Sibel Edmonds

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Sibel Edmonds

Sibel Deniz Edmonds (* 1970 in Iran ) is a former US American translator of Arabic-language texts at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who subsequently became one of the best-known whistleblowers in the US. A few days after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , she was hired as an interpreter by the FBI and worked on the translation of surveillance tapes in connection with the terrorist attacks. She was released in March 2002 after reporting various incidents of evasion misappropriation , treason, and breach of duty. Since then, she has repeatedly made allegations against corrupt Pentagon employees in connection with illicit nuclear weapons - proliferation of the United States, most recently in an investigative series in the London Sunday Times . She is the founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). In 2004 she received the Sam Adams Award and in 2006 the PEN / Newman's Own First Amendment Award.

education

As the daughter of an Azerbaijani doctor, Edmonds lived and studied first in Iran, then in Turkey and came to the USA in 1988 as a student. There she became a citizen in 1996. Edmonds speaks four languages ​​and has a master's degree in international economics from George Mason University and a bachelor's degree in criminal law and psychology from George Washington University .

FBI career

Edmonds was one of many hired by the US Federal FBI in the days following the 9/11 attacks. From September 20, 2001, she worked as an interpreter for Farsi , Turkish and Azerbaijani in the central translation unit of the FBI in Washington. She worked on the translation of surveillance tapes associated with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. Between December 2001 and March 2002, she reported various incidents of incompetence, malpractice, evasion misappropriation, and treason to her superiors. This also included her boss Mike Feghali , who failed to clear up the espionage and deliberate mistranslation of Melek Can Dickerson. Edmonds claimed the superiors were working against them.

In June 2002, Edmonds initially received the support of two US senators who campaigned to come to terms with their history. Even the FBI confirmed some of their allegations, and anonymous government officials reported in the Associated Press and the Washington Post that Edmonds did a poor job and broke safety regulations.

In a 2004 statement, she said the FBI had detailed information about planned terrorist attacks involving airplanes. Despite promises to the contrary and a petition from thirty NGOs, there was no parliamentary investigation even after the Democrats won the parliamentary elections in November 2006 .

In August 2004, Sibel Edmonds founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). NSWBC organizes and advises former or current government employees who help to expose government misconduct and advocates legislation that protects the rights of State Security whistleblowers.

In 2005, Sibel Edmonds' allegations were partially set out in Vanity Fair magazine . It was revealed that she had access to FBI bug-recorded conversations between members of the American-Turkish Council (ATC) about the bribery of American officials. It is also said to have been about statements that sounded like evidence of large-scale drug deliveries and other crimes.

According to Daniel Ellsberg , Edmonds is concerned with the al-Qaeda connection, which was also described by Loretta Napoleoni in her book The Economy of Terror : Edmonds explained to Congress that, according to these interviews, 95 percent of al-Qaida is generated through revenue Financing drug trafficking - drug trafficking that the US government knowingly ignores because it is closely linked to its allies and benefits, such as Turkey , Kyrgyzstan , Tajikistan , Pakistan and Afghanistan . In this drug trade, the opium comes from Afghanistan, is processed in Turkey and shipped to Europe, where it covers 96 percent of Europe's heroin needs. The implementation lies in the hands of Albanian Muslims in Albania or Kosovo, i.e. ultimately in the hands of the UÇK , which was strongly supported at the time towards the end of the 20th century. Edmonds says that House spokesman Dennis Hastert , according to Turkish sources, had suitcases of cash delivered directly to his Chicago home, knowing that much of that money would come from drug trafficking.

In 2008, the documentary Kill The Messenger by French filmmakers Mathieu Verboud and Jean Robert Viallet features people who are familiar with their case - including people like Daniel Ellsberg, Coleen Rowley (FBI whistleblower), Russell Tice (NSA whistleblower), Bogdan Dzakovic ( DHS ), John Vincent (FBI whistleblower), Steve Elson (special agent with the US Navy, the DEA drug investigation and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA )), John M. Cole (FBI whistleblower) and Matthew Fogg . In the documentary, Edmonds says: “The targets of FBI wiretaps are not only foreign individuals supected of espionage and terrorism in the US but also their accomplices, that is [...] top officials at the State Department and at the Pentagon. These people are clearly engaged in criminal activities such as technological espionage, nuclear black market, heroin trafficking, money laundering, corruption of high-ranking officials, particularly in the US Congress. "

process

The allegations of misconduct in the FBI drew the attention of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, which attended two public hearings on the case. In doing so, the FBI produced several unclassified documents and statements and confirmed that some statements were truthful by Edmonds. Two senators then wrote letters, which were also posted on their websites, asking for an explanation from the department and an independent review.

Meanwhile, Edmonds made allegations against the Department of Justice, the FBI and other officials. She claimed that the FBI fired her "out of revenge". Attorney General John Ashcroft put the documents on October 18, 2002 retrospectively with a lock to prevent publication - for "reasons of national security".

In a radio interview with US investigative journalist Brad Friedman in July 2009, Sibel Edmonds claimed, however, that she had information that the United States was at the time, expressly without wanting to feed a “ 9/11 conspiracy ” on the part of the US maintained "close ties" with Osama bin Laden and the Taliban from the collapse of the Soviet Union to September 11, 2001 .

Awards

Works

Web links

literature

Documentaries

  • Kill The Messenger (Une Femme à Abattre) . Documentation, 82 min., First broadcast on September 19, 2006. Directors: Jean Robert Viallet, Mathieu Verboud. Production: Zadig Productions, France. Canal + , Planète, RTBF , Special Broadcasting Service .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Larry Siems: 2006 PEN / Newman's Own First Amendment Award. In: PEN American Center. March 29, 2006, archived from the original on February 20, 2014 ; accessed on February 20, 2014 .
  2. David Rose: To Inconvenient Patriot. In: Vanity Fair .
  3. "I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban - those things can be proven as lies , very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11. " Sibel Edmonds on Mike Malloy (radio show), Transcription, Jul 31, 2009 [1]