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In the last few weeks, UK's Times has run a series of articles about the so-called 'Sibel Edmonds case.' (' For sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets, ' FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft' and ' Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe')
Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds stumbled into a world of espionage, nuclear black market, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and corruption at the highest levels of the US government.
I interviewed Sibel yesterday regarding the current investigation and reporting by the Times, the failures of the US media, and last week's decision by the Bush administration to legalize the sale of nuclear technology to Turkey, in an apparent to exonerate prior criminal activity by officials in his administration.
Sibel also has some urgent 'action items' so that we can stop these dangerous nuclear proliferation activities. I urge you to act on her suggestions.
Luke Ryland: What do you have to say about the recent work by the Insight journalists - Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert, Joe Lauria - at the UK's Times?
Sibel Edmonds: They've done good, solid reporting so far by doing what reporters are supposed to. They have been chasing sources and getting their hands on documents. It's pretty simple. As you know, this story has been available to any journalist for six years now.
There's been a lot of speculation in the last few weeks that American reporters haven't touched this story because they are 'corporate owned' but it is wrong to exonerate these reporters so quickly. Many of them are too close to their official sources, and some are simply lazy. This Times team chases sources, and if they can't reach them one way, they'll try and try again, or they'll seek out alternate sources, or find other ways to ensure that they get the story.
When I hear from US reporters, they say 'Sibel, give us all the documents we'll need, and you line up all the sources for us, and then maybe we'll do a story' and if one source doesn't return their phone call, they simply give up. That's not journalism!
Ryland: Why has the US failed on this story so dramatically for 6 years?
Edmonds: It's a combination of things, obviously. You need to consider that the entire US press corps has failed on this story; not only the regular print and TV media, but the alternative media has failed on this too.
Part of the reason is that journalists are simply too close to their official sources. Those sources might tell the journalist that there's nothing to the story, and so the journalist gives up on it, or the official sources might 'request' that the journalist to stay away from the story, and the journalist is then concerned about losing access to the source in the future.
Another reason is the partisanship. With the foreign press, there is no partisanship, and that's one reason why they have been more effective at covering this case, and I'm not just talking about the recent Times articles here. With the US media, it appears as though if there is no clear partisan angle, then there's no story. As you know, this case is spread over two administrations, and that appears to make it difficult for the reporters to cover the story. Even within one news organization you might have one journalist who wants to use the story to indict Clinton, and another who wants to use the story to bash Bush, and in the end neither of them write about the story because it doesn't fit their partisanship, their 'narrative', so they just drop it altogether.
I had such high hopes for the alternative press, and they do a lot of good work, but partisanship repeatedly gets in the way there too, on both sides.
The US media also suffers from a pack mentality. I was told by one executive that they weren't doing the story because it was 'old news' because 60 Minutes/i> did a single segment in October 2002, even though they only covered a tiny part of the case. This executive literally told me that he'd only cover the story if it was 'hot and sexy.' I often think that I'd need to be able to hire Britney Spears to be a spokesperson -- and this is not just for my case, but for any of the many other solid, important cases at the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition Apparently this is what it would take to get any coverage.
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