FBI WHISTLEBLOWER APPEALS TO SUPREME COURT
BY REBECCA CARR
Cox News Service
August 5, 2005 Friday
WASHINGTON — FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds is asking the
U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether a lower court erred in dismissing
her claims of wrongful termination based on the rarely used “state
secrets privilege.”
By invoking the “state secrets privilege,” the Justice Department
prevented Edmonds, a former language translator, from airing in
court her allegations that the bureau fired her for reporting serious
security breaches and possible espionage.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in May
that Edmonds could jeopardize national security if her case proceeded.
But the state secret privilege was created by the high court 52 years
ago to be used as “a shield for sensitive evidence, not a sword the
government can use at will to cut off argument in a case,” said Ann
Beeson, who represents Edmonds as the associate legal director of
the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU is asking the high court to “rein in the government’s misuse
of this privilege,” Beeson said.
The ACLU is also asking the Supreme Court to reverse a decision by
the court of appeals to ban the media and the public from hearing
Edmond’s appeal.
There are at least four other cases now pending where the federal
government has asserted the state secrets privilege, which effectively
ends the case when a judge approves the use.
On Thursday, the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond
affirmed the CIA’s use of the privilege to end a discrimination
lawsuit filed by a Jeffrey Sterling, a former operations officer in
the agency’s Near East and South Asia division.
“The district court properly concluded that this case would require
disclosure of highly classified information concerning the identity,
location and assignments of CIA operatives,” the court’s ruling states.
When the government invokes the privilege, the person seeking justice
against discrimination or retaliation loses because the case is
dismissed, open government advocates say.
The executive branch is increasingly using the privilege to obtain
dismissals of civil cases that allege unlawful conduct by federal
agencies, said Mark S. Zaid, who represents Sterling.
The government sends a message of “keep your mouth shut” to all
whistleblowers when it invokes the state secrets privilege, Zaid said.
Congress needs to investigate whether the executive branch is
misusing the state secrets privilege, said Beth Daley, director of
communication for the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog
organization based in Washington.
“The executive branch is abusing this authority,” Daley said. The
result is that national homeland security whistleblowers are afraid
to come forward when they see wrong doing because their cases end up
in a black hole, she said.
The Justice Department did not return calls seeking comment, but in
the past it has argued the privilege is a necessary tool to protect
government secrets.
Edmonds was hired by the FBI as a contract linguist soon after the
Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks for her fluency in Turkish, Farsi
and Azerbaijani.
Between December 2001 and March 2002, she reported a number of serious
security breaches to her superiors, including an allegation that a
fellow translator had been associating with an FBI target.
New details of those allegations appeared in the September issue of
Vanity Fair.
The article stated that Edmonds listened to wiretapped conversations
of FBI targets at the American-Turkish Council and the Assembly of
Turkish American Associations and the Turkish Consulate in Chicago.
The article claims that the Turkish groups arranged for tens of
thousands of dollars to be paid to House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s
campaign funds in small checks of less than $200 so they would not
have to be itemized in public campaign filings.
The article states that recordings mention Hastert’s decision in
2000 to withdraw his support for a congressional proposal that
would have designated as a genocide the killings of Armenians in
Turkey between 1915 and 1923. The article said that a senior Turkish
official claimed that the price for Hastert to withdraw his support
was at least $500,000.
Hastert’s voice was not heard on the recordings. And the article
notes that there was no evidence that any payment was ever made to
Hastert or his campaign.
Ron Bonjean, Hastert’s spokesperson, said the allegations are
“nonsense.” Hastert changed his vote because former President Bill
Clinton asked him to withdraw his support out of concern for U.S.
interests abroad.
” It makes for great summer time reading,” Bonjean said. “The
next thing you know they will blame the speaker for the Jennifer
Aniston-Brad Pitt break up.”
The Vanity Fair article also states that Edmonds listened to a
conversation between a Turkish official and a State Department
staffer. In the conversation, Vanity Fair reports, that government
officials agreed that the State Department staffer would send a
representative to pick up $7,000 in cash at the American-Turkish
Council’s Washington headquarters.
“I deny the allegations in the article in the strongest possible
terms,” said James Holmes, president of the American-Turkish Council.
“The article’s treatment of the ATC is packed with knowable lies. Any
rookie fact checker could have found out that the facts were wrong.”
Edmonds’ legal battle with the Justice Department began soon after
she was fired in March 2002. She filed a federal lawsuit alleging that
her termination was in retaliation for reporting security breaches.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton dismissed her case in July 2003
because then-Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the “state
secrets privilege,” allowing the government to block the release of
any material that would harm national security.
In May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed
her dismissal of her case based on the state secrets privilege.
“This privilege was supposed to be invoked rarely, but you see here
that they are using this as a tool to gag whistleblowers,” Edmonds
said on Friday. “It is extremely dangerous the way they invoke it.
According to them, my place of birth, my languages, my resume, are
all state secrets. It’s ludicrous.”
On the Web:
The American Civil Liberties Union’s filing before the U.S. Supreme
Court:
Rebecca Carr’s e-mail is rcarr(at)coxnews.com