SCOTUS Rejects Whistleblower Case

The dismissal of whistleblower Sibel Edmonds’ case has been allowed to stand by the Supreme Court, who rejected her appeal without comment.

The U.S. Supreme Court let stand on Monday the dismissal of a lawsuit by a former FBI linguist who said she had been fired in 2002 for speaking out about possible security breaches, misconduct and incompetent translation work.

Without any comment, the justices rejected an appeal by Sibel Edmonds, who worked as a contract linguist at the FBI's Washington field office from shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks until her dismissal the following March.

Edmonds had reported to FBI management her concerns about the quality of the translations, accusing fellow translators of willful misconduct and gross incompetence. She also accused a co-worker of possible espionage.

A specialist in Middle Eastern languages, she said that numerous communications had been left untranslated or had been mistranslated.

The FBI has said that Edmonds was disruptive and that her allegations were not credible.

In July 2002, she sued the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department and various high-level officials in challenging her dismissal.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton dismissed the case after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the rarely used "state secrets privilege."

He warned that further disclosure of the duties of Edmonds and other translators could cause "serious damage to the national security interests of the United States."

This is clearly a disturbing precedent. What incentive do whistleblowers have to come forward and reveal serious problems within the government if they can expect only to be silenced by the invocation of “state secrets privilege” and summarily shit-canned?

The Heretik notes:

THE GOVERNMENT CLAIMS states secrets privilege more than it admits, sixty times since the concept was born in the McCarthyite, anti communist hysteria of the Nineteen Fifties. In most instances, the state secrets privilege has been used to prevent certain pieces of evidence from entering court. As evidenced in the Edmonds case, the Bush Administration is expanding scope by seeking dismissal of entire cases. National security turned out not to be the issue in the first case that formed the basis for thestate secrets privilege doctrine, United States v. Reynolds. What was argued as a case involving secret military equipment and national security 50 years later turned out to be shoddy maintenance of the United States B-29 fleet.

IN THE EDMONDS CASE testimony given to Congress in open session was later retroactively classified. The way the Bush Administration uses the state secrets privilege the truth may be classified forever.

Mirror-image shades of the administration attempting to use first amendment protection to disseminate classified information anonymously and with impunity. There’s nothing they won’t do to protect their dirty deeds.