http://blogs.cqrollcall.com/spytalk/2009/08/exfbi-translator-tests-justice.html

Ex-FBI Translator Tests Justice Dept. Again

By Jeff Stein

August 4, 2009

Sibel Edmonds may never get her day in court -- or at least the kind she wants.

The former FBI translator has spent seven years trying to get a court to hear her allegations [1] that foreign agents, in particular Turkish intelligence, [2] had penetrated her unit, the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress.

This weekend she's going to try again.

Edmonds, a multilingual Iranian raised partly in Turkey who graduated from college in the U.S., was fired by the FBI in 2002 after lodging complaints of incompetence and corruption in the translation unit. 

Although the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General would eventually validate [3] her complaints, in 2002 Attorney General John D. Ashcroft threw a cloak of secrecy [4] over the entire affair via the so-called state secrets privilege, [5] effectively smothering Edmonds's whistleblower suit against the FBI.

In 2004, the government won another gag order against her when U.S. District Court judge Reggie B. Walton ruled that Edmonds could not answer questions about her FBI allegations in a suit by families of 9/11 victims against the Saudi government. 

This week, Edmonds was scheduled to give a deposition regarding Turkish intelligence activities in an arcane congressional election dispute in Ohio.

Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, had filed a complaint with the Ohio Board of Elections contending that a rival candidate in 2008 had slandered her [6] with a charge that she took campaign cash from Turkish interests -- "blood money," he called it -- to vote against a congressional resolution blaming Ankara for the "genocide" of 1.5 million Armenians during the First World War.   

The candidate, David Krikorian, who ran against Schmidt as an Independent but wants to challenge her again in 2010 as a Democrat, planned to take a deposition from Edmonds on Saturday, Aug. 8.

The genocide resolution never came to the House floor for a vote, Schmidt's communications director, Bruce Pfaff, noted.

Pfaff added that the congresswoman had held her position on Armenia since she was first elected in 2005.

"She feels that there were atrocities on both sides during the 1914-1918 war, and that she could not say it was genocide," Pfaff said in a brief interview Wednesday.

Edmonds is "welcome to give her deposition," Pfaff added, "but I don't know if any of it has any bearing or merit" in relation to Schmidt's complaint that she was smeared by Krikorian.    

On Monday, Edmonds notified the Justice Department of what she planned to tell Krikorian: 

"How certain Turkish entities had illegally infiltrated and influenced various U.S. government agencies and officials, including but not limited to the Department of State, the Department of Defense and individual members of the United States Congress."

She and her attorneys gave the government "until the end of the day to respond," she said, "however, we received no response."

They gave the Justice Department another deadline -- until noon today, to respond.

No answer.

Edmonds says that without a red light, she plans to go ahead now and spill the beans.

"Yes, I will provide a deposition unless DOJ officially bars me from doing so," she said by e-mail Tuesday evening.

She invited "the public/media" to attend.

A senior Justice Department official dismissed Edmonds's maneuver as theatrics.

Edmonds's contract with the FBI requires her to give the bureau 30 days advance notice of her desire to speak about issues related to her employment, the official said. It's akin to a nondisclosure agreement, or NDA.

"State Secrets is not on the table here," said the official, demanding anonymity in exchange for discussing the issue. "This just about a NDA, period."

The official declined to predict how the Attorney General will respond to Edmonds's demand for an immediate answer -- if at all -- or what action the Justice Department might take if she violates the agreement.

Edmonds said she has no control over when a party wants to depose her.

[1] http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7117

[2] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9774.htm

[3] http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/special/0501/index.htm

[4] http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/06/fbi.translator/

[5] http://www.fas.org/sgp/jud/statesec/index.html

[6] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24998.html