Halliburton, Cheney and the Military Industrial Complex

Sibel Edmonds' Deposition: Video and Transcript Released

August 25, 1006

BradBlog - Just over two weeks ago, FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds was finally allowed to speak about much of what the Bush Administration spent years trying to keep her from discussing publicly on the record. Twice gagged by the Bush Dept. of Justice's invocation of the so-called "State Secrets Privilege," Edmonds has been attempting to tell her story, about the crimes she became aware of while working for the FBI, for years.

Thanks to a subpoena issued by the campaign of Ohio's 2nd District Democratic U.S. Congressional candidate David Krikorian, her remarkable allegations of blackmail, bribery, espionage, infiltration, and criminal conspiracy by current and former members of the U.S. Congress, high-ranking State and Defense Department officials, and agents of the government of Turkey are seen and heard here, in full, for the first time, in her under-oath deposition.

Though there was much concern, prior to her testimony, that the Obama Dept. of Justice might re-invoke the "State Secrets Privilege" to keep her from speaking, they did not do so. Nor did they choose to be present at the Washington D.C. deposition...

Ridge Accuses Bush White House of Political Use of Terror Alert System

August 20, 2009

Boston Globe - In his new book, the first Homeland Security chief, Tom Ridge, accuses top aides to President George W. Bush of pressing him to raise the terror alert level to influence the 2004 presidential election.

Ridge, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania, says that he refused the entreaty just before the election from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to a summary of the book from publisher Thomas Dunne Books.

Ridge writes that there was a “vigorous, some might say dramatic, discussion” about raising the threat level. He says his aides told the White House that doing so would politicize national security.

“I believe our strong interventions had pulled the ‘go-up’ advocates back from the brink,” Ridge writes. “But I consider the episode to be not only a dramatic moment in Washington’s recent history, but another illustration of the intersection of politics, fear, credibility and security.”

“After that episode, I knew I had to follow through with my plans to leave the federal government for the private sector,” Ridge, who resigned soon after the election where Bush defeated Democrat John F. Kerry, writes in “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege … And How We Can Be Safe Again.”

Ridge’s book will only fuel Bush critics, who have long said that his White House used terror threats to distract the public from the unpopular Iraq war. The Bush team has long denied that was the case. “Never were politics ever discussed in this context in my presence,” she said. Asked if there was any reason for Ridge to have felt pressured, Townsend told the AP:

“He was certainly not pressured. And, by the way, he didn’t object when it was raised and he certainly didn’t object when it wasn’t raised.”

The summary... says that Ridge also reveals in the book how the department was "pressured to connect homeland security to the international “war on terror;” and how he had "pushed for a plan (defeated because of turf wars) to integrate DHS and FEMA disaster management in New Orleans and other areas before Hurricane Katrina."

The CNP, 'Alternative' Media and Controlled Opposition

July 20, 2009

Dissecting the New Age - If you have never heard of ultra-secret Council for National Policy (CNP) before, don’t be surprised because it’s almost never mentioned by the media, and especially not by those “big names” in the alternative media who regularly feature CNP members as guests on their show.

Established in 1981 by Tim LaHaye, an evangelical minister, author and speaker, the CNP was founded as a forum for “conservative” politicians, business leaders, members of the media, and evangelical leaders seeking to “strengthen the political right” in the United States. The group’s initial funding was provided by Rockefeller associate Nelson Bunker Hunt. Hunt and the Rockefeller family also played a leading role in the financing of the John Birch Society.

Since 1981, the CNP has been meeting in secret three times a year to set the agenda for the conservative and evangelical movement in the U.S. Its meetings are held in undisclosed locations and are off-limits to the general public and apparently the media as well. The reason for this, as claimed by the CNP, is to “allow for a free-flowing exchange of ideas,” a reason often used by other powerful and secretive elite non-governmental organizations that work to set policy from behind the scenes and outside of the so-called “democratic process.”

Because of the CNP’s secretive nature, some, including members of the CNP itself, have compared it to the slightly less secretive but more powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CNP is often viewed as the right wing’s version of the Eastern Liberal Establishment’s CFR, though when looking through the group’s roster, it doesn’t take long to find many names which are/were also members of the CFR. Surely anyone who has done their homework knows that the Left vs. Right argument is a ruse, and that whether somebody in a position of power claims to be “liberal” or “conservative” they are still — knowingly or unknowingly — working toward the furtherance of the globalist, one world agenda.

