American-Turkish Council

From Rightweb: The American-Turkish Council (ATC) was created in 1994 as the U.S.-based counterpart to the Turkish-U.S. Business Council, a "bilateral business council" that aims to foster commercial relations between the United States and Turkey. It grew out of the "consolidation of the Turkish desk of the U.S. Chamber [of Commerce] with the American Friends of Turkey."... After years of maintaining a surprisingly low profile-given its purportedly influential position inside the beltway-the American-Turkish Council has in recent years been the subject of growing media scrutiny as a result of allegations made by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds regarding suspect activities of council members. According to a September 2005 Vanity Fair article, Edmonds alleges that one of her FBI colleagues with close ties to the ATC routinely refused to translate conversations she was monitoring of close associates she had in the council. The FBI, which had been targeting members of the council as well as officials at the Turkish Consulate in Chicago as part of a counter-intelligence investigation, eventually fired Edmonds when she complained about her colleague's negligence, arguing that she was having a "disruptive effect" on their investigation. (5) David Rosen, author of the Vanity Fair piece, writes that some of the FBI wiretaps Edmonds had access to involved conversations among council members and Turkish officials about bribing elected officials and " contained what sounded like references to large-scale drug shipments and other crimes." One official who figured prominently in the conversations was Cong. Dennis Hastert. Rosen reports that FBI wiretap targets boasted "that they had a covert relationship with a very senior politician indeed-Dennis Hastert, Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House since 1999. The targets reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information." Rosen points to Hastert's about-face in 2000 regarding the then-proposed House resolution calling for recognition of the Armenian genocide in Turkey, which was mentioned in the FBI-monitored conversations. After publicly backing the resolution, Hastert abruptly withdrew his support, arguing that President Clinton was concerned it would harm U.S. interests in Turkey.