Authors: Sibel Edmonds
Classified Woman (24 page)
Immediately after settling in, I started to explore. I visited the orphanage where my child referral was expected to come almost daily; because orphanages in Vietnam have an open-door policy I could go there, spend time with the children, help out, and get to know and become friends with the caregivers. I also arranged to teach English in a church-sponsored charity organization as a volunteer. I started making friends—people with whom I expect to remain friends for the rest of my life. And I waited and waited, impatiently, for that call: to inform me of my referral, and to meet my child to be.
Waiting was not easy; not at all. With the clock ticking on the adoption window, and with August fast approaching, my anxiety was starting to mount. By the end of July, I was grimly looking for deals on flights back home. I had thirty-one days left, and the prospect didn’t seem good. By August 4, I had my reservations in place and dimming hopes to deal with. It was out of my hands; twenty-seven more days of waiting.
Then, on August 8, the call at last came through: my referral. All I could make out in the haze of excitement was
baby girl, three weeks old, six pounds, relinquished
(i.e., not abandoned, meaning that the biological mother and/or father, formally and legally, had relinquished parental rights to the orphanage and, thus, the Vietnamese government). I sprang out of the hotel unit, ran to one of the managers, Phi, gave him a tight hug, and jumping up and down, babbled that I needed a motor bike to zoom me to the orphanage, fifteen minutes away. In less time than that I was in front of the door, pacing madly, waiting for the agency representative to show up. She arrived ten minutes later, which felt like an eon, and together we entered the place I had visited at least twenty times in two months.
I stood right behind her while she talked with one of the caregivers and showed her the paper with my daughter’s—yes, my
daughter
’s—name. The caregiver walked to one of the small rooms where they kept six or so cribs with newborns. My heart was pounding. We followed her inside. She leaned over one of the cribs and picked up a teeny tiny baby bundled in red swaddle. I couldn’t yet see her face; finally, the caregiver turned around and came to us. My representative took the baby and brought her up to me, and I reached out. Everything else after that is a complete blur. All I remember is holding my child in my arms and staring at her face, her jet black alert eyes, ruby red heart-shaped lips and a tiny nose on the tiniest baby face I’d ever seen. I held her closer to my chest, leaned over and kissed her for the very first time. I gazed in her shiny black eyes that were holding mine, and felt so very complete, so content.
From that day on, and for the next two months, I spent every day at the orphanage with my daughter, Ela. The orphanage staff and local government agencies were extremely accommodating, even though this was certainly not the usual protocol. After the first few days, my constant presence became a norm. I was part of that institution. I became one of the children’s caregivers, the only family they’d ever known. For the next two months, the place became my home, and everyone there felt like family.
With less than fifteen minutes to go before landing, I maneuvered within the confines of my seatbelt and cramped seating area. I changed Ela’s diaper and prepared her formula for feeding during our descent, which helps babies with the painful ear pressure. Meanwhile, anticipation of my homecoming was rapidly turning into acute anxiety bordering on a panic attack. I wasn’t sure why.
For the last eight months I had been completely cut off from news and relationships; occasional e-mails to family and my regular phone calls with Matthew were the extent of my “being in touch.” Sure, I couldn’t escape the mania surrounding the presidential race and Barack Obama’s victory. Unfortunately for me, Obama’s presidency was no cause to celebrate. Certainly he “looked and talked” better than his opponents, but that was where differences ended. I had dealt with Obama’s Senate office, and we as national security whistleblowers also had “tried” to work with his office—all to no avail. He was as anti-whistleblower, anti-transparency and anti-accountability as they come, along with many of his colleagues there, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. They had made it clear to me and to all of us. Then there is Senator Obama’s record, which speaks for itself. Whether on NSA illegal eavesdropping or the FBI’s outrageous and frightening abuses of civil liberties, Obama was no different than his rival in the campaign, John McCain, or even George W. Bush. Last but not least were Obama’s ties to and selection of infamous Illinois–Chicago figures about whom, thanks to my work with the FBI, I knew a great deal, and none of it was pretty. All that and more put me in a tiny minority who saw through the front, the mask, the phony lip service; and that gave me no reason for “hope” or any high regard for his other slogan, “change.” My optimism had peaked with the 2006 elections; having seen the result—the toxic status quo—it now had reached an all-time low.
