Sibel Edmonds worked as an FBI contract translator from September 2001 until March 22, 2002, translating covert recordings involving Turkish diplomatic and political targets. She filed complaints with the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility and the Justice Department’s inspector general, alleging that a colleague concealed illicit activity involving Turkish nationals, that serious security breaches were ignored, and that intelligence was deliberately suppressed. The FBI said she was dismissed for disruptive conduct, security violations, and poor performance.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held unclassified hearings on June 17 and July 9, 2002, prompting Senators Patrick Leahy and Chuck Grassley to request explanations and an independent audit of the translation unit. A 2005 FBI Office of the Inspector General investigation found that many of Edmonds’s misconduct allegations had “some basis in fact” and that they were a significant factor in her termination, while stating that not all allegations could be substantiated and declining to rule that the dismissal was improper. Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the state-secrets privilege in 2004, blocking further testimony and helping end her wrongful-termination litigation. The case became a major national-security whistleblower controversy and contributed to later advocacy through Edmonds’s National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
