Entered into the database on Thursday, September 01st, 2005 @ 13:16:41 MST
August 31, 2005 -- A convergence of investigations: AIPAC and ATC. As reported
previously on WMR, federal investigators are poring over wiretap transcripts
and other intelligence that link the Larry Franklin/Rosen/Weissman AIPAC investigation
to the investigation of who in the White House leaked the name of Valerie Plame
Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates non-official cover company
to journalists, including Robert Novak. According to intelligence insiders,
a new nexus of the investigation is the intelligence relationship discovered
between AIPAC and the American Turkish Council (ATC). As with the AIPAC and
Mossad penetration of the Pentagon, a similar ATC and Turkish intelligence penetration
of the Defense Department was discovered and it reportedly involved some of
the same players involved in the AIPAC probe, including former Deputy Secretary
of Defense for Policy and Plans Douglas Feith. In addition, two former U.S. ambassadors to Turkey -- Marc Grossman
(who has since joined the Cohen Group of former Defense Secretary William Cohen)
and Eric Edelman, who replaced Feith at the Pentagon, were identified in FBI
wiretaps as key players with the ATC. The AIPAC and ATC link involves
individuals who profit from the use of Turkey as a base for nuclear materials
proliferation, including fissile material from the former Soviet Central Asian
states, and heroin distribution from Afghanistan and other countries to Europe
and North America. The AIPAC-ATC links also involved persons and businesses
tied to the A. Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network that was headquartered
in Pakistan but had operational offices in Turkey. Those links, involving Israeli
citizen and nuclear smuggler Asher Karni and Turkish Jewish businessman Zeki
Bilmen and his New Jersey-based Giza Technologies, were first reported by WMR
on August 1. Another company that has reportedly been making entrees to the ATC-AIPAC
influence peddling consortium is the Ashcroft Group, a firm set up
in May 2005 by former Attorney General John Ashcroft to help countries with
law enforcement and counter-terrorism. Ashcroft's partner in the Ashcroft
Group is Juleanna Glover Weiss, who worked for Ashcroft, Steve Forbes, Rudolph
Giuliani, and Vice President Dick Cheney. As one intelligence insider
put the AIPAC-ATC links, "these have nothing to do with religion or politics,
just pure greed." 