After our smooth landing and clearing through Customs and Immigration, with Ela wrapped around me in her carrier along with four suitcases, a diaper bag, a computer case and my handbag, we entered one of the domestic terminals at LAX for the next and last leg of our long trip home. After our checkin at the ticket counter we proceeded to the security gates. Once there, in a slow-moving, overcrowded line, I was taken aback: here were more than
fifty
TSA security officers—in uniform, with badges and a military police demeanor. They were loudly issuing orders to passengers in harsh and humiliating fashion. Some were busy patting and groping a randomly selected unfortunate few. Another had grabbed and violently emptied a woman’s handbag in plain full view, which contained her birth control, tampons, makeup and other dangerous items.
Now it was my turn to pass through the scan. With Ela (now sleeping) attached to me I tried, with some difficulty, to remove my shoes and place them on the belt. Luckily, the female officer allowed me to go through without first detaching the carrier; but then she stopped me on the other side, and with the help of her colleague, began the pat-down with a loudly beeping handheld device.
As I sat on a bench and struggled again with my shoes, I noticed my palms were sweaty and both hands were trembling. This was one of many sorry points that our response to 9/11 had brought us to: a fear-driven police-like state. No wonder I was shaking. I had seen this before, in Turkey and Iran, and countless other places without the rule of law; no small reason for pessimism.
Now here I was, home in my country, and this was the state of the nation. All communications were monitored and stored by the police, intelligence, the military, or all three. All passengers were treated and searched as suspects, as criminals, and possibly terrorists. The terrible list goes on.
On our way home to Alexandria in a taxi from DC, on that damp and bone-chilling winter night, I gazed at the Capitol across the river, at the Lincoln Memorial and the Pentagon fortress.
The scenery and mood took me back. The years of constant surveillance and threats, my legal ordeals and desertion by family and friends, all had taken their toll; I remembered almost taking that flight to Turkey and shuddered. Almost all of my battles were losses. Over there, across the river, were the winners, the rulers; here in this taxi, with a brand-new baby daughter, still, I remained a classified woman.
A
fter spending almost a year away, I was back and into a new life. The long chapter that had been my case was over, finished and done, concluded. In some ways, it was a relief to go back to being me; but just who was this person? For the first few months, I didn’t give it much thought; instead, I spent almost all my time with my daughter, enveloped in this intimate, warm cocoon of motherhood.
Without TV, satellite or cable, I was able to keep chaos mostly at bay. Once in a while, though, late at night, with Ela sound asleep, I would sit quietly at my desktop and quickly scan news and commentaries. Usually this would end with a disgusted shake of my head or wannabe detached shrug.
Our new president—the President of Change—appeared to be following in the footsteps of his predecessor. The new administration invoked the State Secrets Privilege three times in its first 100 days:
Al Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Obama
;
Mohammed v. Jeppesen Dataplan
; and
Jewel v. NSA
. The president continued the illegal wiretapping of Americans and pledged to shield and protect the participating telecom industry. Also—distressingly—this was the same president who quickly backpedaled on his promise to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Instead, he chose to revive the Bush-style military commission, albeit with a cosmetic tweak.
Tellingly, too, he instantly reversed his earlier stand on protection for government whistleblowers. This new White House was creating several new “czars” a week; the civilian death toll of our war in Afghanistan was climbing; the Patriot Act had a new guardian angel; the list goes on and on.
Clearly—at least to me—all of us were being led deeper into darkness. I tried to shake it off. I was no longer a case. At that time, I wasn’t looking for a fight. I was grateful for Ela and the rest of my family. As long as I stayed in my warm cocoon, I would be safe and unaffected. Or so I thought.
In early March 2009, coming back from a short trip to Florida, I had a horrific confrontation with the airport security, specifically, one TSA badge-woman. It began with her demand that I remove my baby carrier (I’d already gone through without triggering any alarms; her arbitrary stop and search was unreasonable), and from there things escalated to a dreadful point. Supervisors and airport police were called in, we missed our flight, and in the meantime they refused to show me the rules, which they insisted were classified. This badge-woman possessed “unlimited discretion,” she claimed, and that “there are no rules.” What’s more, she insisted, “we don’t have to answer your questions.” Clearly, this tiny woman with a baby posed a security threat: I had dared to question my rights and the rules of a government screening its citizens. I dared them to arrest me. I could feel Matthew’s pleading exasperated eyes but I wasn’t going down without a fight. I wasn’t prepared to hand over my rights, not then, not now. I was adamant.
I noticed too as events were unfolding, how people rushed past us, scurrying to their gates. They gave me quick little glances, making sure to avoid any eye contact; maybe this reality—this new encroachment on their freedom to move about—was too close to the bone, too much for them to see. A few brave souls actually slowed down to whisper such things as, “This is disgusting” or “They have no right to treat people like this” or even “This is a shame.”
