California Courier Online, October 5, 2006
1 – Commentary
Have Turkish Agents Penetrated
Highest Echelons of US Government?
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
2 – Lincy Foundation
Donates $100,000
To Sahag-Mesrob
3 – Turkish-Armenian
Journalist Dink
Indicted Again
4 – Cong. Pallone Visits Armenia Fund Office
5- Dr. Chookaszian to Lecture Oct. 18 at CSUF
6 – UAF’s 140th Airlift Delivers $1 Million of Aid to
Armenia
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1 – Commentary
Have Turkish Agents Penetrated
Highest Echelons of US Government?
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
The Vanity Fair magazine published last year an investigative article
alleging that the American Turkish Council (ATC) and the Assembly of
Turkish American Associations (ATAA) had conspired, among other
things, to make illegal campaign contributions to the Speaker of the
House, Dennis Hastert, in return for blocking a congressional
resolution on the Armenian Genocide. The article also mentioned that
Turkish agents had infiltrated the highest echelons of the U.S.
government.
The main source for some of the Vanity Fair revelations was Sibel
Edmonds who had worked as a Turkish translator for the FBI.
Unfortunately, she could not disclose most of what she knew on this
sensitive subject, as she is legally prohibited from making public
the confidential FBI documents that she had translated in the course
of her work. All attempts by U.S. courts or Members of Congress to
get out the full facts have been quashed by the Bush Administration,
using the cover of protecting national security.
There have been several disclosures in recent months, mostly from
anonymous sources, which shed further light on this matter. A few
days ago, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen posted a special
report (WMR) on his website which included alarming allegations about
the extent of illegal activities by Turkish groups in the United
States. As the report is based on confidential intelligence sources,
there is no way of independently verifying its content. Here are
excerpts from that report:
In 2001, “the FBI counter-intelligence operation was investigating a
weapons smuggling and influence-peddling ring that was centered on
the activities of the American Turkish Council (ATC), a major Turkish
lobbying organization in Washington, DC headed up by George H. W.
Bush National Security Adviser, retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft.
According to U.S. intelligence sources, a principal player in the
ring was [Marc] Grossman, a career foreign service officer who served
as U.S. ambassador to Turkey from 1994 to 1997 and then moved back to
Washington where he served as Assistant Secretary of State for
European Affairs.” In June 2001, Grossman, by then-Undersecretary of
State for Political Affairs, made two phone calls to two foreign
intelligence agents in Washington, DC. “The calls were intercepted by
the FBI.”
“At the end of June 2001, the FBI learned, through its surveillance
of the ring, Beyaz Enerji (White Energy), a Turkish energy firm, told
its ATC interlocutors in Washington that it was sending a high-level
team to the United States to negotiate the procurement of nuclear
materials for Turkey’s nuclear power program. In turn, the ATC
contacted four individuals who had access to Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Tennessee and Los Alamos National Laboratories in New
Mexico and asked them to arrange a three month visit to the labs by
the Turkish nuclear specialists (October through December 2001) to
ascertain Turkish requirements.
“The Beyaz Enerji group also made known its desire to purchase U.S.
nuclear energy consulting firms that maintained access to facilities
like Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, and Lawrence Livermore in California.
However, at the same time Beyaz Enerji was making its play for access
into U.S. nuclear labs, Brewster Jennings and Associates, the CIA
cover company of Valerie Plame Wilson, was very close to penetrating
the Beyaz Enerji ring, known to the CIA as part of a major nuclear
black market operation involving key players in Turkey, Pakistan,
Israel, Iran, and the former Soviet Central Asian states. According
to CIA sources, the ring also involved a key ATC ally in Washington
— the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a group that
provided important access to top U.S. political leaders for Turkish
military and industrial chiefs.
“When Beyaz Enerji began to encounter ‘consultants’ with Brewster
Jennings, they expressed an interest to their ATC interlocutors in
buying the firm along with other energy consulting companies. In the
two phone calls intercepted by the FBI, Grossman told the called
parties to ‘stay away from Brewster Jennings . . . they’re the
government . . . they’re nothing but a cover.’ One of the calls was
to a Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) top agent in
Washington. The other call, bearing an almost identical message, was
made to a Northrop Grumman official who was a key player with the
ATC. The Northrop Grumman official made a phone call to his ATC
handler, stating, ‘Our guy warned us off Brewster Jennings.’ A U.S.
intelligence source stated that ‘Grossman’s name was all over the FBI
wiretaps in 2001.’
