Sibel Edmonds

Personal

Vocation

Lifestyle

Notable

Traits

American whistleblower, this beautiful woman, fluent in Turkish and Farsi, worked as a translator for the FBI. In the days following the 9/11 attacks, she reported to her boss her discovery that intercepted messages actually warned of a terrorist plot involving skyscrapers and discussed the US visa application process. However, the documents were badly translated and overlooked. Five months later, after she had made note of other security lapses upward through her chain of command, she was fired. Attorney General Ashcroft retroactively classified information about the Edmonds case even though some of the facts cited in those documents have been well-publicized and openly discussed with members of Congress during the intervening years. The Department of Justice invoked the seldom-used "state secrets" privilege to keep Edmonds silent in court. Edmonds was blocked from testifying in a lawsuit filed by 9/11 victims and could speak to the 9/11 Commission only behind closed doors. With the re-classification of documents, even the Senate Judiciary Committee, overseeing the FBI, is having trouble getting to the bottom of her allegations. Edmonds is a naturalized US citizen who grew up in Turkey and Iran. She claims that the ordeal has made her grow disillusioned with the "magical system of checks and balances and separation of powers. What I came to see is that it exists only in name. Where is the oversight? Who is there to stop him [Ashcroft]?" She began working at the FBI on September 20, 2001, expediting requested translations from field material. An agent in Arizona submitted the important documents to her because he suspected that they had not been examined thoroughly before September 11. Her supervisor blocked her new translation from being sent, even over a secure line, to the requesting agent (some reports intimate that this may be the same agent who warned about Middle Easterners taking flying lessons). Edmonds also reported that a translation-colleague in the FBI had admitted to ties with a Middle East group that was a target of an FBI investigation. Two months after her initial discovery, Edmonds found documents that had gone un-translated because they were marked "not pertinent" by this colleague. Although Edmonds reported these lapses to several in her chain of command, no one gave it the importance and urgency that the issue demanded. Instead, she was warned that she would open a "can of worms" if she kept filing security complaints. In March 2002, she actually wrote a letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and contacted the Senate Judiciary Committee. The FBI subsequently confiscated her home computer, asked her to take a polygraph test, which she said she passed, and terminated her contract. Edmonds went public with her story, appearing on "60 Minutes" in October 2002. She also sued the Justice Department on First Amendment grounds, claiming she was fired after she exposed shoddy methods in the FBI. On July 7, 2004, a federal judge, who had been appointed to his position by President Bush, ruled that Edmonds’ claims might expose secrets that would seriously harm national security, expose methods of intelligence-gathering and damage diplomatic relationships with foreign governments. Though US District Judge Reggie B. Walton threw the case out, Edmonds said she will appeal. Link to Wikipedia biography