Sibel Edmonds - "Kill the Messenger," a documentary produced by Zadig Productions, directed by French filmmakers Mathieu Verboud and Jean Robert Viallet, is scheduled to air on Canal + in France on September 19, 2006. The film will also be aired in Belgium, on BeTV, and Australia, on SBS, this fall. The documentary explores the abuses behind the State Secrets Privilege as invoked in FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds' case as well as highlighting the travails and persecution of US national security whistleblowers.

 

The filmmakers, Verboud and Viallet, spent nearly two years interviewing witnesses and researching the invocation and implementation of the state secrets privilege in Edmonds' case. Based on their documented findings and interviews with experts such as David Albright, Philip Giraldi, John Cole, Joseph Trento, Glenn Fine, David Rose, and others familiar with Edmonds' case, the film presents a terrifying picture of Turkish networks' activities in global nuclear black-market, narcotics and illegal arms trafficking activities in the United States, and examines the extraordinary efforts of officials within the US Government to insure that the secrecy surrounding Edmonds' case be maintained at any cost – from Edmonds' termination from the FBI, to invoking the State Secrets Privilege, to gagging the US Congress.

The film documents the formation of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition and the collective struggle of its members to bring legislative and media attention to retaliation by national security agencies against whistleblowers, and the resulting danger such suppression of the truth causes the United States. The entrenched bureaucratic power of the United States government would rather sacrifice those who would reveal the truth than face the changes necessary to protect the nation. The filmmakers interviewed many high-profile national security whistleblowers, including Daniel Ellsberg, Coleen Rowley (FBI), Russell Tice (NSA), Bogdan Dzakovic (DHS), John Vincent (FBI), Steve Elson (FAA), John M. Cole (FBI), and Matthew Fogg, among others.

Bill Weaver commented: "H.L. Mencken once said that 'every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats'. This film makes me want to do just that. The incompetence, maliciousness, corruption, inefficacy, impudence, arrogance, and plain stupidity of the government's criminal activities toward Sibel Edmonds are a national shame. Having lived under tyranny in Iran and elsewhere, Edmonds knows what it looks like. In her case, and in many other recent cases, tyranny comes in the form of the state secrets privilege, a foolproof mechanism of the federal government to hide executive branch corruption, incompetence, and illegal activity. This is a practice more at home with Czars and nabobs, and should have no place in the United States. But Edmonds gave the government something it never expected – a no holds barred battle. She hoisted the black flag and went on the attack by forming the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, an organization dedicated to changing the law, exposing government misdeeds, and giving hell to those who richly deserve it. This film will forever change the way you view the United States government and will give you an insight into what true patriotism, not Wal-Mart patriotism, looks like."

"Sibel Edmonds lives in a great democracy but at the wrong time. Making a film on a woman who is gagged by the Bush administration, one of the most secretive in U.S history, was almost a civic duty. We hope this film will be a wake up call for all of us;" stated Mathieu Verboud, the co-director of "Kill the Messenger."

To view the trailer, an exclusive interview with the directors, background information, and more Click Here
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