Tell Congress, “Stop nuke secrets sale!”
Evidence is now coming out that a former State Department official appointed by President Bush may have been involved in a scheme to sell nuclear weapons secrets to Turkey. While this has been largely ignored in the US press, it’s received quite a bit of attention overseas. In part, this is because Valerie Plame was part of the team investigating the case before it was abruptly shut down. As it turns out, Marc Grossman, the State Department official, is the man who originally circulated the classified document identifying Plame as a covert agent.
The White House has clearly been paying attention. On January 23rd, President Bush issued a press release announcing the proposed Agreement for Cooperation between the United States of America and the Republic of Turkey Concerning Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy. Despite the new evidence to the contrary, Bush says,
“U.S. agencies received … information implicating Turkish private entities in certain activities directly relating to nuclear proliferation. … My Administration (is) confident that the pertinent issues have been sufficiently resolved and that there is a sufficient basis (as set forth in the classified annexes, which will be transmitted separately by the Secretary of State) to proceed with congressional review of the Agreement and, if legislation is not enacted to disapprove it, to bring the Agreement into force.”
Unless Congress acts to stop it, this agreement will go into force on April 21st or 22nd. It will provide all the cover needed to sell not only nuclear information and technology to Turkey, but materials as well. Let us not forget that Turkey aided A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani physicist, in selling nuclear hardware and information to Libya, North Korea and Iran.
I urge you to contact your Senators and Representative and ask them to stop the next round of nuclear proliferation before it starts… by killing this agreement. Thanks in advance for your efforts.