Sibel Edmonds
Encyclopedia
Sibel Deniz Edmonds is a Turkish-American former FBI
translator and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
(NSWBC). Edmonds gained public attention following her firing from her position as a language specialist at the FBI's Washington Field Office in March, 2002, after she accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving foreign nationals, alleging serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence which, she contended, presented a danger to the United States
' security. Her later claims have gained her awards and fame as a whistleblower.
as a student in 1988. Fluent in Turkish
, Persian
, English
and Azerbaijani
, Edmonds earned her bachelor's degree in criminal justice
and psychology
from George Washington University
and her master's in public policy
and international commerce
from George Mason University
.
According to Edmonds, she began facing problems when she reported to FBI managers various incidents that she considered misconduct and incompetence involving her supervisor Mike Feghali and others that she says she observed while employed as a translator between December 2001 and March 2002.
On the 1st of February 2011, Edmonds published a story on her own website adding details of incidents she claimed took place in April 2001. This included her role as translator where an informant had told the FBI agents, at that time:
The agents, along with Edmonds, reported this information internally at the FBI but, according to Edmonds, no one at the bureau ever asked for follow-ups or further information prior to 9/11
Edmonds would escalate her complaints to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility
and the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
. In response, she claims that managers retaliated against her, and she was finally fired on March 22, 2002. In June 2002, the Associated Press
and Washington Post
reported, upon investigation, that Edmonds was dismissed because her actions were disruptive, breached security, and that she performed poorly at her job. A later internal investigation by the FBI found that many of Edmonds allegations of misconduct "had some basis in fact" and that "her allegations were at least a contributing factor in the FBI’s decision to terminate her services," but were unable to substantiate all of her allegations, nor did they make a statement regarding her dismissal being improper.
Edmonds' allegations of impropriety at the FBI later came to the attention of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held unclassified hearings on the matter on June 17, 2002 and July 9, 2002. During the hearings, the FBI provided various unclassified documents and statements relating to the case, which led to Senators Patrick Leahy
and Chuck Grassley
sending letters, dated June 19, 2002, August 13, 2002, and October 28, 2002 — to Inspector General Glenn A. Fine
, Attorney General Ashcroft
, and FBI Director Robert Mueller
, respectively — asking for explanations and calling for an independent audit of the FBI's translation unit. These documents were published on the Senators' web sites.
On August 15, 2002, a separate suit, Burnett v. Al Baraka Investment & Dev. Corp., was filed by families of 600 victims of the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks against Saudi
banks, charity organizations, and companies. Although the claims were eventually dismissed, Edmonds planned to file a deposition in this case. On May 13, 2004, Ashcroft submitted statements to justify the use of the State Secrets Privilege against the planned deposition by Edmonds, and the same day, the FBI retroactively classified as Top Secret
all of the material and statements that had been provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2002 relating to Edmonds' own lawsuit, as well as the letters that had been sent by the Senators and republished by the Project on Government Oversight
On June 23, 2004, the retroactive reclassification was challenged in a suit filed by the Project on Government Oversight, citing fear that the group might be retroactively punished for having published the letters on its website. The Justice Department tried to get the suit dismissed, and the Justice Department explicitly approved their release to the Project on Government Oversight. The reclassification did, however, keep Edmonds from testifying in the class action suit as well as her own whistleblower suit. The latter decision was appealed, and Inspector General Glenn A. Fine released a summary of the audit report, claiming “that many of her allegations were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services. …Rather than investigate Edmonds' allegations vigorously and thoroughly, the FBI concluded that she was a disruption and terminated her contract.”
In August, 2004, Edmonds founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
(NSWBC), which exists to assist national security whistleblowers through advocacy and reform. Edmonds is also the founder and publisher of the Boiling Frogs Post, an online media site that aims to offer nonpartisan investigative journalism.
