Vanity Fair is reporting in its September 2005 issue that a Turkish diplomat spoke about arranging for $500,000 in illegal payments to House Speaker Dennis Hastert in order to kill a congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide, in the fall of 2000.
Joel Robertz, an F.B.I. special agent in Chicago, had asked Sibel Edmonds, one of F.B.I’s Turkish interpreters, to review more than 40 recorded conversations of “a senior official” at the Turkish Consulate in Chicago, as well as members of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations in Washington, D.C., according to Vanity Fair.
The subject of the wiretapped conversations sounded like attempts to bribe several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans. “Some of the calls reportedly contained what sounded like references to large scale drug shipments and other crimes,” the magazine said.
In the wiretaps, the Turkish callers frequently used the nickname “Denny boy,” to refer to the Republican Congressman from Illinois, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert. The Turks monitored by the F.B.I. said they had “arranged for tens of 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 in these conversations,” Vanity Fair’s David Rose wrote.
The magazine’s examination of Speaker Hastert’s federal filings for the years 1996-2002 showed his campaign committee to have received close to $500,000 in un-itemized payments – the second highest amount in such contributions for all Congressmen. Vanity Fair stated that there was no evidence that such payments were in fact made by these Turkish subjects. “Nevertheless, a senior official at the Turkish Consulate [in Chicago] is said to have claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000.”
David Rose reported that Edmonds told congressional investigators: “The recordings contained repeated references to Hastert’s flip-flop, in the fall of 2000, over an issue which remains of intense concern to the Turkish government – the continuing campaign to have Congress designate the killings of Armenians in Turkey 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 got anywhere until August 2000, when Hastert, as Speaker, announced that he would give it his backing and see that it received a full House vote. He had a clear political reason, as analysts noted at the time: a California Republican incumbent, locked in a tight congressional race, was looking to win over his district’s large Armenian community. Thanks to Hastert, the resolution, vehemently opposed by the Turks, passed the International Relations Committee by a large majority. Then, on October 19, minutes before the full House vote, Hastert withdrew it. At the time, he explained his decision by saying that he had received a letter from President Clinton arguing that the genocide resolution, if passed, would harm U.S. interests.”
In another wiretapped conversation, “a Turkish official spoke directly to a U.S. State Department staffer.” Vanity Fair reported. He “suggested that the State Department staffer would send a representative at an appointed time to the American-Turkish Council office, at 1111 14th Street NW, where he would be given $7,000 in cash.”
A congressional source told the magazine that Edmonds testified that “she’d heard mention of exchanges of information, dead-drops – that kind of thing…. It was mostly money in exchange for secrets…. Another call allegedly discussed a payment to a Pentagon official who seemed to be involved in weapons-procurement negotiations. Yet another implied that Turkish groups had been installing doctoral students at U.S. research institutions in order to acquire information about black market nuclear weapons. In fact, much of what Edmonds reportedly heard seemed to concern not state espionage but criminal activity. There was talk, she told investigators, of laundering the profits of large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder.”
The main focus of Vanity Fair’s expose is the controversial firing of Sibel Edmonds for complaining to her bosses at the F.B.I. that she believed one of her Turkish co-workers was leaking confidential information to the Turkish officials who were being investigated by the F.B.I. The Bush Administration has banned Edmonds from talking to anyone about her case and has prevented her from filing a lawsuit for her mysterious dismissal.
Besides the bombshell about the Turkish plot to bribe Hastert in order to prevent the passage of a congressional resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide, one wonders why the F.B.I. would wiretap for several years the Turkish Consulate in Chicago, and even more intriguing, the offices of the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations. What did the F.B.I. suspect about these Turkish-American non-profit groups that merited such intrusive surveillance?
Even more incredible is the allegation that officials working at the Pentagon and State Dept. were receiving cash payments from Turkish sources. Is there a Turkish network that has bought its way and infiltrated the highest levels of the U.S. government?
The fact that Edmonds is prevented from talking about her work and filing a lawsuit could be due to the U.S. government’s intent to file charges against these Turkish entities and its desire not to have the case jeopardized by Edmonds’ actions. It could also be that Washington is trying to cover-up the suspected illegal activities of these Turkish groups in order to protect their co-conspirators at the top echelons of the Bush Administration.
The ACLU has appealed Edmonds’ case to the Supreme Court. We hope that the highest court of the land would hear her case, thereby revealing to the American public what the U.S. government has discovered about the activities of the suspected Turkish diplomats and Turkish American organizations.
By Harut Sassounian; Publisher, The California Courier
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