Some have said that the CNP is even more powerful than the CFR. I find this hard to believe because the CFR is part of a global network and simply the American branch of the British-based Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), which has satellites in all commonwealth countries — ie. Canadian Institute for International Affairs, Australian Institute for International Affairs, etc. (In the US it’s called the Council on Foreign Relations because we are supposedly free from British rule… or so we think.)

While there are no doubt some very powerful names involved with the CNP, and it receives its funding from some very dubious sources, it more than likely works under the auspices of the CFR and serves more of a dialectical role in the left/right paradigm, formulating propaganda for the “Christian” right, versus serving as globalist policy makers which truly do control both sides of the political game and have a global influence (like the CFR, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg, etc.). The group may be able to get away with their secrecy because they do, in fact, exercise less power and influence than the more widely known groups which wield global power.

With that said, it’s important not to discount the CNP’s role in the agenda. While the CNP may not be as powerful as other globalist NGOs, they are powerful in their control over the so-called conservative movement in this country, which ties in closely with the “patriot” movement and alternative media, which many people rely on to deliver them what they believe is “the truth.”
The elite control and administer every side of every issue and debate, and the more people wake up and realize how this control is exercised, the less likely they will be duped by the controlled opposition that’s put out there to lead them in circles, while keeping them neutralized with endless fear-mongering and disinformation.

People also need to begin asking themselves why those they have depended on to bring them the truth will not talk about the CNP on their radio programs. These people need to be repeatedly confronted about this on air and questioned about what they know about the CNP...

Report: Cheney Felt Bush Stopped Taking His Advice

August 13, 2009

AP - Former Vice President Dick Cheney believes his old boss, President George W. Bush, gradually turned away from his advice during their second term in the White House, showing a surprising independence as he started taking more flexible positions on a range of issues, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

Cheney, often described as the most influential vice president in U.S. history, has been discussing his years in office in informal talks with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues, the Post said, as he works on a memoir due out in 2011 from Simon & Schuster's Threshold Editions.

Robert Barnett, who negotiated Cheney's book contract, passed word to potential publishers that the memoir would be packed with news, said the article published on the Post Web site, and Cheney himself has said, without explanation, that "the statute of limitations has expired" on many of his secrets.



The book will cover Cheney's long career from chief of staff under President Gerald Ford to vice president under Bush.

"When the president made decisions that I didn't agree with, I still supported him and didn't go out and undercut him," Cheney said, according to Stephen Hayes, his authorized biographer. "Now we're talking about after we've left office. I have strong feelings about what happened... And I don't have any reason not to forthrightly express those views."

According to the author of the Post piece, Barton Gellman, who earlier wrote a book on Cheney called "Angler," the former vice president believes Bush made concessions to public sentiment, something Cheney views as moral weakness. After years of praising Bush as a man of resolve, Cheney now intimates that the former president turned out to be more like an ordinary politician in the end, Gellman says.

"In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him," Gellman quoted a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney's reply. "He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney's advice. He'd showed an independence that Cheney didn't see coming."

The Post quoted John P. Hannah, Cheney's second-term national security adviser, as saying Cheney remains driven, now as before, by the possibility of terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons from a nation hostile to the U.S.

What is new, Hannah said, is Cheney's readiness to acknowledge "doubts about the main channels of American policy during the last few years," a period encompassing most of Bush's second term.

The Bush/Cheney Legacy Examined
Cheney Uncloaks His Frustration With Bush: 'Statute of Limitations Has Expired' on Many Secrets,...

Iraq Contractor KBR Cited By Oversight Commission

August 11, 2009

AP - A federal panel has accused Houston-based KBR Inc. (subsidiary of Halliburton) of resisting government oversight and failing to cut costs on support work in Iraq.

The allegation comes from the Commission on Wartime Contracting. That's an independent panel examining waste and fraud in wartime spending.

During a hearing before the commission in Washington, the contracting giant defended its performance. Its representatives told commissioners that it was under heavy pressure to meet the urgent demands of military commanders.

