Posted on 08/06/2004 5:03:12 AM PDT by SJackson
Newly hired as a translator of Turkish and Farsi (the language spoken in Iran), Sibel Edmonds was sitting at her desk in FBI headquarters in Washington on Sep. 20, 2001, retranslating a communications intercept headquarters had received some time before from an agent in Phoenix. The intercept contained references to skyscrapers and to U.S. immigration procedures, clues to the intentions of the 9/11 hijackers, clues overlooked by the person who first translated the document.
Edmonds raced to her supervisor and asked to speak on a secure line to the agent who had obtained the intercept, to tell him of the significance of what she had found. The supervisor refused, Edmonds told Anne Kornblut of the Boston Globe. Telling the agent what actually was in the intercept would embarrass the person who had mis-translated it, her supervisor told Edmonds.
There was more to worry about than just sloppy translations. Edmonds became alarmed when she learned that a fellow Turkish translator was a member of a Middle Eastern group being investigated by the FBI. She brought this to the attention of her supervisor.
But nothing was done, as Edmonds learned later when she and an agent working with her discovered that the translator in question had withheld "17 pieces of extremely specific and important information."
Frustrated by the FBI's refusal to look into her concerns, Edmonds took them to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight over the FBI. Finally, the FBI took action. Edmonds was fired.
The FBI is the agency chiefly responsible for finding spies and terrorists in our midst. The FBI does a lousy job.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Arab translators cheered Sept. 11 [while the FBI kept the FBI free of Jews]
FBI: Jews need not apply for Arabic linguist jobs - Thread 1
FBI: Jews need not apply for Arabic linguist jobs - Thread 2
Arab translators cheered Sept. 11 [while the FBI kept the FBI free of Jews]
By Paul Sperry
WASHINGTON – In a shocking revelation, an FBI whistleblower claims some
Arab-Americans translating Arabic intercepts for the FBI spoke approvingly
of the terrorist attacks on America more than two years ago.
Former FBI translator Sibel D. Edmonds says translators of Middle Eastern
origin working for the FBI's Washington field office maintain an
"us"-versus-"them" attitude that's so strong it may be compromising al-Qaida
investigations.
She cited examples of mistranslations and security breaches within the FBI's
language division, where translators with Top Secret clearance interpret
sensitive terror-related information for agents.
"The issues and problems within the FBI's translation units range from
security failures to questions of loyalty to competence of translation personnel
to systemic problems within their low-to-mid-level management practices,"
Edmonds said.
She made the explosive charges Monday in a letter to the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, an independent
panel investigating the 9-11 attacks and U.S. intelligence leading up to them.
WorldNetDaily has obtained a copy of the 9-page letter.
Edmonds, a translator who worked closely with FBI counterterrorism and
counterintelligence agents at an office within blocks of the Washington field
office, said she overheard some translators express sympathy for the 9-11
terrorist attacks.
"During my work with the bureau, I was seriously taken aback by what I
heard and witnessed within the translation department," she said. "There
were those who openly divided the fronts as 'Us' – the Middle-Easterners who
shared certain views – and 'Them' – the Americans who were the outsiders
[whose] arrogance was now 'leading to their own destruction.'"
Not long after the attacks, Edmonds said one translator said: "It is about time
that they get a taste of what they have been giving to the rest of the Middle
East."
She says the remark was made in front of the unit supervisor, also of Middle
Eastern origin.
"These comments were neither rare nor made in a whisper," Edmonds said.
"They were open and loud."
She says such attitudes call into question "the integrity and accuracy" of
information Arabic translators are feeding agents.
Edmonds says agents who don't speak Arabic have no way of knowing
whether the information they receive from translators is tainted.
"They simply have to trust the information given to them by translators," she
said, "and based on that, decide to act or not act."
Decisions to release terrorist suspects taken into custody are also based on
translations of interviews with those suspects, she argues.
Remarkably, agents don't even have direct security access to the translation
unit, Edmonds says. They have to be escorted into the area by translators.
She says she caught a Turkish translator intentionally blocking intelligence
from being translated by labeling it as "not pertinent." The translator also
intentionally mistranslated documents and other information, she says. And
she alleges the same linguist, Melek Can Dickerson, was granted security
clearance by the FBI despite ties to targets of FBI investigations.
After she brought the alleged breaches to the attention of her supervisors,
Edmonds was fired by the FBI. Her termination letter does not state a reason.
Edmonds filed a lawsuit, but Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI
Director Robert Mueller got a federal judge to block it by asserting the
extremely rare claim of "State Secret Privilege."
