The Jan Dickerson Affair: A Brief History

CD: Right. So let's discuss your specific experiences of criminal infiltration in the FBI, for example when one of your co-workers, Jan [originally "Can"] Dickerson, and her husband tried to recruit you into a criminal network that had infiltrated high levels of the U.S. government.

SE: Alright, sure.

CD: As I understand it, Jan Dickerson was also trying to protect one criminal associate – a Turkish-speaking suspect of an FBI investigation – by blocking translations referring to him. Yes?

SE: Correct.

CD: And this was an official working out of the Turkish Embassy in Washington –

SE: No, that part is not correct. I cannot talk about the position or the job of this person –

CD: But in the other media stories about your case, he was identified as –

SE: Yes, I know. The term "official" was used in the senators' memos from their [summer 2002] meetings with the FBI, and so then when cited by the media it became automatically assumed that he was government – but since this individual has never been named, I can only describe him as working on behalf of a "semi-legitimate" organization.

CD: Okay, so tell us about Jan Dickerson, and that experience.

SE: Well, I have to be somewhat general about this, but based on unclassified sources alone you can get a pretty good idea. Melek Can Dickerson was a Turkish woman –

CD: Originally from Turkey, like you?

SE: Yes, from Turkey, and she met her husband there, Douglas – Major Douglas Dickerson, that is. He was in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in Ankara. They met in 1991 and stayed in Turkey till 1994 or 1995. Then they went to Germany, where he was stationed after, for two or three years. And then they came to the U.S. in 1999.

CD: But first, regarding Turkey: do you know what Dickerson's function was there in the USAF?

SE: He was involved with weapons procurement for various Central Asian and Middle Eastern governments from the United States.

CD: Yo! Do you mean he was procuring weapons on an intra-governmental basis, or something else?

SE: Yes, from the U.S. government for these other governments. I assume it was all legal and part of his job.

CD: Okay, but in the process he could have built up contacts and connections with various unsavory characters in regional governments and in the arms trade –

SE: He could have, but I don't know.

CD: Anyway, what kind of countries are we talking about here?

SE: Oh… I don't know all of them exactly, but I guess these would be countries like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan –

CD: All of our favorites –

SE: [Laughter] Yes, right, countries like these and some Middle Eastern countries.

CD: And what about after Turkey? When they went to Germany?

SE: Well, he was stationed there, and while in Germany, Jan Dickerson started working for this semi-legitimate organization whose members, much later, were being investigated by the FBI, when I was working there.

CD: Fascinating, And this criminal group that the Dickersons were involved in, what kind of countries did it have connections with and where were its members from?

SE: Oh, that varied. Members came from all over; when you're dealing with those huge amounts of money you get people from everywhere.

CD: Americans?

SE: Of course. But also from Europe, Central Asia, etc. And this organization had branches throughout these places, in the U.S., Germany, and several other countries.

The Fateful Visit

CD: Now let's fast-forward to November 2001, when Jan Dickerson joined you at the FBI. What were her duties?

SE: She was a "monitor," the second type of translator, because she didn't have the scores on one of her two language proficiency exams. As a monitor she was supposed to make general summary translations, not verbatim.

CD: Did you have any idea at the time about her suspect allegiances?

SE: I had no idea at first. It was only after some suspicious behavior and then her and her husband's unannounced visit to our house that everything became clear.

One day in December [2001], my husband and I were at our home in Alexandria, Va., when the doorbell rang. It was Jan and Doug Dickerson. They also lived in Alexandria, so I didn't think of it as suspicious at first. I think the point for her was to introduce her husband to mine. We invited them in for coffee, and –

CD: She started trying to recruit you for their illegal activities?

SE: No, actually she herself did not. It was the husband who started talking about this semi-legitimate organization: "Hey, have you ever heard of this group?" he said, casually mentioning this organization to my husband. He replied, "Yeah, I know about them." And I started sweating, because I knew this organization was under FBI investigation, and I was by law not allowed to discuss anything about it with my husband.

CD: But, for your husband to have heard of it, it had to have been a group that was well known to the public as something fairly innocuous, right?

SE: Yes, as I said, a legitimate front. And Dickerson asked my husband if he'd ever thought of joining the organization.

CD: So there was something socially desirable about belonging in this group?

SE: Correct. And so my husband was kind of surprised, you know, because this wasn't the sort of group just anyone could belong to. "But I thought you had to be such and such a person, with such and such connections and references to get in," my husband was saying.

And then Major Douglas Dickerson smiled and pointed at me. "All you have to do is tell them where your wife works and what she does, and they will let you in like that," he said [snapping his fingers]. They wanted to sell me for the information I could provide, basically.

CD: What did you take this to mean? You would have to hand over classified FBI information –

SE: Correct. The information I could give these people would be worth a lot of money.

