Warnings Of September 11 Ignored
03.04.2004
A former FBI translator with top-secret security clearance says
she has
provided detailed information to the panel investigating September
11 that
proves senior officials knew of al Qaeda plans to attack the
US with
aircraft months before the strikes in New York and Washington.
She said national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's claim
that there was
no such information is "an outrageous lie".
Sibel Edmonds said she spent more than three hours in a closed-door
session with the commission's investigators providing information
circulating within the FBI in the spring and summer of 2001
suggesting an
attack using aircraft was just months away and the terrorists
were in
place.
The Bush Administration, meanwhile, has sought to silence her
and has
obtained a gag order from a court by citing the rarely used
"state secrets
privilege".
She told the Independent: "I gave [the commission] details
of specific
investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information,
specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them
everything
[so] that they could go back and follow up.
"This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented.
These things
can be established very easily."
She added: "There was general information about the time
frame, 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 accusations of Edmonds, a Turkish-American who speaks Arabic,
Farsi,
Turkish and English, will reignite the controversy over whether
or not the
Bush Administration ignored warnings about al Qaeda. That controversy
was
sparked most recently by Richard Clarke, a former senior counter-terrorism
official, who has accused the Administration of repeatedly ignoring
his
warnings about the threat posed by al Qaeda in the months after
President
Bush assumed office.
This issue - what the Administration knew and when - is central
to the
investigation being carried out by the 9-11 Commission which
has been
hearing testimony in both public and private from Government
officials,
intelligence officials and secret sources. Earlier this week,
the White
House undertook a major U-turn when it said Rice would appear
in public
before the commission to answer questions. Bush and his deputy
Dick Cheney
will also be questioned in a closed-door session.
Edmonds, 33, from northern Virginia, was hastily hired as a
part-time
translator for the FBI's Washington field office on September
13, 2001,
just two days after the al Qaeda attacks that killed almost
3000 people.
Her job was to translate documents and recordings from FBI wire-taps,
some
of which had already been translated and some of which was new.
She said much of the information relating to the terror attacks
-
particularly about the funding of the operation - was not obtained
from
agents working strictly in counter-terrorism but in areas such
as
money-laundering.
"President Bush said they had no specific information about
September 11
and that is accurate but only because he said September 11,"
she said.
There was, however, general information about the use of aeroplanes
and
that an attack was just months away.
|