“Grossman, who now works for the Cohen Group of former Defense
Secretary William Cohen, was, according to U.S. intelligence sources,
a subject of interest to counter-intelligence agents since his stint
as U.S. ambassador in Ankara. One of Grossman’s embassy officials was
U.S. Air Force Major Douglas Dickerson, who worked in the embassy’s
military attaché office and was responsible for logistics matters
with the Turkish military. While in Ankara, Dickerson met and later
married Melek Can Harputlu, who U.S. intelligence sources claim was
on the payroll of the MIT — the Turkish Intelligence Agency. U.S.
intelligence sources confirmed that Grossman ordered Dickerson to
assist International Advisors, Inc. (IAI), a lobbying firm registered
in 1989 by Douglas Feith [former Under Secretary of Defense] under
the stewardship of Richard Perle [former Assistant Secretary of
Defense]. The main task of IAI was to represent the government of
Turkey in the United States and ‘promote the
objective of U.S.-Turkey defense industrial cooperation.’ IAI, for
which Feith was CEO and sole stockholder, also steered hundreds of
thousands of dollars to Feith’s law firm, Feith and Zell (FANZ).
“Soon, Dickerson, under Grossman’s aegis, was promoted to handle all
U.S. weapons procurement for Turkey, Azerbaijan (where Richard
Armitage was heading up the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce),
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. In 1996, the
Defense Department’s Inspector General’s office launched an
investigation of a U.S. military officer at the Ankara embassy who
was caught receiving a bribe from MIT agents. Shortly after the
investigation started, Dickerson was transferred to a U.S. Air Force
base in Germany. Dickerson’s wife, Melek Can worked for the
German-Turkish Business and Cultural Association, known to be a cover
for MIT activities in Germany.
“In 2001, after George W. Bush became president, Dickerson was
promoted and placed in charge of weapons procurement for Turkey,
Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan at the
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at Bolling Air Force Base in
Washington. Melek Can obtained positions with the ATC and ATAA.
“Following the 9/11 attacks, Melek Can applied for a translator job
at the FBI’s Washington Field Office. In a Justice Department
Inspector General report, it is stated that Melek Can failed to list
on her application her prior jobs with ATC, ATAA, and the
German-Turkish Business and Cultural Association. When FBI translator
Sibel Edmonds (a Turkish, Farsi, and Azerbaijani translator who
worked with Melek Can) complained publicly about MIT’s penetration of
the FBI, Senators Patrick Leahy and Charles Grassley pointedly asked
the FBI why no Special Background Investigation (SBI) was conducted
on Melek Can. The FBI’s responded that Melek Can entered the FBI
‘through the backdoor’ with her husband’s Top Secret/SBI being
sufficient grounds to grant Melek Can access to FBI classified
information. At the same time, the Dickersons were, according to U.S.
intelligence sources, working closely with the ATC.
“Edmonds’ charges against the Dickersons were highlighted in a June
2002 Washington Post article. On September 9, 2002, the Dickersons
left Washington for Belgium, where Major Dickerson was assigned to
the U.S. Air Force NATO office. Soon, there were three separate
investigations of Edmonds’ espionage charges against the Dickersons:
the Justice Department IG probe, a similar probe by the Department of
Defense IG led by Joseph Schmitz, and a U.S. Senate Judiciary
Committee investigation led by Leahy and Grassley.
“Two weeks after the Dickersons arrived in Belgium, Schmitz sent a
letter stating that Major Dickerson’s relationship with the ATC while
at DIA was ‘within the scope of his duties.’ The DOD IG terminated
the investigation.”
Attorney General John Ashcroft then “invoked the State Secrets
Privilege and imposed a ‘gag order’ on Edmonds’ making any further
comments to the media about her wrongful termination suit against the
FBI, which was prompted by her raising concerns about the Dickersons.
The invocation of the State Secrets Privilege by Ashcroft was
specifically requested by the Defense and State Departments.
