Wow. Pretty ugly. Thanks for the information.

From the Omaha.com piece:

In a major victory for the FBI and Justice Department, the commission came down firmly against creation of a new, separate domestic intelligence agency and opted instead to send a "stay the course" message of support for Mueller.

Isn't it really annoying that they present this as a "major victory for the FBI and Justice Department"? If it was the right decision (which seems rather dubious), then it was a victory for reason. But no, it's a political victory for organizations. When will they understand that this isn't about preserving some manager's job and/or influence, but about the nation's security? What's wrong with these people?

Also, as I've already pointed out in another thread, the full letter by Sibel Edmonds has been published on the Common Dreams web site: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0802-06.htm

Has Edmonds been seriously discredited in any way? Does anybody know? If not, then the lack of coverage that her letter has so far received in the press is truly astonishing by any standards.

See my input to the comments section of "Evaluating the threat from Al Qaeda".

The woman and the story both have serious credibilty issues.

Makes one wonder if we can really trust the FBI to tell us that a group of Syrian "musicians" are really musicians or terrorists on a dry run.

Coincidentally, I have a post today about a threat to the West Coast of the US from North Korea, and why the FBI aren't likely to be investigating it.

so frustrating.

Russia bought Ames and Hannsen the chiefs of Russian counter-espionage in the CIA and FBI, respectively.

The Islamofascists (in Saudiland, Pakistan, Syria, Iran and pre-Saddam Iraq) have more money and have had greater access to the West and have been on the offense in WW4 for twenty years.

OF COURSE THEY HAVE MOLES IN THE CIA AND FBI!

Anyone who thinks they don't is being silly.

The FBI really does seem to feel that it is immune to being taken to task. One example that has bothered me is that not only did the mid-level managers who refused to pass on info from Colleen Rowley and the guy in Phoenix (suspicians regarding middle east men taking flight lessons) not get at least a reprimand. They were promoted.

Perhaps a name change, from Federal Bureau of Investigation to Federal Bureau of Intoxication, is due. They'd have to be a bunch of drunks to operate like this.

I'm wondering if those who are now so up-in-arms over the tendency of the FBI to cover its ass were just as irate when the FBI burned over 50 women and children in Waco.

Or, when Lon Horiuchi shot Randy Weaver's wife and child at Ruby Ridge.

Yeah. I'm just so confused and wondering where ya'll were when the FBI and the rest of the government, including John Danforth covered its ass then.

Not.

"The FBI really does seem to feel that it is immune to being taken to task. One example that has bothered me is that not only did the mid-level managers who refused to pass on info from Colleen Rowley and the guy in Phoenix (suspicians regarding middle east men taking flight lessons) not get at least a reprimand. They were promoted."

Posted by lansing

IIRC, one manager got a special bonus, under a program set up by bush.

I don't know about Edmonds' story, but it's pretty clear that the FBI just fucking sucks.

Wasn't either Ruby Ridge or Waco actually ATF not FBI?

Bithead, I read your previous post about Edmonds, plus the followup you wrote today. While it may be true that she is not credible, I would be interested in seeing some credible sources upholding your statement that she "is a nut" or why you "personally think she has strong personal motivations to discredit those who fired her." The waiting 2 years to file a suit doesn't seem sufficient to prove a lack of credibility.

"I'm wondering if those who are now so up-in-arms over the tendency of the FBI to cover its ass were just as irate when the FBI burned over 50 women and children in Waco."

Interestingly enough, the Delta force guys who planned the Waco raid are now in charge of Special Forces and the Pentagon's Deputy Undersecretary for Intelligence, respectively.

Why does anybody expect the government to be effective at anything? The government will never be effective at anything because it has no competition to improve. There is no market force - unless you consider terrorist/rebel forces, which obliterate portions or all of a government. But this is America, where nobody takes such a threat seriously.

Now maybe if the 9/11 hijackers had slammed into the FBI's building, we might see better results... because then it's their lives at stake. But no, government cannot be efficient. Which is why small government is the best government.

