FBI Arab translators cheered Sept. 11

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.

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.

http://www.meforum.org/article/353

Steven Emerson: Get Ready for Twenty World Trade Center Bombings

Steven Emerson is the author of four books on the Middle East and, since 1993, the foremost specialist on the subject of fundamentalist Muslim activities in the United States. Formerly a staff member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and a journalist for U.S. News & World Report and Cable News Network, he produced the documentary Jihad in America that PBS broadcast in November 1994 and won the George Polk Award for best television documentary. Daniel Pipes interviewed him on April 8, 1997.

THE THREAT

Middle East Quarterly: Do fundamentalist Muslims pose a threat to the United States?

Steven Emerson: No doubt. All the major terror groups of a fundamentalist orientation have established deeply routed, well-organized cells and infrastructure here -- Hamas Islamic Jihad, Hizbullah, as well as the Algerian groups, Islamic Salvation Front and Armed Islamic Group. They believe in the use of violence to carry out their doctrine and to achieve their goals. This is not just my assessment but the publicly stated view of top officials of the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation who repeatedly state that deeply entrenched radical Islamic groups have the ability to strike here in the United States at will.1

MEQ: How do these groups intend to achieve their agenda in the United States?

Emerson: They use the United States as a sanctuary in which they can raise funds, recruit new members, directly control Middle Eastern operations, and initiate terrorists attacks. They also use it to spread da`wa [i.e., to propagate Islam].

MEQ: Did the fundamentalists assess the World Trade Center bombing of February 1993 as harmful to their interests?

Emerson: Yes, at this point Islamic fundamentalists are withholding attacks inside this country, so the current threat is much more to Americans overseas and other Western targets. Not only have funds from the United States paid for the terrorist attacks, but actual recruits have been sent from here on actual missions to fight "infidels" and set up jihad battlefronts in Algeria, Bosnia, Israel and the territories, Lebanon, Chechniya, and the Philippines.

MEQ: At some future point things here will change for the worse?

Emerson: The rage against the United States is increasing. In an environment that not only sanctions terrorism but mandates terrorist attacks against "enemies" of Islam, the question is how long the quiet can remain.

MEQ: The absence of attacks in America since 1993 does not mean the problem of fundamentalist violence has abated?

Emerson: Not at all. If anything, the threat is greater now than before the World Trade Center bombing as the numbers of these groups and their members expands. In fact, I would say that the infrastructure now exists to carry off twenty simultaneous World Trade Center-type bombings across the United States. And as chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons become available to them, the threat becomes ever more ominous. Just because someone holding a gun to your head doesn't pull the trigger should not be understood as the threat not existing. It would be suicidal to permit our national security to depend on the good will or rationality of radical fundamentalists.

MEQ: And in the meantime, what are they doing?

Emerson: They use the United States as a base to spread the word of extremism, to proselytize, and to recruit new members to their interpretation of Islam. They also make efforts to become entrenched and legitimate so that they can provide a base here for the entire panoply of radical policies inimical to the democracy, pluralism, and respect for the individual that characterize Western political life.

MEQ: Might the radical groups limit their violence to American interests outside the United States?

Emerson: No, because these groups are unable to restrict their hatred for the United States to certain geographical regions.

MEQ: You told Congress a year ago that "both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have not only raised considerable ... funds in the United States but have also set up operational headquarters in the US where terrorist attacks and military strategies are orchestrated."2 What proof do you have?

Emerson: Example one: Court documents video tapes seen and other intelligence material relating to the investigation by law enforcement officials of Islamic Jihad in Tampa, Florida. Prior to his assuming leadership of Islamic Jihad in Damascus in October 1995, Ramadan `Abdallah Shallah had been an instructor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Equipped with several search warrants, the FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service retrieved tens of thousands of documents showing that his Florida office had served as the major operational arm of Islamic Jihad outside Syria.

Example two: law enforcement has identified the Islamic Association for Palestine as the primary Hamas front group in the United States. Its December 1996 conference in Chicago included Islamic extremists from the Middle East, Hamas commanders based in the United States, and radical supporters of Hamas from all parts of the United States. Several of the more secretive sessions included a discussion about killing Jews and other "enemies of Hamas."

Example three: the activities of Hamas in the United States were revealed when materials relating to the case of Musa Abu Marzook, its operative arrested at JFK airport in July 1995, were publicly released. These documents clearly established that Abu Marzook had been dispatching agents to Israel to carry out terrorists attacks. Investigators even found the checks by which he paid his U.S.-based couriers.3

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