Pitting Elite Interests against the Rule of Law
By Christian Nicholson
If people know of Sibel Edmonds at all, they know her as an FBI whistleblower. Since mid-2002, her face has graced newspapers across America; she's testified before numerous senators and had her deposition subpoenaed by family members of 9/11 victims; as late as September 2005, Vanity Fair devoted 11 pages to her. Yet almost no one can tell you what she has to say. Like a star in a silent movie, Edmonds has been cast as the heroine in a legal drama whose details are obscure.
That's because Sibel Edmonds is the most gagged person in the history of the United States, at least according to her ACLU lawyers. If gag orders were nickels, she'd be rich. Since her dismissal from the FBI in March 2002, Edmonds has borne the burden of state censorship with relative aplomb, working constantly within the law to make her story heard. After she gave a brief spate of interviews, John Ashcroft invoked the "state secrets" privilege, silencing her before the press and denying Edmonds her day in court. Apparently, her lawsuit involves secrets so secret that not even Edmonds' lawyers are allowed to know the reasons why her case cannot be tried. Aside from an independent investigator, the Supreme Court is her only remaining option, and the Court will decide whether or not to hear her case in mid-October.
After the FBI fired her, Sibel Edmonds sued the bureau for negligent endangerment, negligent investigation, conversion of property, and infliction of emotional distress, among other things. During her six-month stint as a translator in the FBI's Washington, D.C., unit, she had stumbled upon what she alleges were serial acts of espionage on the part of one of her colleagues, Melek Can Dickerson, who worked with Edmonds evaluating all sorts of missives and communications, and translating into English those communications pertinent to ongoing FBI investigations. Dickerson, it turns out, was a former employee of the American-Turkish Council, a Turkish organization under investigation for espionage and bribing public officials, and she considered most of her former colleagues' communications to have no pertinence whatsoever. Edmonds thought otherwise and reported her colleague. Getting no response, Edmonds reported her again and again, moving up the chain of command until Edmonds herself was finally fired. Shortly thereafter, Dickerson and her husband fled the country.
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In the Edmonds case, it's not just "sensitive foreign relations" that are on the line, it's the Americans who are doing the sensitive relating. Indeed, a glance at the bigwigs involved in the American-Turkish Council reveals a panoply of hawks, former ambassadors and generals, and numerous lights of the three Bush administrations: the ATC Board of Directors chair is Brent Scowcroft, erstwhile national security adviser to Bush père; Dick Cheney himself is a former member, and many of his former colleagues at Halliburton remain on board, as do higher-ups at Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Sikorsky, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and Eli Lilly.
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