For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets. The Sunday Times (London), January 6, 2008.

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.
Sibel Edmonds is subject to a gag order under the State Secrets Privilege, which I believe she just broke. The gag was invoked when she was subpoenaed in a 9/11 civil suit and for her wrongful termination suit against the DoJ. Edmonds alleged in her personal suit that her termination was a result of her whistleblowing on allegations of misconduct by individuals employed in the FBI’s Language Services Section. A DoJ OIG review vindicated some of her complaints.

The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.

They were helped, she says, by the high-ranking State Department official who provided some of their moles – mainly PhD students – with security clearance to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities. These included the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent.

In one conversation Edmonds heard the official arranging to pick up a $15,000 cash bribe. The package was to be dropped off at an agreed location by someone in the Turkish diplomatic community who was working for the network.

The Turks, she says, often acted as a conduit for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they were less likely to attract suspicion. Venues such as the American Turkish Council in Washington were used to drop off the cash, which was picked up by the official.

Edmonds said: “I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost certainly more.”

The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.

Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attach�s in the Turkish embassy.
One of the CIA sources confirmed that the Turks had acquired nuclear secrets from the United States and shared the information with Pakistan and Israel. “We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,” the source said.
Note that Turkish nationals Gunes Cire, director of ETI Elektroteknik and Selim Alguadis, President of EKA Elektronik, were found to supply centrifuge components to the AQ Khan network. Further note the 2004 Department of Commerce sting operation involving export controlled triggered spark gaps. (See: Asher Karni Case Shows Weakness in Nuclear Export Controls, INSTITUTE FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, September 8, 2004.)