CD: And what would you get out of it?

SE: Well, money, and we could leave the country, you know, live a very comfortable life wherever we wanted. We would never have to work again, they promised.

CD: So what did you do then, with him propositioning your husband right in front of you?

SE: I tried to change the subject, because anything I might say on the subject would have been against the law, considering the ongoing investigation.

CD: When you went back to work, did you bring the matter up?

SE: I reported it two days later to my direct supervisor, a former Arabic translator. He told me he would file it immediately with the security department. This was in December 2001. When nothing happened, I pursued the matter with a special agent who had also been getting suspicious about some of Jan Dickerson's translations. When we finally got through to the security department, they said they'd never been notified in the first place about my complaint. I have all of the dated documents, emails, etc., still to prove it.

CD: Did Dickerson's protection of the suspects, and their larger infiltration of the American security apparatus, did these things have a deleterious effect on bureau investigations?

SE: As a result of their penetration, certain people who had been detained were released – people who had valuable information. And other targets of this investigation, key people, were allowed to flee the country, right up through January and February of 2002.

CD: These were foreign nationals based in the United States?

SE: Correct.

CD: Did you have any awareness of this exodus?

SE: I reported some of the suspects' names higher up as I came across them in our investigation. And you know what? Within two weeks, they had all left the country. Just vanished.

The Great Escape

CD: So what happened after? As far as I know, Jan Dickerson has quit the FBI and re-located to Belgium. Was she forced out when your story broke? Did she flee? And is her husband still in the Air Force?

SE: I assume that at the time of that conversation in our house, in December 2001, Douglas Dickerson was in the USAF because finally in August of the next year, the USAF held a formal investigation and confirmed this. This was a major violation of his high-level security clearance. By law he is required to report it if his wife or family members are involved with illegal activities.

Mysteriously enough, only two weeks after the formal Air Force investigation began, they both left the country, on September 9, 2002.

CD: Why did the government just let them escape?

SE: Well, after my case began in June 2002, the judge subpoenaed them and ordered the DOJ not to let them leave the country. But the Air Force gave them a free pass – by sending Major Dickerson off to Belgium to work something with NATO, a minimum two-year assignment.

CD: With NATO? Doing what?

SE: I don't know exactly, just that it was with NATO. So before leaving, a pretty angry Doug Dickerson had to make a declaration under oath that if he was requested by the court at any time he would return, and the FBI would pay for his flight.

CD: So there is still a chance that they will face justice someday?

SE: Well, we discovered that the Dickerson's also had bank accounts in several countries, some of which didn't have the appropriate extradition treaties with the U.S. … so I don't think so, no, I don't think it's likely. They're gone.

But the really outrageous thing is that, for the whole month we were subpoenaing them, starting in June 2002, Jan Dickerson was still working away in the FBI translations department, with her top-security clearance. This even though the FBI had simultaneously admitted to a congressional committee that not only had Jan Dickerson worked for this suspect organization in the past, but that she had maintained ongoing relationships with at least two individuals under investigation.

But How Could She Have Been Hired?

CD: Why was she allowed to stay, and keep her security clearance? Were they trying to protect someone higher up?

SE: I don't know. Is it possible? Yes. But I just don't know.

But at the unclassified meeting between the senators and FBI being held then, the former were in utter disbelief when the FBI admitted Jan Dickerson had been working for this semi-legitimate organization since long before she joined the bureau. "But how!?" asked the senators. You know what their answer was? "Well, she didn't write down any previous employers on her application."

CD: What? None?

SE: Correct. She didn't just neglect to mention that job, aside from others she put down. She just left the whole box blank! As if she had never worked a day in her life!

CD: And the FBI hired her? You can't even get a job in a bar without listing previous employers!

SE: Look, it took me a year and a half to get my background check performed. And that after filling out the complete application – at the bottom of which it states that failure to fill out the form correctly will result in a cash fine and jail term for perjury. A federal crime. So based on that alone, even aside from her other activities, Jan Dickerson should have been prosecuted!

CD: But instead she was hired – and kept on even after things heated up. There's something very, very suspicious about all this, especially considering the way Kevin Taskasen was hired. Do you believe another official on the inside, part of that crime ring, brought her in?

SE: I recently met with a reliable source who confirmed that Melek Can Dickerson was hired and granted TSC [top security clearance] without having to go through a background check/investigation, and that in light of [infamous FBI double-agent Robert] Hanssen the bureau is doing all it can to keep it quiet. Still, I have plenty of unanswered questions: why? By whom?

CD: That indeed seems to be the underlying question here. Did the FBI have anything else to say under this senatorial scrutiny?

SE: They made the quite pertinent point that she [Jan Dickerson] had failed to disclose her previous associations with the suspect organization. A shocked senator said, "If you gave her top security clearance, how could she not have been made to disclose [this information]?"

