Wednesday, September 08, 2004
America Deserves Better # 26B
Dear Friends,
Please read the following, and then ask yourself if this is the kind of government you want. Surely America deserves better.
Sincerely, Murray
By Nat Hentoff
Were it not for the determination of Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. andCharles Grassley, R-Iowa, Attorney General John Ashcroft would still be preventing the public from knowing the allegations of an FBI whistleblower that the agency has been covering up its own incompetence that is dangerous to national security. The dismissed accuser, Sibel Edmonds
a linguist and translator with expertise in Mideast languages -was hired by the FBI soon after Sept. 11. As the Boston Globe recently reported: "Sifting through old classified materials in the days after the Sept. 11,2001, attacks, (Emonds) said, she made an alarming discovery: Intercepts relevant to the terrorist plot, including references to skyscrapers, had been overlooked because they were badly translated into English."
Moreover, on Oct. 27, 2002, Edmonds told a CBS- TV "60 Minutes" reporter that there was a large backlog of untrallslated FBI interviewswith possible terrorists, as well as wiretaps. But she was told to do her work slowly so that the FBI could geta bigger budget to hire more translators. For her industrious whistle-blowing, Edmonds was fired in March 2002.
Taking up her cause, Sell. Grassley told "60 Minutes" that Edmonds' accusations were "absolutely credible," adding that the FBI, with its pattern of concealing its weaknesses, "needs to be turned upside down." Edmonds sued to get her
job and her reputation back. But, so intent was the Justice Department to deep-six her case that, in May of this year (as reported by 9/11 Citizens Watch) "the FBI retroactively classified information about Edmonds' claims provided to congressional staff more than two years ago."
Accordingly, senators involved in her case had "to remove previously public material from their Web sites." On July 6, it looked as if this gag rule might become permanent when Judge Reggie Waltoll of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed Edmonds' lawsuit on the basis of Ashcroft having invoked the rarely used "state secrets privilege."
But Sells. Leahy and Grassley were not deterred. In a July 9 letter to Ashcroft, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and FBI Director Robert Mueller, the senators said . they knew of Fine's investigative reportS on Edmonds' allegations wanted to see them.
Seeing that letter, I called the Inspector General's office and was told that a copy of the reports would be sent to those senators, who have security clearance, but the public would not have access. The reports have arrived, but the senators are forbidden to disclose any of that information to the public because the reports remain classified.
But the Inspector General's spokesman tells me that Fine is working with the Justice Department and the FBI to permit declassified sections of those reports to become available to the rest of us. That this administration overclassifies information has long been a complaint of the press and members of Congress. But the reclassification of previously public access to Edmonds' charges has been described by attorney Michael Kirkpatrick of Public Citizen in stinging terms to the Project on Government Oversight:
"We have been doing national security litigation for more than 30 years, and in our view, this is the most egregious misuse of the classification authority we've seen. Classification is to keep secret information that is sensitive. It is not to suppress debate over (previously) widely public information. Yet that is exactly what Ashcroft is doing."
Adds Edmonds: This is part of "John Ashcroft's relentless fight against me, and my information." This fight is also directed against what is now quaintly known as "the public's right to know" in our essential oversight responsibility over our government as responsible citizens.
-Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendmentand the Bill of Rights.
Please read the following, and then ask yourself if this is the kind of government you want. Surely America deserves better.
Sincerely, Murray
By Nat Hentoff
Were it not for the determination of Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. andCharles Grassley, R-Iowa, Attorney General John Ashcroft would still be preventing the public from knowing the allegations of an FBI whistleblower that the agency has been covering up its own incompetence that is dangerous to national security. The dismissed accuser, Sibel Edmonds
a linguist and translator with expertise in Mideast languages -was hired by the FBI soon after Sept. 11. As the Boston Globe recently reported: "Sifting through old classified materials in the days after the Sept. 11,2001, attacks, (Emonds) said, she made an alarming discovery: Intercepts relevant to the terrorist plot, including references to skyscrapers, had been overlooked because they were badly translated into English."
Moreover, on Oct. 27, 2002, Edmonds told a CBS- TV "60 Minutes" reporter that there was a large backlog of untrallslated FBI interviewswith possible terrorists, as well as wiretaps. But she was told to do her work slowly so that the FBI could geta bigger budget to hire more translators. For her industrious whistle-blowing, Edmonds was fired in March 2002.
