May 20, 2004
WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has taken the unusual step of retroactively classifying information it gave to Congress nearly two years ago regarding a former F.B.I. translator who charged that the bureau had missed critical terrorist warnings, officials said Wednesday.
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Law enforcement officials say the secrecy surrounding the translator, Sibel Edmonds, is essential to protecting information that could reveal intelligence-gathering operations. But some members of Congress and Congressional aides said they were troubled by the move, which comes as critics have accused the Bush administration of excessive secrecy.
"What the F.B.I. is up to here is ludicrous," Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said in an interview. "To classify something that's already been out in the public domain, what do you accomplish? It does harm to transparency in government, and it looks like an attempt to cover up the F.B.I.'s problems in translating intelligence."
F.B.I. officials gave Senate staff members two briefings in June and July of 2002 concerning Ms. Edmonds, who said the F.B.I.'s system for translating intelligence was so flawed that the bureau missed chances to spot terrorist warnings.
But the F.B.I. now maintains that some of the information discussed was so potentially damaging if released publicly that it is now considered classified, according to a memorandum distributed last week within the Senate Judiciary Committee. The material could also play a part in pending lawsuits, including Ms. Edmonds's wrongful termination suit and a lawsuit brought by hundreds of families of Sept. 11 victims who have sought to take testimony from her.
"Any staffer who attended those briefings, or who learns about those briefings, should be aware that the F.B.I. now considers the information classified and should therefore avoid further dissemination," the Judiciary Committee memorandum said.
An F.B.I. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the decision to classify the material was made by the Justice Department, which oversees the bureau. The Justice Department declined to comment on Wednesday.
The F.B.I. told Congressional officials that it was classifying topics including what languages Ms. Edmonds translated, what types of cases she handled, and what employees she worked with, officials said. Even routine and widely disseminated information -- like where she worked -- is now classified.
Ms. Edmonds, who is Turkish-American, began working for the F.B.I. shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks as a translator in the F.B.I.'s Washington field office with top-secret security clearance, but she was let go in the spring of 2002.
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Commentary:
They're still working to cover this regime's tracks over 9/11.
If there is truth about what they did in any papers they just classify it so
we won't know.
Poor Ms. Edmonds here she thought she was being a good citizen
she didn't realize that that is NOT what this regime wants. They want silent soldiers who
do their evil bidding.
=Barbara= |
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Commentary:
I have no patience for "conspiracy theorists" who put together the clues and reach grandiose conclusions, people who say they know who shot JFK, and so on ...
But I have less patience, and lots of contempt, for people sitting on a "commission" allegedly "investigating" the horrid events of September 11, 2001, all while avoiding any questions that don't come with pat, built-in answers.
In this story, we see questions disappear -- poof! -- behind a veil of that's classified, sorry.
And in the sidebar to the right, we see some other recent questions so studiously ignored by the 9/11 "investigators."
To me, it's like this:
In any grand catastrophe, you'll find a few odd coincidences, a few little oddities that might make you say, "Hmmm." And for the most part, I'd be willing to chalk up a few "hmmmms" to fate, to general incompetence and bad luck.
In the events of September 11, though, the pile of "hmmmms" just keeps on growing, taller and taller, each "hmmmm" a little more bizarre than the "hmmmms" that came before.
Do we at Unknown News know the answers to September 11? Of course not.
But we know the tough questions simply aren't being asked.
Anyone who can read through this stack of "hmmmms" and tell themselves that the official story of September 11 is what happened -- that 19 terrorists armed with box-cutters caught America with its defenses down ...
Well, anyone who can still convince themselves of that is no different, no better than the guards at Abu Ghraib -- people who convinced themselves that torture is OK because their commanding officers may have said it's OK.
Clearly, America's commanding officers have told Americans -- you, me, all of us -- what we're supposed to think about what happened September 11.
But you know what? Being told something doesn't make it true.
=H&HH= |
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She first gained wide public attention in October of that year when she appeared on "60 Minutes" on CBS and charged that the F.B.I.'s translation services were plagued by incompetence and a lack of urgency and that the bureau had ignored her concerns.
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Edmonds said it was wrong for the Bush administration to claim it wanted a full investigation.
"If there is transparency, there is going to be accountability and that is what they don't want."
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The Justice Department's inspector general is investigating her claims. The F.B.I. has taken steps to improve its translation operations, including hiring more linguists.
But Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, wrote in March to the Justice Department that he still had "grave concerns" about the F.B.I.'s ability to translate vital counter-terrorism material.
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Ms. Edmonds testified in a closed session this year before the Sept. 11 commission, and she has made increasingly vehement charges about the F.B.I.'s intelligence failures, saying the United States had advance warnings about the attacks. Families of the Sept. 11 victims -- who are suing numerous corporate and Saudi interests whom they accuse of having links to the attacks -- have sought to depose her as a witness, but the Justice Department has blocked the move by saying her testimony would violate "the state secret privilege." Her lawyer could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
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While some Congressional officials said they were confident the Justice Department had followed proper procedure in classifying the information, others said they could not remember any recent precedents and were bothered by the move.
"I have never heard of a retroactive classification two years back," said an aide who spoke on condition of anonymity because the subject is classified.
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Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed session with the commission's investigators providing information that was circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001 suggesting that an attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists were in place.
The Bush administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her and has obtained a gagging order from a court by citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege".
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"It would be silly if it didn't have such serious implications," the aide said. "People are puzzled and, frankly, worried, because the effect here is to quash Congressional oversight. We don't even know what we can't talk about."
Senator Grassley said, "This is about as close to a gag order as you can get."
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"What the F.B.I. is up to here is ludicrous," Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said in an interview.
"To classify something that's already been out in the public domain, what do you accomplish? It does harm to transparency in government, and it looks like an attempt to cover up the F.B.I.'s problems in translating intelligence."
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The F.B.I. denied the accusation.
"We're not imposing a gag order," the F.B.I. official said. Members of Congress have the information, but have to treat it as classified, the official said. "The problem is that while these pieces of information may look innocuous on their own, you put them all together and it reveals a picture of sensitive intelligence collection, and that's a security problem."
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Published by
The New York Times
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There's much more than this at Unknown News.
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From the archives, May 19, 2004:
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BushCheney non-testify
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Questions that'll never be asked ...
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9-11 Commission disregards
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# with comments by H&HH
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# with comments by H&HH
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60 days prior to Sept. 11, 2001|
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"The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning." --CIA Intelligence Report for President Bush, July 2001
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"Fighting the White House" to get at the truth about Sept. 11
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Bush's movements and actions on Sept. 11, 2001
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From the archives, Jan. 29, 2002:
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From the archives, Nov. 7, 2001:
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From the archives, Oct. 3, 2001:
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From the archives, Sept. 28, 2001:
White House lied about threat to Air Force One
From the archives, Sept. 24, 2001:
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From the archives,
Sept 23-24, 2001:
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From the archives, Sept. 21, 2001:
U.S. rejects Taliban's requests
for bin Laden evidence
From the archives, Sept. 18, 2001:
U.S., Germany, Japan investigate
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From the archives, Sept. 12, 2001:
San Francisco Mayor says he
was warned not to fly yesterday
From the archives, Sept. 12, 2001:
Bipartisan Committee's recommendations on terror disregarded by Bush Administration
From the archives, Sept. 11, 2001:
German intelligence says US knew
in advance about today's attacks
From the archives, July 26, 2001:
"Threat assessment" keeps
Ashcroft off commercial air flights
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