ACLU Urges Supreme Court to Review Case of FBI Whistleblower

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August 4, 2005

Vanity Fair Profile Reveals New Facts About FBI’s Termination of Former
Translator Sibel Edmonds

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@aclu.org

Sibel Edmonds addressed the press in Washington, D.C.

NEW YORK — The American Civil Liberties Union today urged the
U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court’s dismissal of the case of
Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who was fired in retaliation
for reporting security breaches and possible espionage within the
Bureau. Lower courts dismissed the case when former Attorney General
John Ashcroft invoked the rarely used “state secrets” privilege.

The Court created the so-called state secrets privilege more than 50
years ago but has not considered it since. The need for clarification
of the doctrine is acute, the ACLU said, because the government is
increasingly using the privilege to cover up its own wrongdoing and
to keep legitimate cases out of court.

“Edmonds’ case is not an isolated incident,” said ACLU Associate Legal
Director Ann Beeson. “The federal government is routinely retaliating
against government employees who uncover weaknesses in our ability
to prevent terrorist attacks or protect public safety.”

The states secrets privilege, Beeson said, “should be used a shield
for sensitive evidence, not a sword the government can use at will to
cut off argument in a case before the evidence can be presented. We are
urging the Supreme Court, which has not directly addressed this issue
in 50 years, to rein in the government’s misuse of this privilege.”

The ACLU is also asking the Supreme Court to reverse the D.C. appeals
court’s decision to exclude the press and public from the court hearing
of Edmonds’ case in April. The appeals court closed the hearing at
the eleventh hour without any specific findings that secrecy was
necessary. In fact, the government had agreed to argue the case
in public. A media consortium that included The New York Times ,
The Washington Post , and CNN intervened in the case to object to
the closure.

Edmonds, a former Middle Eastern language specialist hired by the FBI
shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002 and filed a lawsuit later that
year challenging the retaliatory dismissal.

Her ordeal is highlighted in a 10-page article about whistleblowers
in the September 2005 issue of Vanity Fair which links Edmonds’
allegations and the subsequent retaliation to possible “illicit
activity involving Turkish nationals” and a high-level member of
Congress. The ACLU said the article, titled “An Inconvenient Patriot,”
further undercuts the government’s claim that the case can’t be
litigated because certain information is secret.

In addition, a report by the Inspector General, made public in
January 2005, contains a tremendous amount of detail about Edmonds’
job, the structure of the FBI translation unit , and the substance
of her allegations. The report concluded that Edmonds’ whistleblower
allegations were “the most significant factor” in the FBI’s decision
to terminate her.

The outcome in Edmonds’ case could significantly impact the
government’s ability to rely on secrecy to avoid accountability in
future cases, the ACLU said, including one pending case charging the
government with “rendering” detainees to be tortured.

In the 1953 Supreme Court case that was the basis for today’s
state secrets privilege doctrine, United States v. Reynolds,
the government claimed that disclosing a military flight accident
report would jeopardize secret military equipment and harm national
security. Nearly 50 years later, in 2004, the truth came out: the
accident report contained no state secrets, but instead confirmed
that the cause of the crash was faulty maintenance of the B-29 fleet.

Fourteen 9/11 family member advocacy groups and public interest
organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Edmonds
‘ case before the District Court, and many are expected to join an
amicus brief next month supporting Supreme Court review of the case,
including the National Security Archive.

Edmonds is represented by Beeson, Melissa Goodman, and Ben Wizner of
the national ACLU; Art Spitzer of the ACLU of the National Capital
Area; and Mark Zaid, of Krieger and Zaid, PLLC.

The ACLU’s Supreme Court cert petition is online at:
;c=24

The appendix for the Supreme Court cert petition is online at:
.cfm?ID=18872&c=24

Further information on the case, including other legal documents
and a backgrounder on the state secrets privilege, is online at :

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Web site of the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation.

Learn more about the distinction between these two components of
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