EX-FBI TRANSLATOR TESTS JUSTICE DEPT. AGAIN
y Jeff Stein
CQPolitics.com
spytalk/2009/08/exfbi-translator-tests-justice.htm l
Aug 4 2009
Sibel Edmonds may never get her day in court – or at least the kind
she wants.
The former FBI translator has spent seven years trying to get a
court to hear her allegations that foreign agents, in particular
Turkish intelligence, had penetrated her unit, the State Department,
the Pentagon and Congress.
This weekend she’s going to try again.
Edmonds, a multilingual Iranian raised partly in Turkey who graduated
from college in the U.S., was fired by the FBI in 2002 after lodging
complaints of incompetence and corruption in the translation unit.
Although the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General
would eventually validate her complaints, in 2002 Attorney General
John D. Ashcroft threw a cloak of secrecy over the entire affair
via the so-called state secrets privilege, effectively smothering
Edmonds’s whistleblower suit against the FBI.
In 2004, the government won another gag order against her when
U.S. District Court judge Reggie B. Walton ruled that Edmonds could
not answer questions about her FBI allegations in a suit by families
of 9/11 victims against the Saudi government.
This week, Edmonds was scheduled to give a deposition regarding
Turkish intelligence activities in an arcane congressional election
dispute in Ohio.
Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, had filed a complaint with the Ohio Board
of Elections contending that a rival candidate in 2008 had slandered
her with a charge that she took campaign cash from Turkish interests
– "blood money," he called it – to vote against a congressional
resolution blaming Ankara for the "genocide" of 1.5 million Armenians
during the First World War.
The candidate, David Krikorian, who ran against Schmidt as an
Independent but wants to challenge her again in 2010 as a Democrat,
planned to take a deposition from Edmonds on Saturday, Aug. 8.
On Monday, Edmonds notified the Justice Department of what she planned
to tell Krikorian:
"How certain Turkish entities had illegally infiltrated and influenced
various U.S. government agencies and officials, including but not
limited to the Department of State, the Department of Defense and
individual members of the United States Congress."
She and her attorneys gave the government "until the end of the day
to respond," she said, "however, we received no response."
They gave the Justice Department another deadline — until noon today,
to respond.
No answer.
Edmonds says that without a red light, she plans to go ahead now and
spill the beans.
"Yes, I will provide a deposition unless DOJ officially bars me from
doing so," she said by e-mail Tuesday evening.
She invited "the public/media" to attend.
A senior Justice Department official dismissed Edmonds’s maneuver
as theatrics.
Edmonds’s nondisclosure agreement (NDA) with the FBI requires her to
give the bureau 30 days advance notice of her desire to speak about
issues related to her employment, the official said.
"State Secrets is not on the table here," said the official, demanding
anonymity in exchange for discussing the issue. "This just about her
NDA, period."
The official declined to predict how the Attorney General will respond
to Edmonds’s demand for an immediate answer – if at all — or what
action the Justice Department might take if she violates the agreement.
Edmonds said she has no control over when a party wants to depose her.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
