FBI Whistleblower Is Getting No Justice

Is George Bush Above the Law?


"When the President does it, that means it's not illegal."
Richard Nixon
David Frost Interview


"Authority to set aside the laws is inherent in the president."
Memo to President Bush from the Justice Department

President George W. Bush is opposed to rule of law for the Executive Branch and its allies. To that end, he has invoked various forms of Executive Privilege to cover illegal activities of his administration and its allies. America can not be the home of the free and the brave unless we have a government contained by the laws of the land. Our very freedom is in jeopardy.
American Civil Liberties Union

The American Civil Liberties Union today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court's dismissal of the case of Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who was fired in retaliation for reporting security breaches and possible espionage within the Bureau. Lower courts dismissed the case when former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the rarely used "state secrets" privilege.


The Court created the so-called state secrets privilege more than 50 years ago but has not considered it since. The need for clarification of the doctrine is acute, the ACLU said, because the government is increasingly using the privilege to cover up its own wrongdoing and to keep legitimate cases out of court.


"Edmonds' case is not an isolated incident," said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson. "The federal government is routinely retaliating against government employees who uncover weaknesses in our ability to prevent terrorist attacks or protect public safety."

Corporate Crime Reporter

Turkish officials boasted of giving “tens of thousands of dollars in surreptious payments” to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) in exchange for political favors. That allegation is contained a profile of Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) whistleblower Sibel Edmonds in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine.


The article, “An Inconvenient Patriot,” by British writer David Rose, reports that Edmonds was asked to listen to wiretaps as part of what appeared to be an FBI public corruption probe into bribes paid to members of Congress – both Democrat and Republican. Rose, citing “some of the wiretaps,” reports that “the FBI’s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks.”


The article notes that under Federal Election Commission rules, “donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings.” The article reports that Edmonds has given confidential testimony on several occasions – to congressional staffers, to the Inspector General, and to staff from the 9/11 commission.

