Balkinization  

Friday, April 09, 2004

JB

Translator's Story: Condi's Lying

I don't quite know what to make of this story, which has been in the foreign press for some time now, but hasn't yet cracked the mainstream media in the United States:

US officials knew months before September 11, 2001, that the al-Qaeda network planned to use aircraft to commit a terrorist attack, according to a former FBI translator interviewed in a British newspaper yesterday.

Sibel Edmonds told The Independent that a claim by US President George Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that there had been no such warnings was "an outrageous lie".

The report comes as the White House said Dr Rice would testify under oath on April 8 before the September 11 commission. The former translator with the FBI said that she had provided information about her claims to the commission.

Ms Edmonds told The Independent: "There was general information about the timeframe, about methods to be used - but not specifically about how they would be used - and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities - with skyscrapers."

The 33-year-old Turkish-American translator said that based on documents she had seen during her time with the FBI, after September 11, it was "impossible" that US intelligence officials had no warning of the attacks.

The Independent reported that the Administration had sought to silence Ms Edmonds and had obtained a gag order from a court.


The Washington Times mentions Edmond's charges of sloppiness in the FBI's translation unit in her testimony before the 9-11 commission, but it says nothing about her charges about warnings of Al Qaeda attacks.

Dan Froomkin points out that the Edmonds story is one of the stories circulating in the international press that you won't read in the United States, at least yet. Well, thank goodness for the Internet. Here are stories from the Toronto Star and the Independent.




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