“Upon publication of a Vanity Fair article in August 2005 about the
Edmonds case and those of other national security whistleblowers, the
Department of Defense and U.S. Air Force opened a joint IG
investigation of Major Dickerson and Edmonds’ charges, who was still
safely ensconced at the NATO office in Belgium.
“When the DoD/USAF IG investigators asked Major Dickerson once again
about the allegations that had re-surfaced against him, U.S.
intelligence sources report he told them that he would ‘start
talking’ if the investigation proceeded. The DoD/USAF IG
investigation of Dickerson was once again quickly terminated. In
January 2006, Dickerson was promoted in rank to Lieutenant Colonel
and transferred to the U.S. Air Force base in Yokota, Japan, where he
was assigned as the 374th Logistics Readiness Squadron’s acting
commander.
“U.S. intelligence sources stated that the ‘same people’ who have
continually protected Perle and Feith since the 1980s were also
protecting Dickerson and Grossman. CIA sources, including those who
served in Istanbul tracking nuclear smuggling in the late 1980s, also
confirm that the Turkish-U.S. nuclear black marketeering ring was
directly tied to the Abdul Qadeer Khan nuclear smuggling ring in
Pakistan, an operation that sold sensitive nuclear technology to
Iran, North Korea, and Libya. The ATC and ATAA in Washington are
directly tied to and supported by AIPAC and the Jewish Institute for
National Security Affairs (JINSA), reported a U.S.
counter-intelligence source. In fact, JINSA is an ‘Aegean’ member of
the ATC. The source said that Valerie Plame Wilson was targeting the
ATC and Turkey at the height of her counter-proliferation work in
2001, but special interests associated with AIPAC and JINSA, which
the source claims control ATC, scuttled Plame Wilson’s operation
by exposing Brewster Jennings as a CIA front company.
“The CIA’s counter-narcotics division is also keenly interested in
ATC and its connections to NATO. A Turkish hashish kingpin, Huseyin
Baybasin, now jailed in the Netherlands for narcotics smuggling,
stated that the Turkish military and its NATO interlocutors are
totally involved in the drug trade in Turkey. He said the Turkish
military uses MIT and Turkish embassies, consulates, military
missions (particularly the Turkish military attaché offices in
London and Amsterdam) as drug smuggling facilitators. The Turkish
military also reportedly uses its hated Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK)
enemies to help transport drugs throughout Western Asia, especially
heroin now being produced in Afghanistan at record high levels….
“Since Grossman joined the Cohen Group as Vice Chairman in January
2005, the firm has become a top client for the ATC. In October 2005,
Grossman was appointed a board member of Ihlas Holding, a media
corporation that recently sold its TGRT Television network to Rupert
Murdoch’s NewsCorp. U.S. law enforcement sources confirm that Feith
remains under a DoD IG investigation that is being spurred by North
Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones.”
There is a clear need for a congressional hearing to expose all the
facts of this very serious matter. However, it would be impossible to
hold such a hearing as long as the White House and the Congress are
controlled by Republicans who are eager to protect not only their own
leadership in the House but also many top officials in both the
Pentagon and the State Department who are allegedly involved in these
illegal activities.
Furthermore, while the Bush administration is aggressively
confronting the Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, shouldn’t the
American public expect a similar concern for Turkey’s efforts in this
regard, particularly since it is alleged that high ranking current
and former administration officials are covertly assisting Turkey to
go nuclear?
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2 – Lincy Foundation
Donates $100,000
To Sahag-Mesrob
GLENDALE – The Sahag-Mesrob Armenian Christian School announced the
receipt of a $100,000 donation last week from The Lincy Foundation.
Established in 1980, the school was accredited by WASC (Western
Association of Schools and Colleges) and ACSI (Association of
Christian Schools International) first in 1998 and once again in
2004.
Over 375 students of Armenian descent attend the school which offers
classes from Nursery to 12th grade. The mission of the school is to
provide Christian Education, teach the Armenian Language and Culture
and provide the highest Academic Standards in learning. The
Accredited High School program offers the following subjects:
English Language and Literature, World Literature, Algebra I,
Algebra II, Geometry, Pre-Calculus, Biology, Chemistry, Physics,
Honors Physics, U.S. History, Honors U.S. History, Civics, World
History, Arts, Drama, Armenian, Band and Bible. Also, several
juniors and seniors concurrently take college courses offered at
Pasadena City College.