This does not have the feel of the tinfoil hat brigade. (Anyone who deals with the government and government contracting would recognize the behavior described in the letter. Particularly the bit about the translation slow down.)

It would seem a good idea to follow up this lady's comments. If they are to be dismissed, a reason should be given. Ignoring them in the 9/11 report was a mistake -- if for no other reason than conspiracy theories should be debunked if they are demonstrably untrue.

I run a tiny (just me) county forensic DNA lab. I have to deal with the FBI a lot because via the national DNA database (CODIS) they have essentially arrogated to themselves the right to regulate all forensic DNA labs that get federal $$ and/or are connected to CODIS (i.e. essentially every public lab). I'll choose my words carefully here- let's just say you'll hear no enthusiastic defenses of the FBI from me. If you've seen one big government bureaucracy you've seen them all, regardless of ostensible function.

Bithead, I read your previous post about Edmonds, plus the followup you wrote today. While it may be true that she is not credible, I would be interested in seeing some credible sources upholding your statement that she "is a nut" or why you "personally think she has strong personal motivations to discredit those who fired her." The waiting 2 years to file a suit doesn't seem sufficient to prove a lack of credibility.

Of itself. perhaps not.

First let me say I wish I had kept the original research and link list for the resach I did last April. I didn't. I will say I found more than enough to justify the remarks made at the time.

But even discounting that evdience, consider that two years in combination with the progression of increasingly wild charges over time. The charges got wilder as time went on. The most likely answer to why comes back, because hse was not getting the attention (Nee...$$$) she wanted.

If you agree she's not credible based on those two factors put together, which I have, then the rest of my post seems far more likely than the wild tales she's been telling.

Think;
Do these actions listed sound to you like someone who only has their country's security at heart? Does this even sound *sane* to you?

It seems far more likekly what we're dealing with here is someone who got canned on performance issues, and using politics and the court system, decided she would be able to get back at her former employer.

And of course, it should be noted what this says about the far left embracing this story. They're willing to latch onto this less than credible woman, to push their own less than credible agendae.

Finaly, It's noteworthy that the 9/11 commission discounted this tale of hers and the related charges as well, out of hand.

Wasn't this "impacted colon syndrome" at the FBI the reason GWB instituted the Department of Homeland Security?

Doesn't look like such a bad idea now, does it? (Now, if he'd just finish the job and get rid of all that petrified fecal matter on the government payroll.)

r.t. wrote:

Wasn't either Ruby Ridge or Waco actually ATF not FBI?

The ATF began them and the FBI finished them off.

I always take the claims of whistleblowers with a large grain of salt. Years ago, I represented a number of them in actions against governmental agencies who had fired them for whistleblowing. They were all very strange people who definitely did not have the interests of the public at heart.

I wouldn't have hired one of them. Their personalities were like those of kids in grammer school who gloried in being tattletale hall monitors. These people get some kind of strange pleasure out of ruining the careers of their coworkers. In fact, someone did a study of them that was profiled in Parade many years ago. The profile was of a definite weirdo. One of my whistleblowers brought the article in to show me. He thought the article was complimentary. I thought that he was a Grade A Moonbat.

After having the same kinds of experiences with them time after time--I stopped taking cases from whistleblowers because I couldn't stand being in the same room with them.

I was in mediation with one of them once and the mediator (a very respected retired judge) took me out in the hallway, put his head on a secretary's desk and said: "I can't take this anymore." My client was a nut.

After that, I could never watch any movies aggrandizing them like the ones Jack Lemon or Russell Crowe were in (the names of the movies escape me)

Bithead's comments resonate with me as a result.

Our "free" press should be all over this story. Is she a bonafide whistleblower or a publicity hound? Their job is to ferret out the truth in a story like this but, alas, it's a lot less work to be Jason Blair than Jack Anderson.

"After the terrorist attacks of September 11 we, the translators at the FBI’s largest and most important translation unit, were told to slow down, even stop, translation of critical information related to terrorist activities so that the FBI could present the United States Congress with a record of ‘extensive backlog of untranslated documents’, and justify its request for budget and staff increases".

