Wednesday, June 19, 2002
Two FBI
Whistle-Blowers Allege Lax Security, Possible
Espionage
By James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff
Writer
IN separate cases, two new
FBI whistle-blowers are alleging mismanagement
and lax security -- and in one case possible
espionage -- among those who translate and
oversee some of the FBI's most sensitive,
top-secret wiretaps in counterintelligence and
counterterrorist investigations.
The allegations of one of the whistle-blowers
have prompted two key senators -- Judiciary
Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and
Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) -- to pose
critical questions about the FBI division
working on the front line of gathering and
analyzing wiretaps.
That whistle-blower, Sibel Edmonds,
32, a former wiretap translator in the
Washington field office, raised suspicions about
a co-worker's connections to a group under
surveillance.
Under pressure, FBI officials have
investigated and verified the veracity of parts
of Edmonds's story, according to documents and
people familiar with an FBI briefing of
congressional staff. Leahy and Grassley summoned
the FBI to Capitol Hill on Monday for a private
explanation, people familiar with the briefing
said.
The FBI confirmed that Edmonds's co-worker
had been part of an organization
[Website: The
Mossad] that was a target of
top-secret surveillance and that the same
co-worker had "unreported contacts" with a
foreign government official subject to the
surveillance, according to a letter from the two
senators to the Justice Department's Office of
the Inspector General. In addition, the linguist
failed to translate two communications from the
targeted
[Israeli]
foreign government official, the letter
said.
"This whistleblower
raised serious questions about potential
security problems and the integrity of
important translations made by the FBI,"
Grassley said in a statement. "She made these
allegations in good faith and even though the
deck was stacked against her. The FBI even
admits to a number of her allegations, and on
other allegations, the bureau's explanation
leaves me skeptical."
The allegations add a new dimension to the
growing criticism of the FBI, which has centered
in recent weeks on the bureau's failure to heed
internal warnings about al Qaeda leading up to
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Last month, FBI
agent Coleen Rowley also complained about
systemic problems before the attacks. Rowley
works in Minneapolis, where agents in August
unsuccessfully tried to get a search warrant to
look into the laptop computer of a man now
described as the "20th hijacker."
Finding capable and trustworthy translators
has been a special challenge in the terrorism
war. FBI officials told government auditors in
January that translator shortages have resulted
in "the accumulation of thousands of hours of
audio tapes and pages" of untranslated material.
After the attacks, FBI Director Robert S.
Mueller III issued a plea for translators,
and hundreds of people applied.
Margaret Gulotta, chief of language
services at the FBI, said the bureau has hired
400 translators in two years, significantly
reducing the backlog on high-priority cases
while upholding strict background checks. "We
have not compromised our standards in terms of
language proficiency and security," Gulotta
said.
In the second whistle-blower case, John M.
Cole, 41, program manager for FBI foreign
intelligence investigations covering India,
Pakistan and Afghanistan, said
counterintelligence and counterterrorism
training has declined drastically in recent
years as part of a continuing pattern of poor
management.
Cole also said he had observed what he
believed was a security lapse regarding the
screening and hiring of translators. "I thought
we had all these new security procedures in
place, in light of [FBI spy Robert P.]
Hanssen," Cole said. "No one is going by
the rules and regulations and whatever policy
may be implemented."
Edmonds and Cole have written about their
concerns to high-level FBI officials. Edmonds
wrote to Dale Watson, the bureau's
counterterrorism chief, and Cole wrote to
Mueller. Both cases have been referred to
Justice's Office of the Inspector General, which
is investigating, government officials
confirmed.
The FBI said it was unable to corroborate an
allegation by Edmonds that she was approached to
join the targeted group. Edmonds said she told
Dennis Saccher, a special agent in the
Washington field office who was conducting the
surveillance, about the co-worker's actions and
Saccher replied, "It looks like espionage to
me." Saccher declined to comment when contacted
by a reporter.
Edmonds
was fired in March
after she reported her concerns. Government
officials said the FBI fired her because her
"disruptiveness" hurt her on-the-job
"performance." Edmonds said she believes she
was fired in retaliation for reporting on her
co-worker.
Edmonds began working at the FBI in late
September. In an interview, she said she became
particularly alarmed when she discovered that a
recently hired FBI translator was saying that
she belonged to the Middle Eastern organization
whose taped conversations she had been
translating for FBI counterintelligence agents.
Officials asked that the name of the target
group not be revealed for
national security reasons.
A Washington Post reporter discovered
Edmonds's name in her whistle-blowing letters to
federal and congressional officials and
approached her for an interview.
Edmonds said that on
several occasions, the translator tried to
recruit her to join the targeted foreign group.
"This person told us she worked for our target
organization," Edmonds said in an interview.
"These are the people we are targeting,
monitoring."
Edmonds would not identify the other
translator, but The Post has learned from
other sources that she is a 33-year-old
U.S. citizen whose native
country is home to the target group. Both
Edmonds and the other translator are U.S.
citizens who trace their ethnicity to the same
Middle Eastern country. Reached by telephone
last week, the woman, who works under contract
for the FBI's Washington field office, declined
to comment.
In December, Edmonds said the woman and her
husband, a U.S. military officer, suggested
during a hastily arranged visit to Edmonds's
Northern Virginia home on a Sunday morning that
Edmonds join the group.
"He said, 'Are you a
member of the particular organization?' "
Edmonds recalled the woman's husband saying.
"[He said,] 'It's a very good place
to be a member. There are a lot of advantages
of being with this organization and doing
things together' -- this is our targeted
organization -- 'and one of the greatest
things about it is you can have an early, an
unexpected, early retirement. And you will be
totally set if you go to that specific
country
[i.e.
Israel].' "
Edmonds also said the woman's husband told
her she would be admitted to the group,
especially if she said she worked for the
FBI.
Later, Edmonds said, the woman approached her
with a list dividing up individuals whose phone
lines were being secretly tapped: Under the
plan, the woman would translate conversations of
her former co-workers in the target
organization, and Edmonds would handle other
phone calls. Edmonds said she refused and that
the woman told her that her lack of cooperation
could put her family in danger.
Edmonds said she also brought her concerns to
her supervisor and other FBI officials in the
Washington field office. When no action was
taken, she said, she reported her concerns to
the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility,
then to Justice's inspector general.
"Investigations are being compromised,"
Edmonds wrote to the inspector general's office
in March. "Incorrect or misleading translations
are being sent to agents in the field.
Translations are being blocked and
circumvented."
Government officials familiar with the matter
who asked not to be identified said that both
Edmonds and the woman were given polygraph
examinations by the FBI and that both
passed.
Edmonds had been found to have breached
security, FBI officials told Senate
investigators. Edmonds said that two of those
alleged breaches were related to specific
instruction by a supervisor to prepare a report
on the other translator on her home
computer.
©
2002 The Washington Post Company
write to David Irving