Friday, September 22, 2006

Sibel Edmonds

Sibel Edmonds is a former FBI translator that the CT crowd likes to claim is a brave whistle-blower on 9-11. This makes little sense. Edmonds was hired by the FBI after 9-11. She claimed in 2004 that she was fired because she exposed the fact that the FBI's translation team was intentionally working slowly in an effort to win an increased budget the following year, and that people insufficiently trained in the languages they were supposed to translate were hired. This is certainly a cause for concern, but how it ties into the MIHOP theory is hard to figure out, and incompetence and bureaucratic thinking are actually the best argument against LIHOP as well. Since then she has made more lurid claims according to Wikipedia:

The documentary focusses on both Ms Edmonds' personal struggle to expose the criminality that she uncovered while at the FBI, and also the 'secret' itself - the network of nuclear black-market, narcotics and illegal arms trafficking activities.


Here's a clip from the documentary about Edmonds:



Here's a very long interview with Edmonds that gives a little more information, although it does not really explain her relevance to 9-11 conspiracy theories.

But if I were to summarize the 3 or 4 general areas that I reported in terms of the serious problems... One had to do with, and this took place almost within the first two months I was there, that had to do with information related to counter—terrorism division dealing mainly with the 911 terror attacks — and in order to deal with it, not only did it deal with information available after 911, but the agents and the divisions went and actually retrieved a lot of documents and wiretap conversations — some of them dating back to 1999/2000 — on various suspects, or people they believed maybe were suspects.

So they wanted to review a lot of things that took place even before 911. So you were not only dealing, after 911, with information that started coming in, or being obtained after the terrorist attack, but a lot of information that either was translated — verbatim or in many cases summary translations — or things that were maybe overlooked that were retrieved, again from the archives, and this was a decision made by the higher—ups, and for some of those materials to be reviewed again to see what was missed, or what was not translated correctly etc.

Swanson: But you clearly came upon things that the FBI did not want to see made public — would have found embarrassing. Things that you made public to the extent that you were able, that things were poorly translated, things were missed, things were done wrong, and you reported to higher—ups that you had colleagues who were not doing their work properly.

Edmonds: Correct — and, again, there were two categories involved. In some cases it was either intentional or unintentional, unintentional due to incompetence — certain information that was not translated before 911 or they were translated inaccurately. And I also emphasize intentional cases that I reported.

The second category (of things that I reported) was other information that was available and there were significant issues, significant cases, that were not pursued because of 'certain diplomatic relations' and this is something that a lot of people have a hard time understanding, and that is, selective selection of information. That is, let's say certain information came from, let me give you a hypothetical example, let's say it came from Iraq, or certain Iraqi individuals, you can bet that would be processed because of the Axis of Evil Doctrine by our President

Swanson: Whereas Saudi Arabia is 'less evil', for example?

Edmonds: Absolutely! Or you would have in certain cases, there were certain cases that you had several individuals or entities from different nations, let's say, Pakistan, or Turkey, or Israel — and that information, due to pressure by the State Department, they were not transferring that information from counter—intelligence (they were obtained under counter—intelligence, ok) — to the counter—terrorism division — even though they were relevant, extremely relevant, directly relevant.

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