrast, un-itemized contributions to the same period to the committee run on behalf of the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, were only $99,000. An analysis of the filings of four other senior Republicans shows that only one, Clay Shaw, of Florida declared a higher total of un-itemized donations that Hastert during the same period: $552,000…
"Edmonds reportedly added that the recordings contained repeated references to Hastert’s flip-flop in the fall of 200," Rose pens, "over an issue which remains of intense concern to the Turkish government—the continuing campaign to have Congress designate the killings of Americanians between 1915 and 1923 a genocide. For many years, attempts had been made to get the House to pass a genocide resolution, but they never god anywhere until August 2000, when Haster, as Speaker, announced that he would give it his backing and see that it received a full House vote…Thanks to Hastert, the resolution, vehemently opposed by the Turks, passed… Then on October 19, minutes before the full House vote, Hastert withdrew it. He attributed it to a letter from President Clinton.

Vanity Fair insists, however, “there is no evidence that any payment was ever made to Hastert of his campaign. Nevertheless, a senior official at the Turkish Consulate is said to have claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $50,000.”

Hastert’s spokesman denied the allegations, and said he knew nothing of the Turkish group.
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