My father used to tell the same story about civilian government employees working at a communication center in San Francisco in 1946. Their supervisors required that they create a backlog of messages waiting to be decoded and forwarded in order to justify larger budgets and more staff.

So this accusation rings true to me.

Aha, Bob D.... that was a points I wanted to put up; Thanks for reminding me.

Perhaps part of the job of the press is to seperate the actual news fromm as you put it, the "publicity hounds".. and determined for themselves that she was just that. If, of course we accept the idea that the press is unbiased.

If on the other hand, we accept, as I do, that the press us unabashedly leftist,(THere is much in the way of polling data of the press itself, even just recently, which backs this point...
) ...then we can only assume that they all figured that the story would hurt their interests.

Or perhaps it's a combo of the two.

Only if we accept that the press is all a bunch of right wing hacks...(An unsellable proposition by any means known) can we decide that the press is witholding all this info from us for the purpose of saving the hide of the Republcians, and specifically, Mr. Bush.

To this, I have five words, in answer:

New York Times
Washington Post

And to accept this line of thnking you would also have to assume the 9/11 commission, who as I stated rejected her story out of hand, was also a group of right wing extremists.

I've yet to see that particular argument made.

It seems that some people (names not mentioned) assume that someone who calls themselves a whistleblower is credible and correct in what they say. The prejudice, especially among academics and the mainstream press is in this direction.

The FBI had done so much wrong in the past, that it is hard to defend them, but there is no reason to assume, at least in this case, that they are wrong.

Past wrongs have mainly come from the late 1980's and early 1990's, when they seemed to be looking for opportunities to commit atrocities. If you were a right-wing nut, they would send out a small army to do a "Ruby Ridge" on you.

Left wing nuts (or is it left wingnuts?) were exempted from this.

It was all a carry over from their J Edgar Hoover past, when everyone thought this sort of behavior was great (say in the 1930's). As long as you thought that the people getting killed were on the other side from you, it was OK.

This conversation is almost as tiresome as the one about how the increased terror alert is politically motivated. ACTUALLY, the criticism is more politically motivated than the alert.

Statements from the FBI say that they do not claim any of her accusations are untrue. And there is some wierd confusion coming out of Mueller over this. Supposedly he was waiting for the 9/11 Commission Report to take action regarding the whistleblower's claims. He was asked about this during a Congressional hearing a few days ago. He claimed to be surprised that the Commission didn't address it in their report. It sounds to me like he was waiting to have the full force of the 9/11 Commission behind him before he went in to kick butt and take names.

This may sound strange but look at the inaction of Congress who also claimed to be waiting for the 9/11 report. And the completion of this report, and the accompanying prodding of the victims families groups, actually got Congress to hold a number of hearings during their traditional August recess. And spurred the President and Executive branch into action. It's quite amamzing really. Everyone being hesitant to take decisive action on their own but plenty brave enough if the 9/11 report is backing them up.

There are many people who dislike whistleblowers regardless of the validity of their claims. Look at Sherrin from Enron. It was her testimony that blew the lid off the Enron debacle, yet she stated that job offers aren't exactly piling up in her mailbox. And Colleen Rowley. Do you think she will be up for promotion any time soon? I'm not sure what it is. Some think that whistleblowers aren't team players or that they are "tattlers" regardless of the great public service they provide. And in Sherrin's case, a real professional integrity and unwillingness to compromise her accounting standards. I think we have too many sheep in this country who are willing to allow abuse of people's money and trust to occur and real harshness on the part of the American public regarding people who step out of line, even for the noble reasons.

