News Compass

Monday, January 26, 2004

Sibel Edmonds Was Sacked for Exposing FBI's Incompetence on 9/11 Investigation.

Read Here full article by Gail Sheehy from New York Observer, "Whistleblower Coming In Cold From the F.B.I."

Who is Sibel Edmonds?

Sibel Edmonds was one of three Turkish translators recruited by FBI one week after 9/11. She was assigned to work on real time wiretaps, e-mails, and documents related to 9/11 investigations. She is a Turkish-American graduate student, who speaks four languages, Turkish, Farsi (the Iranian language) and Azerbaijani, and perfect American-English. She was then studying for her Master's degree. She got the job when she responded to FBI's call after 9/11 for translators of Middle Eastern languages.

Her job in FBI?

She was hired as contract employee. There was no personal interview for the job. She had top-secret security clearance to translate wiretaps to trail Al Qaeda terrorists and their supporters in the U.S. and abroad. She was one of three Turkish translators recruited.

Working in the F.B.I.' s Washington field office, she listened to hundreds of hours of intercepts and translated reams of e-mails and documents that flooded into the bureau. In a security briefing, she was told that any documents marked "Top Secret" had to be locked up when employees went to lunch. Laptops had to be kept in a safe. Any contacts with foreign people, even social, had to be reported. She also signed a document promising to report any suspicious activities of other translators. She was impressed with the stringency of F.B.I. rules.

The FBI's Translation Department is considered highly sensitive. But the translators could move about in the building, floor to floor, without passing through security, and to any agent's office.

F.B.I. translators are the front line information surveillance operators, listening to foreign-language wiretaps, tips, documents, e-mails, and other intercepted threats to security. Based on what they translate and their assessments, F.B.I. field agents are alerted.

There are about 200 translators sitting side by side in one room, filled with chattering noises from 185 different countries.

Security Breaches in the FBI HQ

Excerpts from Gail Sheedy's article:

During her six months of work for the Bureau, Ms. Edmonds said she grew increasingly horrified by the lack of internal security she saw inside the very agency tasked with protecting our national security.

She has reported serious ongoing failures in the language division of the F.B.I. Washington Field Office.

They include security lapses in hiring and monitoring of translators, investigations that have been compromised by incorrect or misleading translations sent to field agents; and thousands of pages of translations falsely labeled "not pertinent" by Middle Eastern linguists who were either not qualified in the target language or English, or, worse, protecting targets of investigation. These were filed with the F.B.I.'s internal investigative office, the Department of Justice, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and most recently with the 9/11 Commission. Nothing happened.

One of her colleagues was an unassuming immigrant who had been hired, despite failing to pass the English equivalency exam. He was chosen to go to Guantanamo Bay, to translate interrogations with the half-dozen Turkish detainees in America's war on terror.

Her greatest concern was her other female translator colleague, whom she had reported to her superiors and government commissions and agencies. Her name is Melek Can Dickerson, who liked to be called "Jan", a very friendly Turkish woman, married to a major in the U.S. Air Force. The very suspects who were being investigated by the FBI were socially connected to Ms Dickerson.

The following account was related in Ms Edmonds' testimony to the Senate Judiciary committee.

"I began to be suspicious as early as November, 2001" said Ms. Edmonds. According to Ms Edmonds, Ms Dickerson mentioned these suspects and said she had worked for them (the suspects) in a Turkish organization; she talked about how she shopped for them at a Middle Eastern grocery store in Alexandria.

Soon after, Ms. Dickerson tried to establish social ties with her, suggesting they meet in Alexandria and introduce their husbands to each other.

When the Dickersons were invited for tea, the husband, Major Dickerson, began asking Ms Edmond's husband, Matthew, if they had many friends from Turkey here in the U.S. Mr. Edmonds said he didn't speak Turkish, so they didn't associate with many Turkish people.

The Air Force officer then began talking up a Turkish organization in Washington that he described, according to the Edmondses, as "a great place to make connections and it could be very profitable." This organization was the very one she and Jan Dickerson were monitoring in a 9/11 investigation.