But commissioners say KBR's internal accounting and cost estimating systems have been inadequate since 2005. That's led to questionable billings and drawn out arguments with federal auditors over hundreds of millions of dollars in charges.

Commissioner Dov Zakheim said KBR's top managers meet regularly with the Defense Contract Audit Agency. Yet the company has been unable to come up with solutions that satisfy the agency. By comparison, he says Dyncorp International and other large contractors seem to work out their problems quickly.

Halliburton Shareholders Sue to ‘Punish’ Company Directors

August 1, 2009

The Raw Story - To settle charges that its agents bribed Nigerian officials in order to obtain billions of dollars in contracts in the country, Halliburton Co. and KBR agreed in February to pay a combined total of $579 million to the U.S. government.

And if that did not sting the company coffers enough, a group of shareholders is now suing the company in Harris County District Court, seeking to “punish” officials who allowed such lax standards that millions of dollars could be spirited away to Nigerian bureaucrats, incurring massive fines and harming shareholders’ profits.

“According to the lawsuit, ‘the defendants caused Halliburton to maintain internal controls that were so deficient that Halliburton insiders were able to divert millions of dollars of company funds to pay illegal bribes to various foreign officials in direct violation of the [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act]. Defendant’s failure in this regard has caused substantial damage to Halliburton,’” Houston Press reports.

Nearly $150 million of the $180 million given was later discovered in a Swiss bank account.

The suit adds that for bribing officials between 1994 and 2004, damages should reflect “an amount necessary to punish defendants and to make an example of defendants to the community.” It was filed by the Central Laborer’s Pension Fund, which represents almost 7,00 retired workers.

“The fund was the owner and holder of Halliburton common stock,” continued Houston Press. “It claims that as a result of the fines, which were paid to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities Exchange Commission, Halliburton recorded a $303 million loss due to discontinued operations in the fourth quarter of 2008, or rather, a loss of 34-cents a share.”

“KBR’s subsidiary Kellog Brown & Root LLC pleaded guilty in a Houston federal court [in February] to criminal charges of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” thus incurring the deluge of massive fines, noted Market Watch.

All Africa News added:

Last September, former KBR chief executive Albert “Jack” Stanley pleaded guilty to conspiring in a decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials to obtain $6 billion in engineering and construction contracts for a liquefied natural gas plant.

Stanley acknowledged in his plea that a four-company joint venture that included KBR paid about $182 million to consulting companies that then paid bribes to several Nigerian government officials.

Under federal law, it is illegal for U.S. companies to pay bribes to win foreign business. The investigation, under the US Foreign and Corrupt Practices Act, focused on KBR’s involvement in the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in Nigeria from 1996 onwards. At the time it was Africa’s largest ever industrial investment project.

The recent settlement for its alleged Nigerian bribery is not the first time Halliburton has been involved in shady foreign dealings, as activist group Halliburton Watch illustrates:

The Pentagon admitted that a $7 billion no-bid contract to extinguish oil fires in Iraq was awarded to Halliburton after a “political appointee” from the Bush administration recommended the company for the job. Government policy forbids politicians or their appointees from taking a role in awarding contracts to private corporations. But Vice President Cheney ignored this basic principle when his political appointees were directly involved in awarding a $7 billion contract to Halliburton to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure (Cheney is former CEO of Halliburton).

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is investigating the legality of Halliburton’s business dealings in Iran, an enemy of the United States. Halliburton sells goods and services to Iranian companies through its Cayman Islands subsidiary. The sales appear to have violated the U.S. trade embargo against trading with Iran. The OFAC referred the case to the Department of Justice, which is conducting a criminal investigation.

The Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice issued a subpoena to a former employee of Halliburton’s KBR unit to determine whether the company criminally overcharged for gasoline imported into Iraq. KBR, along with its Kuwaiti subcontractor Altanmia Commercial Marketing Co., allegedly overcharged the government by $61 million, but Democrats in Congress say the overcharges were closer to $167 million. KBR charged the government $2.64 per gallon of gasoline while competitors were importing gasoline for less than half that price.

Sibel Edmonds Deposition: Deep Corruption Beneath the Surface

August 11, 2009

NowPublic - August 8, 2009, Sibel Edmonds gave a sworn deposition in which she testified to her knowledge of treasonous crimes and corruption involving current and former members of Congress and State and Defense Dept. officials.

