by Toni Locy, Associated Press
Nov. 28, 2005
A former FBI translator failed Monday to persuade the Supreme Court to revive her lawsuit alleging she was fired for reporting possible wrongdoing by other linguists involved in counterterrorism investigations.
The high court also rebuffed a request by Sibel Edmonds and media groups to rule on whether an appellate court improperly held arguments in the case in secret without being asked to do so by either side.
"When courts are sealed, the public may suspect the worst and lose faith in their government simply because they are prohibited access," wrote lawyers for media groups, including The Associated Press.
Edmonds, 32, who was hired after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and fired in March 2002, argued that a trial court judge was wrong to accept the Justice Department's claim that allowing her lawsuit to go forward would threaten "state secrets," or national security.
The former translator claimed the FBI terminated her contract after she complained about the quality of translations of terrorism-related wiretaps and had reported that another translator was leaking information to targets of investigations.
At the time, the FBI said it fired Edmonds because she had committed security violations and had disrupted the translation unit at the bureau's Washington field office where she worked.
Edmonds' firing was controversial among some lawmakers in Congress, especially after the Justice Department's inspector general found that the FBI had not taken her complaints seriously enough and had fired her for lodging complaints about the translation unit.
Her lawyers argued the government should not be allowed to use the "state secrets privilege" to silence whistleblowers, such as Edmonds, who reveal "national security blunders."
U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton dismissed Edmonds' lawsuit in 2004 after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the "state secrets privilege" before Justice Department lawyers had responded to any of the case's allegations.
News organizations wanted the court to clarify when and how appellate arguments over civil lawsuits can be closed to the public.
"Closing cases that involve allegations of government wrongdoing ... fosters public doubts about the private justice that certain people and entities get in the public courts, harms public debate about the issues involved ... and perhaps most devastatingly, fosters an appearance of unfairness that the government can close off access to the public courts when it is under fire," the media lawyers said in a friend-of-the-court filing.
As originally published
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About Sibel Edmonds:
About ‘state secrets privilege’:
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Recommended: Where are the 9/11 whistleblowers?
Commentary by Helen & Harry Highwater:
I don’t know what to think, about the government’s silencing of whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. Of course, you don’t know what to think either, even if you think you do. It’s impossible to hold an informed opinion, when the information that would inform an informed opinion is not allowed to be known.
Here's what we do know: Sibel Edmonds, fluent in English, Turkish, Farsi, Azerbaijani, was hired as a translator by the FBI, and assigned to work with terror-related documents. After a few months, she reported that anti-terrorism intelligence was being 'lost in translation' so to speak -- that other translators' work was incompetent or worse, intentionally misleading, and suggesting that at least one of the FBI's translators might be a spy for a foreign power.
Pretty damn serious allegations, yes? But the FBI's response was to fire her, and there's no indication that her complaints were ever investigated.
Edmonds sued, claiming the obvious -- that she was fired in retaliation for being a whistleblower. The government has since invoked its “state secrets privilege,” arguing that the matter can't be argued in court, because that would reveal “state secrets” and jeopardize national security.
It is perhaps pertinent that the “state secrets privilege” has been invoked in this case, because it's now known that the federal government was flat-out lying in the 1953 case that established the precedent of “state secrets.”
So it the “state secrets privilege” seems like a flagrant obstacle to justice, just remember, that was the intended purpose of “state secrets privilege.” That's the point, that's why you have no right to know, and Sibel Edmonds has no right to have her case heard in court.
Does it seem strange to fire someone for pointing out a gaping hole in national security? Would you like it pointed out when someone sees danger, or would you rather whistleblowers to keep their worries to themselves? Does quashing this case protect national security, or does it just keep Ms Edmonds from embarrassing the Bush-Cheney administration, by revealing just how compromised American national security is?
These questions are moot. The Supreme Court has ruled that these questions can't be answered, can't even be asked under oath. “State secrets privilege” trumps everything.
