Rep. Schakowsky’s “Lesbian Turkish Affair” Seems To Make Absolutely No Sense

09/28/09-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
There comes a point where the absurdity of a situation is so blatant that it is easy to see. In the case of the supposed lesbian seduction of Representative Jan Schakowsky, the absurdity of the entire affair is incredibly easy to see. Let us begin with the simplest of facts. If the nation of Turkey had wanted access to secrets that the United States wanted, then the way to do it is not to spend a ton of money hiring, training, and sending out spies to seduce and blackmail members of Congress. Instead, you spend a ton of money hiring lobbyists to spend money to buy influence and get Congress to agree to the sale of those secrets. That way, you are more likely to succeed, and it is probably less complicated and expensive than trying to find a bunch of spies who you can trust to pass along these secrets and not turn around and sell them on the blackmarket.

Of course, if you want the stuff that the United States is not willing to sell, which honestly is probably not much, then what the heck are you doing talking to Congresspeople?! Do you honestly believe that Denis Hastert or Jan Schakowsky has access to that level of stuff? Probably the President does not even have access to some of the unredacted items which are considered unsellable since even the President is not all that trustworthy. Maybe Dick Cheney had access to it, but still…why go through the trouble.

The problem staring Sibel Edmonds in the face and that she is missing is that there is a high probability that she is telling the absolute truth as she knows it. The intercepted communications between the Turkish spies in the United States and their Turkish handlers no doubt detailed a vast blackmail ring which set out to seduce members of Congress in order to get secret information from them.

The problem for Ms Edmonds is that she was a translator and not an analyst. She even admits to having never seen the original files which have been put into storage. The timeline for the whole thing makes less and less sense when one delves into it. First of all, Ms Edmonds was hired in the aftermath of 9/11 and is suppose to be doing counter terrorism related work. Instead, she is placed on this case which has been ongoing for six years. Ok, if this was an important case, why had they not hired a translator before then to go through these intercepted communications? It is not like Turkish is a hard language to find translators for. It is not like Farsi, a language that caused MI6 to try and get an opera singer to join their ranks so that he could translate.

There are other issues here that need to be addressed. For instance, these communications appear to implicate many members of the Republican Congressional leadership at a time when they are looking for anything to take down President Bill Clinton. Why would Clinton not just leak this, or better yet, make the tapes available to the media since it appears that they had enough information to continue this going for some time? After all, being blackmailed by Turkish spies trumps the President getting a few blowjobs in the oval office. Ok, failing that, how much damage could this information have done if released, say, two weeks before the 2000 election? If this had any substance, by that point, they would have used it for political advantage.

The other direction is true as well. Why did President George W. Bush, a man who was more than willing to use anything at his disposal to smear the Democrats, not use this information to hurt Jan Schakowsky. By the time that it came out that others were compromised, it would have been too late.

The problem for Ms Edmonds is that she has not only staked her reputation on this issue, but it is largely why she was fired. She was fired for continuing to pursue this case based upon the information that she found in the translated communications even when she was told to drop it. Ms Edmonds has also staked the reputation of the organization she works with regarding federal whistleblowers, and risks perjury charges if it is discovered that she unknowingly lied under oath. She also risks derailing an entire case. There is a lot more riding on this for her than there is for Rep. Schakowsky. In fact, other than the American Conservative and the blogosphere, this has not even shown up as being on the radar of most of the media probably for the same reason that this entire case troubles me.

What this entire case reminds me of is a book by Graham Greene. In the book Our Man in Havana, Jim Wormwold is recruited by British Intelligence to create a network of spies and informants in order to feed that information to the British. Wormwold does that. In fact, he manufactures the network of spies and informants and begins feeding equally manufactured information to the British. Of course, he is eventually unmasked by the Cubans who decode one of his communications.

This case does remind me of that. The probability is that the Turkish spies manufactured the whole thing. Both Edmonds and Schakowsky are probably telling the absolute truth in this matter.

There are a lot of things in this that do not make sense, and it may be time to investigate, on that I do agree with Ms Edmonds, but I suspect that she is going to be sadly and sorely disappointed with what she finds out. However, attacking a sitting Representative, no matter how great your credentials are, is not going to get that investigation, and doing interviews with the American Conservative is not the way to get access to those files which supposedly prove your case.