In September, 2006, a documentary about Edmonds case called Kill the Messenger
(Une Femme à Abattre) premiered in France. The film discusses the Edmonds case as well as offers interviews with various involved individuals. In the film Edmonds, former CIA agent Philip Giraldi
, and others say that Israel was a significant actor in the illicit activities Edmonds discovered.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
translator and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition , founded in 2004 by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds in league with over 50 former and current United States government officials from more than a dozen agencies, is an independent, nonpartisan alliance of whistleblowers who have come forward to...
(NSWBC). Edmonds gained public attention following her firing from her position as a language specialist at the FBI's Washington Field Office in March, 2002, after she accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving foreign nationals, alleging serious acts of security breaches, cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence which, she contended, presented a danger to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
' security. Her later claims have gained her awards and fame as a whistleblower.
Early life and education
The daughter of an Azerbaijani doctor, Edmonds lived in Iran and then Turkey before coming to the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
as a student in 1988. Fluent in Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
and Azerbaijani
Azerbaijani language
Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
, Edmonds earned her bachelor's degree in criminal justice
Criminal justice
Criminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts...
and psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
from George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
and her master's in public policy
Public policy
Public policy as government action is generally the principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. In general, the foundation is the pertinent national and...
and international commerce
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
from George Mason University
George Mason University
George Mason University is a public university based in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, United States, south of and adjacent to the city of Fairfax. Additional campuses are located nearby in Arlington County, Prince William County, and Loudoun County...
.
FBI career
Edmonds was hired, as a contractor, to work as an interpreter in the translations unit of the FBI on September 20, 2001. Among her main roles was to translate covertly recorded conversations by Turkish diplomatic and political targets.According to Edmonds, she began facing problems when she reported to FBI managers various incidents that she considered misconduct and incompetence involving her supervisor Mike Feghali and others that she says she observed while employed as a translator between December 2001 and March 2002.
On the 1st of February 2011, Edmonds published a story on her own website adding details of incidents she claimed took place in April 2001. This included her role as translator where an informant had told the FBI agents, at that time:
- Bin Laden’s group is planning a massive terrorist attack in the United States. The order has been issued. They are targeting major cities, big metropolitan cities; they think four or five cities; New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, and San Francisco; possibly Los Angeles or Las Vegas. They will use airplanes to carry out the attacks. They said that some of the individuals involved in carrying this out are already in the United States. They are here in the U.S.; living among us, and I believe some in US government already know about all of this.
The agents, along with Edmonds, reported this information internally at the FBI but, according to Edmonds, no one at the bureau ever asked for follow-ups or further information prior to 9/11
Edmonds would escalate her complaints to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility
Office of Professional Responsibility
The Office of Professional Responsibility is part of the United States Department of Justice responsible for investigating attorneys employed by the DOJ who have been accused of misconduct or crimes in their professional functions...
and the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice is the Office of the Inspector General specific to the United States Department of Justice that is responsible for conducting nearly all of the investigations of DOJ employees and programs. The present Inspector General is Glenn A...
. In response, she claims that managers retaliated against her, and she was finally fired on March 22, 2002. In June 2002, the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
and Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
reported, upon investigation, that Edmonds was dismissed because her actions were disruptive, breached security, and that she performed poorly at her job. A later internal investigation by the FBI found that many of Edmonds allegations of misconduct "had some basis in fact" and that "her allegations were at least a contributing factor in the FBI’s decision to terminate her services," but were unable to substantiate all of her allegations, nor did they make a statement regarding her dismissal being improper.
Edmonds' allegations of impropriety at the FBI later came to the attention of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held unclassified hearings on the matter on June 17, 2002 and July 9, 2002. During the hearings, the FBI provided various unclassified documents and statements relating to the case, which led to Senators Patrick Leahy
Patrick Leahy
Patrick Joseph Leahy is the senior United States Senator from Vermont and member of the Democratic Party. He is the first and only elected Democratic United States Senator in Vermont's history. He is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy is the second most senior U.S. Senator,...
and Chuck Grassley
Chuck Grassley
Charles Ernest "Chuck" Grassley is the senior United States Senator from Iowa . A member of Republican Party, he previously served in the served in the United States House of Representatives and the Iowa state legislature...
sending letters, dated June 19, 2002, August 13, 2002, and October 28, 2002 — to Inspector General Glenn A. Fine
Glenn A. Fine
Glenn Alan Fine served as Inspector General of the United States Department of Justice from 2000 until January 2011. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 15, 2000...