In this case, “state secrets” trumps national security.
=Helen & Harry Highwater=
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In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.
"There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.
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Is it luck that aberrant stock trades were not monitored? Is it luck when 15 visas are awarded based on incomplete forms? Is it luck when Airline Security screenings allow hijackers to board planes with box cutters and pepper spray? Is it luck when Emergency FAA and NORAD protocols are not followed? Is it luck when a national emergency is not reported to top government officials on a timely basis?
To me luck is something that happens once. When you have this repeated pattern of broken protocols, broken laws, broken communication, one cannot still call it luck.
If at some point we don't look to hold the individuals accountable for not doing their jobs properly then how can we ever expect for terrorists not to get lucky again?
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Amazingly, Air Force One took off [from Florida after the attacks of September 11] with no military protection. It remained unprotected in the sky for more than an hour, though Florida is filled with Air Force bases just minutes away with planes that are supposed to be on twenty-four-hour alert.
Bush's aides later offered, and retracted, the excuse that he spent the day flying around the country because of threats to Air Force One believed to have been received at the White House. What nobody has ever explained is this: If you think Air Force One is to be attacked, why go up in Air Force One?
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The fact that top officials, at a time of extraordinary crisis and public anxiety, lied to protect the president's image has immense implications. If, within 24 hours of the terror attacks, the White House was giving out disinformation to deceive the American public and world opinion, then none of the claims made by the government from September 11 to the present can be taken for good coin.
If Bush lied about his activities on the day of the attacks, why should anyone assume he has not lied about the government's investigation, the identity of the perpetrators, the motives and aims of US war preparations, and the intent and scope of expanded police powers demanded by his administration to wiretap, search and seize, and detain suspects?
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The 9/11 investigation was originally given a budget of $3-million, later increased to $12-million. Some reports say the budget is now $14-million.
By comparison, when the shuttle Columbia disintegrated during its descent in February 2003, $50-million was budgeted for an investigation, which began about an hour and a half after the disaster.
Another $305-million was spent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), searching for shuttle debris.
The investigation into the shuttle accident began publicly releasing its findings within several weeks, and concluded its work with an exhaustive report about six months later.
Even the Warren Commission, the U.S. government's widely-disbelieved investigation of Pres. Kennedy's 1963 assassination, was budgeted at $5.5-million -- in 1963 funds.
Adjusted for inflation, that's more than $32-million in 2003 dollars.
You might think it would cost substantially more to thoroughly investigate a complicated event -- nineteen foreign hijackers commandeering four passenger jets and obliterating the World Trade Center, damaging the Pentagon, and killing thousands of Americans -- than to investigate the shooting of the president in a parade.
The Bush Administration seems to disagree. They think it should cost substantially less.
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CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq -- even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.
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"We've been fighting for nearly 21 months -- fighting the administration, the White House," says Monica Gabrielle.
Her husband, Richard, an insurance broker who worked for Aon Corp. on the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center's Tower 2, died during the attacks. "As soon as we started looking for answers we were blocked, put off and ignored at every stop of the way. We were shocked. The White House is just blocking everything."
Another 9/11 family advocate -- a former Bush supporter who requested anonymity -- was more blunt: "Bush has done everything in his power to squelch this [9/11] commission and prevent it from happening."
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President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN.
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Why did the US military, with the most powerful arsenal in world history, fail to prevent or at least try to stop a series of hijackings and crashes that went on for nearly two hours?
Where was the Air Force?
If President Bush and his cabinet were not, at this very moment, still trying to censor, suppress and delay the publication of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, if there had been honest disclosure and straight stories from the beginning, perhaps all these "dark questions," as the Post puts it, would never have arisen.
The great majority of people, sickened and overwhelmed by the horror of the attacks, unquestioningly accepts the White House version.
Many thousands, however, are patiently stitching together the documented evidence and noting the huge holes in the fabric of that official story.
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On Sept. 10, Newsweek has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns.