And her lawyers say Justice's inspector general is slow-walking an internal
review of her case, even though the office has criticized the FBI for security
lapses in recent reports, some related to the language program. In fact, a Nov.
15, 2002, IG report states: "A language specialist was dismissed for
unauthorized contacts with foreign officials and intelligence officers, receipts
of things of value from them and lack of candor in his convoluted and
contradictory responses to questions about his contacts."
Most of Edmonds' charges have been confirmed by Sen. Charles Grassley,
R-Iowa, and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who have
quizzed the FBI about her case. Edmonds sent a copy of her 9-page letter to
Grassley, one of the FBI's biggest critics on the Hill.
The FBI blamed the security lapses on a chronic shortage of Arabic translators,
which has forced it to hire mostly immigrants from the Middle East, which
makes background checks more difficult.
The Washington field office did not return repeated phone calls seeking
comment.
But the chief of the FBI's language section, Margaret Gullota, has insisted in
congressional testimony that the FBI hasn't loosened its standards in recruiting
Arabic-speaking translators since 9-11.
Edmonds isn't the only one complaining, though.
John Cole, program manager for the FBI foreign intelligence investigations
covering India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, told Congress about what he
believed to be a security lapse regarding the screening and hiring of
translators.
And Donald Lavey, who worked in counterterrorism for 20 years at the FBI,
recalled loyalty issues with a former Arab translator in the FBI's Detroit office.
He said wiretap translations by Mideast-born agents should have a "second
opinion," because their backgrounds may "prejudice" their interpretation and
analysis.
Both he and Edmonds note that translators often exclude large sections of
Arabic dialogue as irrelevant to the investigation, when in fact, they may be
relevant.
"There are thousands of translated documents/information and documents
that were labeled as 'not pertinent to be translated' by certain translators
before and after Sept. 11, that need to, and have to, be retranslated and
re-examined," Edmonds wrote in her letter.
Also, she says some Arab-American translators, including a supervisor,
threatened to sue the FBI for discrimination after complaints were filed
against them.
"In one case, a certain individual ended up getting a supervisory position,
even though initially he was refused due to his questionable past,
incompetence and fraudulent invoices" for expenses, Edmonds said. She
declined to reveal his name.
Edmonds says she is working with some families of 9-11 victims to lobby the
9-11 Commission to investigate the Arabic translation department at the FBI.
just...damn!
I wonder how long it would take to clean house,provided we had the will to do it.I say we start NOW!(dammit)
Promote Lon Horuchi to head of the class...
The fact that she is working with the 9-11 families says "Hillary". And she talks of "clues", things that she's reading into the translations and so I think she's just "guessing" after the fact.
bunp to read later
Anyone know what's going on here with the FBI? Why is the state dept so biased toward Arrid-fart over Israel?
I'm totally clueless. But this stuff is boggling my sanity!
Lost in Translation (an outrageous story of FBI sloth and featherbedding).
(long sigh) I know. God has it covered,though.
In the last 40 years the agency has gone from a hard-hitting law enforcement agency where a senior supervisor would hunt down a bank robber and killer personally with a .45 auto (Melvin Purvis/John Dillinger) to one where gender and ethnicity have a greater impact in hiring and promotion than ability. One cannot expect much from such an organization.
If she was as security-conscious as she claims, she would not have joined forces with Vietnam-era traitor Dan Ellsberg. Ellsberg is the Pentagon Papers guy who's been promoting his "Truth-Telling-Project" to get people in sensitive positions to illegally leak classified information to the press.
On an Ellsberg TTP petition in support of a Danish leaker who leaked three threat assessments to Danish newspapers concerning Iraqi WMD. Sibel Edmonds is signed up alongside such other notables as Ted Kennedy's favorite source of info, Karen Kwiatkowski, the looney Lyndon Larouche nut who made up peices to post on the web - while serving in uniform- about the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, about which she knew nothing. Also appearing is the sig of the infamous Larry Johnson or Joe Wilson/Nigerflap/Plame leak fame. And Ray McGovern of VIPS. Leaking is OK for everyone but Rove, Novak, and Scooter Libby, don't ya know?
Sibel Edmonds is a wiretap translator- or at least she was until fired. I doubt very much she's being being honest about why she was fired. I would not be surprised to find she was fired for doing what she accused others of doing. Leaking.
See the FR article "Larry Johnson, Daniel Ellsberg & The Truth Telling Project --Pleading For Intel Leaks"
The Truth Telling Project ^ | September 22, 2004 | Traitors
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