Ms. Dickerson and her husband offered to introduce the Edmondses to two people connected to the Turkish embassy in Washington who belonged to this organization. "These two people were the top targets of our investigation!" Ms. Edmonds said of the people the Dickersons proposed to introduce them to. (The targets of that F.B.I. investigation left the country abruptly in 2002.) Still nothing happened.

Ms. Edmonds was told by FBI superiors that Ms. Dickerson hadn't disclosed any links to the Turkish organization in her employment application. .

Ms. Edmonds remembers an agent saying: "I'll bet you've never worked in government before. We do things differently. We don't name names, and we usually sweep the dirt under the carpet."

Another special agent warned: "If you insist on this investigation, I'll make sure in no time it will turn around and become an investigation about you."

Ms. Dickerson had said to her, threatening: "Why would you make such a fuss over translations? You're not even planning to stay here. Why would you put your life and your family's lives in danger?" Ms Edmonds reported this threat to Dale Watson, then executive assistant director of the F.B.I. After she made that report, Ms Edmonds learned from friends in Turkey that plainclothes agents went to her sister's apartment in Istanbul with an interrogation warrant.

Ms. Edmonds also discovered that Ms. Dickerson had managed to get hold of translations meant for Ms. Edmonds, forge her signature, and render the communications useless. "These were documents directly related to a 9/11 investigation and suspects, and they had been sent to field agents in at least two cities."

By accident, Ms. Edmonds discovered the breach - up to 400 pages of translations marked "not pertinent"- and insisted that those classified translations be sent back so she could retranslate them. The first half-dozen translations were transcripts from an F.B.I. wiretap targeting a Turkish intelligence officer working out of the Turkish embassy in Washington, D.C. ( It was later confirmed by a staff-member of the Judiciary committee that the intelligence officer was the target of the wiretap Ms. Dickerson had mistranslated, signing Ms. Edmonds' name to the printouts. )

Ms. Edmonds said she found them to reveal that the officer had spies working for him inside the U.S. State Department and at the Pentagon- but that information would not have reached field agents unless Ms. Edmonds had retranslated them. She only got through about 100 more pages before she was fired.

She said she first reported these breaches both verbally and in writing to a supervisor, who assured her that the F.B.I. had done a background check on Ms. Dickerson, and the matter was put to an end.

The F.B.I., contacted with these allegations, would not comment; Ms. Dickerson could not be reached for comment, but has previously dismissed Ms. Edmonds' story as "preposterous."

The F.B.I. has also previously said that it did not believe that Ms. Dickerson acted maliciously, though members of the Judiciary committee have expressed dissatisfaction with the F.B.I.'s investigation.

Sacked

For her actions, Ms Edmonds was fired. The only cause given was "for the convenience of the government." The F.B.I. has not refuted any of Ms. Edmonds' allegations, yet they have accounted for none of them.

On the morning Ms. Edmonds was terminated, an agent said to her: "We will be watching you and listening to you. If you dare to consult an attorney who is not approved by the F.B.I., or if you take this issue outside the F.B.I. to the Senate, the next time I see you, it will be in jail." Two other agents were present.

Harassment

Shortly after her dismissal, F.B.I. agents came to her house and seized her home computer. She was then called in to be polygraphed- a test which she passed.

A few months after her dismissal, accompanied by her lawyer, in May 2002, Ms. Edmonds took her story to the Senate Judiciary Committee. She was tailed by FBI agents. "They weren't secretive about it, they wanted me to know they're there," she said. After being shadowed in plain sight many more times, she said with dark humor, "I call them my escorts."

Ms Edmonds had filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the Department of Justice on March 7, 2002. She was told then that an investigation would be undertaken and she could expect a report by the fall of 2002. Twenty-one months later, she is still waiting.

She also filed a First Amendment case against the Department of Justice and the F.B.I. And a Freedom of Information case against the F.B.I. for release of documents pertaining to her work for the Bureau, to confirm her allegations. The F.B.I. refused her FOIA request. Their stated reason was the pending investigation by Justice, which, her sources in the Senate tell her, will probably be held up until after the November election.

F.B.I. Director Mueller asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to assert the State Secrets Privilege in the case of Ms. Edmonds versus Department of Justice. Mr. Ashcroft obliged. The State Secrets Privilege is used to withhold evidence or to block discovery in the name of national security, and it can effectively terminate the case. "