Will a former FBI translator finally get to tell us what she knows about 9-11?

Against all odds, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds's campaign to speak openly about what she knows regarding 9-11 and the FBI is moving forward—inch-by-inch. Edmonds, who was borEdmonds, who was born in Iran and grew up in Turkey, is fluent in several languages, among them, Turkish and Farsi. She was hired by the FBI in the hectic aftermath of 9-11 and given top secret security clearance. Almost immediately she was struck by the bizarre activities in the FBI's translation department. Interpreters were dispatched to Guantanamo to translate interviews with prisoners, but the translators couldn't speak the languages they were asked to translate. She learned of reports within the bureau relating the story of a long-trusted FBI asset in the Middle East, who first reported bin Laden's plans for an attack in April 2001. She came across activities which she thought might involve active espionage within the bureau. Edmonds was fired after she complained about the fishy translations. She told her bosses that national security might have been breached when an interpreter with a relative at a foreign embassy in Washington actually gave wiretap information to the target of an FBI investigation. She claims these people are still working for the FBI. Since then, there have been letters of inquiry back and forth between the Senate Judiciary Committee and top FBI officials, which tended to confirm her reports. Just as it seemed her charges finally would break into the open, the Ashcroft Justice Department invoked the rarely used states secrets privilege to classify everything she had been telling the Senate committee, and apparently retroactively classifying stories about her in the press. What little progress she was making in bringing her story to public attention suddenly stopped. Nothing could be disclosed because it had become secret, its publication a threat national security. [more] and [more]

• Edmonds' Web site [here]