Edmonds says she was fired in March 2002 after she protested to FBI managers about shoddy wiretap translations and told them an interpreter with a relative at a foreign embassy might have compromised national security by blocking translations in some cases and notifying targets of FBI surveillance.
In response to the new report, the FBI said yesterday it still was investigating Edmonds's contentions. It also said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has reminded senior bureau officials to protect employees against retaliation for raising concerns. The government has said Edmonds did not qualify for formal whistle-blower job protections because she worked with the FBI under a personal contract.
"The report substantiated the most serious of Sibel's allegations and demonstrates that the FBI owes Sibel an apology and compensation for its unlawful firing of her rather than hiding behind its false cloak of national security," said Mark Zaid, her lawyer.
Fine did not specify whether Edmonds's charges of espionage were true. He said that was beyond the scope of his probe. But he criticized the FBI's review of the spying allegations, which he said were "supported by either documentary evidence or witnesses other than Edmonds."
The report did not name Edmonds's co-worker, although Edmonds has identified the employee in comments to journalists. The report said there could be innocent explanations for the co-worker's behavior, but "other explanations were not innocuous."
The report noted that Edmonds's co-worker passed a lie detector test, as Edmonds has done, but it described the polygraph examinations as "not ideal" and noted that follow-up tests were not conducted.
Senators Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said the FBI's review of Edmonds's allegations was unacceptable, especially after the espionage scandal involving Robert P. Hanssen, the FBI agent caught spying for Russia for more than a decade.
