What is happening in this country? The complicity and
capitulation of the "US mainstream news media" has
never been more starkly revealed. The story of John
O'Neill is not the only glaring ommission from the
line of questioning followed by the 9/11 Commission
during its public hearings on the pre-9/11 activities
of the DoJ, the FBI and the CIA. The story of Sibel
Edmonds and her colleague also went unexplored.
Richard Ben-Veniste (D-Truth and Reconciliation), who
all too often seems to be the only one of the
Commissioners with any sense of what the real issues
look like, did invoke the name of Sibel Edmonds as
well as the name of John O'Neill, signally the LNS
hopes that there will be substantive treatment of both
of these compelling stories in the 9/11 Commission's
final report...It is unfortunate that the US has to
rely on the courage, common sense and caring of the
9/11 families to lead the national debate, but that is
where we are...Unless the 9/11 Commission surprises
soon or is really holding its fire for the final
report, the verdict of history will be that they
choose to shore up the Establishment and the current
White House, instead of fighting for the future of the
country (like John O'Neill, Sibel Edmonds, Colleen
Rawley, Richard Clark and yes the 9/11 Families
Steering Committee) by being willing to retell the
recent past without flinching. The fate of so much and
so many hangs in the balance...
James Ridgeway, Village Voice: Despite the best
efforts of the Jersey Girls, leaders of the 9-11
Family Steering Committee, no member of the 9-11
commission this afternoon asked FBI chief Robert
Mueller embarrassing questions about two former FBI
translators who claim to have knowledge bearing on the
attacks. One of them says she is being suppressed and
can't talk because Attorney general John Ashcroft has
placed a gag order on her. Instead, the commissioners
lauded Mueller for his running of the agency, which
only yesterday they were bitterly attacking as
incompetent and ineffective. Today one commissioner
after another lavished praise on Mueller.
Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War Lies,
Show Up for Democracy in 2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0415/mondo10.php
Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
FBI Whistle-Blowers Go Unheard: 9-11 Commission disregards survivor families' interests
April 14th, 2004 4:30 PM
Plane Truth Among Questions Still Up In The Air Is Why
Our Jet Fighters Weren't
Shock and Disgust British officials blast U.S. for its
'HAM-fisted overkill' in Iraq
Daily Condi A closer look at Rice's testimony
Say What?
Breaking: Correcting Condi
Condi's Pre-Testimony Primer Looking ahead to
Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9-11 panel
9-11 Hearings Get Partisan "Prior to 9-11, the FBI did
not have an adequate ability to know what it knew."
ASHINGTON D.C.—Despite the best efforts of the Jersey
Girls, leaders of the 9-11 Family Steering Committee,
no member of the 9-11 commission this afternoon asked
FBI chief Robert Mueller embarrassing questions about
two former FBI translators who claim to have knowledge
bearing on the attacks. One of them says she is being
suppressed and can't talk because Attorney general
John Ashcroft has placed a gag order on her.
Instead, the commissioners lauded Mueller for his
running of the agency, which only yesterday they were
bitterly attacking as incompetent and ineffective.
Today one commissioner after another lavished praise
on Mueller.
Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste briefly alluded to
accusations by the translators, and said he would
pursue it in private.
In particular the Jersey Girls wanted the commission
to closely question Mueller about Sibel Edmonds, a
former FBI translator, who is openly challenging the
agency's veracity in the 9-11 investigation. Attorney
General John Ashcroft has put a gag order on Edmonds
by making her internal complaint to the inspector
general secret. Soon after she came out publicly,
Edmonds was fired.
She subsequently told the commission that the FBI had
information that an attack using airplanes was being
planned before September 11. "Some of our group has
met several times with Edmonds, and from what we can
tell, we think her claims are extremely credible,"
Lori van Auken, one of the leaders of the Jersey
Girls, told The Voice. "So much so that some of our
group hand walked her in to testify before the 9-11
commissioners."
They are also eager to find out more about the
unconfirmed story of a second FBI linguist, Behrooz
Sarshar, who claims he translated for an FBI informant
with information on a supposed Al Qaeda plot to attack
the U.S. with planes back in April 2001. "Some of the
group have also met with Sarshar," said van Auken.
"His claims seem to back up what Edmonds is saying."
Edmonds came to attention most recently following
Condoleezza Rice's assertion in a Washington Post
op-ed piece that the White House had no specific
information on a domestic threat or one involving
planes as "an outrageous lie. And documents can prove
it's a lie," according to Edmonds.
Edmonds, a Turkish American, has been a citizen for 10
years and speaks Farsi, Turkish, and Arabic. The FBI
assigned her to translate documents seized by agents
in its post–9-11 probe. "President Bush said they had
no specific information about September 11, and that's
accurate," says Edmonds. "But there was specific
information about use of airplanes, that an attack was
on the way two or three months beforehand and that
several people were already in the country by May of
2001. They should've alerted the people to the threat
we were facing."
In 2002, then–Senate Judiciary Committee chairman
Patrick Leahy and Senator Charles Grassley, a senior
member, asked John Ashcroft about Edmonds's statements
to the committee in a closed briefing that she was
told by a superior "not to translate important,
intelligence-related information, instead limiting her
translation to unimportant and innocuous information."
She also claimed her superior had previous contacts
with one of the people whose work she had been
prevented from translating.
The FBI, the senators noted at the time, "verified
that this monitor indeed failed to translate certain
material properly, but has attributed the failure to a
lack of training as opposed to a malicious act."
The Justice Department inspector general has been
looking into the case over the last two years, and
still has not produced a report. Ashcroft, on the
advice of Mueller in 2002, invoked the "state secret
privilege," making the entire matter secret, "to
prevent disclosure of certain classified and sensitive
national security information." That effectively put a
gag order on Edmonds.
Among other things, she now suggests one translator
sent to Guantánamo by the FBI "was not even qualified
in basic English." She is questioning whether
translators handling terrorism-related information are
so poorly trained they can't make competent sense of
what they are translating.
A second FBI whistle-blower case involves another
former FBI translator, Behrooz Sarshar, who left the
agency in 2002. He supposedly translated an interview
between an Iranian source, once a member of the Shah's
secret police, with two FBI agents in which the
informant told the agents he had heard in Afghanistan
of an Al Qaeda plot to attack the U.S. in a suicide
mission with planes. Details of the story were first
reported by the WorldNetDaily website.