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Do we know the answers to these questions about September 11?
Of course not. Nobody will know the answers until there's an open and honest investigation.
But anyone courageous enough to think can see that the pertinent questions for any serious "investigation" were never asked, let alone answered.
--Helen & Harry, Unknown News
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You know, in a courtroom, when a witness is shown to be clearly lying about one detail, it calls that witness's entire testimony into doubt.
If it worked that way with presidents, we'd have ample grounds to doubt everything the Bush administration has told us about September 11, 2001.
After all; every newspaper and television account is directly or indirectly based in large part upon what the Bush administration has announced -- that they had no prior warning, that they knew immediately Osama bin Laden was to blame, that exactly 19 hijackers were aboard those four planes, that each hijacker has been posthumously identified, etc.
So our shared public perception of what happened on September 11, and why it happened, is really built on just one assumption, universally agreed: That the Bush administration is comprised of honest people, telling the truth.
But I don't see any evidence to support such an allegation.
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At his press conference yesterday, President Bush was asked about charges that he had received warnings prior to the September 11th attacks that a terrorist incident was imminent.
He answered that even asking such a question was "an absurd insinuation."
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The United States allowed members of Osama bin Laden's family to jet out of the US in the immediate aftermath of September 11, even as American airspace was closed.
Former White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke said the Bush administration sanctioned the repatriation of about 140 high-ranking Saudi Arabians, including relatives of the al-Qaida chief.
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A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance says she has provided information to the panel investigating the 11 September attacks which proves senior officials knew of al-Qaida's plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes happened.
She said the claim by the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no such information was "an outrageous lie".
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Yet one week, one week after 9/11, in response to initial reports that the military failed to defend our domestic airspace during the hijacks NORAD issued an official chronology that stated that the FAA notified NORAD of the second hijacking at 8:43 -- wrong. FAA notified NORAD of the third hijacking at 9:24, according to your report, wrong, FAA notified NORAD of the fourth hijacking at an unspecified time and that prior to the crash in Pennsylvania Langley F-16 combat air patrol planes were in place, remaining in place, to protect Washington, D.C..
All untrue.
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At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that same day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said in a report today.
That manager crushed the cassette in his hand, shredded the tape and dropped the pieces into different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.
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Although American and British officials say they have "no doubt" that Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist organization were behind the crimes of Sept. 11, so far no actual evidence has been made public.
... During the Cuban missile crisis, the United States publicly released photographs that made a convincing case that the Soviets were lying about the missiles in Cuba. This tangible evidence helped retain support from allies and isolated the Russians diplomatically. Our situation today calls for similar action. President Bush should not let a blanket concern about protecting intelligence sources dissuade him from releasing enough intelligence to make our case.
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"The report is incomplete at best," said Breitweiser.
"Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi. We have clear and convincing money trails linking the Saudi princes to the terrorists. Why that's not finding its way into the report, I don't know."
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One day before two American Airlines jets were hijacked and crashed, for example, 1,535 contracts changed hands on options that let investors profit if AMR stock falls below $30 per share before Oct. 20. That was almost five times the total number of those October $30 put options traded before Sept. 10, according to Bloomberg data. AMR shares fell $11.70 today to $18.
Those 1,535 contracts were worth $1.6 million at today's closing price compared with $337,700 at the end of trading on Sept. 10, according to Bloomberg data. A contract represents options for 100 shares.
Similarly, October $30 put options for UAL soared, with 2,000 contracts traded on Sept. 6, three trading days before the attack. A total of 27 contracts had traded previously.
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A Saudi citizen who provided help to two of the September 11 hijackers may have been an agent for the Riyadh government, a congressional report will highlight this week.
The explosive allegation in the report, which is understood to be highly critical of the FBI, is likely to reignite the controversy over Saudi Arabia's links with al-Qa'eda and has already led to accusations that the Bush administration is covering up for the House of Saud.
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There's much more than this at Unknown News.
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