ACLU Appeal | Whistle Blower Details
American Civil Liberties Union
ACLU Urges Supreme Court to Review Case of FBI Whistleblower
August 4, 2005
NEW YORK -- The American Civil Liberties Union today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court's dismissal of the case of Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who was fired in retaliation for reporting security breaches and possible espionage within the Bureau. Lower courts dismissed the case when former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the rarely used "state secrets" privilege.
Vanity Fair Profile Reveals New Facts About FBI's Termination of Former Translator Sibel Edmonds
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@aclu.org
Sibel Edmonds addressed the press in Washington, D.C.
HOW IT STARTED
> Sibel Edmonds, a patriot silenced
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NEW YORK -- The American Civil Liberties Union today urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court's dismissal of the case of Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who was fired in retaliation for reporting security breaches and possible espionage within the Bureau. Lower courts dismissed the case when former Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the rarely used "state secrets" privilege.
The Court created the so-called state secrets privilege more than 50 years ago but has not considered it since. The need for clarification of the doctrine is acute, the ACLU said, because the government is increasingly using the privilege to cover up its own wrongdoing and to keep legitimate cases out of court.
"Edmonds' case is not an isolated incident," said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson. "The federal government is routinely retaliating against government employees who uncover weaknesses in our ability to prevent terrorist attacks or protect public safety."
The states secrets privilege, Beeson said, "should be used a shield for sensitive evidence, not a sword the government can use at will to cut off argument in a case before the evidence can be presented. We are urging the Supreme Court, which has not directly addressed this issue in 50 years, to rein in the government's misuse of this privilege."
The ACLU is also asking the Supreme Court to reverse the D.C. appeals court's decision to exclude the press and public from the court hearing of Edmonds' case in April. The appeals court closed the hearing at the eleventh hour without any specific findings that secrecy was necessary. In fact, the government had agreed to argue the case in public. A media consortium that included The New York Times , The Washington Post , and CNN intervened in the case to object to the closure.
Edmonds, a former Middle Eastern language specialist hired by the FBI shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002 and filed a lawsuit later that year challenging the retaliatory dismissal.
Her ordeal is highlighted in a 10-page article about whistleblowers in the September 2005 issue of Vanity Fair which links Edmonds' allegations and the subsequent retaliation to possible "illicit activity involving Turkish nationals" and a high-level member of Congress. The ACLU said the article, titled "An Inconvenient Patriot," further undercuts the government's claim that the case can't be litigated because certain information is secret.
In addition, a report by the Inspector General, made public in January 2005, contains a tremendous amount of detail about Edmonds' job, the structure of the FBI translation unit , and the substance of her allegations. The report concluded that Edmonds' whistleblower allegations were "the most significant factor" in the FBI's decision to terminate her.
The outcome in Edmonds' case could significantly impact the government's ability to rely on secrecy to avoid accountability in future cases, the ACLU said, including one pending case charging the government with "rendering" detainees to be tortured.
In the 1953 Supreme Court case that was the basis for today's state secrets privilege doctrine, United States v. Reynolds, the government claimed that disclosing a military flight accident report would jeopardize secret military equipment and harm national security. Nearly 50 years later, in 2004, the truth came out: the accident report contained no state secrets, but instead confirmed that the cause of the crash was faulty maintenance of the B-29 fleet.
Fourteen 9/11 family member advocacy groups and public interest organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Edmonds ' case before the District Court, and many are expected to join an amicus brief next month supporting Supreme Court review of the case, including the National Security Archive.
Edmonds is represented by Beeson, Melissa Goodman, and Ben Wizner of the national ACLU; Art Spitzer of the ACLU of the National Capital Area; and Mark Zaid, of Krieger and Zaid, PLLC.
The ACLU's Supreme Court cert petition is online at: http://www.aclu.org/NationalSecurity/NationalSecurity.cfm?ID=18870&c=24
The appendix for the Supreme Court cert petition is online at: http://www.aclu.org/NationalSecurity/NationalSecurity.cfm?ID=18872&c=24
Further information on the case, including other legal documents and a backgrounder on the state secrets privilege, is online at : www.aclu.org/whistleblowers.
© ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor New York, NY 10004 This is the Web site of the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU Foundation.
CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Vanity Fair: Turks Boasted of Payments to Hastert
19 Corporate Crime Reporter 32(1), August 3, 2005
Turkish officials boasted of giving “tens of thousands of dollars in surreptious payments” to House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) in exchange for political favors.
That allegation is contained a profile of Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) whistleblower Sibel Edmonds in the current issue of Vanity Fair magazine.
The article, “An Inconvenient Patriot,” by British writer David Rose, reports that Edmonds was asked to listen to wiretaps as part of what appeared to be an FBI public corruption probe into bribes paid to members of Congress – both Democrat and Republican.
Rose, citing “some of the wiretaps,” reports that “the FBI’s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks.”
The article notes that under Federal Election Commission rules, “donations of less than $200 are not required to be itemized in public filings.”
The article reports that Edmonds has given confidential testimony on several occasions – to congressional staffers, to the Inspector General, and to staff from the 9/11 commission.
“Edmonds reportedly added that the recordings also contained repeated references to Hastert’s flip-flop, in the fall of 2000" to “the continuing campaign to have Congress designate the killings of Armenians in Turkey between 1915 and 1923 as genocide.”
According to the Vanity Fair article, the resolution never went anywhere until August 2000 when Hastert announced he was supporting it – in an effort to win over his district’s large Armenian community.
According to the article, the resolution passed the House International Relations Committee by a large majority “thanks to Hastert.”
“Then, on October 19, minutes before the full House vote, Hastert withdrew it,” the article reports.
Hastert said at the time that he withdrew it because of a letter he received from President Bill Clinton that the bill would harm U.S. interests.
And while the Vanity Fair article reports that “there is no evidence that any payment was ever made to Hastert or to his campaigns,” it also reports that “a senior official at the Turkish Consulate is said to have claimed in one recording that the price for Hastert to withdraw the resolution would have been at least $500,000.”
The article reports that Edmonds testified that she heard about the payments when listening to “Turkish wiretap targets.”
In one wiretapped conversation, a Turkish official spoke to a State Department staffer.
“They agreed that the State Department staffer would send a representative at an appointed time to the American-Turkish Council office, at 1111 14th Street, N.W. where he would be given $7,000 in cash,” the article reports.
Another call Edmonds heard allegedly discussed a payment to a Pentagon official “who seemed to be involved in weapons-procurement negotiations,” according to the article.
Hastert’s spokesman could not be reached for comment.
But he told Vanity Fair that Hastert is “unaware of Turkish interests making donations” and his staff has “not seen any pattern of donors with foreign names.”
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