At this point, I didn’t want to be on a flight. We would rent a car and drive twenty hours back home. The two police officers escorting us out tried to commiserate, apologizing for “these TSA guys” whom they claimed, armed with guns and badges, were “high with a sense of power.”
The first few hours of our long drive back home were spent in miserable silence. I simmered, more with fear than rage—not only of what we had become as a nation, but even more, where we were headed. All of this—the police state climate and practices—were way too familiar.
I turned to Matthew, driving on my left, and in a calm and measured voice said, “I won’t let my daughter grow up in a police state and under these circumstances. I won’t let her go through experiences like this. I won’t let her go through what I did when I was a child. I won’t let it happen.”
To my surprise, he agreed. “This is not my country anymore,” he told me with terrible sadness in his voice. “This is not my government. This place is now as foreign as any other foreign country to me. We the people must fight against all of this, but there doesn’t seem to be enough of us who are willing to fight …”
We talked about other countries. Australia? No. It too has been catering to our nation’s illegitimate demands, participating in our perpetual wars abroad, deserting its innocent citizens held with no probable cause in America’s detention center, and participating in our intelligence operations. Western Europe? Definitely not: same old same old. New Zealand? Perhaps; not hawkish, not militarized, free and dignified air transportation procedures, not part of the global intelligence operations, excellent health care system, very good public education … a definite possibility. The question remained: At what point do we say enough is enough? At what point do we give up on our beloved country? What would we consider to be the turning point? We left that to time, and I knew the clock was ticking. It had been, in fact, ever since 9/11, since I went to work for the FBI.
With all I had gone through up to this point, I faced the need to speak up; to write. I wanted to share my observations of our police state status and precisely to what degree our media is complicit. I had firsthand knowledge of notorious incidents that were blacked out not only here, in our news, but abroad. Entire stories were killed in their tracks. The tentacles of our government’s censorship extend far and wide, and I wondered how many others knew about it. I needed to know where others stood, and accordingly, where we were headed. I had to know if there was any hope of stopping and reversing these trends, and if not, I had to find out when and where I’d go next, if only to save my daughter. She didn’t have to live as I once did. I thought I’d escaped that life, that I’d finally put it behind …
Now starting a personal blog seemed urgent. I could share my experience and observations of the escalating police state, the proliferation of badge-men and badge-women in our malls and cities and airports and hubs with their frightening weapons and dogs. I could inform others of noxious new developments and their real-life implications despite the media’s blackout. I could list the already numerous changes brought about by President Obama, illustrating how all have been changes for the worse—at least so far; and to also show to what extent the partisan divide is political theater—dangerous antics, to be sure, but nevertheless a distraction from what both parties always never want you to know.
So I began my novice venture into the blogosphere. I set up a simple page under the “
blogspot.com
” free Google platform, named it 123 Real Change, and every few days or so posted an article or analysis; without a splash, without advertising it, and without any readers at first. To my amazement, within a few weeks, my small and almost invisible new site had been found by a few hundred weekly visitors, commenting with sincere and astute observations.
The sorry state of our nation, its ever-increasing number of wars and ever-worsening status of civil liberties, provided me with more topics than I could cover in a lifetime. Since taking office in January 2009, the president who duped the nation as a candidate for change has indeed manically brought about changes—most of them for the worse.
The persecution of whistleblowers has only escalated: now they are
prosecuted
for telling the truth. Far from protecting government whistleblowers as promised, the Obama administration has amassed the worst record in U.S. history for persecuting, prosecuting and jailing government whistleblowers and truth tellers. This president’s Department of Justice has
twisted the 1917 Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five instances of alleged national security leaks:
more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous administrations combined, going all the way back to the founders.
The assault on the First Amendment has reached unprecedented levels. The government, via the Pentagon, now takes books off shelves and actually
burns
them. The reason? Sorry, that’s classified. We aren’t even allowed to know why.
Secrecy and gag orders too have reached new highs. President Obama has invoked baseless, unconstitutional executive secrecy to quash legal inquiries into hushed-up activity more often than any of his predecessors, including, famously, George Bush. This president’s almost reflexive invocations of state secrets already has resulted in shutting down lawsuits involving the National Security Agency’s (then) illegal wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, assassinations and illegal torture.