Typical bureaucratic pile of crap. Bush should have rolled heads at the FBI as well as the CIA, and the fact that he didnt I hold against him. He's been fortunate to have Rumsfeld at the Pentagon kickin in doors to get the army streamlined for the 21st century (whatever you think of his wars aside). Its quite obvious that Bush doesnt have either the ability or the will to lean on his subordinates and makes sure shit gets done. Thats one of the major reasons Iraq is such a mess, a bureaucrat named Bremmer was in charge that didnt understand foot to ass diplomacy.
Why do I still support Bush despite this glaring weakness? I have no faith Kerry will do anything different. He sure as heck isnt going to take on any government employees. At least Bush has the right policies and a few key people that kick ass.

Anal farts:

"Wasn't this "impacted colon syndrome" at the FBI the reason GWB instituted the Department of Homeland Security?"

Now we have two disasters on our hands to replace the previoussingleton.

Sounds like an improvement to me.

moles

Thanks for the great post. I cited it on my Blog, but I don't have trackback.

-- Stygius
http://stygius.mindsay.com/

Paul a'barge is right. No one at the FBI was fired after Waco. No one was disciplined or demoted. I blamed Reno, maybe its the institution.

Ah...a little research reveals why this whistleblower may have credibility issues.

She was hired as a translator for the FBI's Washington field office on 13 September 2001, just two days after the al-Qa'ida attacks. Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps.

She said said it was clear there was sufficient information during the spring and summer of 2001 to indicate terrorists were planning an attack. "Most of what I told the commission ­ 90 per cent of it ­ related to the investigations that I was involved in or just from working in the department. Two hundred translators side by side, you get to see and hear a lot of other things as well."

"President Bush said they had no specific information about 11 September and that is accurate but only because he said 11 September," she said. There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0402-01.htm

Anything this woman knows about the way the FBI handled 9/11 is either from documents she translated (AFTER 9/11) or hearsay (office gossip -- the things you learn from working with 200 other translators.) This doesn't make it untrue -- just second-hand.

The other stuff in her story is very believable. But since she made her media splash with more dramatic stuff that she absolutely could not know first hand, she probably did a number on her own credibilty.

The spirit of J Edgar Hoover lives on.

Whatever became of those gay Arabic-speaking linguists who were booted out of the service before the war? The FBI should recruit them. They would be unlikely to have jihadist sympathies.

I won't bash the FBI were at war. After the war maybe. If you really want to do something, here are some links worth considering.

The sooner the American People realize we are at War against Islamofascism and unite both left and right to crush this enemy, the fewer lives will be lost in the struggle.

This war will be fought and won in cyberspace. You are the elite frontline warriors of this war. Nows the time for action. Don't sit idly by and wait for your government to take action.

With the power of the Net and the Blogspshere we can win this war:

To our enemy:

May the underwear and the blood of all the murdered innocent multiple one hundred fold and rain down on your silly little asses and wash you from the face of this earth.

WE DECLARE: The American People from the land of the free and the home of brave and the US Military the finest fighting force in all the world.

My our God have mercy on your souls.

****

See my post re the article in the New Yorker magazine and the subsequent links on what the American People can do in this War On Islamofascism at LGF:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11989#c0058

Ron Wright, Moderator
HSPIG Forums Site
www.hspig.org

I was on this story a month ago, when the District Court dismissed her claims (having noted the FrontPageMag story some time ago). Edmonds just seems like a nut case to me, especially her stuff about her supervisor celebrating the 9/11 attacks.

I do hope somebody has taken her claims seriously enough to investigate them, given their gravity. But color me skeptical as to her credibility.

AM;
An interesting addition, but one I never did find a second source for, in my original investigation. And as I've already suggested Common Dreams has their own axe to grind, here, in any event... So, I never used the reference as valid.

Crank;
I remember that reference when doing the research on my original write-up. However, again, I only found once source with that angle, and I didn't consider the source particularly credible, any more than I found her charges themselves were credible.

BTW, I note your writeup calls her a 'disgruntled' employee. It interests me that so many in here deny the idea that this is a motivation for acting as she has. And by the way, why is it we never hear of gruntled employees?

And I don't know as I was ever aware of the DC court having dismissed her case. Too bad, really; I'd have enjoyed adding it as a follow-on in my blog, and certainly would have added it here as another body that didn't think her charges credible. DC Courts, after all, are hardly known as bastions of right-wing rulings. Thanks for the info.