Taking up her cause, Sell. Grassley told "60 Minutes" that Edmonds' accusations were "absolutely credible," adding that the FBI, with its pattern of concealing its weaknesses, "needs to be turned upside down." Edmonds sued to get her
job and her reputation back. But, so intent was the Justice Department to deep-six her case that, in May of this year (as reported by 9/11 Citizens Watch) "the FBI retroactively classified information about Edmonds' claims provided to congressional staff more than two years ago."
Accordingly, senators involved in her case had "to remove previously public material from their Web sites." On July 6, it looked as if this gag rule might become permanent when Judge Reggie Waltoll of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed Edmonds' lawsuit on the basis of Ashcroft having invoked the rarely used "state secrets privilege."
But Sells. Leahy and Grassley were not deterred. In a July 9 letter to Ashcroft, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and FBI Director Robert Mueller, the senators said . they knew of Fine's investigative reportS on Edmonds' allegations wanted to see them.
Seeing that letter, I called the Inspector General's office and was told that a copy of the reports would be sent to those senators, who have security clearance, but the public would not have access. The reports have arrived, but the senators are forbidden to disclose any of that information to the public because the reports remain classified.
But the Inspector General's spokesman tells me that Fine is working with the Justice Department and the FBI to permit declassified sections of those reports to become available to the rest of us. That this administration overclassifies information has long been a complaint of the press and members of Congress. But the reclassification of previously public access to Edmonds' charges has been described by attorney Michael Kirkpatrick of Public Citizen in stinging terms to the Project on Government Oversight:
"We have been doing national security litigation for more than 30 years, and in our view, this is the most egregious misuse of the classification authority we've seen. Classification is to keep secret information that is sensitive. It is not to suppress debate over (previously) widely public information. Yet that is exactly what Ashcroft is doing."
Adds Edmonds: This is part of "John Ashcroft's relentless fight against me, and my information." This fight is also directed against what is now quaintly known as "the public's right to know" in our essential oversight responsibility over our government as responsible citizens.
-Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendmentand the Bill of Rights.
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Dear Murray,
You must to make your blog safer by choosing the appropriate selection in your profile site to avoid automatic commercial spam (it is a field you must click that calls "the word verification" ) and like that you are protected. I'm from Portugal a country near the Greenwich line and at the left of Spain. I think that you are completely reasonable right about your ideas about what rules us by these days and I think that we might be exceeding the critical mass of the great civilisations. I say this only because my government is also making a politic that its not socialist at all (I mean, despite the governmental political force be called Socialist Party, a state with social health care and law support). After what kind of macro business could flourish if the common people weren't doing all the work. The today's economy profit its a inflationated speculation about the future income, they claim the best odds in the beginning, to launch their public participation to after a while they declare bankruptcy. With the dices of speculation they tend to explore more the people that works in the hard way, and the Government is always pressured by all of the economy intervenients. So I meant that all ancient laws about good government get their rules quite right to their own scale but if that scale is hugger or smaller then all that collapses and they're not applicable. Well, finally it's not common a 70 years people with such energy and new technologies appetising, so my five to you.
Post Scriptum: sorry my english.
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You must to make your blog safer by choosing the appropriate selection in your profile site to avoid automatic commercial spam (it is a field you must click that calls "the word verification" ) and like that you are protected. I'm from Portugal a country near the Greenwich line and at the left of Spain. I think that you are completely reasonable right about your ideas about what rules us by these days and I think that we might be exceeding the critical mass of the great civilisations. I say this only because my government is also making a politic that its not socialist at all (I mean, despite the governmental political force be called Socialist Party, a state with social health care and law support). After what kind of macro business could flourish if the common people weren't doing all the work. The today's economy profit its a inflationated speculation about the future income, they claim the best odds in the beginning, to launch their public participation to after a while they declare bankruptcy. With the dices of speculation they tend to explore more the people that works in the hard way, and the Government is always pressured by all of the economy intervenients. So I meant that all ancient laws about good government get their rules quite right to their own scale but if that scale is hugger or smaller then all that collapses and they're not applicable. Well, finally it's not common a 70 years people with such energy and new technologies appetising, so my five to you.
Post Scriptum: sorry my english.
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