FBI sacks translator who reported on pro-terrorist colleagues

Center for Security Policy ^ | Feb. 16, 2004 | CSP

[FairOpinion]

The FBI has sacked a linguist who blew the whistle on some colleagues who cheered the 9/11 terrorist attacks and reportedly sabotaged translations crucial to ongoing terrorism investigations.

The report is the latest instance of high-level political correctness within the FBI, where senior officials have been pandering to Islamist fringe elements who are tied to terrorist groups.

Investigative reporter Paul Sperry reports, “Middle Eastern linguists with top-secret security clearance” at the FBI celebrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States and shouted: “It's about time they got a taste of what they've been giving the Middle East.”

Sperry reports that when FBI linguist Sibel Dinez Edmonds reported the incident and other “breaches in security, mistranslations and potential espionage by Middle Eastern colleagues,” she was fired “without specified cause.”

Edmonds’s supervisor, “a naturalized U.S. citizen from Beirut” reportedly told his employees “to take long breaks, to slow down translations, and to simply say 'no' to those field agents calling us to beg for speedy translations so that they could go on with their investigations and interrogations of those they had detained.”

Edmonds is said to have detailed these allegations further in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month.

The Center for Security Policy has warned repeatedly over the last year and a half that the failure of the FBI to acknowledge the nature of certain Islamist groups and individuals, in order not to appear “insensitive," would jeopardize the Bureau's ability to protect against potential terrorist threats.

[archy]

are we suppose to blame Bush? or Tenet??

That's a beginning.

[John Beresford Tipton]

"Ashcroft heads Justice not FBI."

News Flash!! Stating the obvious.

The FBI is a part of the Department of Justice, which is headed by Ashcroft.

The Department of Justice is part of the Executive Branch whose head is a certain Texan.

Among things that they are both either ignorant of, or oblivious to, are Truman's words:
"The Buck Stops Here"

[FreedomCalls]

"A Review of the FBI's Response to John Roberts' Statements on 60 Minutes"

Read it here.

http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/03-02/index.htm

[oceanview]

well, what are the facts? are you saying that no one in the food chain above this has any idea of what is going on here, or at least trying to find out?

[mercy]

It's all about being owned lock stock and barrel by the house of Saud. Read Bob Baer's books. It's not just the FBI. The State Department makes the FBI look like super-patriots. The CIA does nothing but collect their paychecks. There is a reason the Presidents father gets $100,000 per speech from the Carlysle Group.

[John Beresford Tipton]

"Sure, everything is Bush's fault."

Not everything, but it is verrrrry late in the day to be blaming his predecessors for screw ups as Bush ends his term. What did Clinton have to do with firing the whistleblower??

[oceanview]

am I missing something? the conclusion doesn't seem to indicate anything regarding the allegations of what may (or may not) have taken place regarding the actions of the translation bureau.

[FairOpinion]

Your accusations are ridiculous.

If we want to fight terrorism effectively, we need to stamp out political correctness.

"The FBI, which like the army suffers from a severe shortage of Arabic translators, instated a bureau-wide Muslim-sensitivity training program after 9-11."

[GeronL]

I am saying they may not care.

[FreedomCalls]

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2002 WWW.USDOJ.GOV

AG (202) 616-2777 TDD (202) 514-1888

STATEMENT OF BARBARA COMSTOCK, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, REGARDING TODAY’S FILING IN SIBEL EDMONDS V. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE:

“To prevent disclosure of certain classified and sensitive national security information, Attorney General Ashcroft today asserted the state secrets privilege in Sibel Edmonds v. Department of Justice. This assertion was made at the request of FBI Director Robert Mueller in papers filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Department of Justice also filed a motion to dismiss the case, because the litigation creates substantial risks of disclosing classified and sensitive national security information that could cause serious damage to our country’s security.

