FrontPage Magazine brings us a story with allegations that, if true, expose an outrageous threat to national security that has failed to be addressed for nearly two years. "Celebrating 9/11 at the FBI":
When linguist Sibel Dinez Edmonds showed up for her first day of work at the FBI, a week after the 9-11 attacks, she expected to find a somber atmosphere. Instead, she was offered cookies filled with dates from party bowls set out in the room where other Middle Eastern linguists with top-secret security clearance translate terror-related communications.
She knew the dessert is customarily served in the Middle East at weddings, births and other celebrations, and asked what the happy occasion was. To her shock, she was told the Arab linguists were celebrating the terrorist attacks on America, as if they were some joyous event. Right in front of her supervisor, one translator cheered:
"It's about time they got a taste of what they've been giving the Middle East."
She found out later that it was her supervisor's wife who helped organize the office party there at the bureau's Washington field office, just four blocks from the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
"This guy's wife brought the date-filled cookies for the celebration," Edmonds, 33, recalled.
At the time, the supervisor, Mike Feghali, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Beirut, was in charge of the FBI's Turkish and Farsi desks.
But he's been promoted since then, and now also runs the all-important Arabic desk, which is key to intercepting the next al-Qaida plot.
. . . Edmonds has also complained about Feghali and other Middle Eastern translators to the Justice Department inspector general. And on Wednesday, she is scheduled to give a detailed briefing to members of the 9-11 commission in a secure room here.
She claims terrorist "investigations are being compromised," and has demanded an independent probe of the FBI's language department.
"If there were, and are, persons within the language department that either intentionally prevented translation because of their agendas, or persons who were, and are, not qualified to properly translate, it is likely that terrorist communications prior to 9-11 were missed; and it is likely that current and future terrorist communications will likewise be missed," Edmonds wrote Justice's Inspector General Glenn A. Fine in a Jan. 5 letter. "I have alleged, and the FBI has confirmed (to Senate investigators), that there are in fact such persons in the language department."
Fine still has not released the findings of his internal probe, even though Edmonds first filed her complaint with his office almost two years ago. Speaking for Fine, Justice official Carol Ochoa said the investigation is "still ongoing."
"We are working hard to complete it expeditiously," she said in a Jan. 6 letter to Edmonds.
Contact the Justice Department here and let them know you will be very interested in the Inspector General's investigation findings. If this story contains any truth at all, an independent probe should have begun nearly two years ago when Edmonds filed the complaint. Concerned citizens should keep an eye on this one.
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