To inquire about the school’s mission and academic plans, visit the
school website at , or call the office at
626-798-5020.
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3 – Turkish-Armenian
Journalist Dink
Indicted Again
ISTANBUL (AFP) – An Istanbul court has indicted Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink for “denigrating the Turkish national identity”
by calling the 1915-17 massacres of Armenians a “genocide”, his
lawyer said on Monday.
Dink received a suspended three-month jail sentence in October for an
article about the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman
Empire, which many countries recognise as genocide. An appeal was
rejected in July.
The European Union condemned Dink’s conviction at that point, and the
journalist “granted an interview to a foreign news agency on the 1915
events, in which he employed certain words,” as his lawyer put it,
speaking to AFP.
If convicted again, the journalist will have to serve his original
sentence plus a possible three more years.
His lawyer Fethiye Cetin said the new proceedings had been sparked
when Agos, the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly that Dink edits,
reprinted excerpts from the July interview.
In the interview, Dink says of the World War I killings of Armenians:
“Of course I say this is a genocide, because the result itself
identifies what it is and gives it a name. You can see that a people
who have been living on these lands for four thousand years have
disappeared. This is self-explanatory.”
Ankara refuses to apply the term genocide to the events. Earlier this
month it rejected a European Union report saying that it should do so
as a condition for joining the bloc.
Nevertheless, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted last week
that Article 301 of the Turksh penal code — which is the legal basis
for Dink’s indictment and for most proceedings against intellectuals
who speak out about the Armenian question — could be amended.
The EU has repeatedly warned Ankara that the prosecution of
intellectuals for exercising their right to free speech is damaging
Turkey’s membership bid.
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4 – Cong. Pallone Visits Armenia Fund Office
LOS ANGELES – U.S. Congressman and Co-Chair of the
Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ)
visited the offices of Armenia Fund U.S. Western Region and met with
leadership and staff of the organization on Sept. 23.
Maria Mehranian, Chairperson of Armenia Fund, Sarkis Kotanjian,
Executive Director, and Greg Boyrazian, Director of Development, held
a breakfast meeting with the congressman. Among the various topics
discussed during the meeting was the U.S. Millennium Challenge
Corporation’s grant of $235.65 million made to Armenia over a course
of five years. The grant is designed to combat rural poverty through
the construction of new rural roads and a modern irrigation network
for the purpose of revitalizing Armenia’s rural economy. The project
is aimed at making Armenia the region’s breadbasket through this
critical socio-economic stimulus project.
According to the MCC, the compact includes a $67 million project to
rehabilitate up to 943 kilometers of rural roads, more than a third
of Armenia’s proposed Lifeline road network. The program will be
joined by Armenia Fund’s major Rural Poverty Eradication program
later in fiscal year 2007. The ambitious infrastructure development
program was unveiled by Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian during the
3rd Armenia-Diaspora Conference in Yerevan.
Mehranian thanked Congressman Pallone for his unyielding support of
issues vital to the development of Armenia. She emphasized that U.S.
foreign aid to Armenia, along with the growing support of the
Diaspora through Armenia Fund, are contributing to the critical
development of Armenia and Nagorno Karabagh. Pallone stressed that
the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s grant should not be used as an
excuse for decreasing any type of aid to Armenia under the Foreign
Aid Operation act. He pledged to continue to fight for more foreign
aid to Armenia and Nagorno Karabagh.
Kotanjian also thanked the Congressman for his support, especially to
the fledgling Republic of Nagorno Karabagh. It is
noteworthy that Congressman Pallone has been to the republic several
times. He highly commended Armenia Fund’s ongoing projects,
especially in Nagorno Karabagh. Kotanjian later added details about
the ongoing regional development program in Martakert.
In 2007, Armenia Fund plans on implementing a parallel regional
development program in the southernmost
poverty-stricken Hadrut region as well. The 2006 Telethon will raise
funds for that purpose.
Pallone pledged to push for more assistance to Nagorno Karabagh in
the context of regional development. Pallone wished the Armenia Fund
a successful Telethon and a strong future as it embarks on the Rural
Poverty Eradication Program.