Given the nature of the deposition, the lines of questioning focused on Turkish espionage and services obtained through bribery and blackmail by Turkish officials and proxies.

However, Edmonds has previously disclosed that the corruption involving U.S. officials also includes money laundering, trafficking in drugs, arms and nuclear secrets, U.S. support for Bin Laden/Al Qaeda, and obstruction of FBI investigations related to 9/11, before and after the attacks; she said these things came up “briefly” during the deposition.

Edmonds learned of these things from wiretaps she listened to while working as a translator for the FBI in 2001-2002.

Video coverage from VelvetRevolution.us and BradBlog.com

Edmonds' Aug 8 testimony was subpoenaed by David Krikorian (Democratic 2010 Congressional candidate- OH) to support his defense against a lawsuit brought by Jean Schmidt, R-OH. Krikorian had circulated a flier in his 2008 campaign in which he alleged that Schmidt had accepted “blood money” from Turkish interests in exchange for opposing a Congressional resolution acknowledging the Turkish genocide of Armenians in World War I. The deposition took place in Washington, DC at the headquarters of the National Whistleblower Center

After the deposition, Edmonds took questions, and spoke in general terms about the deposition subjects (video, 13:25):

Larson- “Were you able to talk about any of the stuff that you’ve said about 9/11 in the past - did any of that come up?”

Edmonds- “We talked very briefly on Central Asia angle and 9/11 and the Mujahideen and Al Qaeda… and the role played by certain Turkish entities, so we talked briefly about that, yes, but mainly on the corruption U.S. persons, even in relation to those activities… it came up briefly.”

Larson- “How about the stuff about nuclear trafficking, drug smuggling, arms trafficking?”

Edmonds- “Yes, it came up - not in detail - Mr. Grossman’s name came up and Brewster-Jennings - I believe this is gonna be for the first time under Oath, on the record, people getting answer on Brewster-Jennings and the real story - not the crap that they got from the media.”

It seems that while a great deal of new information came out in this deposition that will justify criminal investigations and widespread media coverage, Edmonds was witness to a great deal more that remains to be disclosed and properly investigated.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft had invoked the State Secrets privilege in 2002 to quash Sibel Edmonds’ lawsuit against the DOJ for suppression of her Right to speak freely about the crimes and corruption she had witnessed.

He invoked the State Secrets privilege again in 2004 to prevent her from testifying in a case brought by family members of 9/11 victims, classified her date of birth and also retroactively classified letters from Sens. Grassley and Leahy that had been public for nearly 2 years (this was later overturned, when POGO, who had published the letters, sued the DOJ).

The DOJ attempted to dissuade Edmonds testifying this time as well, but did not re-invoke the State Secrets privilege and did not appear at the deposition.

No so-called “mainstream” print or broadcast media showed up to cover the deposition. Too bad for them, as Edmonds’ allegations reportedly include a juicy sex scandal involving a current Democratic Congresswoman - exactly the kind of thing the mainstream media loves to cover in depth ad nauseum. Given that these allegations intersect with allegations of treasonous activities by high-level figures in the Democrat and Republican establishment, it seems unlikely the corporate media will report on this, even when the video and transcript are made public.

One mainstream media outlet did acknowledge that the deposition would be happening:

Ex-FBI Translator Tests Justice Dept. Again – CQPolitics.com

Several U.S. and Armenian independent media stayed until the press conference following the deposition, and will be covering further developments:

The event was reported on in advance and live blogged by Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com; Friedman interviewed participants by cell phone with the help of on-site associates, who also took video and photos...

David Krikorian said, quoted by Brad Friedman:

“From my opinion, if I'm some of the current members of Congress, I'd be very very worried about the information that's going to come out of this. There are current members of Congress that she has implicated in bribery, espionage. It's not good. It's crazy, it's absolutely crazy. For people in power situations in the United States, who know about this information, if they don't take action against it, in my opinion, it's negligence.”

Regardless of whether the Obama Administration or the Democrat-controlled Congress want to investigate evidence of treason by Democrats and Republicans, and regardless of whether the corporate “news” media are inclined to report on any of this, public opinion and action organized through word of mouth and the web have the power to compel public servants to follow the law, as well as turn this into a story the corporate media can’t ignore.