Moles in the FBI?
It certainly seems that way.
Wow.
According to the Washington Post, a former FBI wire-tap translator named Sibel Edmonds "raised suspicions about a co-worker's connections to a group under surveillance." At the time, these suspicions appear to have been dismissed by the FBI. So was Edmonds, on the grounds that she was being "disruptive."
Perhaps we need a little more of such disruptiveness:
Under pressure, FBI officials have investigated and verified the veracity of parts of Edmonds's story, according to documents and people familiar with an FBI briefing of congressional staff... The FBI confirmed that Edmonds's co-worker had been part of an organization that was a target of top-secret surveillance and that the same co-worker had "unreported contacts" with a foreign government official subject to the surveillance... In addition, the linguist failed to translate two communications from the targeted foreign government official...The FBI said it was unable to corroborate an allegation by Edmonds that she was approached to join the targeted group. Edmonds said she told Dennis Saccher, a special agent in the Washington field office who was conducting the surveillance, about the co-worker's actions and Saccher replied, "It looks like espionage to me."
Edmonds said that on several occasions, the translator tried to recruit her to join the targeted foreign group. "This person told us she worked for our target organization," Edmonds said in an interview. "These are the people we are targeting, monitoring."Edmonds would not identify the other translator, but The Post has learned from other sources that she is a 33-year-old U.S. citizen whose native country is home to the target group. Both Edmonds and the other translator are U.S. citizens who trace their ethnicity to the same Middle Eastern country.
Later, Edmonds said, the woman approached her with a list dividing up individuals whose phone lines were being secretly tapped: Under the plan, the woman would translate conversations of her former co-workers in the target organization, and Edmonds would handle other phone calls. Edmonds said she refused and that the woman told her that her lack of cooperation could put her family in danger.Edmonds said she also brought her concerns to her supervisor and other FBI officials in the Washington field office. When no action was taken, she said, she reported her concerns to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, then to Justice's inspector general.
"Investigations are being compromised," Edmonds wrote to the inspector general's office in March. "Incorrect or misleading translations are being sent to agents in the field. Translations are being blocked and circumvented."
OK: what Middle Eastern country? What "targeted organization"? What do you think, Fred?
Posted by Dr. Frank at June 19, 2002 11:58 AM | TrackBack