SPP ALUM RECEIVES FIRST AMENDMENT AWARD

SPP Graduate Sibel Edmonds

SPP graduate Sibel Edmonds is slated to receive the PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award on April 18th. The PEN American Center, a non-profit organization for freedom of expression, will honor Edmonds with the $20,000 prize at its annual gala in New York City.
Edmonds, who received her master’s degree from the International Commerce and Policy Program, worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation translating into English documents written in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani. Believing that some materials in her possession relevant to the September 11, 2001, attacks had been either incorrectly translated or not translated in a timely fashion, she reported her assessment to her supervisors. She said that she was concerned, too, about work slowdowns in the language department that were intended to increase the unit’s budget by demonstrating the need for more translators. Subsequently, she was fired by the FBI.

Alerted to Edmonds’ allegations, the Senate Judiciary called for an independent audit of the FBI's translation unit. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) was quoted by CBS’s News as saying, “She's credible…and the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.”

Edmonds filed suit against the FBI for wrongful termination. However, Attorney General John Ashcroft blocked court proceedings on her case by asserting "state secret privilege." The same obstacle has also hindered her involvement in a separate suit, for which she was supposed to testify regarding her claim that the FBI had foreknowledge of al-Qaeda’s attack against the World Trade Center.

The American Civil Liberties Union is now trying to overturn the "state secret privilege" claim as it applies to both lawsuits. Edmonds’ website, http://www.justacitizen.com, recounts the latest developments on her lawsuit.

In August 2004, Edmonds founded an organization called the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, a nonpartisan alliance of citizens who have come forward to address concerns about security weaknesses of the U.S. More information about the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition is available at: http://www.nswbc.org.