A lot of the single source stuff I did manage to find, was to my memory all of a kind; it tended to mesh together quite well. Having dealt with employee situations in the past, and having a fair understanding of the inner workings of government jobs, it all rang true... and I wrote based on those impressions and some logical deductions based on those impressions.

I've seen nothing in that time or since to counter those original perceptions of the woman, her claims and her (lack of) credibility in the matter, inclduing what's been posted here so far.
I'm willing to be convicned I'm wrong, but based on those original impressions, it'll be a hard sell.

OK, OK, you've almost convinced me. Give him one more year to whip the Golden State into shape and we'll give you "Ahnold" to start in on the FBI.

In the meantime, RIF the top four layers in each DC bureau, and the top two elsewhere, make a bunch of promotions from the mid and lower levels, and get some clearer thinking and less self-protective minds in there.

Or, start calling them the "Federal Bureacracy of Investigation".

Not totally worthless?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040805/ap_on_re_us/mosque_raid&cid=519&ncid=716

Two words: Robert Mueller.

He should have never been confirmed. His work as Assistant Attorney General during the Bush I administration made him the front man in subverting the Noriega investigations into Panamanian connections to the CIA, Iran-Contra and other Cold War covert operations. Mueller was also held duties on overseeing investigations into BCCI, another operation with connections to Iran-Contra, Noriega and Cold War covert operations.

Not a single Senator voted against Mueller. Senator Kerry for one should have voted No. Kerry's Subcommittee hearings investigating BCCI were actively obstructed by delay and dawdling by Mueller at the DoJ.

If Bush wins re-election Mueller should be one of the first casualties.

r.t.: That would be called failure to perform constitutional duties. The Congress wasn't moving because the 9/11 commission never had to worry about running for re-election. The Congress failed the people and states again in waiting for an independent commission to report its findings. The Congress has a constitutional duty for oversight of the agencies and bureaus that it creates.

Ron Wright: I'm a big LGF fan, but the notion that "we're at war" is an obtuse standing to expect Congress to pretend like the Constitution doesn't exist. If that's what we're doing to fight Islamofascism then they're winning. We cannot ignore our responsibilities as participating citizens, voters and soldiers in defending this constitutional democracy if we are to continue pushing our representative democracy as superior to the theocratic Salafis that want to destroy us.

Bithead, before you put together another misinformation essay on your web site (or here), please at least get some basic facts right:

1. Edmonds originally filed her lawsuit in July 2002, not in February 2004 (as you claimed on your web site and in the other thread here).

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/06/fbi.translator/

2. Her lawsuit was dismissed by the DC District Court not on the merits, but because John Ashcroft invoked the "state secrets privilege", claiming that that for Edmonds to present her claims or for the FBI to defend itself against her claims vital national secrets would have to be revealed.

The court explicitly says that it dimisses the case "with great consternation" and to enable Edmonds to "immediately seek appellate review" (rather than putting the case on hold for an indefinite amount of time).

Source: http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/02-1448.pdf

Edmonds' claims are very detailed and precise. Some of them could be tested very easily, some of them have already been corroborated by the press. Most of the specific claims have nothing to do with partisan politics - everybody concerned about our nation's security should be concerned about serious mismanagement at the FBI of terror investigations and should want to correct it.

Her claims with regards to who had prior knowledge of terrorist threats before 9/11 should be separated from the other claims. It is quite obvious that people like Bithead will attack her relentlessly for those claims alone and will attempt to discredit _everything_ she says because they view her as a political danger. It becomes very clear from these kinds of attacks who really cares about our country and who cares only about partisan politics.

1: I get the impression you're talking about a different suit.

2: And apparently the DC District Court saw merit in the argument.

Edmonds' claims are very detailed and precise.

I've yet to see a government worker fighting for a jb they've been removed from to be less than this, particulalry when losing such a case will likely result in criminal procecuton for filing false claims.