You know how they [the FBI] replied? "A lack of good training" was behind Dickerson's failure to properly disclose her various relationships.

CD: That's incredible. What was the reaction from the senators?

SE: They were persistent, mentioning that beyond that, hadn't she blocked pertinent information [in translations]? The FBI replied, "Oh, well, we've confirmed this in two or three cases."

Actually, there were hundreds of cases from November 2001 to February 2002 in which she obstructed investigations with her translations – or lack thereof.

CD: Right, how exactly would she do this?

SE: Well, as a monitor, she was supposed to give general translations – or not – and if not the document could be marked "not pertinent," and basically never be seen again.

In those few months, she managed to mark every file that mentioned this, these targets, [the Turkish suspect] as "not pertinent." Hundreds of files. Finally, this special agent working on the case got suspicious, and he tasked me with re-translating all of these documents.

CD: So how did that go? Did you find any damning information?

SE: Oh, yes. There was content that directly linked the suspects with the group under investigation.

CD: How many documents did you translate?

SE: Out of the pile of hundreds, I only got to 17 pieces before I was suddenly terminated.

CD: Can you tell us how long the FBI had been investigating these targets by the time you started working for them?

SE: A long time. There's really no time limit with the big criminal and counter-intelligence investigations, versus the counter-terrorism ones. These are investigations we'd never do anything about –

CD: Why?

SE: [Laughing] Because it would hurt certain foreign relations abroad, of course … and they don't want that. So even after 3,000 people lost their lives on 9/11, those behind these very lucrative illegal activities get a free pass. And they refuse to continue important investigations because of certain diplomatic relations that 99.9 percent of Americans gain no benefits from.

G. Polygraph Examinations

The Security Office decided that polygraph examinations would be helpful in making determinations about Edmonds' security allegations and the security violation committed by Edmonds. In a four-page request for polygraphs, drafted on February 25, 2002, the Security Officer stated that "preliminary investigation" indicated that the co-worker had not made any threats to Edmonds, but the polygraph was needed to thoroughly pursue these issues and determine whether or not the co-worker posed a security risk. The Security Officer also noted that "preliminary investigation" indicated that Edmonds had written, on her home computer, multiple memoranda containing classified information, had retained an attorney, and had threatened to go to the press. The Security Officer asked that a polygraph be conducted of Edmonds to determine whether she had written additional memoranda on her home computer or whether she released classified information to unauthorized parties.¹⁶

Based on the Security Officer's request of February 25, which was approved by the FBI, polygraph examinations of Edmonds and the co-worker were scheduled for March 2002. The Chief of the FBI's Polygraph Unit e-mailed an FBI manager to say that the focus of the polygraph examinations would be to determine if classified or confidential material had been passed to any unauthorized individuals. He also stated that the polygraph examinations would focus on broad security concerns, rather than the threat that had been alleged by Edmonds.

On March 7, the day before her polygraph, Edmonds met with a higher level FBI official who listened to Edmonds repeat her allegations and then thanked her for the information. This official then contacted a manager in Edmonds' supervisory chain, who told the official that the matter was being looked into by the FBI, including by the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).¹⁷ The official with whom Edmonds met took no further action.

On March 8, Edmonds took the polygraph examination. The polygraph questions asked of her related to whether she had disclosed classified information to unauthorized persons and whether she was maintaining classified information outside FBI office space. She denied those charges, and the polygrapher concluded that she was not deceptive in her answers.

The co-worker was polygraphed on March 21. The co-worker was asked about her activities. The co-worker denied having engaged in inappropriate activities. The polygrapher concluded that the co-worker was not deceptive in these answers.

The Security Officer and other FBI managers later expressed disappointment with the questions asked in the polygraphs. The Security Officer said the questions were not responsive to the allegations raised by Edmonds. An FBI manager said that the polygraphs should have been "customized" to obtain optimal results and that he was hoping the polygraphs would be more conclusive in the investigation of these allegations. The Chief of the Polygraph Unit later told the analyst that more precise questions could have been asked.

We also concluded that the polygraph examinations of Edmonds and the co-worker were not ideal. In addition, we found that despite the concerns about the polygraph, the FBI never considered doing any additional polygraphs
and continued to rely on the polygraph as support for its position that Edmonds' allegations were unfounded.

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¹⁶Once Edmonds was notified of the polygraph, she began writing letters to FBI managers requesting a written explanation of why she was being polygraphed and what questions she would be asked. The FBI declined to provide her with anything in writing on that subject.

¹⁷That same day, Edmonds contacted FBI OPR and the OIG to report her allegations. Because the OIG opened its investigation shortly after FBI OPR was contacted, FBI OPR did not pursue the matter further.