Post by George W. Maschke on Oct 28th, 2002 at 7:56pm
Last night (Sun. 27 Oct. 2002), CBS 60 Minutes featured an interview with Sibel Edmonds, who revealed alarming details of alleged FBI misconduct. A summary is posted on the CBS website under the title, Did FBI Deliberately Slow Translation? Among other things, Edmonds indicates that the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense have been penetrated by Turkish spies:
Quote:
| In its rush to hire more foreign-language translators after Sept. 11, the FBI admits it has had difficulty performing background checks to detect translators who may have loyalties to other governments, which could pose a threat to U.S. national security. 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. Edmonds also says that when she reviewed Dickerson's translations of those tapes, she found that Dickerson had left out information crucial to the FBI's investigation - information that Edmonds says would have revealed that the Turkish intelligence officer had spies working for him inside the U.S. State Department and at The Pentagon. Edmonds says she complained repeatedly to her bosses about what she'd found on the wiretaps and about Dickerson's conduct, but that nobody at the FBI wanted to hear about it - she says not even the assistant special agent in charge. The FBI has not responded to numerous attempts to seek comment on Edmonds’ allegations and other charges in Bradley’s report. |