Your attempt to seperate out claims that have been disproven is amusing but unavailing. THe question of motivation as well as her lack of ability to tell the truth...applies to all the points equally. Those questions destroy both her case and that of the Democrats who are in their turn using this case in their attempts to regain the white House by whatever means possible.

Bithead: Is Senator Grassley working for the Democrats when he co-authors letters to the DoJ and FBI on behalf of Ms. Edmond's claims?

This is not a partisan issue. These are Congressional inquiries that the DoJ and FBI are not responding to. In court they can claim "state secrets". To the Congress they cannot.

Perhaps following the Plame thing, they'd better start thinking about not reporting to Congress, hmmm?

And I disagree... this IS a partisan issue. Once the DNC got ahold of it, it could hardly be else, even on that level alone.

As for Grassley's involvement;

Think about it for a split second and ask yourself; How would it be now if he'd NOT gotten involved? How many people..(say, yourself for example) would have had the torches, tar and feathers out, accusing him of stonewalling the investigation?

And I don't recall him being particularly partisan on either side, previously, in any event, regardless how the left paints him.

Sorry, I don't see his involvement provides any credibility to the claims; He's just following process,a nd making a show of it so as to stay out of harm's way.

Bithead, exactly which one of Edmonds' claim has been "disproven"?

Your claim, on the other hand, that Edmonds filed a lawsuit two years after the fact for political gain in an election year, is clearly false. The court's PDF document that I cited above clearly states that her lawsuit was filed on July 22, 2002, excatly three months after her contract with the FBI was terminated.

So far the "question of motivation as well as her lack of ability to tell the truth" are nothing but a fiction of your imagination. Or should we conclude that the question of YOUR motivation and YOUR lack of ability to tell the truth should make us all question everything YOU write?

And by the way; if it's not a partisan issue, explain to me why generally the only outlets talking about it are the off the left end wack jobs?

It's all a cover-up, huh?
Sorry, no sale.

Bithead: Grassley and Leahy's letter seemed quite simple in its questions. It wanted to know more from the DoJ and FBI about the treatment of whistleblowers. To my knowledge neither the DoJ or FBI responded to the Senators.

Frankly, if it takes partisanship to raise the concerns that the Congress is failing to execute its constitutional duties on oversight then let me roll out the red carpet for them. The DoJ and FBI have been far and away uncooperative with this Congress on standard matters such as the treatment of whistleblowers and providing information to the committee's with direct oversight. Recall AG Ashcroft's answer to Biden's request for documents that media reports suggest created a policy that found zero fault in the use of potential torture methods at Gitmo and possibly Abu Ghraib. Ashcroft cited past precedent and denied he was using "executive privelage".

Failure to respond makes the Majority party look incompetent.

Apparently, you didn't read AM, where he said:

Anything this woman knows about the way the FBI handled 9/11 is either from documents she translated (AFTER 9/11) or hearsay (office gossip -- the things you learn from working with 200 other translators.) This doesn't make it untrue -- just second-hand.

I consider that evdience removed form the realm of proven... and if you thikn that's going too far, let me ask... is it that when Republicans are the target, second hand information is now considered proof?

Odd how the bar gets moved around depending on who is the target.

Apparently, you didn't read AM, where he said:

Anything this woman knows about the way the FBI handled 9/11 is either from documents she translated (AFTER 9/11) or hearsay (office gossip -- the things you learn from working with 200 other translators.) This doesn't make it untrue -- just second-hand.

I consider that evdience removed form the realm of proven... and if you thikn that's going too far, let me ask... is it that when Republicans are the target, second hand information is now considered proof?

Odd how the bar gets moved around depending on who is the target.

Apparently, you didn't read AM, where he said:

Anything this woman knows about the way the FBI handled 9/11 is either from documents she translated (AFTER 9/11) or hearsay (office gossip -- the things you learn from working with 200 other translators.) This doesn't make it untrue -- just second-hand.

I consider that evdience removed form the realm of proven... and if you thikn that's going too far, let me ask... is it that when Republicans are the target, second hand information is now considered proof?