Under the present administration, not only government whistleblowers but hundreds if not thousands of peaceful American activists and truth tellers have been subject to government witch hunts, surveillance and arrests. Recently, too, the FBI has launched a series of raids and issued grand jury subpoenas targeting dozens of antiwar activists. Thousands of protesters have been arrested for exercising their First Amendment right to speak out.
President Obama has initiated a covert assassination program as well, allocating to himself the power to include Americans on that list. Indeed, several United States citizens, including their children, have been assassinated abroad.
Contrary to his campaign pledge, President Obama not only granted amnesty to those involved in enacting and implementing illegal wiretapping of every American citizen’s communications, he went further, to even sanction and expand these police state practices. The president is now preparing for the next assault: on Internet users and independent reporters and bloggers.
America’s illegal, unjustified invocations of war more than quadrupled in the current term. Our commander in chief has expanded our war fronts to Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan; more are under way.
Toward the end of July 2009, less than two weeks before our departure for New Zealand (yes, I’d been doing some research for a suitable place we might go if and when things got worse), I received an unusual e-mail from a man named David Krikorian. In it, he briefly described his case as a candidate from Ohio who had run against incumbent Republican Representative Jean Schmidt. Schmidt, who was intensely favored by the Turkish lobby and its numerous networks, was a recipient of their generous contributions and support. He now was a party in a legal battle, a case pending before the Ohio Elections Commission, in which Ohio’s Republican U.S. Congresswoman Jean Schmidt had filed a complaint against Krikorian, who, Schmidt had charged, distributed false statements about her during the previous year’s campaign. Krikorian and his attorneys were planning to depose me.
I quickly ran an Internet search on
Schmidt v. Krikorian
. Schmidt alleged that Krikorian—who announced plans to run against Schmidt again, as a Democrat, in 2010—libeled her in campaign ads, claiming she had taken “blood money” as campaign donations from Turkish interest groups. Schmidt, as co-chairwoman of the Congressional Turkish Caucus, had received more than $10,000 from the Turkish Coalition USA PAC since taking office in 2005, and had recently taken a trip to Turkey—sponsored by the Turkish Coalition of America—valued at more than $10,000. At issue in the initial
Schmidt v. Krikorian
case was the century-long debate over whether the extermination of some 1.5 million ethnic Armenians during World War I would be declared a “genocide” by the American government.
I immediately called Krikorian and we had a brief discussion, during which he provided general outlines of his case, the reasons he and his attorneys were seeking my deposition, and the timing of their upcoming legal filings. I found him sincere, likeable and articulate, and I knew exactly what he was up against. I knew only too well how Turkish-American operatives bought and managed elected representatives and candidates.
I was up-front with Krikorian. First, I let him know that although I was intimately familiar with some of the lobby groups and operatives involved, I had no direct information on Jean Schmidt. (Schmidt had gotten into Congress several years after I was fired from the bureau.) Next, I warned him what he was up against, a fact about which he was very well aware. And finally, I told him about my upcoming trip in less than two weeks, which was problematic with their case filings and hearing dates; and that I needed to consult with my attorney as to whether I would be able to testify in their case, considering the Justice Department’s position in previous cases. Krikorian understood and said he and his attorneys would have a meeting and take the appropriate action.
Then I contacted Steve Kohn at the National Whistleblowers Center. I explained the case and situation, and asked for his legal advice. Steve told me that “based on FBI employment and classification rules, we have to submit their formal subpoena to the DOJ and ask them to clear your deposition.” I told him about their deadline and my upcoming trip, to which he replied they would ask the DOJ for expedited clearance, that they were “obligated to respond and act accordingly.”
I provided Krikorian and his team with the information I had gotten from Steve. They would prepare a subpoena for my deposition in forty-eight hours or less. My attorney then would submit it to the Justice Department for clearance.
Two days later, my attorney’s office received Krikorian’s subpoena for my deposition: the date was set for Saturday, August 8, at 10 a.m., exactly twenty-four hours before my departure to New Zealand. As required, the Krikorian legal team had included the major points and areas on which they were planning to question me. This was to be an “open to the media deposition.” The subpoena stated I would testify that during the time I was employed by the FBI, I obtained evidence that (1) “The Government of Turkey had illegally infiltrated and influenced various U.S. government institutions and officials, including the Department of State, the Department of Defense and individual members of the United States Congress”; (2) “The Government of Turkey had engaged in practices and policies that were inimical to American interests and had in fact resulted in both the direct and indirect loss of American lives”; and (3) “Turkish American cultural and business groups conduct operations with direct and indirect support from the Government of Turkey.”