, Attorney General Ashcroft
John Ashcroft
John David Ashcroft is a United States politician who served as the 79th United States Attorney General, from 2001 until 2005, appointed by President George W. Bush. Ashcroft previously served as the 50th Governor of Missouri and a U.S...
, and FBI Director Robert Mueller
Robert Mueller
Robert Swan Mueller III is the 6th and current Director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation .-Early life:...
, respectively — asking for explanations and calling for an independent audit of the FBI's translation unit. These documents were published on the Senators' web sites.
On August 15, 2002, a separate suit, Burnett v. Al Baraka Investment & Dev. Corp., was filed by families of 600 victims of the September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks against Saudi
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
banks, charity organizations, and companies. Although the claims were eventually dismissed, Edmonds planned to file a deposition in this case. On May 13, 2004, Ashcroft submitted statements to justify the use of the State Secrets Privilege against the planned deposition by Edmonds, and the same day, the FBI retroactively classified as Top Secret
Top Secret
Top Secret generally refers to the highest acknowledged level of classified information.Top Secret may also refer to:- Film and television :* Top Secret , a British comedy directed by Mario Zampi...
all of the material and statements that had been provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2002 relating to Edmonds' own lawsuit, as well as the letters that had been sent by the Senators and republished by the Project on Government Oversight
Project on Government Oversight
The Project On Government Oversight , founded in 1981, is an independent non-profit organization in the United States which investigates and seeks to expose corruption and other misconduct. POGO assists whistleblowers and investigates federal agencies, Congress, and government contractors...
On June 23, 2004, the retroactive reclassification was challenged in a suit filed by the Project on Government Oversight, citing fear that the group might be retroactively punished for having published the letters on its website. The Justice Department tried to get the suit dismissed, and the Justice Department explicitly approved their release to the Project on Government Oversight. The reclassification did, however, keep Edmonds from testifying in the class action suit as well as her own whistleblower suit. The latter decision was appealed, and Inspector General Glenn A. Fine released a summary of the audit report, claiming “that many of her allegations were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough, and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI's decision to terminate her services. …Rather than investigate Edmonds' allegations vigorously and thoroughly, the FBI concluded that she was a disruption and terminated her contract.”
Post-FBI
Edmonds has continued to make various allegations and claims about operations within the FBI. Many of her allegations about the 9/11 attacks and nuclear proliferation have been reported in the media and published online, and she continues to publish open letters on her personal website, Just a Citizen. On August 8, 2009, Edmonds gave sworn testimony accusing current and former members of the government of treasonous activity. A video of her deposition and PDF transcript is available online as well as an easy-to-read HTML transcript.In August, 2004, Edmonds founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
The National Security Whistleblowers Coalition , founded in 2004 by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds in league with over 50 former and current United States government officials from more than a dozen agencies, is an independent, nonpartisan alliance of whistleblowers who have come forward to...
(NSWBC), which exists to assist national security whistleblowers through advocacy and reform. Edmonds is also the founder and publisher of the Boiling Frogs Post, an online media site that aims to offer nonpartisan investigative journalism.
In September, 2006, a documentary about Edmonds case called Kill the Messenger
Kill the Messenger (film)
Kill The Messenger is a 2006 French documentary film about Sibel Edmonds. An English version of the film was produced in 2007 by SBS Australia....
(Une Femme à Abattre) premiered in France. The film discusses the Edmonds case as well as offers interviews with various involved individuals. In the film Edmonds, former CIA agent Philip Giraldi
Philip Giraldi
Philip Giraldi is a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency and a columnist and television commentator who is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a group that advocates for more even handed...
, and others say that Israel was a significant actor in the illicit activities Edmonds discovered.
External links
- Sibel Edmonds's sites: Home Page and National Security Whistleblowers Coalition