Odd how the bar gets moved around depending on who is the target.

Apparently, you didn't read AM, where he said:

Anything this woman knows about the way the FBI handled 9/11 is either from documents she translated (AFTER 9/11) or hearsay (office gossip -- the things you learn from working with 200 other translators.) This doesn't make it untrue -- just second-hand.

I consider that evdience removed form the realm of proven... and if you thikn that's going too far, let me ask... is it that when Republicans are the target, second hand information is now considered proof?

Odd how the bar gets moved around depending on who is the target.

Doggone connection. Sorry, Dan.

By the way, as regards the date of the suit, it appears the error was either my own, or the source I used, I'm not sure which eyt, but it appears there were two seperate suits filed... the original one, and the one to lift the gag order, which was pursuant to the first. Barring my finding my original sources for that info last April, I'll accept the blame.

Bithead, Ashcroft has retroactively classified information previously given to Congress (in 2002) so that he doesn't have to respond to Edmonds' claims - see http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30E1EFC3B5B0C738EDDAC0894DC404482, which can be read for free at http://www.911citizenswatch.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=265. Quote from that article:

"What the F.B.I. is up to here is ludicrous," Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said in an interview. "To classify something that's already been out in the public domain, what do you accomplish? It does harm to transparency in government, and it looks like an attempt to cover up the F.B.I.'s problems in translating intelligence."

Also, contrary to your assertion that the DC District Court is all liberal all the time, the single judge who let Edmonds' lawsuit sit for two years before dismissing it and who refused to hear her or her attorney, but only met with DOJ representatives, was a George W. Bush appointee - see http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/walton-bio.html.

I'm not saying this to claim that the judge must have been biased in one way; I'm just disproving your carelessly made claim that the judge must have been biased in the opposite way.

I'm also beginning to wonder if you have problems with the English language. I asked you to name a single claim that Edmonds made that was DISPROVEN. You replied by referring to claims she made that HAVE NOT BEEN PROVEN, at least not yet. Please note that DISPROVEN is far from the same as NOT PROVEN. And please let's not forget now that you used the false accusation that some of her claims had been DISPROVEN to cast doubts on her credibility in general.

You also claimed that the mere fact that we haven't heard more about this should indicate that there is nothing to it. Far from it, the fact we haven't heard more about this so far was due to Edmonds' trying to play by the rules, filing a lawsuit on which a judge sat for two years, gagging orders by the DOJ, retroactive classification of previously unclassified information and general non-responsiveness by the DOJ and the FBI, not just to Edmonds, but also to Congress. It is amazing that you dare use this as evidence against Edmonds rather than as evidence that the FBI and the DOJ have something to hide.

It is quite possible that all they are protecting is the heads of some managers at the FBI. Still, their incompetence may have cost us dearly in the war on terror and may still be costing us today.

At the same time let me be clear that I've never said or indicated that I believe that everybody at the FBI is incompetent. Certainly not! Most FBI agents are probably extremely competent and brave people. The problem is that in every large organization less competent people sometimes get promoted up precisely because of their incompetence (they can't be fired or demoted for some reason or another, so the only way is up!).

We can't tolerate such incompetence at an organization as important as the FBI. Incompetent managers must be removed as soon as possible.

Bithead:

gw addressed my concern above, when he indicated that her charges about the FBI pre-9/11 should be divorced from the other charges.

I did my earlier google because I thought it odd that some credible sounding charges she made had gone into the media memory hole. I think I found my answer -- she went too far with one of her charges, and the media (a very hive minded institution) decided to tune out everything else. I'm with gw and Brennan Stout that this was unfortunate. A lot of what she talked about felt very true, and merits investigation, not dimissal.

Nobody has a monopoly on the truth, and it pops out in the oddest places and out of the most unlikely people. It's usually unwise -- if you are interested in the truth -- to dismiss plausible charges until they are investigated.

gw:
Bithead, Ashcroft has retroactively classified information previously given to Congress (in 2002) so that he doesn't have to respond to Edmonds' claims -

A leap on your part. That the stuff had been clasified is beyond question. But you're making an unjustified assumption as to why, and then speculating based on that assumption.

