Sibel Edmonds : biography
Sibel Deniz Edmonds is a Turkish-American “But as a naturalized Turkish-American, she saw the job as her patriotic duty.” former Federal Bureau of Investigation 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. She had accused a colleague of covering up illicit activity involving foreign nationals, alleged serious security breaches and cover-ups and that intelligence had been deliberately suppressed, endangering national security. Her later claims gained her awards and fame as a whistleblower.
In March 2012, she published a memoir, titled Classified Woman – The Sibel Edmonds Story.
Edmonds testified before the 9/11 Commission, but her testimony was excluded from the official 567 page 9/11 Commission Report.Kill the Messenger. SBS Australia, 2007. Documentary.
Edmonds is also the founder and publisher of the Boiling Frogs Post, an online media site that aims to offer nonpartisan investigative journalism.. URL accessed 20 April 2010.
Notes
tags-->
Category:1970 births Category:Living people Category:American people of Turkish descent Category:American whistleblowers Category:9/11_conspiracy_theorists Category:Federal Bureau of Investigation Category:American translators Category:George Washington University alumni Category:American people of Azerbaijani descent Category:Turkish emigrants to the United States Category:George Mason University alumni
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 1 February 2011, Edmonds published a story on her own website, adding details of events she described as taking place in April 2001. The account centered around her post-9/11 role as translator of a pre-9/11 interview during which an informant had told the FBI agents:
- 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 and the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. In response, she claims that managers retaliated Reply Brief of the Plaintiff-Appellant, SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT "provides direct support for Ms. Edmonds allegation that the FBI fired her for disclosing serious security breaches within the agency" 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 and breached security and that she performed poorly at her job. A later internal investigation by the FBI found that many of Edmonds’s 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. of Appendix 7 also available.