Administration Blinks: Major Breakthrough In Sibel Edmonds Case

[G_j]

http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=17527&c=206

Administration Blinks; Admits Retroactively Classified Information Not Harmful to National Security

February 22, 2005


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: [e-mail]

Decision Likely to Have Significant Impact on Sibel Edmonds’ Appeal, Says ACLU

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department admitted today that information it had retroactively classified could be released to the public and did not pose a threat to national security. The American Civil Liberties Union said the revelation could aid government whistleblowers in their efforts to fight unlawful dismissals.

"The Justice Department’s long-overdue admission goes to the core of the ACLU’s allegations that the government is going all out to silence whistleblowers to protect itself from political embarrassment," said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson, who is representing former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds in a lawsuit challenging her termination. "This is hardly an isolated case, as numerous national security whistleblowers can attest. The government is taking extreme steps to shield itself while gambling with our safety."

In May 2004, the Justice Department retroactively classified information presented two years earlier by the FBI to the Senate Judiciary Committee during two unclassified briefings regarding Edmonds, who had repeatedly reported serious security breaches and misconduct in the agency’s translation program. An executive summary of the Justice Department’s Inspector General report into her termination concluded that Edmonds was fired for reporting the misconduct, and that her allegations, if true, could have potentially damaging consequences for the FBI.

Edmonds, a former Middle Eastern language specialist hired by the FBI shortly after 9/11, challenged her retaliatory dismissal by filing a law suit in federal court, but her case was dismissed last July after Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the so-called "state secrets privilege." It was at that time that the Justice Department retroactively classified the two-year old briefings in attempt to bolster its "state secrets" claim. The ACLU is representing Edmonds in her appeal.

..more..

[evolvenow]

1. Superb!!! Let the Truth Out!! Eventually, the real story will be revealed.

and it ain't gonna be pretty for B*sh and the war criminal club.

[G_j]

3. I believe that Sibel said

at one point that that these records incriminate some people in high places.
I hope this is true!

[Demit]

2. This is good news for Sibel Edmonds and us!

"When forced to defend its extreme step of retroactively classifying information, the government was unable to do so and admitted the information could be released to the public without harm to national security."

[G_j]

4. kick

:bounce:

[G_j]

5. kick

[G_j]

6. no interest in this? or was it posted already?

I'm surprised this hasn't recieved more interest.


http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/6107/

Major Developments in 9/11 Whistleblower Case
Sibel Edmonds is a government whistleblower who has stated that prior to 9/11, in April 2001, the U.S. government had information about plans for airplanes to be used on suicide missions in U.S. cities in the coming months.


Washington, D.C. - Her statements contradict what administration officials told the 9/11 Commission in public testimony. Edmonds has also charged that the FBI has been compromised in various ways and that her raising these issues led to her dismissal.


The Washington Post reports today on a case pertaining to Edmonds brought by the Project On Government Oversight: "The Justice Department has backed away from a court battle over its authority to classify and restrict the discussion of information it has already released, handing a local advocacy group a victory by granting it explicit permission to publish letters written by two senators that contain the contested information."

..more..

[alfredo]

9. I think it was posted at LBN.

[Al-CIAda]

7. kick

[No Exit]

8. If God weren't dead, I'd ask him to protect Sibel Edmonds!!! n/t

[Al-CIAda]

10. State Dept. Quashed 9/11 Links To Global Drug Trade

State Dept. Quashed 9/11 Links To Global Drug Trade
 -FBI Whistleblower

Sibel Edmonds- FBI Whistleblower, interview
SE: Everything – from drugs to money laundering to arms sales. And yes, there are certain convergences with all these activities and international terrorism.
CD: So with these organizations we're talking about a lot of money –
SE: Huge, just massive. They don't deal with 1 million or 5 million dollars, but with hundreds of millions.
CD: From your previous testimony and the examples I want to bring up next, it would seem that organized crime with terrorist links is really holding the reins inside powerful governments, even the American one. No?
SE: That may be, but I don't know. I didn't get high enough up on the ladder to find out. With all of this suspicious and unprecedented "state secrets" obstructionism from Ashcroft, it might seem that way, but I don't have any direct information.
CD: But what do think, within departments such as the Pentagon and the State Department. Do you suspect certain high officials may be profiting from terrorist-linked organized crime?
SE: I can't say anything specific with regards to these departments, because I didn't work for them. But as for the politicians, what I can say is that when you start talking about huge amounts of money, certain elected officials become automatically involved. And there are different kinds of campaign contributions – legal and illegal, declared and undeclared.
CD: Could this apparent toleration of dangerous criminal groups in the midst possibly be interpreted to mean that American policy is driven by the "ends justify the means" philosophy?
SE: But how are the ends possibly met by such activities? To this day, I just can't see how. What is happening does not benefit 99.9 percent of Americans – just a very small elite.
I'm no expert, but from what I have personally seen I can say that our national security is being compromised every day, because important investigations are being stopped, and potentially important clues are being overlooked. It's absolutely incredible that even after 9/11, certain individuals, foreign businessmen and others, among others, are still escaping scrutiny.
Okay, perhaps talking about the pre-9/11 world they could get away with saying "we didn't know," but to continue doing so – I mean, what if we are attacked by nuclear or chemical weapons, what will be their next excuse? That "we didn't know" it could happen? Come on! I can prove they are lying, because they know."
http://www.breakfornews.com/Sibel-Edmonds-Story.htm

[alfredo]

11. Kick

This is good news

[G_j]

12. is it just me?

it seems to me this is BIG!

