licentious radio

Monday, October 28, 2002
[8:49:14 PM]

My blood boils. We need clean law enforcement. People who risk their lives to keep us safe deserve praise, respect, and grattitude.

Corrupt cops, politicized FBI agents, and rogue bureaucrats are a different story.

"Sibel Edmonds, hired as a translator of Turkish and other Middle Eastern languages after Sept. 11, has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the FBI, which she claims fired her for bringing the corruption to light. 'Let the documents pile up so we can show it and say that we need more translators and expand the department,' Edmonds says one of her supervisors urged.

"When Edmonds wasn't slowing down enough, that supervisor forced her by deleting her work, she says. 'The next day I would come to work and the translation would be gone,' she tells Bradley. Edmonds says when she confronted the supervisor, 'He said, 'Consider it a lesson and don't talk about it to anybody else and don't mention it.''

"It was frustrating for Edmonds, she says, because the agents who needed the translations were working hard. 'The first two months after the September 11 event...[The agents] were working around the clock...I would receive calls from these people saying, 'Would you please prioritize this and translate it'' she says."

Got that? These bureaucrats actually destroyed valuable work that was needed urgently. This is another case where I wouldn't mind expanding our sense of "treason".

But the story gets better....

"Take the case of Jan Dickerson, a Turkish translator who worked with Edmonds. The FBI has admitted that when Dickerson was hired last November, the bureau didn't know that she'd worked for a Turkish organization being investigated by the FBI's own counter-intelligence unit. And they didn't know she'd had a relationship with aTurskish intelligence officer stationed in Washington who was the target of that investigation.

"According to Edmonds, Dickerson tried to recruit her into that organization and insisted that Dickerson be the only one to translate the FBI's wiretaps of that Turkish official.

"When Edmonds refused to go along with her plan, she says Dickerson threatened her and her family's life."

"'She's credible and the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story,' says Grassley. She's told her whole story in a private session of Grassley's committee and the senator believes it's time to change things."

cbsnews.com