'FBI Audit Leaves Vital Questions Unanswered' by Sibel Edmonds

[G_j]

http://www.antiwar.com/edmonds/?articleid=3724

FBI Audit Leaves Vital Questions Unanswered
by Sibel Edmonds

Glenn A. Fine, Inspector General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Suite 4322
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001

Dear Mr. Fine:

I have reviewed the recently released redacted and unclassified version of your department's audit of the FBI's Foreign Language Program. Your report helps to bring badly needed attention to serious problems within the FBI's translation department; problems that must be corrected for the department to be effective in its role on the frontline of the war on terror. As you are aware, over two years ago I reported serious issues and problems within the FBI's translation units, with serious consequences to our national security and the war on terror. I am still awaiting the results of your long due report on the specific cases and issues I reported to your office and to the United States Senate. On one hand, this report draws attention to the problem of the backlog of untranslated intelligence by putting forth shocking numbers. On the other hand, other equally or more serious problems with even more significant consequences were completely ignored. Inaccurate translations due to incompetence and/or intentional acts, intelligence sabotaged by high security risk translators with questionable loyalties, criminal activities ranging from serious security breaches to facilitating the acts of sabotage, corrupt hiring practices, and serious mismanagement are among those issues that greatly impact the reliability and integrity of intelligence gathered and analyzed on the front lines, for as you state in the report

"The FBI's linguists play a critical role in developing effective intelligence and Counterterrorism information. Linguists are the first line of analysis for information collected in a language other than English."

Your report omitted information regarding tens of thousands of inaccurately translated documents. As you are fully aware, intentional mistranslations and mistranslations due to incompetence constitute a significant portion of the FBI's translated intelligence. According to your report, "more than 89,000 hours of audio and 30,000 hours of audio in other Counterterrorism languages have not been reviewed. Additionally, over 370,000 hours of audio in languages associated with counterintelligence activities have not been reviewed." Although these numbers by themselves are appalling, this data is misleading and not nearly complete, since it fails to also address the fact that of those documents considered translated, many were inaccurately translated, and the fact that of those documents considered reviewed but found "not pertinent to be translated" by translators, many were, and are, pertinent. The following are but a few questions and examples:

What is the number of "translated documents/audio" that were inaccurately translated due to incompetence and unqualified translators?

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http://www.citypages.com/databank/25/1244/article12523.asp

NEWS . VOL 25 #1244 . PUBLISHED 10/6/04

An October Surprise for Bush and the FBI?

FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds talks about her case --and hints at a forthcoming scandal

by Steve Perry

Sibel Edmonds's claims of incompetence, malfeasance, and possible espionage in the FBI's translation unit have received only sporadic attention since she first aired them widely in a 60 Minutes report in October 2002--not least because of the veil of silence that the Bush Justice Department has tried to draw over the case. In July of this year, a Bush-appointed judge dismissed Edmonds's lawsuit against the FBI on the grounds that the case would necessarily expose state secrets. Judge Reggie Walton's logic parroted that of Attorney General John Ashcroft, who in May 2004 issued an order retroactively classifying all the information that had been presented to Congress in her case because of its alleged national security sensitivity.

But l'affaire Edmonds is heating up again. Last month Edmonds filed a new lawsuit seeking to compel release of the documents in her case under the Freedom of Information law. And last Tuesday's page one New York Times story about the 120,000-hour backlog of untranslated intelligence tapes the FBI is presently sitting on lent additional credence to her charges. (Some al Qaeda communiqués, the Times reported, were automatically deleted by the overloaded computer system in the department before they could be translated.)

It wasn't the first time Edmonds had been featured on the front page of the Times; she was the subject of a July 29 dispatch which disclosed that the DoJ Inspector General had completed a report--classified, of course--concluding that her whistleblowing activities were a factor in her April 2002 firing, after just six months-plus of employment at the FBI.


Despite the legal walls the FBI and the Bush administration have attempted to build around her case, it's nonetheless clear from letters and documents that are already irretrievably in the public realm that Edmonds's claims (give or take those of Richard Clarke) may be the most explosive yet lodged against the U.S. government's anti-terrorism work post-9/11.

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[Pow_Wow]

1. sounds like a complete mess

scary

[Karenina]

2. So many

http://www.unansweredquestions.org

[Kenneth ken]

3. kick

Sibel Edmonds is a powerful voice on the failings of the FBI to do its job in fighting terror.

[KoKo]

4. G_J, I'm hoping so much that Sibol has something that will blow the Bushes

in the water...but she does say in her discussions that Dems are involved...and I get the impression "Dems" have stalled her maybe a little more in her quest to get the "truth" out.

I put her with Joe Wilson and his wife and everything else that's been stuffed in the can with lid on tight...I hope sometime we can really get to the bottom of what's been going on in our "corrupted foreign policy" for years with both these stories.

Let the chips fall where they may. I think, unfortunatly, that our Dem are in bed with the Repugs with all of this and "stonewalling" as long as they can is the order of the day. Who would we have left if we swept Congress and Senate of these folks who've feathered their nest on all the money and lies for decades?

We dream on..but I think they always have a new "spin" to weasel themselves out of culpability.

I hope that Sibol's testamony gets out there. I think it has to do with banks and who we've been funding tied to the terrorists and it could bring them "all" down...so who wants to leak this before an election?

Very Sad...what we are into..and that there's no one we can really trust who doesn't have some thread or tie to it all. :-(

[G_j]

5. I think you are right

and I think that so much depends on the media also that there is probably little hope of something really 'breaking' before the election. But I think this is big enough and Edmonds and others determined enough that eventually something will give.
Major corruption in high places (tied to 9-11?)

[Beam Me Up]

6. kick for Sibel Edmonds