The Reasons For Treason

I keep finding more evidence of treason, fairly obvious and widespread, and it keeps getting uglier and uglier. Yesterday, in chasing down the threads of this, I ran into the Sibel Edmunds story, which I'd be completely unaware of, as was evidently The Whole Idea. But Lukery of Wot is it Good 4 has started a blog specific to the case.

Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

Sibel Edmonds is the most gagged person in US history. The government has repeatedly invoked the State Secrets Privilege in her case - not for reasons of 'national security' but to hide ongoing criminal activity. Please call Waxman and Conyers' offices this week and demand public open hearings into Edmonds' case and the State Secrets Privilege. Links to the petition, action items and phone numbers will remain in the post on top.

Elsewhere there:

Thom Hartmann on Air America Radio did an angry ten minute segment on the illegal, FISA-abusing, spying on "high-profile U.S. public officials" as exposed by Sibel and the NSWBC on March 5th.

Hartmann thinks that the Democrats should "raise some hell." I agree.

Download here (MP3)

This post gives both background and current info on the issues.

It has been almost five years now since former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds first contacted the Senate Judiciary Committee to reveal the shocking tale of Turkish bribery of high-level U.S. officials. In that time span, Edmonds has been misled by members of Congress on several occasions: Numerous promises have been made to the whistleblower by the Senate Judiciary Committee that her allegations would be exposed in public hearings. Those promises have rung hollow.

Now, with the Democratic victory in Congressional elections, coupled with revelations that many of the tapes she translated were probably obtained illegally through FISA warrants , the Turkish translator's case has gained new relevance.

...

Unlike the numerous Iraq War investigations that Waxman and other Democrats in Congress are planning, the issues brought up by Sibel Edmonds may tarnish the images not just of the Bush Administration, but also of certain elements of the Clinton Administration. Further complicating matters is that members of both political parties in Congress were also allegedly the recipient of Turkish gratuities: When a country like Turkey decides to engage in illegal espionage and lobbying, it spreads its funds generously. And though Edmonds' case involves the nuclear black market, not even the potential of a nuke reaching American soil is guaranteed to motivate our public servants, especially when they fear some of the muck might splatter on their own Party.

I have long wondered why leading Democrats have behaved as the have done - for instance, Harry Reid's inexplicable failure to support Jack Carter's run in Nevada against John Ensign - a man who is no more than a rubber stamp for the White House and his treasured Focus on the Family allies. The statement by Nancy Pelosi that "Impeachment was of the table" when already there was enough information to make hearings fairly much a formality.

And then there is Lieberman. Oy.

The specter that three or more leading Democrats are compromised either through corruption, blackmail or both is not a shade anyone should be comfortable with, but it certainly does explain a great deal about many things - such as the passage of the Patriot Act and the rubber stamping of the AUMF that seem, in a way, more plausible than what I've always thought to be rather weak excuses.

The thought of blackmail has crossed my mind before, but the "what" of it eluded me. This could be yet another smoking gun, and one more data-point suggesting that my gut feeling that it would be unwise to support Hillary is worth mentioning aloud LONG before I'm really ready. But at this point, I'm not willing to support her until she's cleared of involvement in - whatever it is that we do not yet know, and any lack of enthusiasm on her part in pursuing all these issues should be taken as confirmation that she's unfit for office.

That, of course, applies to all serving members of the House and Senate, of either party.

Now here's stuff from other sources relating to Plamegate.

Why Cheney Lashed Out at Wilson

Vice President Dick Cheney can be forgiven for feeling provoked. The Times, having been led by Cheney and others down a garden path littered with weapons of mass destruction that were not really there, did some retaliation of its own with the snide title it gave Wilson's op-ed: "What I Did Not Find in Africa."

Adding insult to injury, Wilson chose to tell Washington Post reporters, also on July 6, in language that rarely escapes an ambassador's lips, the bogus report regarding Iraq obtaining uranium from Niger "begs the question regarding what else they are lying about."

That threw down the gauntlet, and Cheney had to worry that others who knew about the lies might feel it safe to go to the press and spill the beans. Retaliation had to be swift and as unambiguous as possible.

Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years and is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). His e-mail is rrmcgovern@aol.com.

But in retaliating swiftly and unambiguously, Cheney blew a real "NOC" operative, an entire deep cover intelligence network and critically damaged our capability to monitor and deal with nuclear proliferation in the middle east and elsewhere, possibly contributing, along with other, equally brainless White House policies, to North Korea developing an offensive nuclear capability.

Nobody in our intelligence community - or any other - was unaware of the consequences of Cheney's act, as this 2003 article clearly shows.

NOC, NOC. Who's There? A Special Kind of Agent

Security agencies all over the world are now quietly running Plame's name through their data banks, immigration records and computer hard drives as the White House leak scandal continues to percolate. Officials with two foreign governments told TIME that their spy catchers are quietly checking on whether Plame had worked on their soil and, if so, what she had done there. Which means if one theme of the Administration leak scandal concerns political vengeance — did the White House reveal Plame's identity in order to punish Wilson for his public criticism of the case for war with Iraq?--another theme is about damage. What has been lost, and who has been compromised because of the leak of one spy's name? And who, if anyone, will pay for that disclosure?

There is no polite euphemism for this. It was, and it remains a conscious act of treason, in furtherance of a treasonous effort to subvert our nation and transform it into the servant of his own ambitions.

As for George Bush, who promised that he'd fire anyone who was responsible for the leak; well, he either knew who was responsible at the time or became aware soon afterward. Either way, that rises to the level of conspiracy to commit treason, or conspiracy after the fact. To say that either is an impeachable offense is the most British of understatements.

UPDATE+Bump More evidence of treason from a completely different perspective.
Wot is it Good 4 has the idea that blowing an intelligence network may have been the actual goal.

This is probably the most significant post related to this issue:

"My question then, given that the egadmin spent 2 months planning the leak of her name, is it more likely that they did it to:
a) discredit Wilson (which failed spectacularly, and could never have succeeded), or b) shine the light on BrewsterJennings (which succeeded spectacularly, and could never have failed)?

[snip]

Surely the maladministration knew the implications, exactly - they'd been thinking obsessing about it for months, and they went out of their way to cover their tracks. Not only did they know that it was illegal to do what they were doing, they surely also knew that BrewsterJennings would be exposed - surely we need to consider that the purpose of the outing was to out BJ, rather than some silly attempt to undermine Joe Wilson. In fact, given the extent to which they devised elaborate cover stories, surely we should at least consider the possibility that the 'get wilson' story is really just another level of cover..."

the rest of the post tries to rescue just about everyone from the apparently universal idiocy that Plame was outed to get at Wilson, and more specifically, that the long-set-in-stone idea that the Plame leak was "Clearly... meant purely and simply for revenge" - as reported in the 'blockbuster' Sep29 front-pager in the WaPo.

The question, of course is "why." But on the other hand, aside from aiding in the process of rounding up all the treasonous bastards - it doesn't matter. Because there are no excuses.

tag: Impeach, treason, Dick Cheney, Plamegate, ethics, foreign policy, Impeach the President, Valerie Plame, Downing Street Memo, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, High Crimes and Misdemeanors