“The state secrets privilege is well-established in federal law. It has been recognized by U.S. courts as far back as the 19th century, and allows the Executive Branch to safeguard vital information regarding the nation’s security or diplomatic relations. In the past, this privilege has been applied many times to protect our nation’s secrets from disclosure, and to require dismissal of cases when other litigation mechanisms would be inadequate. It is an absolute privilege that renders the information unavailable in litigation.”

###

02-605

[oceanview]

on the Carlyle group stuff, yes. But the stuff about the Saudis and the State Department, I've seen elsewhere.

[mercy]

You can start the blame with Franklin Roosevelt who cut the first deal with the house of Saud. Then you can throw in every president since. It was a good deal for a long time. Lots to be said for cheap gas. Creates a lot of jobs and keeps the economy humming. However I think the victims of Terrorism around the world and here in our own country might argue with you.

Our controllers knew the Saudis were bankrolling the terrorists ... but they were pocketing so much money they just didn't care. The game has not changed ... thus this whistle blower gets the axe.

[FreedomCalls]

Read the part "B. The Broadcast."

The Broadcast

The 60 Minutes broadcast containing excerpts of Roberts' interview aired on Sunday, October 27. The program mainly concerned allegations by Edmonds that the FBI had not translated thousands of foreign language documents and that the FBI's foreign language program was riddled with incompetence and corruption.6 (A transcript of the 60 Minutes broadcast is Attachment 3.)

The 60 Minutes segment also included an interview of Senator Grassley, who stated that he believed Edmonds was credible because people within the FBI had corroborated much of her story. Ed Bradley stated on the program that critical shortages of Middle Eastern translators had plagued the FBI for years and that the FBI had hired more foreign language translators after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, but the FBI admitted that it had difficulty performing background checks on the translators. Edmonds said that an FBI contract translator had tried to recruit her into an organization that was the subject of an FBI investigation. Edmonds said she complained repeatedly about this other translator, but no one in the FBI wanted to hear it. Senator Grassley stated that the Edmonds case fell into a pattern of behavior by the FBI to sweep embarrassing information under the rug, then "eventually they shoot the messenger."

[Happy2BMe]

"The FBI has sacked a linguist who blew the whistle on some colleagues who cheered the 9/11 terrorist attacks and reportedly sabotaged translations crucial to ongoing terrorism investigations."

FBI wonder of wonders - ONWARD MUSLIM SOLDIERS PING!

[John Beresford Tipton]

"The Department of Justice also filed a motion to dismiss the case, because the litigation creates substantial risks of ......

showing we do not know our asses from hot rocks?

[mercy]

I'm tryin to tell ya. Just read Bob Baer's books. There is no mystery here. It's all spelled out. It's not about PC. It's about sucking Saudi ____.

[kitkat]

BUMP

[Cicero]

IMHO Sessions has been a total disaster ever since his appointment. He has done NOTHING to get rid of the clintonoids at the top of the agency or to turn around the politically correct attitudes that were encouraged by clinton and Reno. He has several times given medals to clintonoid stooges, like that guy who was promoted for covering up the TWA800 affair. And now this. I can well believe it.

The FBI has an obvious Muslim problem. They have very few Arab speakers or agents who can penetrate and report on the Muslim community, and from what I have heard the "double agents" they have working for them are probably giving their first loyalties to Islam and their fellow Muslims, not to the United States. There's reason to believe that some of these double agents were involved in the OKC bombing as well.

[FreedomCalls]

U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY

CONTACT: Office of Senator Leahy, 202-224-4242

VERMONT

---

August 13, 2002

 

The Honorable John Ashcroft
Attorney General
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C.  20530

Dear Attorney General Ashcroft:

We are writing jointly in order that you might allay our concern about the status of the investigation into allegations made by Sibel Edmonds, a former contract linguist in the Washington Field Office of the FBI.  Although we understand that the matter is currently under investigation by the Inspector General, we are troubled that the Department of Justice, including the FBI, may not be acting quickly enough to address the issues raised by Ms. Edmonds= complaints or cooperating fully with the Inspector General=s office.  We are sending a similar letter to Department of Justice Inspector General Glenn Fine.