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5 – Dr. Chookaszian to Lecture Oct. 18 at CSUF
FRESNO – Dr. Levon Chookaszian, Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian
Studies at Fresno State, will give an illustrated lecture on
“Armenian Massacres and Genocide and the Liberation Movement as
Reflected in Armenian Art,” at 7:30 PM on October 18. This second
lecture, in his series of three, will be held in the Alice Peters
Auditorium, Room 191, in the University Business Center on the Fresno
State campus.
The Armenian massacres of 1895-96 and of 1905-1907 stimulated the
appearence of topics related to those events in the works of Armenian
painters. The first artist who represented the acts of violence and
ethnic cleaning was Haroutyune Shamshinian(1856-1914). Later on
numerous Armenian artworks were produced by different artists
depicting those horrible pages of Armenian modern history.
During the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1922, certain painters became
the eyewitnesses of the deportation of the Armenian people from their
native lands and portrayed those homeless people, sometimes even
endangering their own life.
The mass tragedies of those years created the generations of
orphan-painters, who grew up in orphanages in foreign countries and
until the end of their lives produced artworks full of sadness and
nostalgy.
The shortages of the Soviet system and the ideological pressure and
censorship did not encourage that kind of activity and created
obstacles and problems for painters and sculptors. The depiction of
any topic related to massacres or Genocide was considered
nationalistic propaganda and an attempt to destroy the international
solidarity and brotherhood of different nations, including
Armenian-Turkish, especially Armenian-Azeri connections.
Dr. Chookaszian will utilize slides taken from his many trips to
various countries to illustrate his lecture.
The scholar will conclude his series of the presentations on Nov.
15, with a talk on “Armenian Art Treasures Saved from the Genocide.”
The talk will start at 7:30 PM in the Peters Auditorium.
Dr. Chookaszian is an expert on Armenian illuminated manuscripts of
the Middle Ages and has recently finished a monograph on the 13th
century Armenian painter, Toros Roslin, the most outstanding painter
of medieval Armenia. For many years, he has been Director of the
UNESCO Chair of Art History at Yerevan State University and a Senior
Fellow and Professor of Armenian Art at the Center for Armenian
Studies at Yerevan State University.
He is the author of more than 200 articles and reviews for scholarly
journals and newspapers as well as numerous entries for
encyclopedias. He is also the recipient of several prestigious grants
that have helped him pursue his research in Armenian art history.
All lectures are fee and open to the public.
For more on the lectures, contact the Armenian Studies Program at
559-278-2669.
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6 – UAF’s 140th Airlift Delivers $1 Million of Aid to
Armenia GLENDALE, CA – The United Armenian Fund’s 140th airlift
arrived in Yerevan on September 30, delivering over $1 million of
humanitarian assistance. The UAF itself collected $106,000 of
medicines and medical supplies for this flight, most of which were
donated by AmeriCares ($83,000); Catholic Medical Mission Board
($14,000) and Health Partners International of Canada ($9,000).
Other organizations which contributed goods for this airlift were:
Fund for Armenian Relief ($385,000); Nork Marash Medical Center
($166,000); Centre D’Assistance Mondial Armenien de Montreal
($90,000); Dr. Stephen M. Kashian ($84,000); Hershey Medical Center
($55,000); Focus Armenia/Dr. Mary Alani ($54,000); and Sacred Heart
Medical Center ($41,000). Also contributing to this airlift were:
Anahid Yeremian ($19,000); Howard Karagheusian Commemorative
Foundation ($18,000); Armenian Relief Society ($16,000); Armenian
Cultural Foundation ($15,000); Armenian General Benevolent Union
($13,000); Dr. Samuel Malayan ($10,000) and Armenian American Medical
Society of CA ($10,000). Since its inception in 1989, the UAF has
sent $447 million of humanitarian assistance to Armenia on board 140
airlifts and 1,359 sea containers. The UAF is the collective effort
of the Armenian Assembly of America, Armenian General Benevolent
Union, Armenian Missionary Association of America, Armenian Relief
Society, Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, Prelacy of the
Armenian Apostolic Church of America and The Lincy Foundation. For
more information, contact the UAF office at 1101 North Pacific
Avenue, Suite 301, Glendale, CA 91202 or call (818) 241-8900.
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