[cthrumatrix]

13. bush just said there should be total transparency for press

so let's go.... let Sibel talk.

[G_j]

14. "Certain elected officials will stand trial and go to prison."

http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=2917

An Interview with Sibel Edmonds
FBI Whistleblower Talks to Antiwar.com

by Christopher Deliso
balkanalysis.com

<snip> from the very end of this long and fascinating interview:

CD: If your full testimony is heard by the public, who or what agencies are going to be in the biggest trouble?

SE: Well, as for agencies I guess the DOJ, FBI, State Department. But in a way these agencies get some kind of immunity when you charge them like this … I hate to see how a lot of agents get stigmatized in this. Most of the field agents I met in the FBI were good, honest and hardworking individuals. They were trying to do their best, but up against this ingrown bureaucracy – this is where you have the problem, as will as with certain elected officials.

CD: What are they so afraid of?

SE: They're afraid of information, of the truth coming out, and accountability – the whole accountability issue that will arise. But it's not as complicated as it might seem. If they were to allow the whole picture to emerge, it would just boil down to a whole lot of money and illegal activities.

CD: Hmm, well I know you can't name names, but can you tell me if any specific officials will suffer if your testimony comes out?

SE: Yes. Certain elected officials will stand trial and go to prison.

------
** any ideas on who she is talking about?

[cthrumatrix]

15. the mafia (gov officials) will NOT let her speak the truth

[Mandate My Ass]

16. "the whole accountability issue will arise..."

accountability is like kryptonite to these people. I can't wait to see who's implicated but I have my guesses.

[G_j]

17. I sure hope the name "Cheney"

comes up.

[Mandate My Ass]

18. GMTA

Accountability on this scale couldn't happen to a better dick. Big time. :D

[manna]

19. didn't Edmonds allude to..

an investigation being conducted in florida about 9/11 ties to drug trafficking, money laundering etc.

sounds like the group that brought us Iran -Contra, BCCI, Weapons of Mass Destruction

I believe that florida site is http://www.madcowprod.com

[Mandate My Ass]

21. That site is awesome

I'm checking it out now. Thanks.

[Oilwellian]

22. This was a great interview

Long, but well worth the insight you gain. I guess it's up to Grassley and Leahy to set the gears in motion, now that the gag order has been lifted.

[Just Me]

20. What did they do,...shred a buncha' documents?

:shrug:

This is interesting.

I'd also like to see that other woman, Lt. Col. Karen K???? (geez, her name has completely escaped me), get her coup story out there.

Of course, the CM won't cover any of this material which is of vital interest to the American people. :grr:

[G_j]

24. Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski

Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski (Rocks!)


---------------------------------
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html

The Lie Factory

Late last year, a special Mother Jones investigation detailed how, only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war.

By Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest

January/February 2004 Issue

It's a crisp fall day in western Virginia, a hundred miles from Washington, D.C., and a breeze is rustling the red and gold leaves of the Shenandoah hills. On the weather-beaten wood porch of a ramshackle 90-year-old farmhouse, at the end of a winding dirt-and-gravel road, Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski is perched on a plastic chair, wearing shorts, a purple sweatshirt, and muddy sneakers. Two scrawny dogs and a lone cat are on the prowl, and the air is filled with swarms of ladybugs.

So far, she says, no investigators have come knocking. Not from the Central Intelligence Agency, which conducted an internal inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, not from the congressional intelligence committees, not from the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. All of those bodies are ostensibly looking into the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, amid charges that the White House and the Pentagon exaggerated, distorted, or just plain lied about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda terrorists and its possession of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. In her hands, Kwiatkowski holds several pieces of the puzzle. Yet she, along with a score of other career officers recently retired or shuffled off to other jobs, has not been approached by anyone.

Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. "It wasn't intelligence‚ -- it was propaganda," she says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials‚ -- including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February‚ -- that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war.

Until now, the story of how the Bush administration produced its wildly exaggerated estimates of the threat posed by Iraq has never been revealed in full. But, for the first time, a detailed investigation by Mother Jones, based on dozens of interviews‚ -- some on the record, some with officials who insisted on anonymity‚ -- exposes the workings of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion.

<snip>

[yellowcanine]

23. Another asscraft screw up. It will take Gonzales 4 years to clean up the

mess he left.

[G_j]

25. kick