By way of background, Ms. Edmonds first raised concerns about security problems and the integrity of important translations earlier this year.  Unfortunately, nearly every person at the FBI who was notified of the situation reacted by questioning why Ms. Edmonds was Acausing trouble.@  Indeed, the FBI=s first internal security action in this case focused on Ms. Edmonds, instead of the allegations she raised in good faith as a whistleblower which bore on national security and the war against terrorism.

Ms. Edmonds has made a number of serious allegations, some of which the FBI verified were not unfounded during an unclassified briefing for Judiciary Committee staff on June 17.  First, Ms. Edmonds has alleged that a contract monitor in her unit (Amonitor@) chose not to translate important, intelligence-related information, instead limiting her translation to unimportant and innocuous information.  The FBI has verified that this monitor indeed failed to translate certain material properly, but has attributed the failure to a lack of training as opposed to a malicious act. 

That conclusion is directly related to Ms. Edmund=s second allegation.  Ms. Edmonds alleged that the same contract monitor once worked for an organization associated with a counter-intelligence investigation and that the monitor had contacts with a foreign national who was a member of the target institution.  Additionally, Ms. Edmonds states that some of the mistranslated recordings on which the monitor actually worked contained conversations by this same person with whom the monitor had such contacts and concerned matters pertinent to the investigation.

Even after verifying some of these allegations, the FBI downplayed the importance of this matter and seemed to imply that it had ceased looking into the complaints as a security matter until after the Inspector General finished their investigation.  Anyone who remembers the long-time treachery of former FBI Supervisor Robert Hanssen, would be concerned at this reaction.  For years, Hanssen=s bizarre actions were also written off as minor security breaches and unworthy of serious consideration.  If even routine diligence had been exercised earlier, Hanssen could have been stopped from doing untold damage.  The FBI needs to learn from its mistakes.

In addition to general concerns raised by this case, we have two specific concerns we wish to raise for your review.  First, we have learned that a person central to the investigation will soon be leaving the country  B perhaps before the investigation is resolved.   If you or your staff would like to know the identity of this person, please contact Inspector General Fine=s office, with whom Senator Grassley=s staff has been in touch.  This person may hold dual citizenship with the United States and a foreign country and may possess a valid passport issued by that foreign country.  Thus, there will be little or no assurance that the person will return or cooperate with an investigation in the future.  Based on these facts, we would like your assurance that you are satisfied that there has been and will be no delay that will prejudice, in any way, the outcome of this investigation. 

Furthermore, we would like your assurance that the Department of Justice, including the FBI, will fully cooperate in all aspects of the inquiry.  For instance, we draw your attention to the fact that the FBI currently opposes depositions of the monitor and her husband as part of the investigation into this case, even though the monitor=s husband never worked at the FBI and even though the military agency at which the monitor=s husband does work is not opposing a deposition.  Moreover, we understand that the monitor and her husband have signed a letter stating they will make themselves available for depositions.  It is unclear, then, why the FBI is taking this position in the wake of such important allegations bearing on national security.  We hope that you will ensure that the FBI is fully compliant with the Inspector General=s inquiry as it proceeds. 

Second, we are concerned about the most crucial evidence in the case B the raw material that was allegedly improperly translated.  We seek your assurance that the recordings will be properly maintained and promptly translated by a competent and independent authority.  That way the validity of the complaint can be quickly judged. 

We know that you share our concern that the FBI address issues bearing on national security in a prompt manner, regardless of whether or not they cast the FBI in a positive light.  Only by honest evaluation can the FBI learn from its past mistakes.  We thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.  We request a reply in writing at your earliest possible convenience. 

Sincerely,

            __________________                                    __________________

PATRICK J. LEAHY                                     CHARLES E. GRASSLEY

Chairman                                                         Ranking Member

Committee on the Judiciary                               Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs  

 

[GeronL]

So we cannot prosecute these traitors because of the risk of disclosing something classified?