Also, contrary to your assertion that the DC District Court is all liberal all the time, the single judge who let Edmonds' lawsuit sit for two years before dismissing it and who refused to hear her or her attorney, but only met with DOJ representatives, was a George W. Bush appointee - see http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/walton-bio.html.

I dind't say they were all liberal, nor did I suggest the directly that the judge in this particualr case was either. Go back and look at what I said. The implication was and remains that conservatives in robes in the DC area are rare at best.

By the same token however, because one is a Bush appointee doesn't make them conservative, either, given that such appointsments seldom make it through the Congressional Democrats, particularly during this Congress... the Democrats therein having called for and executed open stonewalling on any nominee to the right of Castro.

In any event, BUSH isn't a conservative but a moderate. Neither was his father. Consider Justice David Souter, as an example. The rest follows.

And let's be honest enough to say that this issue wouldn't have even the limited light it's gotten ahd the Democrats not been looking for something/anthing to toss at Presdient Bush. That alone calls for some serious questioning of accuser credibility.

AM;
Again, your point was well taken, but pretty much single sourced, (and at that single sourced to a site with a serious lean to one side...) which as I recall is one reason I didn't use it last April.

I still suspect there's far less to this story than she'd like you to think... and the DNC with her.

Another point; Have you considered where a mere translator might be getting her legal funding from? I find it of interest I cannot find any reference to that point anywhere.

***

To all, by way of apology, let me ask a question:

Is it just me, of did the net throw up about an hour ago?
About the time of that repeated post, I lost all connection to the outside. This is not unusual for me for the at-work network... but it wasn't just there. I have access to several different POPs here, which output at several differnt points around the country (NY Rochester, LA, Pittsburgh, etc) some direct and some tunneled, all of which were unable to get to this page or my home page and a goodly number of other sites for over a half-hour.

IN looking at the problem and trying to isolate it, I pinged the server this page is on and got upwards of 75% packet loss for a while... even wnen connetced directly to a DSL line exclusive on the net here at work... and this held true across every pop I could access. What gives?

Now, usually, I post through a proxy, and not direct, since my main desk machine here at work runs through a proxy. Looks like the repeats were due to the proxy re-trying the connection repeatedly due to the same problem I noted... dropped packets. Again, my apologes for the repeats earlier.

Weird.

Bithead:
I've been online for more or less the last couple of hours (on a dialup that portals via Splitrock at Cincinnati), and didn't notice any particular problem with site access or slow(er) loading, just the usual 28.8K crawl. (One site that I'd Googled wasn't available the first time I tried it, but it was there 5 minutes later.)

That said, that Blogads javascript bug that screws up page rendering in Mozilla seems to be "back after a short absence." (Problems at Command Post and Roger Simon) Bummer.

Bithead said:

By the same token however, because one is a Bush appointee doesn't make them conservative, either, given that such appointsments seldom make it through the Congressional Democrats, particularly during this Congress... the Democrats therein having called for and executed open stonewalling on any nominee to the right of Castro.

Um, actually, of the 131 hearings held by the 107th Congress for judicial nominations, 100 of the candidates were confirmed. Are you saying that Bush nominated 100 judges that were more left-wing than Castro? (link) Also, Bush padded his nomination numbers by renominating ultra-conservative judges (link) - i.e. Owen, Pickering, Estrada - after they were returned almost unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committe; plus he submitted 8 of his nominations less than three months before the Congressional recess.

And yes, Clinton had higher confirmation rates than Bush Jr, but then Bush Sr had higher confirmation rates than Clinton. (link) Besides, both parties are guilty of partisanship when it comes to confirming judicial nominees. Democrats actually tend to confirm more judges overall than Republicans; however, their partisan differential is, admittedly, wider (33% vs. 20% for the Republicans).

843 http://www.texas-holdem-now.com play texas holdem here!