Oregon author and Bend resident, Sibel Edmonds, known as the "most classified woman in the U.S.," will not be silenced. She's the subject of several government-asserted State Secrets Privilege Orders, and the U.S. Congress has been indefinitely gagged and prevented from taking up her case through unprecedented retroactive classification orders issued by the Department of Justice. With agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice breathing down your neck (she was fired after reporting serious acts of security breaches and cover-ups during her work as a language specialist following 9/11), no one could blame Edmonds for clamming up. And yet, with the release of her second self-published book, "The Lone Gladio: A Novel," Edmonds is sending a clear message to the federal and corporate institutions that increasingly govern our lives: the truth will out (one way or another).
As she was preparing her first memoir manuscript, "A Classified Woman," for publication, her security clearance required that she submit the book for review and redaction. Siting the sensitive nature of her material, the FBI blacked out every word, discouraging all the top tier publishers interested in Edmonds' book. Having lived under Middle East dictatorships, Edmonds knew firsthand what could happen when government is allowed to operate in secret. Determined to challenge the powers-that-be to a standoff, Edmonds self-published the tell-all, and went on to win the 2006 PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award. Along the way, Edmonds also sought congressional assistance (which was consistently denied), testified before the 9/11 Commission, and engaged with various media and other non-governmental organizations to champion her cause. She founded and serves as editor of Boiling Frog Post, and the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. And yet, as The New Republic has stated, "the silencing of Edmonds has been remarkably silent—which is probably just what the FBI was counting on in the first place."
Now, in a new self-published novel, Edmonds offers a whole new take on the geo-political quagmire she experienced, which has inspired a narrative that is both action-adventure and spy novel, tinged with just enough deep state reality to make readers very nervous—but thoroughly entranced. "The Lone Gladio" is a thrilling ride across the globe from Northern Cyprus and Azerbaijan to Southeast Asia, and into the heart of "the company"—the American Pentagon, NATO, CIA and MI6. In the first few pages, Operation Gladio operative Greg McPherson enters an underground operations center beneath a mosque in Azerbaijan's capital Baku to prepare the next terrorist attack on Russian soil. Thus commences a story that follows a web of interconnected characters across multiple agencies, providing an edge-of-your-seat thriller that is as subversive as it is entertaining. In her riveting (albeit "fictional") exposé of some of NATO's very worst crimes, among them the terror attacks of 9/11, Edmonds provides an insider tale, told with insider perspective.
